Claire Trevor returns to Suspense in
a Richard Vodra script. Trevor has a very good performance in a very
weak and often confusing script. Listeners need to keep up with the
story, but some details are missing. Their absence make the ending
less satisfying and understandable than it should be. All the
elements of a captivating story are there, but they never coalesce
with certainty. This may be the worst broadcast of the Anton
M. Leader producership, and likely also in the bottom ten
episodes of the series.
SPECIAL THANKS TO BARBARA WATKINS AND JOHN BARKER WHO
ASSISTED IN THE DISSECTION AND ANALYSIS OF THIS EPISODE. THEIR
STEADFAST DEDICATION AND ATTENTION TO DETAIL AND CONTEXT IS AN
INSPIRING AND VALUED CONTRIBUTION TO THIS PROJECT AND THE OVERALL
HISTORY OF CLASSIC RADIO.
Spoiler alerts apply to
this entire post; it’s
worth knowing them before listening. It is hard to believe
that so many keystrokes will be spent describing this story yet and
serve warning listeners about it but also trying to figure the
storyline out. But that’s the way it is with confusing productions.
Great stories don’t need this much explanation. You have to keep
listening again and again to make sure you’re not the crazy one.
Then you realize it may have been a waste of time. Why couldn’t
this recording be one of the missing Suspense episodes? If it
was missing, we’d give it the benefit of the doubt and think more
highly of it. We would be in happy ignorance of the truth.
The Light Switch should be a
much, much better production than it is. The story seems unfinished,
not just unpolished. The script cover indicates that it has a
revising writer, Robert Ryf (a name many fans of the 5-part Johnny
Dollar series may recognize). Ryf’s participation likely
indicates that Tony Leader and others in the staff may have realized
there were issues that needed attention before broadcast. The final
script’s cover identifies it as the second revision. Just a few
lines could have fixed it, or at least made it more plausible. They
may have run out of time… even for changes in dress rehearsal, it
seems. If Robert Richards and Bill Spier were on the case, as they
were through the Roma Wines period and a little but after, would this
script have made it to air? Would Spier have set the script aside for
more work, and then go into the file cabinet and repeat one of his
favorite scripts as often he did before?
What is the story here? It’s murky.
Does the wife, played by Trevor,
want to murder her husband, John, for his cheating?
Does she want to kill his
mistress, chorus girl Terry Williams?
Is the detective she hires
interested in running a proper investigation?
Does the detective just want to
take her money, doing as little detective work as possible?
Is this a setup by a wicked woman
in cohoots with her detective boyfriend to scam the wife of a
wealthy banker?
Is the wife mentally ill?
In the end you really wonder if the
husband was definitely cheating at all. It is possible it is a
delusioned misunderstanding.
Be sure to listen for mentions of the
husband’s gray coat. Somehow her hired private eye ends up wearing
it. How? We are never told. Did she give it to the detective? Did the
detective steal it for his own purposes? What happened? We’re left
hanging.
The cross-current of motives and
speculation about the nature of the evil intent of some seriously bad
characters should make for a great story. Listeners could be led down
one path, then get the rug pulled out on that possible solution and
then led down a different path toward a new one. This is a potential
multiple schemer story line where the schemers work against each
other. It’s the kind of story that Suspense often does very
well. The great story with entertaining diversions never emerges; it
just stays murky for lack of facts.
The story begins just fine. It opens
with sound effects of someone going through drawers or moving around
in a living space. (Remember, there were no carpets in classic radio
drama. Everyone walked on wood or tile floors, it seems). We learn
that Trevor’s character was opening and closing apartment windows,
making sure they were locked and closed tightly. You soon learn why.
Trevor portrays the wife of wealthy
banker (John) whom she suspects of using “his business trips” for
selfish personal pursuits unrelated to banking. Obviously displeased,
and seeking revenge, she sets up a gas stove accident. When a light
switch is clicked on and sparks a fiery explosion, it will kill him
and his mistress. As she finishes setting up the trap, she passes out
from the flow of gas. She musters some consciousness, and recalls
what led up to this situation and cluing listeners in via flashback.
So far, this is classic Suspense first person narrative.
Be suspicious of this first flashback.
She recounts her initial encounter with “Skit” Webb, a shady
detective who does not attract the best clientele. She may know more
about Skit’s unsavory nature than she lets on, but that’s not
very clear. As the production plays out, you suspect she might be the
one setting up the mistress, or the detective and the mistress, or
the husband and the mistress, and possibly not the husband at all. In
her initial meeting with Skit, he describes a gas “accident” that
he thwarted. It was set up by a woman named Juanita Cole using an
alarm clock and a cigarette lighter. This exchange is what gave
Trevor’s character the idea of her own trap, except she’d do it a
lot better.
As she talks to Skit, she expresses
disbelief that her husband has taken up with another woman. She says
“girls, perhaps, but not another woman.” It’s as if having
brief flings with multiple young woman would be more understandable
to her than an affair with someone near his own age. In her mind, the
latter may be a greater offense.
Skit does some detective work and
learns the hotel where they meet, or at least where he says they
meet. He tells her that she can either rush there and confront one or
both of them or play it clever and “wait for the kill.” This is a
key moment. Rather than confronting them, she chooses to be clever.
You suspect Skit surmised that she would. This was a way of
entrapping her into his own reprehensible plan.
Is she setting Skit up? He is
constantly asking for money, yet she continues to employ him. You’d
think she’d seek a different detective. Is this a clue that implies
she is setting him up? If she has her own plans for him and keeps
using his services, she may be scheming against Skit.
Finally, Skit tips her off to a
romantic rendezvous which he claims was arranged by her husband for
the following weekend. Skit calls her and tells her to wait outside
the apartment building and not do anything until she sees her husband
arrive with the mistress. She should wait for him, Skit says,
explaining he might be a little late. Was this to buy him time to
walk in with Williams in the husband’s coat and then sneak back out
to meet her at the car?
Ignoring Skit’s directions, she
manages to sneak into her rival’s apartment where she opens the gas
jets and makes sure the windows are shut tight. She smashes the light
bulb of the lamp near the door. The bare wire is still intact. When
her husband and his love interest enter the dark apartment and snap
on the light, those tiny wires, she figures, will ignite a blast that
will blow them to bits. (Other possible victims in such a blast in
the building do not qualify for her consideration).
The flashbacks conclude after the 18:45
mark and the implementation of her plan begins. She is in room 504 of
the hotel where Terry Williams and the husband were to meet. She
hears people outside the room and she stays there. She must avoid
being seen coming out of the apartment after turning the gas jets on.
This is the endpoint of the introductory scene that began the
broadcast and led into the explanatory flashback.
Overcome with the trapped natural gas,
she manages to leave the apartment and stumble into the hallway. Two
drunken ex-vaudevillians, husband and wife, find her staggering
there. She ends up in their room, 505. They know Terry Williams, the
mistress, and mention that she has “a new boyfriend.” But who is
that boyfriend? Skit or her husband?
They keep trying to get her to stay
around, it’s like she’s trapped there by her wooziness and their
desire for company. They’re crazed with explaining how big they
were in vaudeville and they break out into “I’m Just Wild About
Harry.” (It’s the only time we ever get to hear Wally Maher sing!
Unfortunately, he’s playing a drunken has-been at the time). At
23:00 he looks out the window and sees Williams getting out of a taxi
with “that new boyfriend.”
Trevor’s character finally gets out
into the hallway at 23:25, and she starts taking the stairway down to
the lobby. As she turns the corner she sees “John’s gray coat”
trailing behind as he boards the elevator. This is a key moment. Is
it John? Later, we learn it’s Skit. She stays in the lobby and sees
the elevator floor indicator stop at the fifth floor, where Williams’
apartment is. Seconds later, there’s an explosion.
At 24:20, she’s headed down the
street, away from the building, She feels quite satisfied. At 24:45
she returns to her apartment. She’s prepared to act surprised
expecting a police or fire officer to come by later to tell her John
is dead. But at 25:00, it’s John at the door! She lets out a
scream! It seems sincere, meaning that she really thought it was her
husband and Williams caught in the apartment blast. If that’s the
case, then she did not know that Skit and Williams were scheming
against her.
Why was the husband home? He explains
that he came back for his gray coat, and it’s not there in the
closet. She breaks down into tears. He says that he started on his
trip, realized he had forgotten his coat, and decided to come back
for it.
There may be an important segment of
dialogue at 25:35 which implies something else may have been at play
all along as he says “You’re not well. And here you go running
around when you’re not supposed to leave the house.” And after a
few more words she says “You’ve been a perfect husband.” She’s
not well? That issue is mentioned briefly about 10 minutes earlier
but had no context.
At 26:00 she offers a little epilogue
that casts doubt as to whether the husband was cheating and if the
entire plot was to go after Skit Webb and the girlfriend. But this is
counter to her reaction when her husband returns home and starts
looking for his coat. She’s waiting for the police to come and
arrest her. She seems to have an odd reaction to her murder of two
people, Skit and Williams. Is it guilt or strange delight?
What are we supposed to believe? This
was all in her head, that she’s been delusional all along?
Classic radio collector and researcher
John Barker believes that the gray coat was stolen by Skit allowing
him to pretend to be the husband walking into the apartment building
with Williams. This makes sense and is the consensus of those who
contributed or reviewed this blogpost. This is John’s explanation:
Skit broke into
her house and took the husband's gray coat from the closet (we don’t
know when). He had told her to be in the car across the street,
watching the entrance to the alleged girlfriend's apartment house.
This way she could witness the girl entering the building with her
husband at 7:30. He had told her that he might be a little late. This
set up his impersonation of the husband walking into the apartment
building. She would see it and think he was in the building with his
girlfriend.
Presumably his
plan was to enter the building with the Williams, spend some time
with her, then exit the building without being seen by the wife
(through a rear exit?). Then he’d join her in her car where he told
her to wait. He did all this in order to collect the $500 she'd
promised if he gave her proof positive that the husband was carrying
on with someone. His plan apparently hinged on his resembling the
husband from the rear and from a distance, with the stolen gray coat
being the distinguishing characteristic that would convince the wife
that she was seeing her husband, and not Skit, with the girl.
John also notes the very strange
relationship between the characters is established early in the
broadcast. At 6:50 she screams at Skit that he’s a liar. Then she
calls him right back, and is conciliatory. John remarks:
...how openly and
almost hilariously hostile Trevor’s character and Skit are towards
each other from the word “go” all the way to the end of the
episode. The naked aggression between the two almost supports the
theory that Skit was her intended victim all along, except that
doesn't seem to square with what happens in the rest of the episode.
Evidently Skit was the only detective available in a fifty-mile
radius, or else she was too lazy, or too crazy, or too dumb to go
looking for someone who wasn't so obviously sleazy. He has no
scruples but he's pretty transparent about that from the beginning!
Collector and researcher Barbara
Watkins has these comments after listening to the broadcast and
following along with the script:
I am convinced
that she wanted to kill her husband once her suspicions were
apparently confirmed [at 13:20 in the script]. I am also convinced
that Webb stole the coat and arranged the scene for her to observe in
order to get his payoff.
It seems obvious in filling in the
blanks of the story that Skit stole the coat. But it is not clear
when or how (more about this below). He just wanted her money, that’s
clear, and he’d do most anything to get it. (That $500 he’s
looking for is about $6500 in US$2024 value). He set her up to pay
him by wearing the coat. Skit never believed that she would act on
the information he supplied and attempt to murder her husband,
especially after he told her to stay in the car and wait. In and
earlier scene he told her that he had foiled an attempted gas
explosion, and it would be silly if she attempted one. What about
that coat?
Establishing the importance of that
outergarment could have been done early. Perhaps some dialogue like
“John left the house this morning with his usual brown banker’s
attache case and that ugly gray overcoat he always wears this time of
year. For such a big job at the bank he keeps wearing that old coat”
or something like that.
Despite her conviction that her husband
is cheating, we don't know if it’s really true, if she’s
misinterpreting a pattern of events, or if it’s a delusion. We do
know that Skit is playing into this because he smells the aroma of
money and suspects she's an easy target if he makes her think he’s
cheating even if he’s not. It seems like Skit gets his money with
the truth or a lie if he plays it right.
At 16:00 she is with Skit and mentions
that her husband hired a private nurse to be with her. Near the end
of the story the husband mentions that she shouldn’t be going out.
Why? Why does she have a private nurse? Is it because she's sick or
is it to be her "keeper" so John can go gallivanting
around, confident she'll never see him? How do we know there is a
nurse? Is she just saying that to Skit to keep him out of the
apartment and have their meetings somewhere else? The first mention
of the nurse is here at 16:00. The nurse has no lines in the script
for listeners to know that she is there and what function she serves,
even if there is one.
At 16:20 she says she's “...clever now, very clever.” This
means she's playing along with Skit’s plan. Then Skit says “a
switch,” meaning referring to her change in heart from verifying
the affair to doing something to act on that information.
This could be “the switch” that is part of the title. What
does "the light switch" mean, anyway?
Of
course, it's electrical, but it
could also refer to the
changing the plan, and the
change where she acts on her
own even though
Skit
tells her to remain
in the car (later
in the script).
She tells Skit “you
say where and when and I'll
stay quiet” (16:25).
There is an important part of the
script that could have saved much of the production. At 17:47 she
says “wait here in the hall,” then music plays to indicate a
change of scene or time. This could have been the pivotal opportunity
for Skit to have the coat and have the script tie up many of the
loose ends. Perhaps the could have been something like “wait here
by the coat closet,” or Skit could have taken off his own coat when
he got to the apartment and put it in the closet. As they’re ending
their meeting she could be a polite host, retrieve Skit’s coat from
the hanger, and give it to him. Then she could go back into the
apartment and get the money. Since coat closets are near apartment
entry doors, Skit could have grabbed John’s coat, toss it quickly
into the hallway, still be standing near the closet waiting for her
to give him the money. She'd be none the wiser. This is an exact part
of the script where Skit could get the coat and it's not even used to
establish that. Instead, they just change the scene.
There's another possibility noted by Barbara that can be summarized as:
if the husband was having the affair, he forgot... that he forgot... the coat at Terry Williams' apartment. That would easily place the coat within Skit's possession for his ruse.
Barbara notes that this certainly has
all of the elements needed to make a good script for The Whistler.
It certainly could. As soon as you hear the husband say “I came
back for my coat” it is easy to imagine the big kettle drum
followed by the show’s theme.
* * *
The detective’s name is sometimes
hard to precisely discern, but it is definitely “Skit” and not
“Skid” and not “Skip.” The script was viewed by Keith Scott
many years ago as he compiled cast information, so that verifies the
name. It is pronounced clearly much of the time. But there are times
it’s not all that clear. As a nickname, “Skit” certainly is an
odd one. The closest nickname has a Finnish origin, but that's a real
stretch, and doesn’t apply here. The name is clearly made up. The
closest real person with a name that sounds like “Skit” is Skitch
Henderson. Wikipedia explains his name as coming his musical
ability as an arranger. Lyle Henderson got the name from his ability
to quickly “re-sketch” a song in a different key. Bing Crosby was
the person who suggested he use the name professionally.
This is the first of three Richard
Vodra scripts to be used on Suspense. One of them, Search
for Isabel, was first used on Philip Morris Playhouse when
William Spier was the producer of that series. Vodra also wrote for a
short series produced by Spier, The James Mason Show. None of
the Mason shows have been located at the time of this writing.
Wally Maher and Verna Felton play the
ex-vaudevillians. They probably had a great time because they were
close friends. In an interview with Wally’s son in 2022, he
explained that the Maher family enjoyed visiting her (she may have
been called “Aunt Verna” by them) at her Burbank home. The Maher
kids thought she was great: she had a pool and they didn’t!
The hotel named in the story is “Bryn
Carlton,” which is the name of a Los Angeles apartment building
that opened in the 1930s. It was promoted as bachelor apartments. The
practical meaning of that is the apartments were small, too small for
a family. It likely had its share of aspiring actors as residents
through the years. The script spells it as “Bren Carlton”
which may be to obscure the name, but more likely to ensure proper
pronunciation.
Leith Stevens replaced orchestra leader
Lud Gluskin for this and the next two episodes. Stevens had a
marvelous career in radio, television, and motion pictures. He was
nominated for three Oscars for his musical endeavors. In a strange
quirk of fate, his wife died in a car accident in 1970. When he was
called with the news shortly thereafter, he had a fatal heart attack
just minutes after hanging up the phone.
LISTEN
TO THE PROGRAM or download in FLAC or
mp3
https://archive.org/details/TSP490512
THE CAST
CLAIRE TREVOR (Mrs. Winston), Wally
Maher (Harry), Lou Krugman (Skit Webb), Ted Von Eltz (Man / John
Winston), Verna Felton (Eva), Paul Frees (Signature Voice)
COMMERCIAL: Bill Johnstone (Hap),
Harlow Wilcox (Announcer), Sylvia Simms (Operator)
[NOTE TO THOSE GROUPS WHO RE-CREATE
RADIO SHOWS: If someone took the time to fix this script, it
could be turned into a marvelous production, right a 75ish year
wrong, and win the hearts of Suspense fans everywhere.]
###
