Here it is, the most famous Suspense
script of all time… and much of the stories about it that spread
around the hobby since its
beginnings are untrue. It’s
a shame. Those
long-held myths
obscured
the importance and innovation of this script
and broadcast. Sorry,
Wrong Number changed the
direction of the series and created a dramatic franchise, a
distinctive notoriety for
Agnes Moorehead and higher
recognition for writer
Lucille Fletcher.
The plotline: a husband hires a
killer to murder his nagging
wife while he’s on a
business trip. That’s all. How the drama was constructed around
that basic idea is what made
the broadcast legendary.
How different it was
The program did not get much
pre-broadcast publicity, and it didn’t even have the name Sorry,
Wrong Number until days before
broadcast. The “hook”
that the CBS publicity
department used was
that Agnes Moorehead’s voice would be the only one heard in the
broadcast except for unidentified voices on the telephone.
This was their main reason to
listen.
And
then you listen. Does this sound anything
like the John Dickson Carr version of Suspense?
No. This was new. This was quite different. Where are all the
characters? Where’s all that constant banter between them. We’re
listening to a lady on the phone. She’s stuck in bed. She’s
lonely. The story is practically real-time, not drawn out in
different scenes that take place days apart. We’re eavesdroppers.
We’re thrown into a story with no set-up, no circumstance, no
introduction. We don’t know what’s going on.
“Everyone” in the hobby talks about the “flub” at the end.
Guess what: it doesn’t really affect the story. Mrs.
Stevenson was still dead.
Everyone who listened knew it. Minor
details may befuddled
some at the end of the
broadcast, but
it was the
full scope of the ending,
so contrary and unlike other
broadcasts of its time, that
made ending so surprising,
flub or not. Many in audience
thought they
missed something. The period of dead silence after the murder to
rattled the audience whose expectation was for a different ending.
You don’t hear that long a
period of silence on radio. “Dead air” is considered taboo. “Dead
air” was part of this drama.
Then there is
also the
myth
that the east got the flawed broadcast (Eastern
and Central time zones), but
the west (Pacific and
Mountain) got a perfect one.
Suspense didn’t
even have east and west broadcasts in May 1943.
There was only one broadcast, and
the newspaper timetables across the country verify that. Suspense
was a sustaining, sponsorless series. One of the reasons networks
had east and west broadcasts
was so sponsors could have their message reach the largest possible
audience at a particular time of the listenership.
You needed sponsors
with big budgets for that.
Suspense didn’t have
a sponsor.
Here is an image of the top of the script cover page. It shows the switch to the Sorry, Wrong Number title and only one broadcast time, 6:30pm Pacific War Time (special thanks to Suspense researcher Don Ramlow).
The
east-west broadcast history of Suspense
CBS was courting “bankrollers”
for Suspense
throughout 1943 and did an
east-west “test” that was sponsor-free on two Saturday evenings
in August 1943. Sorry, Wrong Number
was the first
of the Saturday broadcasts,
and was
highly promoted.
CBS and
Colgate were
in negotiations for the
series sponsorship.
The experiment
lasted only two weekends
before they gave up and
reverted back to weeknight
broadcasts. Ratings
for the Saturday program must
have been awful, otherwise they would have continued it.
That August day, however,
was the first time Moorehead
performed the script since
May, and was the first time she performed it
twice on
a single
day.
When Roma Wines initiated
its series sponsorship
in the beginning of December
1943, the east and west
broadcasts were on separate
days, Thursday for the east
and Monday for the west. Then, in mid-September 1944, the full CBS
schedule finally cleared
in a manner
that allowed for east and west on the same day. The east and west
broadcasts ended when the Roma sponsorship ended in November 1947.
The flub
kerfuffle that really wasn’t
What is startling as this is researched from the perspective of
the 2020s is how little mention there was in newspapers and the trade
press about the “flub.” Yes,
it is likely that director Ted Bliss threw the cue out to
Hans Conried at the wrong
time, but that was not really anything new in radio. The stuff just
happened, but it didn’t happen very often, and when it did it was
rarely newsworthy.
The few newspapers that mentioned
it wrote about it in
a matter-of-fact passive way,
reporting that the script
would be repeated soon. Initial reports said it would be two weeks
later. It wasn’t. It ended
up as almost three months
later.
Variety of 1943-06-02
stated
Lucille Fletcher’s whodunit
script, broadcast May 25 on the “Suspense” series, will be
repeated two weeks hence by CBS because the solution was lost when
one of the actors missed a cue in the original performance.
That was basically all
that was said. Reporting
about it elsewhere was
practically zero. The
solution wasn’t “lost.” Leona Stevenson was dead.
Newspapers, likely assisted by
CBS publicity, focused more on the large
number of phone calls the
network and affiliates received
and the overall reaction
to the story, and the requests to hear it again. All these years
later, the context of the
listening marketplace of that
night is not widely
understood by
most classic radio fans. To
grasp how different Sorry, Wrong Number was
and why it got such a strong listener reaction, here
are four key points.
First, it was a really
good story
Flubs
don’t create a stir. Very few programs get news coverage or “buzz”
after their broadcast. SWN was
much different than what listeners were used to hearing. It
had them talking around water coolers in the office and chatting
with a neighbor while hanging
laundry in the backyard clothesline. The
dead silence after the murder
confused attentive
listeners. Did they miss
something? Where are the police? Did they
just witness a murder? How
did she die? Is the radio
still working? It was so very
different than other programs they heard. That
atypical ending caused more
confusion than any flub could.
The
principal aspect of the
conclusion is that Mrs.
Stevenson dies, brutally, upon the attack of the
paid killer. We
don’t know exactly how she was murdered. We
heard the “thud” of her body.
At
about the 4:10 point of the network recording, the killer is told
that using a knife to kill Mrs.
Stevenson is okay as long as there isn’t much blood. But by the end
of the story it’s not clear that a knife was even used. All we know
is that the act is taking place as the train goes by, and the fall of
her body.
The
entire program she was complaining about being bed-ridden and
helpless, but she seems to
get
out of bed to defend herself. She
was a weak, helpless woman who got up from her bed. Instead of
complaining about how awful her life was, she attempted to defend it.
Unless she did that,
there would be no “thud.” This must have been vicious.
The killer could have just suffocated her with a pillow if she was so
helpless. But that’s not the way it happened. The
killer had to work.
Typically,
a suffocation
on radio would have required the complexity of dialogue and a staged
and extended scuffle in her
bed. Shooting
her would have been loud and perhaps draw attention, even over the
noise of the elevated train. Was
she strangled? beaten? choked?
stabbed? Fletcher
pulls any possibility of satisfactory closure away from the listener.
The train passing by masks the noise of the murder to the neighboring
apartments and to the listeners. Does
it matter how she dies in the radio play? It’s yet another open-end
question for the listener, with the murder details drowned out by the
train noise. The lack
of details and the thud make
it more shocking.
In
the 1948 movie (scripted by Fletcher herself) you get a glimpse of
the killer’s fingers going toward her and the camera shifts to the
window where you see the passing train, but when the camera shifts
back to the bed, you see the arms of a lifeless Mrs. Stevenson,
killed in bed. In the stage play, you’re not quite sure how it
happens, whether strangled or
choked. In
the movie and in the stage version, you don’t need a thud.
How
good was the story? In 1947,
Decca released a studio
recording record set of a new Moorehead performance. It became one of
the biggest selling recorded performances ever done, and was issued a
multiple times over the next 10 years. A “flub” cannot create
that level of financial
reward and
that high degree of marketing persistence
and presence that SWN
had.
Second, listeners became very
impatient with Mrs. Stevenson.
She was constantly complaining and
was making demands to
try to bully others to do her
bidding. The personality was
similar to a woman Fletcher had a run-in with at a local store.
Fletcher’s daughter was interviewed years later and said that the
character was her mother’s act of revenge.
There
was likely a good portion of the audience who muttered “I wish she
was dead” or “shut up, already.” The tide of the story turns
against Mrs. Stevenson the
longer one listens.
Once the audience realizes she’s dead, there’s a shock of guilt
for the intense listeners.
This was made worse by no one rushing in to help, not
a police officer, not
a neighbor, or
anyone else. There’s a long
silence after the “thud.”
Did the listeners
who grew impatient with Mrs. Stevenson have some voyeuristic
complicity in her murder?
We
don’t even know exactly how she died. Was she beaten? Was she
strangled with the phone cord? Was she choked? We
didn’t hear a gunshot. Was
she stabbed as
the killer discussed
at the beginning of the play?
Radio
listeners always had a clue what the instrument of crime will be, and
it was usually integral to the scene of the crime or its attempt.
Scriptwriters often
used now-laughable lines like “put down that gun” or “you think
you can kill me with a knife?” or “why do you have that rope?”
Fletcher introduces the idea of a knife at the beginning of the
story, but we really have no idea if it was used. The
knife was mentioned about 20 minutes before the murder occurs.
Listeners were used to knowing details of nefarious acts: Fletcher
withholds it and all we know is the aftermath.
Third, the
ending was atypical of its time and genre.
The
original concept of the story was that she would be saved by police
rushing in. Sorry, no police. The story would not
have its
dramatic impact if she was saved from an attempted killing. It
would be just like every mystery and detective program heard every
other night. This ending was
so very different from what was on the air at the time.
This
may be hard for us to understand all these years later. We are
used to stories having dark endings (it seemed especially common for
movies in the 1970s). In the 1940s, there were movie codes and a
general sentiment that good always had to win in the end. This story
was actually quite risky to broadcast.
Remember:
Suspense
was
a sustained program.
In light of some actions taken
by future sponsors Auto-Lite
and Roma Wines to
alter
script plotlines or reject scripts,
it is highly likely
that they would rejected
this story ending.
They would have pushed for
the police rescue or a saving
act by someone, anyone. By
the time these companies sponsored Suspense,
this script was considered an
unalterable classic. Sorry,
Wrong Number was bigger than the
companies sponsoring it. These
same sponsors
that rejected lesser scripts during
their tenure were happily
and enthusiastically grabbing
the coattails of this proven
audience-grabber for all of
the repeat performances. What
a funny paradox that is.
Fourth,
there is an undercurrent
of class envy in the story.
Less
than 40% of the households in the US had a phone.
Generally, only
businesses and upper middle
class families could afford
one. It was either too
expensive for many or a luxury item with little practical use. This
means that even having a phone itself had a mysteriousness about it
for many of the listeners. A
problem like crossed lines and overhearing conversations was very
rare. Because
almost two thirds of the audience had
no regular experience with
phones, they accepted its possibility. Fletcher
could play a little fast and easy with phone technology
misconceptions in the story.
There
were probably some listeners
who had aspirations of phone ownership, but after the program
wondered if they should aspire for
something else. How many
breadwinners who were
skeptical of phones in the home were
saying to
their spouses and relatives “see....
this kind of stuff only brings trouble... we don't need one in our
house…”?
In
terms of overall class envy, there
may have been some
in the audience who were intrigued by a
wealthy person with a
comfortable life struggling
through the story. There
is a “money can’t buy happiness” underlying
theme. Mrs. Stevenson seems ungrateful for what she has, even though
she has a phone, lives in a posh area of Manhattan, and can boss
people around.
It’s
clear where the fictional Stevensons lived in Manhattan. Fletcher has
their address as 53 North Sutton Place. There is no such address, but
Sutton Place is a short road that becomes York Avenue around East
55th
Street. The Sutton area is one of the most expensive and exclusive
areas of the east side of Manhattan
In
the meantime, “regular people” were dealing with the scarcities
and uncertainty of the World War. Everyone was sacrificing in one way
or another or had family members in the service. All
Mrs. Stevenson seems to
do is complain. A
key part of the storytelling
is to
slowly erode
any sympathy
for her,
and
harden the audience against
her, making
the ending more devastating to
their decency.
How the myths
became entrenched
in the classic radio hobby
Those major points are
about the listening audience and the nature
of their times. Pioneer
classic radio hobbyists did
not really seek that kind of context. Their
mission was to rescue programs, record
them, trade them, and enjoy them.
Eventually, they encountered
the Suspense program
of 1943-06-01, Banquo’s Chair.
At the beginning of the program, they hear this announcement:
In just a moment, CBS will present
its weekly program of the world's outstanding thrillers, Suspense.
Before we begin, the producer feels it incumbent upon him to reply
herewith to the many inquiries concerning the solution of last week's
story of the woman on the telephone called Sorry,
Wrong Number.
Due to a momentary confusion in the studio, an important line cue was
delivered at the wrong time and some of our listeners were uncertain
as to the outcome of the story. For them, be it known that the woman,
so remarkably played by Miss Agnes Moorehead, was murdered by a man
whom her husband had hired to do the job. We should also like to
announce that in response to many hundreds of requests, this Suspense
play will be repeated within a few weeks.
What were they to think about that? Upon first hearing of this
announcement, the collectors myth snowball began its downhill descent
and accumulation. For those whose only knowledge of the flub was this
announcement, it was easy to assume it caused was panic and chaos in
the studio. If it was confusing enough to necessitate an
announcement, then it’s not a big leap to believe that news like
that must have been in the papers and the industry trade magazines.
No, sorry, this was not a post-War of the Worlds news
moment.
Those pioneer collectors did not have the research tools that we
have today. If the Banquo’s Chair announcement
was all they had to go on, what they assumed was not
unreasonable. In their mind, the key reason Sorry, Wrong Number
was big was because there was a big mistake at the end and
that’s what made the broadcast noteworthy.
Such sentiment was
unfortunate, and drew
attention away from how good
the script and the performance was.
And
then there’s the myth of the flawless west coast performance. Many
collectors assumed that all series
had east and west broadcasts.
This would mean that west
coast listeners were fortunate they heard SWN the
way it was intended to be. Again,
those early collectors did not have the research resources that
collectors of our times have. If
there was such an event, it would be a news story: “Suspense
drama confuses east coast and
midwest listeners; other regions spared.” There wasn’t.
The timetables in each time zone
make it clear. Suspense was
broadcast and fed to its
network once, at 9:30 Eastern
time, 8:30 Central time, 7:30 Mountain time, and 6:30 Pacific time.
Years later,
some hobbyist
of hopefully honorable but
misguided intent, “created”
a west recording through tape editing. It was “flub-less,” just
like the west heard it. You
can still
find that recording in many collections and
in some logs all these years
later. We
know there was no such broadcast,
and the well-intentioned “reconstruction” of
a west coast broadcast was a
confusing fraud.
Another way
we know that there was no
west recording is that
an Armed Forces Radio Service
transcription of this inaugural
Sorry, Wrong Number
broadcast has survived.
It
has the error. If that
error was so gigantic and
disorienting, and there
was a west coast broadcast,
AFRS would have been supplied
“the flub-less” west coast recording for
their distribution. But there
was no such recording
to give. The AFRS recording matches the network recording, flub
and all.
Sorry,
Wrong Number was confusing to
many listeners because it was so very different, and so contrary to
their expectations, especially their expectations of style that were
reinforced in the weeks and weeks of Carr-style presentations. To
blame it all on the “flub” is to dismiss the innovation the story
was in its time.
Sorry, Wrong Name
One of the more intriguing parts of Suspense history
is the relationship of producer William Spier and his second wife,
Kay Thompson, and her
influence on the series. They
were not married for long. But Kay may have been one of the most
broadly talented
people in show business. She was a choreographer, music coach,
singer, dancer, and had
numerous other talents,
especially for MGM.
It was Bill and Kay who helped
Fletcher with the ending of the story. One of their other
key skills was in developing
story titles. Fletcher was admittedly not good at it. Her title for
the script was “You Can Always Telephone.” Researcher
Don Ramlow and Keith Scott uncovered many names for the episode.
Among the names they found were “I’m So Nervous,” “She
Overheard Death Talking,” “She Overheard Death Speaking,” “She
Overheard Murder Speaking,” and “If at First You Don’t
Succeed!”
Here is the full cover page of the edited version of the Sorry, Wrong Number script. This script image was supplied by Don Ramlow who has spent extensive time with the University of Wisconsin archives materials (where this script is archived) and also archives of the Suspense advertisers and others. He also had discussions with Lucille Fletcher about this episode and her career. (Don was the guest for a series of installments of Good Old Days of Radio podcast for their retrospective about Fletcher's career. The playlist of the Fletcher podcasts can be accessed by clicking here. Or, find them at their website goodolddaysofradio.com )
“She Overheard Death Speaking”
was the title announced at
the end of The ABC Murders the
week before, and the title or
a variation of it was in all
of the newspaper listings. This means that Sorry, Wrong
Number was selected as the title
less than a week before the broadcast. No newspaper listing can be
found with this final and now-legendary
title.
1943-05-25 Des Moines IA Register
The
Spiers eventually
agreed they
would separate and divorce.
They decided
Kay would establish residency in Nevada to take advantage of their
more accommodating divorce laws, and
that she would
work there for the required time.
In that brief time
away from Hollywood,
she developed
what is remains
the prototype multi-act
Las Vegas night club show. By
the time the Spiers were legally able end
their marriage in Nevada, her
influence over Suspense had
ended, and instead she
transformed Vegas entertainment for
the decades that followed.
After SWN,
Suspense finally
earned the consideration
of potential sponsors
Prior
to SWN, Suspense
was just another mystery
program. It was getting
the attention of the big Hollywood stars, their
agents, and the studios, but
you could hear stars
on other radio programs
most every night.
SWN set Suspense
aside from the other mystery and
Hollywood programs with compelling scripts,
innovative integration of music,
and exceptional performances.
Their embrace of against-type casting that put comedians and singers
and dancers in dramatic roles was a
publicity and audience magnet.
The mistakes of the Forecast pilot
had faded from memory. Its
growing stature and
reputation meant that
Suspense could be
offered
to a sponsor without
reservation. Who would
sponsor the series? There’s much more work for
CBS and Suspense production
staff to do
before a sponsor signs on to the project.
And there are more
performances of Sorry, Wrong Number
that can be used to discuss them.
LISTEN
TO THE PROGRAM or download in FLAC or
mp3
https://archive.org/details/TSP430525
THE CAST
AGNES MOOREHEAD (Mrs. Stevenson), Hans Conried (Man on phone),
Harry Lang (George), unknown (Operator), Margaret Brayton (Chief
Operator / Information), Paula Winslowe (Henchley hospital woman),
Joe Kearns (Western Union / Man in Black), Charles Seel (Sergeant
Martin)
NOTE: Of the two
recordings available, the network recording has better sound than the
AFRS one.
Agnes
Moorehead would eventually become “the first lady of Suspense.”
That did not happen with this
broadcast. It
was not until Elliott Lewis took over as producer that Moorehead
appearances promoted her with that title about eight years after this
first broadcast of Sorry,
Wrong Number. At this time,
Moorehead was in the
entertainment news pages more often
for her role on the radio
program Mayor of the Town
and her role in the 1942 Orson Welles film
production of The
Magnificent Ambersons. Her
“first lady of Suspense”
reputation grew because of her fine work in broadcasts of The
Diary of Sophronia Winters, The
Sisters, To Find Help,
The Yellow Wallpaper, and
many others, as well as all
of the repeat performances of
SWN.
There is obviously lots more to know about the role that Sorry,
Wrong Number played in the
history of Suspense. This
page
https://sites.google.com/view/suspense-collectors-companion/click-for-home-arrow-for-more/agnes-moorehead-and-sorry-wrong-number
has many more details about this and all the SWN
performances on radio and early
television, in the USA and in England.
And we barely
mentioned the record set, of
the television broadcasts, or the
movie or… the opera? Yes… the opera… That will be described in a commentary of a later broadcast performance.
Kay Thompson was also responsible
for saving a Suspense classic
from the garbage can. A script titled Articles of Death was
rejected by husband Bill and she asked him to reconsider it. It would
become Dead Ernest,
one of the most beloved Suspense scripts
and performances. It was the broadcast that would win the series its
Peabody Award.
Thompson may have had an in-joke
mention in the script. Mrs. Stevenson mentions that her maid is named
“Eloise.” In the 1950s, when
Thompson was
living at New York’s Plaza Hotel, she wrote
books about a little girl
named Eloise, a young girl who lived at
that very same hotel.
Biographer Sam Irvin notes that the “Eloise” character was
developed by the Thompson based on her childhood imaginary friend and
alter ego with that name. The imaginary friend, according to Irvin,
had “a voice in which Thompson spoke throughout her life.” It’s
possible that as the Spiers were working with Fletcher in finalizing
the script that they needed a name for the maid… and it became
“Eloise.”
The
next week’s show was announced as “The Extra Guest,” but the
name was changed to “Banquo’s
Chair.” But that’s a
strange situation – the original stage play was named “Banquo’s
Chair” and Suspense was
going to change the name of an established play! Perhaps Spier
thought better of it, and reverted to the original title, even after
the newspapers were listing “The Extra Guest” in their
timetables.
IF THIS IS YOUR FIRST TIME ON THIS BLOG...
You will enjoy the post about another Lucille Fletcher script, The Hitch-hiker, which starred Orson Welles. Click this link:
https://suspenseproject.blogspot.com/2023/01/1942-09-02-hitch-hiker.html
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