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.
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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)
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