Adelaide Klein and Philip Sterling star in a William N. Robson story that takes place during the construction of the Berlin Wall. The broadcast was about four-and-one-half months after the wall was started on August 13, 1961. As this script makes quite clear, the purpose of the Wall was to prevent East Berliners from traveling into West Berlin without permission.
Sterling plays “Willy,” the son of the elderly Frau Schmidt (played by Klein) who desires to stay in her East Berlin apartment. Willy’s wife and child, however, are already in West Berlin, and he wants to join them with his mother. Security measures are increasing against travel to West Berlin. Their attempt to cross at the Brandenburg Gate is stopped by a border guard and their nosy neighbor, Herr Weiss. When they return to the apartment, a friend, Carl Dietrich, is there. He also failed to cross and wants to attempt it once more. When Willy and his mother had their failed attempt, they saw a fleeing man killed by border guards. That incident removed any doubts, about leaving in Frau Schmidt’s mind. She urges Willy and Carl to find a way to leave. A border guard comes to her home, and he is subdued and killed by Willy and Carl. The man’s uniform will fit Carl, and he will wear it as a ruse to get everyone through security; they decide to leave. Carl pretends to be the officer in front of Weiss as he escorts his “prisoners,” Willy and Frau Schmidt, for interrogation and possible arrest. They leave and head towards the Friedrichstrasse checkpoint. They are challenged by the police yet again, and Carl’s explanations as to why they have permission to cross do not fool the guards. Willy decides to floor the gas pedal and plow through the barricade at high speed. It results in a terrible accident. Only Willy survives, but now he is free, and can join his family, because of the sacrifices of Carl and Willy’s mother.
The production is a bit stilted and preachy, and would have been better with the Suspense music of years before. Some of that might have been the result of the constrained rehearsal time that Suspense had in the austere budgets of the 1960s New York shows. This tragic story of the Berlin Wall and this script could not have been written back in the glory days of Suspense, but this style of story was always done well in that era. The insightful and wonderful orchestral bridges and backgrounds that Suspense used at that time could weak scripts and weak performances. Those resources were not available in this last year of the series, unfortunately.
The oppression in Eastern Europe and Russia were always a concern of Robson, and some of his best broadcasts in the time he was Suspense producer were stories of this type. He often employed performers who had a familial or ethnic tie to those scripts. In this case, he might have recommended Adelaide Klein to producer Bruno Zirato, Jr., or Zirato may have already known Klein. She was a long-time radio actor and also appeared on stage and movies. She was noted for her ability to reproduce over twenty different dialects, making her a valuable resource for many producers and directors. Like Robson, however, her career was negatively affected for a few years by being listed in Red Channels. Her appearance in this Robson script may have been inspired by their mutual experience and the style of casting he used in the past. At the time of this broadcast, Robson was already working at Voice of America.
No script cover is available for this episode. Therefore, the date and time of its recording is not known.
There are two surviving recordings, a network aircheck and an Armed Forces Radio and Television Service recording (AFRS#860). Both recordings are very listenable but have very mild defects. The AFRS recording is the better of the two. The network aircheck is missing the opening words “And now…” and also has a slightly trimmed close that lacks the network ID.
LISTEN
TO THE PROGRAM or download in FLAC or
mp3
https://archive.org/details/TSP620107
THE CAST
Adelaide Klein (Mother, Frau Schmidt), Philip Sterling (Willy), Robert Dryden (Weiss), Danny Ocko (First VoPo), Alan Manson (Carl), Luis Van Rooten (Third VoPo), Sam Raskyn (Escapee), Doug Parkhirst (The GI), Guy Repp (Second VoPo)
The acronym “VoPo” stands for Volkspolizei, which translates to “People's Police.” The Volkspolizei was the national uniformed police force of East Germany from 1945 to 1990. They worked closely with the Stasi, State Security, which was somewhat similar to the US Federal Bureau of Investigation.
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