Jimmy Blaine and Grayson Hall star in a William N. Robson script about some tourists who want to go to a small town to get away from it all. They are bullied by a frequently intoxicated young man in a hot rod who likes playing dangerous driving games on the highway and making a ruckus as they drive along unfamiliar country roads.
Charlie and Flo are a generally happy couple, taking some time away in the desolate town of Red Mountain, Arizona. While they are on the road, a young hodrodder is taunting them with his horn, driving slow, making them pass, and then passing them, all actions that are the opposite of safe driving. The driver, Leroy, enjoys scaring tourists in the small town, especially with his loud horn that sounds like and is as loud as the train that regularly passes through Red Mountain. Charlie and Flo stop at a local restaurant, and the driver walks in on them and gives them some threatening talk. He might be drunk. Charlie decides to report him to the police, but they’re not interested in doing anything about him. Everyone in town seems to know him and believe he’s not a danger, saying he’s “just a big kid.” Charlie gets very frustrated when he realizes that Leroy let the air out of their tires. He tries the police again, but they are intent on inaction. It’s pretty clear they don’t like tourists complaining about the residents. When Charlie and Flo go outside of the hotel, Leroy starts honking the hot rod’s horn. Flo is always surprised by the horn and sometimes mistakes the train coming through town as Leroy’s horn. (NOTE: remember that) The police officer talks to Leroy and offers to let him sleep off whatever intoxication he has in a cell. The next morning, Charlie and Flo are driving back, happy to leave that little town. It’s snowing, and they can only drive 20 miles per hour because of the slippery road and the poor visibility. Behind them is Leroy, with one bright headlight on… but Leroy is sleeping it off in a cell… so that’s not a car, and it’s not Leroy, so it must be the train passing through town. Charlie and Flo don’t make it across the tracks.
The script is somewhat about road safety, similar to what Auto-Lite used to do for one episode per year of its sponsorship. There’s no safety message in the story, but had it been in the Auto-Lite period, it could have been used that way.
The Robson story includes the name of “Red Mountain,” a reference to his earlier script that was an allegory about his CBS Blacklist exile, Night on Red Mountain that was first broadcast as Nobody Ever Quits. There is a volcanic structure referred to as “Red Mountain” about 25 miles northwest of Flagstaff, Arizona.
The number “66” is spelled out in the title on the script cover as “sixty-six” to ensure that it was read by the announcer in the way desired, rather than saying “six-six.”
The program was recorded on Tuesday, June 26, 1962. The script cover does not indicate the session start or conclusion times.
The surviving recording is missing its introduction and begins mid-way in a Parliament commercial. There have been copies of this episode in circulation with “patched” opens, where a collector who thought they were restoring the program cleverly added the opening segment from a different episode. These recordings can be identified because they are missing the announcement of the episode title and a different Parliament commercial was added.
In the close of the broadcast, Stuart Metz mispronounces the name of the writer of the next week’s episode. He says “Joseph Corcoran” when he should have said “Joseph Cochran.” It is not known if it is his error or if the script had the mistake. It is surprising it was not corrected because the program was pre-recorded.
“Flo” was played by Grayson Hall, who was appearing on Broadway in the David Merrick musical Subways are for Sleeping. She played “Myra Blake.” The show had a big cast that also included Carol Lawrence, Orson Bean, and Valerie Harper. (The underlying story of the play was a Harper’s article about homeless people in New York’s subways. It became an episode of CBS Radio Workshop on 1956-08-30). Hall also appeared in almost 500 episodes of the television series Dark Shadows. Her big movie role was as a supporting actress in 1965’s The Night of the Iguana for which she received Oscar and Golden Globe nominations. She was very busy in supporting television and movie roles for many projects.
Jimmy Blaine worked his way up through radio and television in Kansas City and New York. He was mainly an announcer, but was also a singer and an actor. He was a singer for the early 1950s television show Stop the Music. This is the first of two Suspense appearances. He passed away in 1967 at age 42, of a heart attack.
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https://archive.org/details/TSP620715
THE CAST
Jimmy Blaine (Charlie), Grayson Hall (Flo), Gwen Davies (waitress / telephone operator), James Dmitri (Leroy), Bill Mason (police officer), Sam Raskyn (mechanic, motel manager)
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