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.
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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.
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