Elspeth Eric and Bernie Grant star in an Allan Sloane script that begins a new (and unexpected) season of Suspense. It is an interesting selection for the first episode, a psychological drama. In some ways, it has similar feel to 1951-10-01 Case Study of a Murderer which was redone as 1955-01-20 Study of a Murderer. It’s a heavy drama, not in the typical Suspense format of mystery, and is well done. Allan Sloane was a veteran scripter who was involved in a wide range of projects and themes, ranging from crime in shows like The Big Story and Indictment to religious programming such as The Eternal Light. His skill shows.
Grant plays a man who arrives at a hotel where he is a regular, getting the same room each time. He is visiting his wife who is at a nearby psychiatric hospital. An unstable woman tries to kill her husband, blaming him for the tragic death of their son. As he prepares for the latest visit, there is a knock at the door. She escaped from the hospital, and demands to discuss the death of their son which was the catalyst for her mental challenges and the strife in their marriage. She has a gun, and the husband has to protect himself and her from his own death and her possible suicide. Through the script’s dialogue, the two sides of the incident and the hurt and pain are revealed. It is not an easy story to listen to, especially if you know people and families who have had similar tragedies in their lives. In that sense, it is an odd choice to open the new season, even though it is powerful and serious drama.
It is possible that this script was in producer Paul Roberts' files, waiting in queue for broadcast, when Suspense was cancelled in November 1960. Roberts and Sloane worked together on the Indictment series where Sloane adapted the experiences of assistant district attorney Eleazar Lipsky for that series. Some Indictment episodes were revised and re-used by Roberts during his Suspense tenure. It may have been selected as the first episode of this new season because it was the best script that new producer Bruno Zirato, Jr. had at that moment, fully edited and prepared for a 1960 airing that never came.
How did Suspense arrive at this particular day and its return?
Just seven months prior, the series was cancelled and there was no expectation of any future return. Suspense was finished, along with numerous other series, including long-running soap operas. In May, 1961, CBS radio executives finalized their earlier decision to have radio drama in New York and not Hollywood. Suspense had moved to New York at the end of August 1959, but Gunsmoke was still being produced in Hollywood. Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar moved, a year later, with its first New York show in December 1960. Gunsmoke was ended for a variety of reasons, mainly the success of the television series. CBS decided to use the Gunsmoke time slot to bring Suspense back, allowing affiliates and the network to sell an entire hour to advertisers. The radio production of Gunsmoke ended on 1961-06-18. Suspense would air the next week. The news about the change started to appear in newspapers in the early days of June; it received barely any mentions in the trade press.
In the 1961-06-11 Cincinnati Enquirer, esteemed radio critic Magee Adams offered these observations:
Effective June 25, Suspense is to come back to the CBS Radio Network, replacing Gunsmoke at 6:35pm Sunday. If there is any compelling reason for the change, it does not appear in the CBS announcement.
Of course, Suspense has had a distinguished past, including such triumphs as Agnes Moorehead's Sorry, Wrong Number. More recently, however, it slipped into the groove of contrived goose pimpling.
Meanwhile, the worst to be said of Gunsmoke is having sired the brood of adult westerns on TV, and that without malice aforethought.
With Johnny Dollar ahead of it at 6:05pm Sunday, the effect of bringing back Suspense is to line up two dramas or essentially the same type. When those two are the entire crop of radio drama on the networks, that choice is meager.
To summarize Adams: Gunsmoke was so successful that it inspired many other western TV programs, most of which did not meet its high standard. He believed, prematurely, that Suspense and YTJD would be the same kinds of mystery programs. He lamented that there were no other radio dramas, and that these were the last two, which essentially meant it was these two or nothing for listeners. On the contrary, Suspense had a greater variety of stories in its 1961 return than it did prior to the 1960 cancellation.
The week following the broadcast, Adams expressed his concern in his column of 1961-07-02:
Suspense returned to CBS and WKRC Radio last Sunday With the tale of a man whose life was threatened by his mentally ill wife. In its contrived way, the yarn worked up enough goose pimples to score a passing grade. But the heavy price was equating mental illness with homicidal mania.
For Suspense this was a familiar dramatic device in its previous radio run. But something more enlightened might have been expected to mark its return to the air.
Fostering the notion that mental illness Is synonymous with homicidal mania is a dismal disservice to public understanding of the disease. Suspense well might take account of that if it is to avoid the unflattering publicity being heaped on TV crime shows by Senate committee hearings.
The Senate committee hearings that Adams was referring to were about juvenile delinquency and included testimony about the possible causal effects of television crime shows that might inspire violence and criminal acts. The Federal Communications Commission was also the recipients of many complaints about the subject.
Adams’ concerns were valid in general, but the underlying theme of the story is that a tragic act, even if accidental, can create serious problems. Most importantly, the husband remained loyal to his wife and steadfast to her recovery. Such events can permanently destroy marriages and families, sending each person away in different directions, never to see each other again. It is that point that he missed. (It is easy, however, to say Adams missed something some sixty years later).
The closing of Gunsmoke had many facets and most of them are overlooked. The cancellation was a case study in the media transition from radio to television, with multiple converging factors. Some will point to cost, that saving money was paramount at CBS Radio. Sponsors were already souring on radio drama to promote their products, which meant that ad sales were falling. When ad revenues fall, costs must be reconfigured and rebalanced. Another factor was that Gunsmoke was considered too difficult for New York production to handle. It was an extremely complex broadcast in terms of sound effects, especially. The resources needed were too great and the learning curve was too steep. The television version was doing quite well, and there was concern that there might be oversaturation of the brand, that there was “too much Gunsmoke for the marketplace” and the radio version could be dropped and narrow the audience attention to the newer offering. Most importantly, however, the radio actors on the series were getting very busy on television having appearances on many different series, and the writers were, too. The money was quite good. While they loved radio, and working with each other, their schedules and commitments made it more difficult to work together. Too many forces were pulling the show’s financial and human resources into other directions. In comparison, Suspense was simple, and New York had lots of skilled actors available for the series from Broadway, television soap operas, and advertising production.
The series was now under the direction of Bruno Zirato, Jr. He was a staff producer for CBS and was handed this assignment with no budget, of course. The recording day was four hours long, with a read-through, dress rehearsal, and a performance. Zirato would record the dress rehearsal finding that it had a “spark” and often had better and more natural results. It also served as backup in case there were issues with the final tape and performance. Some of the broadcasts were combinations of the dress and final performances. He stuck with New York actors who could work under these circumstances, some of whom remembered it as the way soap operas were done. The show doesn’t use as wide a range of voices as the Hollywood productions did. The community of radio voice actors was also shrinking after the Auto-Lite era.
The program was recorded on Tuesday, June 20, 1961. Rehearsal and recording time from 3:00pm to 7:00pm. As noted, Zirato had the cast read through together, record the “dress rehearsal,” then proceed to a production recording.
The script cover has “Half-Past” with the hyphen, not the unhyphenated “Half Past.”
Actress Freddi Chandler is in the cast. She was a well-known character actor at the time, and is not credited correctly in many references, where she is often identified as "Freddy." She was originally scheduled to the phone operator, but added a doubling part as the maid. They did this to add the part of a cat, played by Frank Milano. Bernie Grant plays “Cliff Simmons” but the original name was “Clark Simmons,” changed before the recording session.
Milano was a versatile radio actor, known for his ability to mimic animals in programs and especially commercials. Unfortunately, Milano would pass away about 18 months after this episode. He was 44, and died of a heart attack.
LISTEN
TO THE PROGRAM or download in FLAC or
mp3
https://archive.org/details/TSP610625
THE CAST
Elspeth Eric (Fran Simmons), Bernard Grant (Cliff Simmons), Sarah Fussell (Donny Simmons), Jack Grimes (Bellhop), Freddi Chandler (Maid / Operator), Lawson Zerbe (Clerk), Frank Milano (Cat)
###
