Writer Jules Archer reveals secrets to his Suspense scripts

Cobalt Club member Emruf7 made a big contribution in the research of Suspense and Escape recently when he pointed out a book by veteran writer Jules Archer. The book is I Sell What I Write and was published in 1950. His Escape and Suspense contributions include stories such as Two Came Back and Murder is a Matter of Opinion. The book can be viewed at The Internet Archive https://archive.org/details/isellwhatiwrite00arch/page/6/mode/2up . His sections on those stories and others give the background about how they were created and how he sold them as short stories. The creative origins of Two Came Back is especially interesting.

His comment about his short story Murder is a Matter of Opinion, adapted for Radio City Playhouse and Molle Mystery Theater long before it was on Suspense:  "Which brings me to an important footnote on making money out of pulp mystery writing. The pulps will hand back radio rights to you upon request. In the case of Murder Is a Matter of Opinion, the radio rights paid off almost eight times as much as I received for the original story in Mystery Book." The story was also used in 1951 in the TV anthology series Cameo Theater. No kinescopes have survived.

• Direct links to the short stories mentioned

• Two Came Back https://archive.org/details/isellwhatiwrite00arch/page/72/mode/2up
• Murder is a Matter of Opinion https://archive.org/details/isellwhatiwrite00arch/page/52/mode/2up
• Sold to Satan https://archive.org/details/isellwhatiwrite00arch/page/68/mode/2up

Three "Truly Missing" Suspense Have Not Been Recreated... Yet! Here's the Background...

1948-07-08 The Last Chance

This was the first Auto-Lite broadcast after the failed 60-minute broadcast experiment. The CBS publicity effort was strong behind the return of the series and promotion of the first episode. Why the discs of this episode are missing is a surprise. Somebody took them out of the library for some reason and never returned them. But it's the first episode of a new sponsor, and you would think that there would have been reasons for multiple copies made for Auto-Lite and its agency, and other reasons. One thing against it, however, is there was no longer a need to produce the show twice for east and west. It is not clear if the recording was supplied to AFRS. 

1951-11-12 The Mission of the Betta

This was a WW2 drama about a secret submarine mission. Lewis produced it and Robson wrote it under a pseudonym. He used segments and staging of an episode of Man Behind the Gun. There are challenges to getting this one right from a recreation production perspective. This clip is from the 1951-11-11 Shreveport LA Times.

1956-08-01 Massacre at Little Big Horn 

This is a psychological drama about the night before the massacre of Custer's forces in late June 1876. Of the three, this might be one of the less compelling topics for a recreation. I suspect it might the last of them to be recreated. One review, however, was positive and mentioned that the experience of producing Fort Laramie was an advantage to making a compelling production. The broadcast was done around the 80th anniversary of the original event. This is a brief review from the 1956-08-06 Cincinnati OH Enquirer.

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1959: Suspense curiosities as the show moves to New York under Paul Roberts

• Actress Ellen McRae makes many appearances on the series, and even writes two scripts. She made her Broadway debut in a play named Fair Game. That play was written by Sam Locke. The director of the play was Paul Roberts. He and McRae met in the production and were married in 1957. The Crisis of Dirk Diamond was written by Sam Locke. So it was Locke who was indirectly responsible for McRae and Roberts meeting and marrying months later. Roberts and McRae divorced in 1961. She married again, and became Ellen Burstyn. Between Tonys, Oscars, and Emmys, she may be the most decorated actor to ever appear on Suspense, and the appearances were all before she became famous.
• Dirk Diamond was actually a re-used script from 1951 and the TV series The Web. No kinescope has been found. It is not the best show but we now have a crisp and clear AFRS copy!
• One of the episodes is Infanticide doesn't really seem to fit the Suspense style, but Paul Roberts produced that ground-breaking show, and one can understand why he would re-use what he considered to be a good script. He used three scripts from that series. The Indictment script is a reminder of how little documentation we have of that series in terms of dates and even newspaper documentation. Lots of the newspaper listings are wrong or nebulous. If anyone knows a downtown Atlanta college student who can be hired to go look at the scripts at U of Georgia, let me know. We do have the original Indictment broadcast for this episode.
• The Last Trip has a plotline with a suitcase bomb that would not go over well, literally, as it would explode during a plane flight. This ranks the episode on the unsavory scale with the 1947 episode The X-Ray Camera which would blow up underground tunnels leading in and out of Manhattan. Last Trip turns into some comedic aspects as the husband cancels the plane trip and arrives back home with the unexploded suitcase, as the other two in the triangle have to dispose of it so they don't suffer the explosive consequences.
• Re-Entry is better once you put it into context of where the Russian and US space programs were at the time. George Bamber combines his inspirations from X Minus One and Twilight Zone in that one.
• The 1959 New York episodes are a bit spotty in terms of their ability to engage. Among the better episodes of these 17 are Room 203, The Easy Victim, Re-Entry, Dynamite Run, and A Korean Christmas Carol. (Room 203 was also a TV script used in the 1953 Philip Morris Playhouse. No kinescope is known to have survived.)
• A Korean Christmas Carol was George Bamber's first radio script. He wrote while he was serving in Korea and was assigned to the Armed Forces Korea Network station as an announcer. When his military commitment was completed, he was working at the CBS mail room in Los Angeles, and submitted the script to William N. Robson. It was rejected. Bamber submitted it to Paul Roberts when he became the show’s producer, and Roberts accepted it. The script was performed on his station sometime between 1955 and 1957 with a cast of co-workers who were also assigned there. They produced their own sound effects, including recording some of the trucks they used, since there were no sound effects records at the station.
• We are lacking 1959 script covers so much of the research process is hampered, unfortunately. Karl Schadow did locate most of the script covers from 1960 to the end of the series in the Hummert Papers at the University of Wyoming. How they ended up with the Hummerts is beyond me, and I have not figured that out.  The covers are fascinating, with lots of cast changes noted before the recording sessions.

1961 New York Suspense under Bruno Zirato, Jr.

• Some of the better 1961 episodes are listed below with links to the Internet Archive pages that include commentary about them:

• 1961-06-25 Call Me at Half-Past https://archive.org/details/TSP610625 
• 1961-07-02 Night of the Storm https://archive.org/details/TSP610702 
• 1961-08-20 Murder Is a Matter of Opinion https://archive.org/details/TSP610820 
• 1961-10-01 No Hiding Place https://archive.org/details/TSP611001 
• 1961-10-22 Witness to Murder https://archive.org/details/TSP611022 
• 1961-10-29 Death of an Old Flame https://archive.org/details/TSP611029 
• 1961-11-12 The Imposters https://archive.org/details/611112 

• Actress Barbara Kasarr - who is she?

• Kasarr sometimes appears in OTR research as "Cossar" or "Kossar" in Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar and Suspense. The spelling was phonetic, as there were no script covers we could find that had that name. Some of the script covers had character names only, but no casting details. There was one script cover that was quite different. That one had, in barely legible handwriting, a cast member "Barb Readick." No directories had her listed anywhere with that name. The handwriting looked hurried... perhaps it was a mistake. Then the detective hunt began; we tried all kinds of varied spellings of the name. We found some minor 1950s newspaper references to her as aspiring actress "Barbara Kasar." They were mainly in gossip columns about her on and off relationship with Marlon Brando. Now that we had a rough spelling of the name, "Kasar," with the help of Karl Schadow and John Abbott, we started to piece together she was Bob Readick's wife at the time Suspense was in New York.

• Karl found a July 1958 article about the Readicks in TV-Radio Mirror... but the article does not mention her last name https://archive.org/details/radiotvm00mac/page/50/mode/1up?view=theater 

• Using genealogical sites, the story started to come together using some clues found in the story. Bob Readick married Barbara Kossower in Greenwich, CT on 1955-05-08. That led to some other records now that we knew her legal name. "Kasarr" was a stage name, likely used for simplicity in pronunciation and spelling. 

• She was born on 1934-01-28 in The Bronx. She died 2004-08-20 in Los Angeles. The names and aliases on her Social Security record are Barbara Ruth Kossower, Barbara Readick, Barbara Kasarr, Barbara Joachim, and Barbara Holden. Barbara and Bob must have gotten divorced sometime in the 1960s or 70s. She married Lawrence Joachim in Los Angeles on 1976-02-25.

• The Black Door of 1961-11-19 was Readick's first radio appearance after leaving YTJD five months earlier because of his medical troubles. He was replaced by Mandel Kramer just a week after Kramer played a supporting role in the series. Readick's difficulties with depression caused his medical hiatus. They would probably have had more options for treament and been more successful if it was happening today. Barbara Kasarr's appearances on Suspense and YTJD begin after he exited that leading role, and they ended when he retuned to Suspense.  It may be that the Suspense producers wanted to be sure that the Readicks still had income from radio, and would accommodate that need until Bob could return.

• Readick made 10 appearances on Suspense after exiting YTJD. Bob and Barbara had only had one joint appearance on Suspense, in 1962-05-06's The Second Door. There are no records indicating any other radio appearances for her in any other series thereafter.

The 1962 New York Suspense broadcasts under Bruno Zirato, Jr.

Unfortunately, the decline in script quality of the series is rather evident in these waning months. The actors did their best! The effects crew did their best! There are a few scripts that stand out.

• Four of the better 1962 Zirato episodes are listed below with links to the Internet Archive pages that include commentary about them:

• Date Night https://archive.org/details/TSP620225  (William N. Robson uses the an allegory of a worried father and his daughter's first date to make a statement about the Red Scare and his early 1950's exile from CBS. The story holds up even if you don't know that's the inspiration. Robson was already working at Voice of America, but was still sending scripts to the series.)
• Perchance to Dream https://archive.org/details/TSP620318 (A man with a guilty conscience about the death of a friend's wife in a car accident he had attempts to make amends in a wrong way.)
• Brother John https://archive.org/details/TSP620415 (Elspeth Eric's underappreciated and very creative script that bases much of its structure on the French lullaby Frere Jacques. There are many curious references in character names and other aspects of the story throughout. You'd never guess that a story about criminal impersonation, blackmail, and extortion could be built on a childhood song. It's worth reading the notes prior to listening).
• That Real Crazy Infinity https://archive.org/details/TSP620527 (A lighthearted story about two jazz musicians who have the opportunity to go back in time to the jazz era they love. It's one of the few times that sci-fi and fantasy and music work together so well, especially in this period of the series.)

• Script misattributions

• There are many situations in the New York era where scripts from other series were used. This is especially true of Robert Arthur and some Mysterious Traveler scripts. There are prior books and other sources about Suspense this period that mis-attribute some scripts as being re-used in other series. Those writers and researchers did not have the access to script covers that we have had these decades later for this project, newspaper archives, or so many recordings.  The script titles might be similar, but the stories are not. The Internet Archive posts and the blogposts identify and document these situations. There were more Suspense-first scripts in this period than originally believed.

• Where did Zirato go?

• It was pretty clear that Suspense and other radio programs would be cancelled at some point in the future. Zirato was transferred by CBS management to the far more lucrative game show To Tell the Truth. He was associate producer and had as one of his tasks the screening of people to be "liars" and the training of the two "liars" and the real person. He had many other duties in the process, and followed that series into its 1970s syndication. 

• Fred Hendrickson replaces him for the final 18 broadcasts

• Hendrickson is too often discounted as "just" a production engineer. He worked for CBS for 30 years, from the time he was 18. He was an electrical engineer, and was Arthur Godfrey's director or producer or other roles for Godfrey's radio and TV at various times, and other assignments. Fred was well-known at CBS and in his community of Mamaroneck (near White Plains and New Rochelle in the Westchester suburbs of New York City). He worked in local charitable events, sometimes arranging for CBS celebrities to appear. Unfortunately, he passed away at age 48 in 1965.

• Hendrickson's first episode is Stand In for Murder broadcast on 1962-06-03. We have an early script, with no cast assignments identified, with Zirato identified as producer-director. Zirato was transferred and Hendrickson assigned between that paperwork and the broadcast. Hendrickson is announced in the closing credits of the episode. It's likely that Zirato had some "command presence" over the first few Hendrickson episodes, giving advice on casting and other matters. The first scripts of the Hendrickson run were likely selected by Zirato before he learned of his reassignment.

• The issue of Variety that announced the ending of Suspense and YTJD is dated August 8, 1962. It is likely that Hendrickson knew all along he was a "lame duck" but wanted the experience of handling the two last dramas at CBS.

Hendrickson had filled in for Zirato for YTJD for 1961-08-27 Too Many Crooks Matter and 1962-01-17 The Hot Chocolates Matter (and perhaps others). His regular scheduling for the series started with the 1962-06-03 Wayward Gun Matter. (Hat tip: John Abbott, now working on the third edition of his YTJD book).

The Final 1962 Broadcasts Under Producer Fred Hendrickson

Unfortunately, Suspense script quality was declining entering the Hendrickson period. Five of the eighteen, however, deserve mention. 

• 1962-06-03 Stand In for Murder https://archive.org/details/TSP620603  A philandering husband's girlfriend is dead by his own hand, and he asks his wife to help him construct an alibi. That alibi includes having his wife imitate the girlfriend... which is a set-up for her to be a victim of a mob contract killing!
• 1962-06-24 With Murder in Mind https://archive.org/details/TSP620624 A mentalist is convinced his wife was killed in a hit-and-run accident with a white convertible with fender damage. But... which white convertible was it? Hollywood radio star Jack Kruschen was in it because he was in a Broadway show at that time.
• 1962-07-22 The Next Murder https://archive.org/details/TSP620722  Two strangers have an interest in the reasons behind murders. One insists that current theories like passion and jealousy and others are much to simple. He's writing a book the goes into the deeper causes of 100 murders. The other man starts to think that the man has a little too much information about a recent murder... and he's  gathering information about numbers 99 and 100 that have not occurred yet.
• 1962-08-19 Pages from a Diary https://archive.org/details/TSP620819  This might be one of the strangest episodes of Suspense ever. It stars Jim and Henny Backus and is mostly monologues. The structure of the narrative is that you're listening to a man's psyche devolve into multiple personality disorder. You start to wonder if the events and sensations he describes ever really happened. I'm sure it confused many listeners back in 1962 and a lot of them probably turned off the radio in mid-show. This is a good one to read the notes before listening.
• 1962-09-23 At the Point of a Needle https://archive.org/details/TSP620923  In 2012, blogger Christine Miller wrote about this production "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… " She 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... and that results in two needless murders in a failed attempt to get her to stop complaining.

By the time Hendrickson was handed Suspense he had been at CBS for 30 years in various roles. He worked as producer and director and other positions for Arthur Godfrey's radio and television broadcasts. He likely knew he was a "lame duck" producer when he was assigned the position. Bruno Zirato, Jr., who preceded Hendrickson, likely had a backlog of six to eight scripts already being prepped for the series as most producers did. But Hendrickson still had to produce and direct them.

The official cancellation of Suspense and YTJD was announced in the 1962-08-08 edition of Variety. The official decision was a week or so before, but everyone knew it was coming,

Hendrickson's brief tenure has often been dismissed by collectors and Suspense fans. It was erratic like much of the New York productions, but he deserves a new look, especially for the five episodes noted above.

He was well respected at CBS and also in his community. He unfortunately passed away three years after Suspense went off the air, at age 48.