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.
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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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