Lawson Zerbe stars in a Jack Johnstone episode written as “Jonathan Bundy.” It’s a light story that has a similar plotline and surprise ending gimmick as Banquo’s Chair. A gangster named Feathers Grogan is very upset with one of his “bag men,” Peter Weldon who has stopped collecting money for his loan-sharking operation. Grogan is very superstitious, and makes decisions based on his luck charms such as a lucky horse shoe that hangs on a wall and a rabbits foot that he keeps in his pocket. Since Peter stopped collecting, those charms are failing. Peter wants to return home to Kansas and get out of the racket, which upsets Grogan to the point of killing him. At the opening tease of the broadcast, Weldon is heard telling Grogan that he will regret killing him, and he will haunt him if he does. That sets up an element of the “surprise” ending.
Feathers ends up in custody of the police, but all they have him on is the loansharking charge. They know he killed Weldon, but they can’t prove it. They have to find a way to get him to confess. Peter Weldon’s brother Richard comes to the station, and is a dead ringer for his younger brother, and sounds just like him. The police get the idea of isolating Grogan in a cell and then having Richard say ghostly things over a microphone to work on Grogan’s superstitious mind and drive him into confessing. Of course it works, but police are confused when the ghostly voice cites an incident that only Peter would have known about. They get a call from Richard apologizing for being late and not being able to help them. We knew there’d be a case of the heebie-jeebies! It’s not that big of a surprise that it was Peter’s ghost that returned as he said he would.
No script cover is available. The recording date and time is not known.
Is Feathers a reused script? It seems so… but not in the usual way...
In 1940 and 1941, Jack Johnstone was the creator, producer and usual writer for a short-lived 15-minute Mutual radio series, Who Knows? Very few Mutual stations picked it up, but the ones that did were big, such as WOR in New York, WGN in Chicago, and some others. Many of the stories had a psychic phenomena angle and were based on the popular psychic Herewood Carrington. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hereward_Carrington One of his books, True Ghost Stories, was published in 1915, and the text is available at Project Gutenberg https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/44625
Karl Schadow, noted researcher and major contributor to this project notes a connection between that Mutual series of 20+ years prior to this Suspense episode. His investigation revealed that Feathers, though having much in common with the plotline of Banquo's Chair, is actually based on a Who Knows? script that Johnstone built out from a Who Knows? broadcast. That series was sponsored by shoe polish manufacturer Griffin Manufacturing and there are no recordings of the series in circulation. More background on the series can be found at the Library of Congress blog https://blogs.loc.gov/now-see-hear/2021/10/who-knows-radio-and-the-paranormal/ The blogpost notes that LoC does have recordings of rehearsals of broadcasts, but they are not available at this time.
Karl believes that there are other Suspense episodes beyond Feathers that Johnstone scripted using Who Knows? episodes as a foundation. More research needs to be accomplished to find those links. Johnstone had great interest in such matters, and beyond the Who Knows? series, there are instances in his early work for Philip Morris Playhouse and other programs that may have ties to the Suspense broadcasts, as well as Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar. Most all of the eight episodes he wrote for Suspense have a psychic phenomena angle, especially Bells, The Green Idol, Dreams, Formula for Death, and Devilstone. If The Curse of Kamashek for Suspense has a connection, it would be through the work Johnstone did for the much superior 5-part YTJD production.
LISTEN
TO THE PROGRAM or download in FLAC or
mp3
https://archive.org/details/TSP620114
THE CAST
Lawson Zerbe (Peter Weldon / Richard Weldon), Bill Mason (Sgt. Brady), Bob Readick (Feathers Grogan), Ian Martin (Captain Nichols), John Thomas (Lt. Gilroy)
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