1962-06-03 Stand In for Murder

Teri Keane and Larry Haines portray an estranged married couple whose husband is too conniving for his own good. He is itching for a divorce and has a mistress, Laura Morgan. He claims he killed Laura, accidentally. He asks his wife to help cover up the crime and pretend to be Laura as part of a ruse that Laura has traveled to Europe. There’s a “problem” that actually becomes part of the husband’s scheme: Laura was a witness to a mob hit. Because the mob knows she saw their killing, they need to eliminate her. Did the husband kill Laura? Or is he demanding his wife imitate Laura, training her to dress and sound like her, in hopes the mob kills his wife? This would let him and Laura live a happily-ever-after life together. The story comes to a rapid close, and the husband’s ruse that seemed so brilliant and possible is suddenly not.

The story is one of the better ones in the final months of the series. It was written by long-time CBS staff writer Gladys F. Gallant. Her work in the 1950s was usually in the background, rarely credited. This was her only Suspense script. Unfortunately, Gallant would pass away in 1965 at age 45.

The program was recorded on Thursday, May 24, 1962. The session began at 1:30pm and concluded at 5:00pm.

The script cover does not hyphenate the title as “Stand-In.”

The surviving recording of this episode is a WROW aircheck, and is in much better sound quality than what has been in circulation among collectors for many years.

This is producer Fred Hendrickson’s first Suspense episode, replacing Bruno Zirato, Jr. Hendrickson was assigned to Suspense and Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar until the end of the series on September 30, 1962. It's likely that Zirato had some "command presence" over the first few Hendrickson episodes, giving advice on casting and other matters. The first scripts of the Hendrickson run were likely selected by Zirato before he learned of his reassignment to the game show To Tell the Truth.

Hendrickson is too often discounted as "just" a production engineer. He worked for CBS for 30 years, from the time he was 18. He was an electrical engineer, and was Arthur Godfrey's director or producer or other roles for Godfrey's radio and TV at various times, and other assignments. Fred was well-known at CBS and in his community of Mamaroneck (near White Plains and New Rochelle in the Westchester suburbs). He worked in local charitable events, sometimes arranging for CBS celebrities to appear. Unfortunately, he passed away at age 48 in 1965.

LISTEN TO THE PROGRAM or download in FLAC or mp3
https://archive.org/details/TSP620603

THE CAST

Teri Keane (Kay), Larry Haines (Jim), Claire Niesen (Laura Morgan), Toni Darnay (Jiffy Cleaning Services Rep / lady on street), Jack Grimes (Lieutenant Kelly), Ivor Francis (Phil, the actor on tape / Brady, the doorman), Joseph Julian (radio announcer on tape / Captain Blaine), Bob Readick (reporter on phone / Killer), Bill Lipton (man on street)

The original script cover had the role “Operator,” such as a phone operator, but that may have been edited out or changed to a different character. Many thanks to classic radio enthusiast and researcher Karl Schadow for identifying the actors and their roles. They were not noted on the script cover, and they were not announced in the closing credits.

###

1962-05-27 That Real Crazy Infinity

Jack Grimes and Richard Holland star in an amusing and somewhat endearing Dick W. Dowling time travel story about friendship and a steadfast love of music. They play “Bud” and “Lou” (already a not-so-inside joke related to comedy duo Abbott and Costello) about two down-on-their-luck jazz musicians who don’t have enough money to get out of a small town. They want to get back to a big city where they might get some good-paying gigs. They’re sitting in the local diner having coffee and chatting things up with a waitress when the proprietor of a radio repair shop overhears them. He offers them a chance to make $10 each ($106 value in current US$2025) if they help him make a delivery of some electronic equipment. They agree, as it won’t take long, will give them plenty of money to leave town. The equipment is headed to a reclusive scientist on the outskirts of town. When they get there, they realize how remote it is, that the equipment is heavy, and there are a lot of stairs. They are dropped off, with the equipment, and the repair shop owner drives away, stranding them!

They are really lost now, but they carry the equipment up to the house and meet Professor Norville Hagen. He’s working on an audio project that some folks in town have heard strange voices, have come to think his house is haunted, and that he is very strange. He is working on something he calls “Infiniphone,” which allows him to listen to audio from the past, very far in the past. They hear Julius Caesar making a speech from 46 BC, just like they were listening on a modern day radio! (He says, in Latin, roughly translated, “I am Caesar, your leader, and your king”). One of the time periods they tune into delivers the sound of jazz music from the 1930s. Bud and Lou are thrilled. Professor Hagen loves music, too, but of the classical kind. He invites them to stay and use the machine. Bud and Lou decide that they can record the music from the device and make money by releasing it commercially. Everything seems to be going well, until Lou realizes he loves the music he’s hearing so much that he starts playing along and doesn’t always record the Infiniphone audio onto tape. They learn that Hagen has been working on an enhanced invention, allowing a person to physically travel back to the times they desire. In his case, back to the times of the music he loves. He has long been dissatisfied with the world as it currently is, and is now prepared to make the trip. Lou decides he wants to go, too, but to the jazz era he adores. Bud will have no part of it. Hagen and Lou leave, but the energy of the process stresses the equipment and causes a big explosion. It destroys the Professor’s home, but somehow Bud escapes. Later, we learn that a recording of Lou’s solos as he played along with past jazz masters, has survived, is released, and is a big hit. Bud misses his friend, and hopes he got to where he wanted and “is fine and having a ball in that real crazy infinity.”

No information can be found about scripter Dick W. Dowling. There is a possibility that the name is a pseudonym. No record of other writings or work positions under this name or a more formal name can be found in publishing or broadcasting data bases, or newspaper archives. He could be a Suspense “one-hit wonder” whose only script he ever wrote for any medium was this very one.

This is one of the few science fiction stories that worked on Suspense in the final New York era, and especially under producer Zirato. It’s an entertaining story, and doesn’t take itself too seriously, with interesting characters. The implausibility of the events is easily set aside as fantasy just for the fun of it.

The program was recorded on Thursday, May 17, 1962. The session began at 1:30pm and concluded at 5:00pm.

There are two surviving recordings, with the better or the two from the Armed Forces Radio Service. It has some minor audio defects, but is an enjoyable listen. The AFRS service announcements have been edited out. The “Suspense March” is heard at the end, indicating it is an AFRS recording. The network recording is an aircheck with very narrow range, some volume fluctuation, and overall low quality sound.

This episode was Bruno Zirato, Jr.’s final episode as producer-director. He was reassigned by CBS to the game show To Tell the Truth where he had a long run as associate producer and later as producer when the show went into syndication. CBS veteran Fred Hendrickson takes over Suspense with the next episode.

LISTEN TO THE PROGRAM or download in FLAC or mp3
https://archive.org/details/TSP620527

THE CAST

Jack Grimes (Bud), Richard Holland (Lou), Robert Dryden (Charlie Olin), Court Benson (Professor Norvell Hagen), Athena Lorde (Jenny), Robert Readick (Max Wesson), Guy Repp (The voice of Julius Caesar)

###

1962-05-20 Dagger of the Mind

Radio soap opera veteran Claire Niesen stars in a John Roeburt play about a jealous woman who is convinced her husband is having an affair with a young and attractive co-worker.

Vicki Kent is disturbed by her nightmares but a psychiatrist laughs off her fears and attributes them to idleness and “middle age.” She is a jealous sort and imagines situations and motives that are darker than they really are. She believes her husband of twenty years, Walter, and a female associate, Martha, are having an affair. Vicki interprets Walter’s workaholic nature and his last minute changes in plans as indicative of him having a rendezvous with the woman. She interprets her dreams as telling her that Walter has a hidden hatred for her. They are married but she feels very alone. Walter brings Martha home for a business dinner. Martha is an influential figure in the firm, and this dinner might be helpful to Walter’s career. Vicki attributes him having the dinner to flaunt their affair and humiliate her.

It will soon be their twentieth anniversary, and she receives a cold, impersonal gift of a monogrammed cigarette case delivered by an office boy. (She does not know that Walter had much different plans for that, revealed at the end of the story). Walter tells her that he must go on a trip, a cruise ship to Paris, to replace a colleague who developed appendicitis. Vicki doesn’t believe that at all, especially when she learns that Martha will be on the same trip. Vicki goes to the dock and boards the ship (this was a time when it was common for passengers and friends and family to go on board for visits and goodbyes, which has not been possible in the last few decades, especially after 9/11 security measures for all transportation). Vicki confronts Martha, who denies an affair or such intentions, and shoots her. The sound of the gun is masked by the loud activities on board. She returns home and is shocked when Walter arrives shortly thereafter. His colleague’s problem passed and he did not have appendicitis. Martha’s murder eventually hits the news, but there are no suspects named in the news. Vicki is frantic about whether or not she left any clues behind; she thinks she left the cigarette case there! Walter is suspicious about Vicki’s behavior, but he’s really more concerned about her mental state than whether or not she killed Martha. They argue, and she shoots him. Walter lies dying on the floor and Vicky taunts him. She tells him to reach out to Martha, and as he is dying, he realizes what Vicki did and how insane she really has been. He reveals that the “monogrammed cigarette case,” was in his coat pocket. He had taken it to have diamonds and rubies set into it, along with an inscription about their anniversary. Vicki murdered two innocent people based on delusion and paranoia. Now she realizes her husband was always telling the truth.

The title refers to the second act of MacBeth and the scene where he hallucinates a dagger that leads him to King Duncan’s chamber to kill him. The title ties to Vicki’s mental instability and desire to kill Martha and her husband Walter, whom she believed were having an affair, but were not.

The program was recorded on Thursday, May 10, 1962. The session start and ending times are not known.

There are two surviving recordings of this episode. The network recording is of low quality with somewhat narrow range and occasional distortion. The Armed Forces Radio Service (AFRS) recording has much better sound quality. It has some minor sound issues, but is very listenable. It has a slightly clipped ending at the time of the AFRS identification.

This is the first of two Suspense appearances by Claire Niesen. Her radio acting career started when she was 15 years old. Her most important role was as Mary Noble, main character of the series Backstage Wife, which she held for 14 years (1945-1959). She was on many other soaps, as well, and did some theater work early in her career. Niesen was married to Melville Ruick, who also appeared on Suspense. Sadly, she passed away of cancer about 18 months after this performance, at age 43.

LISTEN TO THE PROGRAM or download in FLAC or mp3
https://archive.org/details/TSP620520

THE CAST

Leon Janney (Walter Kent), Claire Niesen (Vicki Kent), Guy Repp (Office Boy), Ralph Camargo (Dr. Randow), Evelyn Juster (Martha Coles / Operator)

###

1962-05-13 Hide and Seek

Jackson Beck narrates a Bob Corcoran story about a gambler, “Dandy DeAngelis,” played by William Redfield. It’s a generally good production about a man who picks the wrong time to overcome a paralyzing childhood fear.

Dandy is a well-dressed gambler in deep trouble with Bigelow, the mob boss, for his excessive debt from horse racing. He tries to reason with them, but he’s lied about making payments for a while. They decide they’ve had enough and will “take him for a ride” to a “forest preserve.” This can only mean one thing: they will kill him and bury him there. He tries to get away, jumping out of their car, which only makes the mobsters mad. He runs through the streets and an alley behind buildings. He hides among garbage cans, his obsessive interest in clean and impeccable clothing challenged by the filthy cans and garbage in the alley. The mobsters have a sense of where he is, and taunt him that he can’t hide from them. Then there’s a rat he sees, of which he has a great and paralyzing fear since being bitten in childhood. He has to overcome it now if he wants to survive, and kills it with a milk bottle he found in the garbage, a triumph. It’s a hollow one, which only brings his location to the attention of the tough guys. Dandy may have killed the rat, but this was an unfortunate time to overcome his fear. One tough guy says to the other, seeing Dandy stand over the rat, “now it’s our turn.” He referred to Dandy as a rat because he didn’t pay off his debt to the mob.

The Chicago intersection where Dandy jumps out of the car at North Sedgwick and West Blackhawk is just south of the Lincoln Park neighborhood. It is about a half mile from the Chicago History Museum.

The program was recorded on Thursday, May 3, 1962. The session began at 4:30pm and concluded at 8:00pm.

LISTEN TO THE PROGRAM or download in FLAC or mp3
https://archive.org/details/TSP620513

THE CAST

Jackson Beck (Narrator), William Redfield (Dandy DeAngelis), Santos Ortega (Bigelow), Larry Haines (Lloyd), Jack Grimes (Herbie), Joseph Julian (Earl)

###

1962-05-06 The Second Door

Bob Readick stars in a script he authored as a man named “Gordon Saunders.” He is tired of his daily life and seeks the solitude of a remote house in the northwest. His peace does not last long, however, as a neighbor is engaged in some very strange experiments. Saunders is lured into them with strange visions and illusions. They start with a white house with yellow shutters and a woman in a red dress in a rocking chair. The inhabitants are an odd man, Dr. Ederly, and his daughter Marilla. She turns out to be the woman in the red dress. It all seems real, but it’s not, or is it? Saunders senses that something is really different, where his sensation of physicality is different in the house. He gradually uncovers that Adderley is a reclusive philosopher-scientist who has invented a device that projects hyper-realistic, three-dimensional illusions, including their own house and Marilla herself. (In more modern terms it might be referred to as holographic imaging that creates “holograms.”). The experiments allow the operator to select longitude, latitude, and altitude of a particular place, and a person go there… except for one thing: it is their image that goes to that location, not their physical nature (that’s for Star Trek transporters to do in the future). When Saunders is sent to a place of his childhood, he finds his hand goes through a common farm implement. The story gets a bit bizarre and confusing, but in the end, it is clear that even the doctor and his daughter, and the house are not really with Saunders. They are somewhere else. Ederly has been working on adding the sensation of “touch” to the imaging, and asks Saunders to try it. Marilla kisses Saunders and he says that the touching of the lips seemed real, but the sensation was cold, like death.

These later Suspense shows may have been grasping for a different kind of modern relevance and differentiation from both television dramas. It may be different, but this episode is not particularly engaging.

The program was recorded on Thursday, April 26, 1962. The session’s start and ending times are not known.

The surviving recording appears to have a slightly clipped open. It is more complete, overall, than others that have been in the hobby for decades in that the original commercial is intact. Many prior recordings have had that edited out.

This is the only episode where Bob Readick and his wife Barbara appear in the same episode. It is her final Suspense appearance. “Kasarr” was her stage name, one among a few she used, a contraction of her last name “Kossower.”

LISTEN TO THE PROGRAM or download in FLAC or mp3
https://archive.org/details/TSP620506

THE CAST

Robert Readick (Gordon), Paul McGrath (Dr. Ederly), Barbara Kasarr (Marilla), Robert Dryden (The Farmer)

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1962-04-29 Blackbeard's Ace

Elaine Rost stars in a Jack Buttram story about ESP and spirits and the possibility of messages from Blackbeard the pirate to find his buried treasure. It could be a different story, however, the ESP-skeptical husband suddenly develops an interest in it, perhaps to make her believe, in her words, to “make me think thoughts that don’t belong to me.”

It is a needlessly tedious story and it is easy to lose patience with it. Someone is killed and you’re supposed to wonder if the messages facilitating the act are real or not, and then listeners are supposed to say “oh, that was spooky, I never thought that would happen.” Sorry, this is Suspense. Listeners deserve better than that.

Elaine Rost plays “Margo Reed,” a wife who is haunted by vivid “dreams” that she believes are messages from the dead. She considers them an example of Extra Sensory Perception (ESP). Her husband, Charles, humors her a bit, and decides they need a break from things will help her mental well-being. They will take advantage of an offer from his aunt to a coastal home she owns in the Carolinas. Needing a book to bring along, she picks up a book about piracy and the Spanish Main. (The “Spanish Main” referred to the Caribbean Sea and north coast of South America where Spain had colonies in the 16^th and 17^th centuries). When they arrive in the area, they get a driver to take them to the home in Teach’s Cove. The area is named for the pirate Edward Teach, better known as Blackbeard, who roamed those shores with other pirates in the early 1700s. The driver tells that last year that the previous owner died there from a “terrible cut” that was believed accidental. That death occurred during the “Pirates’ Moon,” which usually refers to the brightest full moon where their nefarious activities, such as burying their treasure (usually stolen), could be done more easily than darker times of the lunar cycle when tides might be too low for them to get far inland by waterways from the shore.

As evening changes into nighttime, Margo feels the need to be in the cabin, locked safely inside. She senses that something is trying to communicate with her. Charles is concerned about the voices she ie hearing. He arranges for the driver to pick them up earlier than they originally planned, fearing that she may be having a relapse of her issues. The driver warns them to avoid “moonlight strolls” along the beach. He says it in a way that he believes some of the pirate legends of the area. It’s a surprise that it’s Charles who opens one of the pirate books, and finds a map of Blackbeard’s travels in the area. He reads that Blackbeard’s favorite weapon was a cutlass, a short, curved sword. He would carry a few of them on his person when engaged in his confrontations. As listeners, we are to start thinking that it was the “terrible cut” that only a cutlass could deliver that killed the person in the cabin in the prior year. Suddenly, they hear a scream outside, and Charles runs out of the house to find out where it came from, and can’t. Margo has an ominous feeling she will hear the scream again the next night. (Part of the Blackbeard legend is that he was guillotined, and his head and body thrown overboard, and the headless body was swimming looking for his head, and those living on shore for years later wouldhear winds on shore that sounded like a man yelling “where’s my head?”).

The next day, Charles finds something sticking out of the sand, which Margo recognizes as a “planchette,” an instrument for communicating with the dead. She knows a lot about it, and tells Charles it is evil. (Today, more people are aware of Ouija boards, and a “planchette” was a precursor to such an instrument. It is a small board supported on casters, typically heart-shaped, its shape like the “heart” symbol in a deck of cards, gives the episode the name “Blackbeard’s Ace” referring to the “ace of hearts”). The planchette has a hole that is fitted with a pencil, and is used for “automatic writing” assisted by a medium whose hand is guided to write by spirits of the deceased, such as in seances.

Charles is fascinated by it, and uses it that night, with no results. Later that night, Margo finds the planchette in the kitchen; she begins to suspect that Charles is trying to send her over the edge again, to “drive her out of her mind” by making her think that Blackbeard put it there for her. The loud scream is heard once more after using the planchette, and they realize the message written is “KILL CHARLES.” There is a scuffle between Margo and Charles, with a bad ending. The next morning, the driver arrives and finds Margo in a state of shock, and Charles is dead. He has a “terrible cut” just like the man who died last year.

Margo wonders if the planchette was real. The driver explains there were many planchettes distributed in the area, the result of a when a gambling ship that sunk there a couple of years prior. They kept washing up on shore, and had little value, and were definitely not antiques. She remains convinced that the planchette she found led to her messages and that those messages were real.

The program was recorded on Wednesday, April 18, 1962. The session start and ending times are not known.

The surviving network aircheck includes network news and sports after the episode. The sports report is clipped during a commercial, and the recording ends there.

LISTEN TO THE PROGRAM or download in FLAC or mp3
https://archive.org/details/TSP620429

THE CAST

Elaine Rost (Margo Read), Bob Dryden (Jed), John Thomas (Charles Read)

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1962-04-22 The Curse of Kamashek

This reworking of an original 5-part Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar serial may be the lowest or near the lowest quality production of the Zirato era. Except for the title, some character names and the few most basic elements of the YTJD plotline, this Suspense production bears little resemblance to the excellent and intricate YTJD production. The plot elements that make the YTJD serial so good were eliminated in this script. It is good that writer Jack Johnstone used his pseudonym “Jonathan Bundy” so only those who know that Bundy is him will blame him. But, it might have been better as “Anonymous.” The YTJD broadcasts were from 1956-09-03 to 1956-09-07.

Even if you had never heard the YTJD version prior to listening to this episode, and had no expectations the storyline, this would still be very dissatisfying all by itself. But we have heard the YTJD serial, and that makes the disappointment greater. Abridging a longer story does not mean tearing its core mystery away. Instead of Egyptology intrigue, we get a very bad third cousin of W.W. Jacobs short story The Monkey’s Paw.

A wealthy patriarch is tired of his nephew’s archaeological pursuits as frivolous. The nephew defies his uncle to go on an Egyptian expedition and find a lost pharaoh’s tomb. Three months later, a package arrives containing a bone fragment and a letter announcing the nephew’s death. The rich man tries to to discard the bone but is confronted by the museum curator he knows claims the bone carries a deadly curse. The patriarch thinks it’s silly, challenges the curse, so he has a swift and unexplainable death. Of course he does. “Curse” is in the title, isn’t it? Nothing much else matters in the plot. Think of the story as a bad Haunting Hour or Murder at Midnight. Better yet, don’t think of the story at all.

Why couldn’t this be one of the missing Suspense episodes so we could think more highly of it?

The program was recorded on Thursday, April 12, 1962. The session began at 1:00pm and concluded at 6:00pm.

The surviving network aircheck recording has slightly clipped opening and closing, and slightly narrow range.

LISTEN TO THE PROGRAM or download in FLAC or mp3
https://archive.org/details/TSP620422

THE CAST

Ian Martin (Turnbull), Mercer MacLeod (Walden), Guy Repp (Doctor), Raymond Edward Johnson (Brackton), John Thomas (Donald)

The original planned cast was for Bernard Lenrow as “Turnbull,” Bob Dryden as “Walden,” and Joe Boland as “Doctor.”

###

1962-04-15 Brother John

Elspeth Eric’s very creative script about an attempted criminal impersonation hinges on the singing of a French nursery rhyme, Frère Jacques. The script is also constructed in the framework of the song when sung as “a round” (explained below). In English, that translates as the episode’s title, “Brother John.” It is a good story, but requires some extra attention to catch the nuances of the impersonation and the details of who knows what and when. It is one of the better scripts of the Zirato tenure, but often discounted because collectors only heard it in lesser quality sound. There is now a fine listenable recording available.

William Redfield plays “Frank,” a stroke patient in a veteran’s hospital. He is recovering. Another stroke patient, Charlie, shares the semi-private room, but is not able to communicate. Charlie is visited by his older brother, John, who once took a prison rap for a wealthy embezzler, Gerald Tremaine. John is the butler for the Tremaine family in return for which he is overpaid, living comfortably on a monthly retainer. He promised John that the payments would last for the rest of his life as payment for his silence. John has been having an affair with Tremaine’s wife. He has a hold over her, too, and can threaten her with telling her husband. John was telling Charlie much of this as he was unresponsive in his hospital bed, and Frank overheard all of it. Over the years, John saved much of the money and now plans to leave it to brother Charlie when he recovers. Charlie’s doctor assured John there he has an excellent chance for recovery, hopes his brother join him soon. Charlie’s recovery is slower than Frank’s. John was told that familiar music could help with Charlie’s recovery of his memory and speech. John tries to sing Charlie’s favorite song from childhood, Frère Jacques. Charlie was raised in France before being sent to the US to join his brother when then parents died. The Tremaines never met Charlie but knew some of the story.

Frank is ready to be released from the hospital and learns that John has been murdered. This is his chance: since the Tremaines have never met Charlie, and he decides to go to the Tremaines, pretend to be John’s brother, and keep the blackmail scheme going.

The Tremaines are startled by Frank’s “faux Charlie” visit. They thought their individual problems were over with John’s murder. They are hospitable, and invite the Frank, the Charlie impostor, to stay in the apartment John used. Frank confronts each of them in conversation that he knows about the embezzlement and the affair. Something happens that he was not expecting: husband and wife confess to each other, but they deny killing John. Frank, still known to them as Charlie, demands $50,000 in extortion, threatening to go to the police if they do not cooperate. Then, another unexpected event: the real Charlie calls from the hospital and he can be heard singing Frère Jacques. Frank’s hoax is revealed, and the scheme falls apart.

The dollar figures used in the story seem low, but once they are adjusted for inflation, the values are very high:

John’s weekly payment was $200; that is approximately $2,125 in US$2025, or $111,000 annually.
John’s savings amounted to $38,000; that is approximately $404,000 in US$2025.
Frank’s blackmail demand for $50,000; that is approximately $530,000 in US$2025.

The title of the episode is from the French song Frère Jacques. The song is about a friar who has overslept and is urged to wake up and sound the bell for the midnight or very early morning prayers for which a friar would be expected to be awake. The traditional English translation changes the order of the original lyric to fit the melody better:

Are you sleeping? Are you sleeping?
Brother John, Brother John,
Morning bells are ringing! Morning bells are ringing!
Ding, dang, dong. Ding, dang, dong.

How curious: the story’s “Brother John” is “sleeping” because he was murdered. “Bells are ringing” because the real Charlie is calling from the hospital to sing the song that John would remember him as knowing in the original French:

Frère Jacques, Frère Jacques,
Dormez-vous? Dormez-vous?
Sonnez les matines! Sonnez les matines!
Din, din, don. Din, din, don

The nursery rhyme is often sung as a “round” with a group of singers divided, where one set sings the first line and continues, the second set starts singing the first line when the first set is starting the second. Eventually each line is added until there is a point where all four lines are sung in parallel, and then three, then two, and then a final singer with the last line.

There is audio of the song from Wikipedia played simply on piano. It illustrates how the song is heard as a melody, and is followed with a sample of how the lines of music overlap, in parallel, as a “round.” This brief recording is at the same Internet Archive page as the program recording.

Also curious: The song as a round is found in the plotline. John is at the Tremaines living the good life as a blackmailer. Charlie is recovering the in hospital. John, Frank, and Charlie all have different but key parts of the storyline, and there is a time when all three of their stories, and the Tremaines, are all playing out simultaneously. One drops out at a time. The real Charlie is the last to sing, just like the final singer in a “round.”

Frank can’t speak French, and that is funny, a little irony inserted in the story by Eric. Those who can speak French are “francophones.” Frank’s plans are thwarted by a phone call from a man who speaks French. Frank can’t speak French!

Eric selected interesting the character names, possibly from her background in studying English literature in college.. “Charles” is derived from an Old English word meaning a “free man” who has no debts or obligations, possibly referring to his recovery and how he will be free of the schemes that John created and Frank attempted to perpetuate. Of all people in the story, Charles is the one who gets a clean start, beginning with a fond memory of childhood now that he can recall his favorite childhood song. The name “Tremaine” has a possible derivation from a the Cornish version of English referring to monks and their seminaries, giving it a connection to “Frere Jacques,” or “Brother John,” a monk who has overslept, the subject of the lullaby. The wife’s name, “Constance,” means “steadfast,” which she is, when staying with Gerald after he admits his embezzlement and payoff of John, and she admits her affair. “Gerald” is German in origin for someone “with a spear who rules,” which means some kind of leader. But Eric may selected the name because of Gerald of Mayo, a famous British monk who established a monastery in Mayo, Ireland.

The program was recorded on Thursday, April 5, 1962. The session began at 1:30pm and concluded at 5:00pm.

LISTEN TO THE PROGRAM or download in FLAC or mp3
https://archive.org/details/TSP620415

THE CAST

William Redfield (Frank [impostor Charlie]), Connie Lembke (Constance Tremaine), Paul McGrath (Gerald Tremaine), Sam Gray (John), Bill Smith (Doctor), Guy Repp (“Voice” [real Charlie on phone])

###

1962-04-08 Let There Be Light

Ivor Francis stars in an Irwin Lewis story. He portrays a very independent blind man, named “Bill,” who lives alone in a rural mountainous area. Recently, there was a crash of a small plane in the area, and we soon learn it involved a diamond smuggler. A man and a woman, associates of the dead pilot, are looking for anyone who might have found the pilot’s little sack of diamonds. The couple enters Bill’s house with intentions of interrogating him and threatening him. He maintains that he “did not see the plane,” wisely responding with a mental reservation. (Lewis gives listeners a clue about how the story may end with this dialogue). Finally realizing Bill is blind, they decide he’s not worth any more attention. That is, until a woman from town arrives. She is checking on him before a big snowstorm arrives. She lets slip a comment about how independent and active Bill is. It’s clear to the criminal couple that he duped them, and he could have found the crashed plane and its diamonds. They are quite miffed, and start their belligerent behavior again. The lights are suddenly turned out in the home, however, giving Bill an upper hand in thwarting their plans. The couple panics, and Bill subdues them with the help of his friend. And… he finally admits to finding and hiding the diamonds, practically in plain sight. It’s a generally good but stereotypical story of its genre, a product of its time in the understanding about living with vision impairment.

Lewis wrote mainly for television in the 1950s, and began writing science fiction in 1963. The three Suspense episodes he wrote might be his only significant radio work. Analog magazine ran his short story To Invade New York in their August 1963 issue. He continued work on that and built it out into a novel The Day They Invaded New York in 1964. The story involved aliens disrupting New York City’s transportation system. His second novel was published in 1967. The Day New York Trembled involved using a pain-killer to create chaos in the city. That novel can be accessed at The Internet Archive https://archive.org/details/daynewyorktrembl0000irwi

The program was recorded on Thursday, March 29, 1962. The session began at 1:30pm and concluded at 5:00pm.

LISTEN TO THE PROGRAM or download in FLAC or mp3
https://archive.org/details/TSP620408

THE CAST

Ivor Francis (Bill Dennison), Mason Adams (Sam Shelby), Teri Keane (Gloria Jackman), Jean Gillespie (Helen Prescott)

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1962-04-01 You Died Last Night

Santos Ortega and Bob Readick star in a Robert Arthur script that is another “extraterrestrials are warning us to be good or else” stories (the intergalactic equivalent of “don’t you kids make me turn around while I’m driving”).

It has been believed that this is a re-use of a Robert Arthur script, but it does not seem to be. There is a Mysterious Traveler episode I Died Last Night, but it is a very different story. Yet, it has been assumed in some research that the Suspense script was the same as the MT one, just with a title change. A recording of the MT episode is not available. Arthur’s proven reputation for “recycling” in MT and Sealed Book and Strange Dr. Weird means you have to be careful before assuming use on other series like Suspense was an extra use. Detecting these was not always possible in previous research, but now there are many more resources, such as online newspaper archives. The I Died Last Night plotline in MT has some curious dialogue detailed in the episode publicity picked up by newspapers. A detective asks a suspect if they killed their brother. The suspect responds “Kill my brother? How could I? I died last night!” Spooky. Definitely not this Suspense episode.

The reason for this episode’s title becomes clear in the conclusion of the story. A lowly garage mechanic goes prospecting one day near Bakersfield, California. He discovers a promising vein of ore and decides to use dynamite to blow a hole in a ridge. As he lights the fuse, a large spaceship appears. He puts out the fuse, and the dynamite in unexploded (remember this; it’s the spoiler of the story). An alien emerges and starts talking to him telepathically. He’s from a planet fifteen light years away, and they became concerned because of the atom bomb explosions in Japan. They decide that since earthlings can’t behave, they need to be eliminated. The alien brings the mechanic along for a “tour of inspection” that will provide the information needed to decide the fate of the Earth people. They see an amusement park, a parade, people trying to escape over the Berlin Wall, and what is presumably a Russian atomic test. The alien was okay with it all as a display of happiness and vitality, until the atomic test. It is decided to take a drastic measure, starting with destroying major cities. Learning that the ship can travel in time, the mechanic has an idea. He asks to return to the place and time where he was when the ship arrived. When the ship arrives, the mechanic is still inside and… he has the dynamite he was going to use for his prospecting. The ship blows up, the alien is dead, and the mechanic is thrown free. He suffers a broken ankle and some bruises, but and warns listeners that they have 15 years (remember the 15 light years distance) before another ship arrives to find out what happened and evaluate Earth’s suitability to pass their evaluation. Had he not acted the way he did in the time travel, everyone would have died the night before. Hence, the title. The mechanic saved the world, but the clock is ticking.

The story is at best mediocre and another drifting off the traditional suspenseful path into science fiction, something that was much better done by NBC in Dimension X and X Minus One. Zirato may have believed there was greater interest in these kinds of stories in light of the current events and interest in the “space race.” It did not result in compelling radio.

LISTEN TO THE PROGRAM or download in FLAC or mp3
https://archive.org/details/TSP620401

THE CAST

 Santos Ortega (“Tony” [the telepathic alien]), Robert Readick (Joe [the mechanic])

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1962-03-25 Memory of Murder

Phil Sterling stars in a John Roeburt story about a man, Harry Jonas, who strangely confesses to a murder that took place ten years before he was born! Roeburt was a reliable writer whose work was often on Inner Sanctum. This particular script has a strong Inner Sanctum feel, but it cannot be verified that it was used on that series. Details that match this episode’s plotline cannot be found in classic radio logs or other resources, or in newspaper searches. Perhaps more information, or a recording, may be found in the future. Inner Sanctum was on for many years, with many programs surviving, but also many gaps in the series. Only about one-third of the series recordings have been found out of more than 500 broadcasts.

Roeburt also wrote for the Basil Rathbone vehicle, Tales of Fatima, an ABC mystery program that was produced and directed, and sometimes written, by Harry and Gail Ingram. The program with this title was broadcast on 1949-07-23 and was likely the first time that this script was used. (The Ingrams were a power couple of sorts in radio circles, until Harry’s untimely passing at age 40 in 1952). Newspaper clippings are not consistent for describing this particular plotline, however, with some clippings stating “Rathbone tells of a girl with a “Memory of Murder” and others with “Rathbone meets a young man with a “Memory of Murder.” The difference is likely some editorial or typographic error. The ToF series is poorly documented, with very few recordings surviving (only three out of thirty-nine, it seems). A log of its broadcasts, with tantalizing titles, is available but lacks cast details or plot descriptions.

The story does not really fit Suspense, but at this time in 1962, such a script really had no place else to go. If this episode is amusing in an Inner Sanctum kind of way, it is because of Roeburt’s strange magician and ghoulish guillotine act that drives much of the story.

The broadcast begins with Harry Jonas on a park bench and his first person narration moves from a cemetery to seeing a vaudeville magician act, “A Study in Illusion and the Black Arts.” Harry has vivid visions of a murder in a cemetery, a mysterious “Grave Digger” figure, and a unique coin. He takes a job at a local theater and gets involved in the lives of a vaudeville magician and his assistants. The act uses knives and a guillotine, and put his pretty assistant, and wife, Marietta, in danger, at least in the eyes of the audience. Harry soon believes that the magician is a master criminal. He learns from the wardrobe assistant at the theater that Marietta was in danger. A prior assistant to the magician, Nino, was killed by the magician because of his romantic interest in Marietta. It is Harry who is now infatuated with Marietta, so this does not bode well for him. The wardrobe assistant tells Harry that she learned it is the night when the magician will kill Marietta in the guillotine. Harry witnesses the ghastly act of gushing blood and a falling head. Harry murders the magician… but he soon learns it was Marietta who orchestrated this very elaborate scheme… and that Nino is alive in Mexico waiting for her. This might be the end of the story for most scripts, but not this one. Harry goes to the police and confesses to the murder, relating the details of all his experiences. It is there he learns that what he admits to would be impossible, because those events happened forty years ago, before Harry was born!

The program was recorded on Thursday, March 22, 1962. The session began at 1:00pm and concluded at 6:00pm.

James Monks is in this cast, his sole Suspense appearance. He was in theater, radio, and early television, most always as a supporting player. His radio work was mainly in soap operas, but he did star in the radio version of Mr. Moto. His brother was screenwriter John Monks, noted for Brother Rat and 13 Rue Madeleine, and other films.

LISTEN TO THE PROGRAM or download in FLAC or mp3
https://archive.org/details/TSP620325

THE CAST

Philip Sterling (Harry Jonas), Ethel Everett (Anna), James Monks (Constantine), Connie Lembcke (Marietta), Lawson Zerbe (Charley Prince), Ralph Bell (Lt. Bellson)

###

1962-03-18 Perchance to Dream

The title of the episode comes from Act 3, Scene 1 of Hamlet. It is “To sleep, perchance to dream,” is part of the same scene as the more famous “To be or not to be.” The phrase refers to the possibility of dreaming during sleep, and that the potential for unpleasant dreams in death might make sleep a less desirable option than the actual living of the daily hardships and challenges of life.

Paul McGrath stars as a hospital psychiatrist in a good script by Bob Corcoran. This is one of the better stories of the Zirato productions.

Dr. Locke meets with Mary Foster, the wife of his patient, Paul Foster, who is recovering from injuries sustained in a car accident. Paul had broken bones and serious skin damage, but his is not right mentally. He is consumed with guilt for the death of a friend’s wife in the crash. The friend has long forgiven him, as all of the analysis of the accident show it was a tire blowout that could not have been foreseen that cause the crash. Paul will not speak with his friend, and spurns his every attempt to offer forgiveness and support. The doctor is concerned that Paul’s guilt is all-consuming and is preventing his return to mental health. Paul has been having a recurring dream that indicates he may be suicidal, and the likelihood of such an act seems to be increasing. Nonetheless, Paul is discharged, and plans a restful train trip to Providence, Rhode Island. The doctor is concerned and warns Mary to look for signs that his recovery still has issues. She should be on the lookout for weapons, especially in his luggage on the trip. While on the trip, Mary peeks into the suitcase and sees a train timetable for Abingdon. That is the town where the fatal accident occurred.

The doctor is very concerned and wants to make a breakthrough. He consults Paul’s friend and mentions the Abingdon timetable that Mary told him about. With the information he gathers, he starts to believe that Paul is not going to commit suicide, he is planning to kill Mary, in a warped sense of balancing the scales of fate, so that each of the friends would have lost a wife, and Paul’s guilt would disappear. The doctor does his best to reach Mary at the hotel where she and Paul are staying. He needs to warn her about what is really happening, which leads to a surprise ending for which Paul’s guilt might become even deeper and darker than it already is.

Providence is the capital of Rhode Island. Abingdon is considered a southern suburb of Boston, nowadays. There may not be a “Brewster Hotel” by that name, but Brewster is a town on the north shore of Cape Cod.

The program was recorded on Thursday, March 8, 1962. The session began at 1:00pm and concluded at 6:00pm.

The surviving recording is a WROW aircheck and has a quick tape defect just before McGrath’s name is mentioned. All of the copies of this broadcast originated with the WROW aircheck by Pat Rispole.

It was previously believed that this script was re-used from the 1949-10-19 production with the same title on the series Starring Boris Karloff. It was not, and appears to be freshly written for Suspense. The Karloff script was about a mad scientist who was drugging his son in a manner that would result in a genius-level intelligence when we grew up. The story was told in first-person format by scientist character, seemingly from a psychiatric hospital. No recording of this broadcast has been found.

The patient’s name is “Paul Foster” and his wife is “Mary Foster.” If that name sounds familiar, there was a radio series Mary Foster, The Editor’s Daughter, but there is no connection with this episode, even as an inside joke.

LISTEN TO THE PROGRAM or download in FLAC or mp3
https://archive.org/details/TSP620318

THE CAST

Paul McGrath (Dr. Locke), Teri Keane (Mary Foster, Operator #2), Bernard Grant (Paul Foster), Bob Dryden (Ernest Masterson), Guy Repp (Train Conductor), Toni Darnay (Nurse Clemens, Operator #1)

###

1962-03-11 Heads You Lose

William Redfield stars in a Robert Arthur story that borrows concepts popularized in Donovan’s Brain to create a mildly engaging story if you ignore some of its expected bad sci-fi suppositions. A hard luck detective is thrilled to get into an investigation that will turn his fortunes around. It’s a predictable sci-fi gumshoe hybrid plotline. A financier has been missing for a little over six years and is presumed dead because he was extremely ill when he vanished. (Most listeners would have known that a person can be declared dead by a court after seven years missing). After six years passed, his attorney got a call from the missing man to conduct a stock trade in his portfolio to raise some cash! The man and lawyer always had a secret code, so he was certain it was him. The lawyer wants the story’s two detectives, Steve and Rollo, to find him. (This is one of those stories where in modern times it seems easy to track phone calls and their origination point, but not so back in the time of hardwired land lines). Skipping ahead of some time-filling dialogue and scenes, the missing man did die, but his brain was kept alive in a tank. He was able to communicate thoughts with the wired connections to a speaker. Steve finds him in a hidden laboratory, and he converses with the missing man’s brain. The man is tired of this existence. He offers Steve money to end it all, to let him finally die in peace. The amount was bigger that the reward to prove him alive or prove him dead. Steve will do it, but before he can get away with it, the angry lab professor who kept the brain alive shoots Steve. And in the end, Steve gets his comeuppance, and now it’s his very head that is being kept alive. Oh boy, be careful what you ask for. Sure, sure, sure… that was a missed spoiler alert.There are multiple ways the title is a play on the plotline. The title has no comma, which is a clue in itself that something may happen to a head of a character. It can be actual or figurative, such as when someone loses their temper. “Heads, You Lose” (with a comma) is a common phrase that deals with elements of risk and you chose between two options incorrectly. In this case it could even refer to the lab about its failed experiments and how they have to keep getting new ones to replace those brains.

Santos Ortega is cast as Rollo Collins, a three-hundred-pound detective. Is this an inside joke? Ortega briefly starred as the rotund Nero Wolfe character in the 1940s radio series. (Hat tip: emruf7 of the Cobalt Club classic radio enthusiast forum).

Keeping brains alive in tanks worked in sci-fi stories, but not in real life. You hear stories, usually of celebrities, about people who contract with cryogenic firms to “freeze” them upon their demise. Thawing will occur when cures are found for whatever they died from. Usually, the process is done only on brains or heads because it is considered that the brain holds the key to a person's identity and consciousness. At some time in the distant future, it can be preserved and potentially transferred into a new body or some kind of robotic device. Sounds like a job for the 2000+ series. Or, perhaps like in Woody Allen’s movie, Sleeper, we will find out that humans should have been eating hot fudge sundaes every day to ensure health.

This is a strange show for Suspense, there are creative aspects to, but it does seem so very out of place. Was it the popularity of Twilight Zone that made producer Zirato pursue a path of more sci-fi than the series usually had? Or was Zirato just working with the flow of what was coming across his desk as writers submitted scripts for consideration? Or did he pick it to thank Robert Arthur for the support for the series in its final months?

The program was recorded on Thursday, March 1, 1962. The session began at 1:00pm and concluded at 6:00pm.

LISTEN TO THE PROGRAM or download in FLAC or mp3
https://archive.org/details/TSP620311

THE CAST

William Redfield (Steve Kimberly), Jimsey Sommers (Secretary), Raymond Edward Johnson (Joshua Franklin), Melville Ruick (Professor Green), Kermit Murdock (Harrison Ward), Santos Ortega (Rollo Collins)

###

1962-03-04 Doom Machine

Leon Janney stars in a script by Edgar Marvin that was originally presented on the science fiction series 2000+on 1950-08-02 and starred Luis Van Rooten. The story is set in the year 2500, and some of it sounds strange because many of the technological capabilities that were 500 years away seem to already be here, such as artificial intelligence and self-regulating systems. There are other aspects of the story that have the typical characteristics of 1950s sci-fi, such as robots needing to have some kind of human-like construction. Setting all that aside, however clunky the story is to modern ears, it attempts to address serious philosophical and ethical issues about the hubris of creating something perfect and what would happen if an artificial being had no constraining moral aspects that played a role in the calculus of its “decisions.”

The story is not that good. The question is whether it is simple or simplistic, and ignorant because important knowledge was not discovered by its scripting in 1950, or it was ignorant because many of the concepts were too complex or subtle to be presented in 20 minutes of drama. That broadcast duration limitation makes for some production difficult trade-offs. Considering how the desire of the public for basic scientific knowledge was growing because of the nuclear age and the space race, it is surprising that this story “made the cut” and was considered acceptable and fitting for Suspense. The audience could have handled a better and more suspenseful story.

Janney plays Dr. Atley Ferris who is so frustrated with human limitations and frailties that he wants to create a “pure brain” that is free of such weaknesses. He does so, and his creation, “Max,” who has such a brain that has “maximum electronic mentality.” If things did not go wrong, there would be no story. Things go wrong, Max turns out to be very inflexible in the objective decision-making, and that causes serious issues that can’t seem to be stopped. The story does stop, and is mostly unsatisfying in the end.

The program was recorded on Monday, February 19, 1962. It may have been moved to this date because the Washington’s Birthday holiday was on the usual day for recording, Thursday. The session began at 1:00pm and concluded at 6:00pm.

Scriptwriter Edgar Marvin wrote for various radio series and specials. He became involved in 1950s TV, including a script on Alfred Hitchcock Presents.

When some early classic radio collectors were attempting to find and restore as many 2000+ episodes as possible, some took this Suspense episode and clipped its opening and closing, and put the 2000+ series name on it, and the date, and did not add a notation that it was a Suspense episode. This recording was intended to be a “placeholder” until the time, if and when, the actual 2000+ broadcast recording ever surfaced. It was not a nefarious act of deceit, it was what they believed was a good idea at the time. This unfortunately befuddled many collectors of 2000+ and casual radio fans who were not aware of the Suspense production.

LISTEN TO THE PROGRAM or download in FLAC or mp3
https://archive.org/details/TSP620304

THE CAST

Leon Janney (Dr. Ferris), Elaine Rost (Sally Ferris / Hostess), Bernard Grant, Eugene Francis, Cliff Carpenter (roles: Jack, Phillip, Max)

###

1962-02-25 Date Night

This William N. Robson script about a father who is concerned about his 16-year-old daughter’s first date stands on its own as a well-told story. Sam Gray plays the father, and Rosemary Rice plays the daughter. As Kathy goes to her dance, her father descends into a night of escalating worry, imagining the worst, and starting to drink in the process. He starts having paranoid fantasies about every possible thing that can go wrong, and the evil intent of her date for the night. He even tries to contact police stations, hospitals, and even the morgue, only to find that he kept the phone so busy all night with his frantic calls that Kathy couldn’t get through and tell him how things were going! The story ends well.

That’s the story. And then there’s the allegory. Robson got caught up in the Red Scare of the 1950s, needlessly so, which turned into trouble working at CBS, and then being forced out. He could not submit scripts until mid-1955 and did not resume producing until 1956. His experiences were the basis of the episode Nobody Ever Quits (that was re-titled Night on Red Mountain in future productions; and yes, “Red” as in Red Channels and Red Scare) and broadcast multiple times on the series. That script has numerous references to his personal CBS Blacklist experience, especially with executive Daniel O’Shea. This script, Date Night, seems to refer to the whole historical period.

If one posits that the father in the story is a parallel to Senator Joe McCarthy, and his supposed alcoholism, and the paranoia of the times, the script has a much different meaning. The fever pitch of the father’s investigation of where his daughter was, and his drinking in the process, meant that he had no trust of his daughter, and how he raised her with his wife, and surely no trust of her date for the evening.

Much of the McCarthy era’s problems were self-inflicted, just like the father’s incessant phone calls would not allow her to reach him by phone. There were Communists in many government positions, as documented by the 1990s de-classification of the Venona Project from the decryption of communication cables and other forms of communication with Russian and other operatives. The Red Scare was so hot, that it became more difficult to determine what the real threats were.

Kathy, the daughter, was a good-natured innocent, like much of the general public in the Red Scare period, confused by all of the goings-on, and just wanting to go about their lives. The boyfriend had accusations and suspicions hurled in his direction that were actually baseless. It’s like he was never given a chance to prove himself as a good and reliable person who might actually be a good companion for the daughter. Thankfully, the mother is the voice of reason in the story, a sense of moderation, that the father needs so desperately. The story ends well, and perhaps there were some lessons learned.

Robson returned to CBS and through a variety of events, ended up at Voice of America, producing programs to reach people behind the Iron Curtain and other totalitarian geographies. He won multiple Peabody awards for his work.

There is a possibility that it wasn’t just Joe McCarthy as the inspiration for the script, but also former CBS executive Daniel O’Shea. He was in charge of the CBS Blacklist and vetting of talent. O’Shea lost a lot of power in 1955 at the network when CEO Bill Paley got sick of it all, especially after Ed Murrow’s reporting on the McCarthy hearings. O’Shea went back to RKO Pictures as president and retired in 1958. McCarthy died in 1957. Robson obviously still had some hard feelings, but his expression of them resulted in some very good radio productions. He would later say he was pleased with his career and really held no grudges. Perhaps that was the case because he worked them all out in his creativity.

No script cover is available for this episode. Therefore, the date and time of recording is not known. 

This program was originally scheduled for 1962-02-18.

The program was recorded on Thursday, February 15, 1962. The session began at 1:00pm and concluded at 6:00pm.

Two recordings have survived, both are listenable, but have somewhat narrow range. The network aircheck is the better of the two. The Armed Forces Radio Service recording (AFRS#914) is has narrow range and some additional noise. It is hope that better recordings will be found in the future for this compelling script and production.

LISTEN TO THE PROGRAM or download in FLAC or mp3
https://archive.org/details/TSP620225

THE CAST

Rosemary Rice (Kathy), Sam Gray (Father), Richard Holland (Jerry), Toni Darnay (Mother), Fredi [Fredericka] Chandler (neighbor, telephone operator), Jack Grimes (Midnight Expresso employee), Lawson Zerbe (Black Kitten manager), Bill Lipton (hospital employee), William Mason (Highway Patrolman), Guy Repp (Sergeant Shea, Morgue Attendant)

Some newspaper publicity mentioned Ian Martin in the cast. He was likely originally cast as the father and replaced by Sam Gray.

###

1962-02-18 The Old Boyfriend

Elspeth Eric and Joe Julian start in a rather pedestrian Peter Fernandez script. A recently released convict turns to an old girlfriend for help after leaving prison. He’s trying to avoid the police, but kidnaps her daughter to use as a bargaining chip to avoid capture. The old girlfriend was recently widowed, and remembers the old boyfriend, but once her daughter is taken hostage, she does whatever she can to get her released. The woman is thankfully able to change places with the daughter. Then she starts to talk him down, and lowers the temperature of the crisis: “I'm giving you my life. You'll either have to kill me, or you'll have to use me as a shield, and one of their bullets might kill me.” The standoff diffuses, and she explains to the police “If he'd been a stranger, I wouldn't have had a chance. But he wasn't a stranger… he was an old boyfriend.”

Is this another case where the Suspense music could have communicated more tension in the story? It is very predictable, with little personal tension beyond what is stated. What if he was wrong about their past friendship? What if she was a victim of assault, and she had to surrender some even deeper feeling of hate for him? What if her job was to make room for a sharpshooter to get him? Even in a twenty minute story, there was likely room for that.

The program was recorded Friday, July 28, 1961, almost seven months prior to broadcast. The recording session ran from 10:30am to 2:30pm. The episode was originally scheduled to air Sunday, August 13, 1961. It was pre-empted for a sports special about the Mantle-Maris home run chase of Babe Ruth’s record.

The surviving recording is a WROW aircheck. Once again, the station engineer misses the network cue because the weather report ran a few seconds longer than it should have. This is a much better recording than has been available to classic radio enthusiasts for decades.

LISTEN TO THE PROGRAM or download in FLAC or mp3
https://archive.org/details/TSP620218

THE CAST

Elspeth Eric (Maggie), Joseph Julian (Judson), Lawson Zerbe (Police Lieutenant), Francie Myers (Babette), Peter Fernandez (Officer)

###

1962-02-11 The Man Who Went Back to Save Lincoln

Ian Martin and Court Benson star in a Robert Arthur script that was originally broadcast on The Mysterious Traveler of 1950-02-07. Benson plays an expert on Lincolniana, Tom Morrison, who is convinced the course of history would have been different if Lincoln's assassination had been prevented. He consents to submit to scientific time travel experiment concocted by a Professor Hodges, played by Martin. But it’s not time travel, but it is consciousness travels and inhabits the mind of someone living in that desired time. They run a test involving Tom to complete a simple task that his father had left undone back in 1912. It works! They ran another where Tom hears the Gettysburg Address with the mind of a local farmer. Professor Hughes is confident now, and they move the equipment to the Ford Theatre in Washington. Tom walks through the events of that day and the exact movements of people involved on the fateful night of April 14, 1865, when Lincoln was assassinated by actor John Wilkes Booth. They are targeting John Buckingham, the doorkeeper at Ford’s that night, and Tom has to keep repeating the phrases “Save Lincoln. Kill Booth” to keep that in the mind of Buckingham in whom his consciousness is residing. Unfortunately, the time travel did not work… and he is not in the mind of Buckingham, but in the mind of the assassin John Wilkes Booth! The possibility was planted at the beginning of the story when Tom and the Professor were talking about the strength of the will of the host might not be able to be changed by the traveler. Wilkes’ determination was obviously too much for Tom to overcome.

Robert Arthur’s approach to time travel in this story is rather novel, which keeps the story more interesting than it might otherwise be. It’s usually the case that such time travel gimmicks have entire persons transported back in time. Another interesting approach is in the episode Time on My Hands by Walter Black of 1960-09-25. https://archive.org/details/TSP600925 Time travel stories always have significant plot holes or require major leaps of faith about plausibility. That doesn’t mean they can’t be fun or entertaining.

The program was recorded on Thursday, February 8, 1962. The session began at 1:00pm and ended at 6:00pm.

In 1962, Lincoln’s Birthday was not a national holiday, but was observed in about half of the US states at that time.

After many weeks without advertising, Alpine cigarettes is the sponsor of this episode.

The surviving recording is a network feed and has the close of Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar and a promo for CBS News before Suspense begins.

LISTEN TO THE PROGRAM or download in FLAC or mp3
https://archive.org/details/TSP620211

THE CAST

Ian Martin (Professor Hodges), Ralph Bell (Man), Margaret Draper (Mary Andrews), Cliff Carpenter (Buckingham), Court Benson (Tom Morrison), Jim Boles (Voice of Abe Lincoln)

Ralph Bell also appeared in the original Mysterious Traveler production of this script.

###

1962-02-04 Friday

Ivor Francis stars as “Henry Beckham,” an 1860s shipping broker, in a Jack Johnstone script (written as “Jonathan Bundy”). It is about a sailor who is skeptical about the superstition of bad luck for Friday sailings, especially Friday the 13th. He has a new boat built so every construction step occurs on a Friday, and launches his new boat on Friday the 13th just to prove the superstition wrong. Whoops. It's not a good idea to tempt fate, it seems, at least according to superstition.

Johnstone uses a persistent legend involving the British Royal Navy as his springboard for the script. The claimed incident has been proven untrue. Sometime in the 19th century, the fable goes, the Royal Navy attempted to stop the Friday superstitions once and for all. A ship named HMS Friday was supposedly commissioned, its keel laid on a Friday, the ship completed on a Friday, and its maiden voyage on Friday the 13^th. This all happened, fittingly, under the command of a Captain James Friday. The ship was never seen or heard from again, much to the dismay and embarrassment of the Royal Navy. There has never been any Royal Navy ship of that name. But, legends, even false ones, are always potential plotlines of radio scripts.

He builds out the story, giving it a time and place (1860s England) and removing Royal Navy involvement. The story is instead about a shipping agent who cannot get insurance for a cargo shipment that is bound for Philadelphia. His long-time insurance broker, Edward Etherington, refuses because the sailing date is a Friday the 21st. Etherington recites a long list of wrecks associated with Friday sailings. He goes to another broker, Mr. Archrock, who also turns him down. Beckham becomes so frustrated with the “sheer, stupid superstition” that he decides to buy his own ship. He sells his share of the business to his business partner, Philip Morley, to raise the money. He and makes sure its construction under the supervision of shipbuilder Malcolm MacBaskin flies in the face of superstition every step of the way. The contract is signed on Friday, April 28^th, construction beginning on Friday, May 5^th , and the start of each construction milestone is a Friday. The ship is christened on Friday, September 22^nd. The ship is even named “Friday.” He plans to embark on the worst of all Fridays, October 13^th. He hires a captain for the ship, whose last name is “Friday.” The ship leaves port… and Beckham never hears from it ever again.

No script cover is available. The date and time of recording is not known. 

In the cast is Hetty Galen, who plays a young girl, Beckham’s niece. This was her only Suspense appearance. She was 33 at the time of the broadcast. Her birth name was Harriet Gutterman. Galen appeared in many CBS radio soaps, especially Whispering Streets. She often voiced teenagers and adults in her advertising, radio, and animation work. She was in 15 CBS Radio Mystery Theater productions. She was the first person whose voiceover for Clairol hair products uttered the famous line “Does she? Or doesn’t she?”

Suspense had another episode, The Mystery of the Marie Celeste, about the true story where a ship was found, adrift but intact, but the entire crew was missing! It was broadcast on 1953-06-08 with Van Heflin, and again on 1955-12-27 with John Dehner. There is no mention if a Friday date was involved.

Classic radio researcher Karl Schadow notes that Jack Johnstone planted an inside joke related to a 5-part Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar. Starting at approx 6:50, after the announcement of the ship that was lost at sea, the Etherington character (portrayed by Bob Dryden) cites other previously ships lost at sea including The Molly K. That series, The Molly K Matter, ran from 1955-10-10 to 1955-10-14. It was written by Les Crutchfield, produced and directed by Johnstone.

There may be another inside reference, which is that Mercer McLeod plays a character named “Captain Friday” in this episode. Jack Johnstone worked with Carleton E. Morse in the mid-1950s on a short-lived soap opera, Family Skeleton. “Captain Friday” was a main character in Morse’s syndicated adventure series, Adventures by Morse.

A sillier reference might be “Mr. MacBaskin,” also played by MacLeod. After checking multiple genealogy web sites, there is no such surname. It could be, however, a mash-up of “McDonalds” and the ice cream shop “Baskin-Robbins.” Both franchise organizations started in southern California, and it is likely there were stores nearby to Johnstone’s home off the busy Santa Monica Boulevard. Some writers will do anything to break writer’s block or to amuse themselves as they come up with character names. Johnstone had the kind of humor to do so.

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https://archive.org/details/TSP620204

THE CAST

Ivor Francis (Henry Beckham), Hetty Galen (Beckham’s niece), Bill Lipton (Insurance agent #2), Herb Duncan (Insurance agent #1), Dave Gilbert (Insurance agent #3), Robert Dryden (Edward Etherington), Mercer MacLeod (Captain Friday, Mr. MacBaskin), William Redfield (Philip Morley), Lawson Zerbe (Mr. Archcroft)

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