1945-12-27 Pink Camellias

Marsha Hunt stars in a curious story where her character dares to use poisoning to get an inheritance of her annoying, demanding, and infirm Aunt. But there’s someone else in the house who is good with this poison strategy, too. And there’s another relative who’s after the money, and also after the heart of Marsha Hunt’s character. But how sincere is he, really?

The author of this script was Charmion McGuirk, a Suspense “one-hit-wonder” who may have never submitted another radio script that was accepted again. The script was adapted by Silvia Richards. It is an entertaining story with Verna Felton as the annoying aunt.

McGuirk was 26 at the time of this broadcast. Her father was a newspaper reporter and moved the family around the country wherever his jobs took him. Born in Iowa, she was active in drama programs while in high school in New Jersey and attended the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York City. She moved from New Jersey to California and married in Hollywood to Frank X. O’Connor, a New Yorker, in 1943. This script was submitted under her birth name. Charmion O’Connor passed away in 1993. Other than a 1940 short story she wrote for the New York Daily News, there is no record of her writing under her birth or married name after that story or this script.

There is one surviving network recording which is in fine sound. It is not known to which coast it was broadcast. An Armed Forces Radio Service recording is known to exist (#135) but it is not available at this time. In the 1970s, the Armed Forces Radio and Television Service had a special series, AFRTS Mystery Theater which included this episode, with heavy editing and increased playing speed, as episode #254. That recording has survived, and the drama is derived from the surviving network recording.

LISTEN TO THE PROGRAM or download in FLAC or mp3
https://archive.org/details/TSP451227

THE CAST

MARSHA HUNT (Martha), Verna Felton (Aunt Abby), Jack Edwards, Jr. (Neil), Joe Kearns (Signature Voice / Bennett), Jim Nusser? (John)

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1945-12-20 Double Entry

This episode is a rather lighthearted episode that involves illegal gambling, “bookies,” and some embezzling to fund it all. And when they think they’ll be thrown in jail, something else happens that’s really good luck. “Double entry” has multiple meanings in the story, whether it’s the a concept in bookkeeping, two characters are making bogus bookkeeping entries, multiple entries in a horse race, or an entry into jail. It’s a good title that plays on both words in one way or another. It’s Hume Cronyn’s first appearance on Suspense and he’s joined by Keenan Wynn who always delivers a good performance. Wally Maher is very entertaining as he calls the horse races they are betting on.

Part of the story is a bad bet on a long shot horse who wins the race… and perhaps the writer of the script was a long shot to get onto Suspense when so many other writers were trying to get the attention of Bill Spier and Robert Richards.

The author is Robert Minton, a 26 year-old graduate of Princeton University who at one time won a scriptwriting contest sponsored by MGM. That award led to a year in Hollywood as a junior scriptwriter. After graduation, he began his professional writing career began as a reporter for the New York World-Telegram where he also became their book reviewer. That paid the bills, but he still enjoyed scriptwriting, which led to this Suspense submission.

About six years after this Suspense success, he worked for the State Department as spokesperson for the Marshall Plan. He was the first public relations director of Radio Free Europe. He became a local newspaper publisher in a suburb of Boston, and then became a PR Director for Boston University. It is not known how many radio and TV plays he authored, but this Suspense episode is the only credited and surviving one; he has two television writing credits in IMDb. He had many articles and opinion pieces published in leading magazines through his career.

Double Entry was performed twice on radio and also on the Suspense television series. There were some revisions to bring it to TV https://archive.org/details/Suspense_201705/Suspense+++S03E25+++Double+Entry...with+Virginia+Gilmore.mp4

Minton’s experience is similar to another journalist who had one script performed on Suspense: Walter Bazar, author of On a Country Road. It was Bazar’s only radio script as he became a reporter for government and science topics for The New York Journal-American after he graduated from Columbia University. Bazar’s script was also performed multiple times on the radio and performed on television.

Three network recordings have survived, two studio recordings (east and west) and a KQW San Jose, California aircheck. An Armed Forces Radio Service recording has also survived (#134). The AFRS version is from the east recording. Cronyn has some difficulty with a line; times are approximate:

• WC 25:56 “I’d never sleep again if I escaped scot-free”

• EC 25:39 “I’d never sssssleep again if I escaped scot-free”

• AFRS 22:53 “I’d never sssssleep again if I escaped scot-free”

The east network recording (EC) is the best sounding of the four.

This story was included in Suspense Magazine #3. A PDF may be downloaded from the same page as the audio recordings.

This is the first Suspense appearance of Hume Cronyn. He was not on radio often except for some of the movie related series and but he did appear on Suspense five times during 1945 and 1946, and also appeared three times on the Suspense television series. Cronyn’s career was long and very successful, and acted in many productions with his wife, Jessica Tandy. They especially loved theatrical work.

One of them was a play, The Fourposters, a married couple. Their interest in portraying marriage on stage eventually led to a 1950s radio series, The Marriage, on NBC Radio. The series was highly regarded, but interest in radio was ebbing at NBC. How interesting that Cronyn’s radio work was minimal in the golden age, but he found great interest in this particular project. It is one of classic radio’s “hidden gems.” An overview of Cronyn’s career can be found at Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hume_Cronyn

LISTEN TO THE PROGRAM or download in FLAC or mp3
https://archive.org/details/TSP451220

THE CAST

KEENAN WYNN (Eddie Sullivan), HUME CRONYN (Sam Crockett), Wally Maher (Race announcer), Jerry Hausner (Fink Martin), Elliott Lewis (Signature Voice / Bartholomew), unknown (Jail guard)

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1945-12-13 The Argyle Album

A famous journalist who encourages his protege, played by Robert Taylor, to succeed him in his life's work. The older journalist is murdered, but has a huge album of notes, with a very recognizable argyle cover. The notes had evidence of a great international scheme that he uncovered. There are dangerous interests who want to keep those notes from the light of day.

The Argyle Album was written by Cy Endfield, the son of a Scranton, Pennsylvania furrier, whose hometown newspapers followed his theatrical career from its very beginnings as a performer and a writer, and eventually a director and producer. Yes, Endfield was going places… and Hollywood success was in his grasp.

This episode is another Suspense connection to Orson Welles: Endfield was skilled at magic tricks and taught Welles and others how to do them. He was invited by Welles to the sets of some of his movie productions. This was was one of the ways Endfield developed his insights into film-making. It is possible that Welles’ relationship with William Spier helped Endfield get his script considered for Suspense.

This script was one of the handful of Suspense scripts that became a movie after its broadcast.

• Watch it on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pYFsuJFdu54

• Watch it on The Internet Archive in a much sharper video with Spanish subtitles https://archive.org/details/1948-the-argyle-secrets-cy-endfield-vose

The script got a new title, The Argyle Secrets, assumed to make it more mysterious to attract an audience. It was a B-movie and was filmed in… 8 days, and it shows! The movie is not very good, but it is fun to watch because of the Suspense connection and a nostalgia connection for baby boomers. The movie has early roles of actors we know for their work about 15 years later. The cast includes Barbara Billingsley (June Cleaver) and John Banner (Sgt. Schultz) from the iconic 1960s sitcoms Leave it to Beaver and Hogan's Heroes, as well as Marjorie Lord (The Danny Thomas Show). It was a B-movie created to keep movie-goers entertained for the evening as they waited for the feature attraction to be played. The movie starred William Gargan, who had a 1950s radio role in NBC’s Barrie Craig, Confidential Investigator as well as a good film and television career.

Endfield’s career can be viewed at https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0256831/?ref_=nmbio_bio_nm

There are three recordings of the episode: a west aircheck from KQW of San Jose, California, a west studio recording, and an Armed Forces Radio Service recording (#133) which is derived from the east recording. One of the often-used markers of differences in these identifications is the performance of Wally Maher. He was a natural radio reader and would change his patterns and pace in reaction to the fellow players. There was nothing stilted about Maher’s performances on Suspense. Whatever his character, it sounded natural and had changes in emphasis and timing as the performance flowed. Times are approximate:

• AFRS 2:19 “Say....you're Harry Mitchell, aren't you?”

• West 2:59 “Say...you're...you're Harry Mitchell, aren't you?”

The west (WC) recording is the best of the three. The west recordings go directly to network ID. The KQW aircheck has a clipped opening. The AFRS recording is in very good sound, rivaling the west studio recording.

This is the first of three Suspense appearances for Robert Taylor. He had a long movie career which is summarized at Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Taylor_(American_actor) His most famous Suspense appearance would be House in Cypress Canyon in 1946.

The opposite-endedness of Cyril Endfield and Robert Taylor in the blacklist era shows the conflicting and swirling directions of the political winds in the entertainment industry and its audience. Endfield’s career was negatively affected in the Blacklist era, so he left Hollywood to pursue his film career in Britain where he could avoid distraction and better concentrate on his art. Taylor offered strong anti-communist testimony and opinions in many venues about the business and its practitioners. The Blacklist era would begin just a couple of years after this broadcast after the surge of post-WW2 relief and enthusiasm eased. The uncertainties and tensions of the Cold War were escalated in the news and affected the way Hollywood operated. Former artistic collaborators became suspicious of each others interests. Some never worked together again.

LISTEN TO THE PROGRAM or download in FLAC or mp3
https://archive.org/details/TSP451213

THE CAST

ROBERT TAYLOR (Harry Mitchell), Cathy Lewis (Marla), Wally Maher (Alan Peers / Haggerty), Joe Granby (Gil), Jerry Hausner (Melvin “Pinky” Pincus), Elliott Lewis (Signature Voice / Lieutenant “Horse-lip” Samson), Jack Edwards, Jr. (Winter, alias Gerald Avery), Paul Marion (Jor Brod), unknown (Dr. Van Selvin), Peggy Rea? (Nurse)

Suspense researcher Keith Scott notes about The Argyle Album movie: Note that the little boy in the movie version was played by a very young Ken Greenwald (billed as Kenneth). Ken went on to become a top coffee house comedian in the 1960s and soon after, in his personal life, he ended up as one of the greatest radio show collectors and preservationists. A vast chunk of the prime material we all enjoy today was due to Ken’s fine recording skills.

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1945-12-06 I Won't Take a Minute

Glenn Ford stars in a Suspense adaptation of a Cornell Wool… oh, wait… Lee Bowman stars in a Suspense adaptation of a Cornell Woolrich story. Robert Tallman adapted his 1940 short story, Finger of Doom, and gave it a new title. A 1965 anthology of Woolrich works used this Suspense title for this story.

Lee Bowman’s appearance was not planned. Yet again, Suspense production had to be flexible as the work schedules of its guest stars took precedence. This news item from the 1946-02-21 Indianapolis IN Star explains what happened:

Sometimes the calamities that happen during the broadcast of Suspense cause more suspense for the participants than the listeners. The program Glenn Ford was to appear on seemed hoodooed from the start. A few hours before air time Ford couldn't get away from his movie set in time so Lee Bowman was called in to sub at the last minute. Truman Bradley, the announcer, turned up with a high fever and a hoarse voice, but his pipes were pretty good for the broadcast. Then the sound-effects girl slashed her hand while crushing a berry box to represent the sound of a breaking door. So the program was sewed up with three stitches on the hand.

One has to wonder… was Bowman the first person they called? Was Spier privy to the schedules of potential fill-ins as they moved closer to broadcast day? Did potential fill-ins know they were on the call list? If, suddenly, there was no big Hollywood guest star available, who from the ensemble cast would be called on for that lead role? Did they know they were the “understudy”? Bowman performs very well on short notice. Once production shifted to tape recording, these kinds of situations were virtually eliminated.

Bowman’s character is with his fiancé for an evening out. Before they go to their first stop of the evening, she just has a brief errand for her employer: deliver a small package to an apartment building. She never comes back. A policeman (played by Wally Maher, who is very entertaining in the role) tries to help, but the story becomes more unbelievable every time he gets more information. In the end… it’s a spy story! It’s very entertaining and Bowman and Maher play well together. It’s not great Woolrich in terms of radio, but it is still listening very well spent. Woolrich’s style of stories where everything seems to go uncontrollably wrong and have to get resolved in the end fit Suspense like a glove. How they fit it all in about 24 minutes of story time is a wonder, but that pace is one of the things that makes the series so fascinating.

There are three surviving network recordings. The east recording (“EC”) is the best of the three. There are two west recordings. One is a studio recording that is also in good sound, and the other is an aircheck from KQW of San Jose, California. That recording has narrow range, but airchecks like this remind us how lucky we are to enjoy classic radio from rich-sounding studio recordings. The airchecks are examples of the narrow range of sound that many listeners experienced over AM radio.

The east recording has a time to network ID of about 26 seconds; the west is about 15 seconds.

LISTEN TO THE PROGRAM or download in FLAC or mp3
https://archive.org/details/TSP451206

THE CAST

LEE BOWMAN (Kenny), Cathy Lewis (Stephanie Ryska / Brat kid), Herbert Rawlinson (Hessen), Wally Maher (Lt. Gilman), Junius Matthews (Building Super), Elliott Lewis (Signature Voice / Calhoun), Lucille Meredith? (Fake Stephanie, alias Olga), unknown (Mother / Landlady)

It is believed that the sound effects artist who hurt her hand working on this episode was Becky Barnes, assistant to Berne Surrey. (HT: Karl S. and Keith S.)

The Woolrich story was produced in 1949 on Escape under its original title, Finger of Doom. That was a different adaptation by John Dunkel under Norman Macdonnell.

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1945-11-29 A Week Ago Wednesday

Nancy Kelly is back on Suspense and her character is having nightmares that her husband has plans to kill her. He’s not, but the dreams are so vivid and detailed that she is convinced he is. Eventually, she believes that the dreams are reliable premonitions. No matter how her husband behaves, there’s a sinister aspect to it and she knows his true motives. It does not turn out well.

The author is New York-based scriptwriter Winifred Wolfe who wrote for many series and also 1950s television. This story was later repeated on the syndicated Murder at Midnight, episode #48. No audio is available of that episode. Why mention New York? The radio era had two persons named "Winifred Wolfe" in its history: this writer (1923-1981), and Hollywood had an actress with the same name (1922-2022). She appeared on One Man's Family as "Teddy" with a married name of Winifred Beck.

Kelly’s performance is superb but for the first half of the program you realize how critical the Suspense music is to building the story and intensifying mood and background. The music of Suspense is often like a character in the story, and this episode is a good example of that. The underlying story is not among the strongest Suspense has offered, but the music raises it to be better than it is.

Three recordings have survived. An aircheck of KQW, a west coast station in San Jose, California, is an obvious marker for that coast’s broadcast. It has a 13 second time to network ID. The east coast broadcast is the best sounding recording; it has a 40 second delay to broadcast. The Armed Forces Radio Service recording (#131) is derived from the east coast broadcast. Times are approximate:

• EC 26:02 “I know now what wrong I've done.”

• WC 26:40 “I know now what I've....what I've done is wrong.”

• AFRS 23:01 “I know now what wrong I've done.”

LISTEN TO THE PROGRAM or download in FLAC or mp3
https://archive.org/details/TSP451129

THE CAST

NANCY KELLY (Maude Haskin), Gloria Gordon (Old Woman), Verna Felton (Woman in Apartment 3B), Bill Johnstone (Harry Haskin), Elliott Lewis (Signature Voice / Short order cook / Priest), Henry Blair? (Little Boy)

Elliott Lewis fills in as the “signature voice” for four weeks replacing Joe Kearns. Lewis does his best to sound serious and authoritative. It doesn’t always work because when you’re listening you say to yourself “that’s Elliott Lewis doing his best to sound serious and authoritative.”

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1945-11-22 Nineteen Deacon Street

Lloyd Nolan is a necktie sales representative who is looking for an apartment where he can sleep after long days selling his wares. A landlady says she has no apartment for him, but after chatting with him and sizing him up, she decides to show him a room that she has been holding for a tenant who is away. It turns out the room has been untouched, and unlived in, for ten years! The room belonged to a young woman, Laverne, who was trying to start a stage career. He senses that she is around… and hears her voice… and her crying. What happened to her? He wants to find a place to display his ties, and finds a small theater that has been closed, and the owner refuses to rent it… and that’s been closed for a decade, too. He’s intent on finding out what happened (she’s not coming back). We never really get an explanation about the crying on the phone.

The script is by Larry Marcus and Robert Light.

Nolan has another part with many monologue segments, but they have much better context than they did in Murder for Myra.

Bill Johnstone plays an ethnic character, Joe, who runs an Italian restaurant. We rarely hear him in such roles.

There are two network recordings and it is not known which is east or which is west. The better recording goes directly to network ID and is labeled “(dirID).” The other recording is only two seconds to ID, “(2s).” The recordings are very close in sound quality.

Nolan coughs about 21:20 in the “(dirID)” recording and it does not stop his momentum; he just continues reading. The words are “...let it go. [cough] He won’t rent...” There is no cough in the other network recording. These are the kinds of markers that help identify the east or west network source of AFRS recordings. There is no AFRS recording of this episode available at this time, but we are prepared when one becomes available. We often stumble upon these quirky things and they always seem to come in handy in the research.

The actual title of the script is unclear. Is it “19” or “Nineteen,” and does it include a comma? The KNX Collection of scripts has the title for the 1958 re-performance as “Nineteen, Deacon Street.” For the 1945 broadcast, most newspapers used “19,” which likely means that is what the CBS publicity department used. The Spier papers at the University of Wisconsin have “Nineteen” as appearing on the script cover page.

LISTEN TO THE PROGRAM or download in FLAC or mp3
https://archive.org/details/TSP451122

THE CAST

 LLOYD NOLAN (Morrie Swartz), Cathy Lewis (Laverne Claire / Phone Operator), Joe Kearns (Signature Voice / Jasper Florenz), Verna Felton (Landlady), Elliott Lewis (Cop), Bill Johnstone (Joe), unknown (Voice of Florenz’s secretary on phone).

Some of the casting details were a little sketchy, but a script resides in the Spier papers at University of Wisconsin. Those holdings do not have final production scripts and tend to be the scripts that Spier was working with in the week or so leading up to the broadcast. They offer great insight into the editorial review that was part of bringing each episode to its broadcast. There are more characters in Spier’s script than in the final performance!

Keith Scott reviewed the script and the broadcast and this is what he said:

• “Man” and “Bartender” were cut from the original script for time reasons

• “Man” was a bit part (a guy serving Morrie Swartz coffee)

• “Bartender” was another tiny bit who pointed out Joe (the bar owner) to Morrie

• The scenes had a pencil through their lines indicating cuts.

• “Voice” referred to Jasper Florenz’s secretary who spoke on the phone to Morrie

• It could be actor Alan Hewitt playing Florenz’s secretary but I’m not certain

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1945-11-15 Murder Off Key

Zachary Scott stars in a story that explains one of the hazards of life in an apartment building: annoying neighbors. It gets worse. The woman with the bad singing voice is always practicing, and her tiny dog is always yapping, but she’s a reliable and wealthy tenant so the landlord looks the other way when other tenants complain. She takes a liking to Scott’s character, and since she’s a rich widow, and he’s a single man, people start to talk that he’s looking for her money… especially after she’s murdered!

The story was written by Jean Russ Kern, a freelance scripter who also wrote for First Nighter and other programs. She was involved in news reporting and commentary for The West Indian Radio Newspaper, a radio service that broadcast news to countries and US and British territories in the Caribbean. It is likely they also supplied dramas as part of that service as she was described in the February 1946 Radio News as their dramatic script writer.

Elliott Lewis’ character has no name, just referred to as “soft voice.”

There are two surviving network recordings of this episode. The better sounding episode is 22 seconds to the network ID. The other recording is 20 seconds to the network ID. It has thumping sounds at the show open from a disc scratch or damage of some type, and it also has a small dialogue flub at around the 26:30 mark.

• 20s: “When she started Roses of Picardy, Marley… Morley thought so, too.”

• 22s: “When she started Roses of Picardy, Morley thought so, too.”

The disc thumping noise was likely the reason this episode fell out of circulation many decades ago. It is not known which recording is east or west, so the recordings are designated as “(22s)” and “(20s).”

This story was included in Suspense Magazine #4 and a PDF is available on the same page as the audio files.

This was the only Suspense appearance for Zachary Scott. His first film appearance was in 1944 after a few years in Broadway and regional theater. At the time of this broadcast, he gained much attention for his appearance in Mildred Pierce opposite Joan Crawford. His career is summarized at Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zachary_Scott

LISTEN TO THE PROGRAM or download in FLAC or mp3
https://archive.org/details/TSP451115

THE CAST

ZACHARY SCOTT (Carlson), Cathy Lewis (Girl next door), Verna Felton (Imogene Poindecker), Elliott Lewis (“Soft Voice”), Wally Maher (Snide tenant / Joe), Jerry Hausner (Elevator operator), Joe Kearns (Signature Voice / Morley), unknown (Pepe the poodle)

Verna Felton is marvelous as the bad-singing widow. In an interview with Wally Maher, Jr., he said that Wally, Sr. would bring the whole family to Verna’s house a few Sundays a year and they had a great time on every visit. Of course they did: they were all little kids and she had a pool!

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