Betty Garde delivers a despicably excellent and loud performance as a toxic narcissistic wife intent on having her way and her way alone over very small matters. Her behavior becomes destructive, and of course, something’s wrong with everyone else, not her. The script is by Joseph Cochran. Blogger Christine Miller, in her Escape and Suspense! blog wrote in 2012:
This show was the second to final episode of Suspense… and one can only wish that the series had ended its twenty year run with this aggressive little episode, and the perfect performance by Betty Garde…
Some listeners may not like Garde’s character and performance because it is so loud and aggressive, but that’s the idea. She’s a horrible and there are times when you feel “I’ve met someone like this” somewhere in your past.
A perpetual complainer, for whom no level of attention or cooperation is good enough, is at a rented beach cottage with her husband. They want to escape the Summer heat. It’s a public beach, but “public” is a concept that is very hard for her to grasp. She considers the beach in the width of the cottage to be private. If anyone is in her line of sight to the water, they are trespassing. She puts up signs, plays loud and obnoxious music, in an attempt to deter people from settling down in whatever spot they choose on the beach. Her selfish efforts go to court against a couple who liked that part of the beach. (How they got a court date so quickly is an impossible part of the plot, but let it go, as she probably heaped verbal abuse on a court clerk to get her way). The judge rules against Myra and George. Of course, the judge is stupid and incompetent, despite his Ivy League law degree, according to her. She continues to belittle and humiliate George. He finally reaches a breaking point and walks to the supposedly offending beach couple, and shoots them. Myra is shocked… but George calmly walks back into the cottage, and calls the police to report a murder. Part of the shocking incident is that he did not turn the gun on himself. He does not turn the gun on Myra, either, too scared to do so. The episode concludes with Myra in voice-over, complaining about George, and how he left her so little money, and how stubborn he had become. Her concluding line is “After I had been such a kind and loving wife, why I didn't even have enough money to buy a decent morning outfit.”
The last name “Petit” of Myra and George may be plays on the words “petty” which the wife certainly us, and “petite,” meaning small, which describes the size of George’s resolve. That is, until he reaches a breaking point does the very wrong and most severe thing at the end of the story. Myra has her footprints all over George’s back until that point, when it turns very dark very quickly and unexpectedly.
The title may have been selected to show how delicately balanced things are in the story, until they fall very apart.
There are two network aircheck recordings. The WROW aircheck is the better of the two, in clear sound. The station engineer missed the cue for the “And now…” introduction. The other is from WDNC in Durham, North Carolina. The somewhat noisy and narrow range recording is fully intact and has more of the closing and after-broadcast announcements.
LISTEN
TO THE PROGRAM or download in FLAC or
mp3
https://archive.org/details/TSP620923
THE CAST
Betty Garde (Myra Petit), Walter Kinsella (George Petit), Teri Keane (Esther), Bill Adams (Judge), Bob Readick (Bill)
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