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.
###
