Suspense: 11/16/50, episode 402 Brought to you by the Old Time Radio Researchers, courtesy of The Suspense Project

Cary Grant stars in this classic episode that has an interesting history: it’s by a one-hit-wonder writer who became a prominent journalist. Grant gives his usual fine performance. The story was disconcerting to many listeners because hitch-hiking was a common practice at the time, and there were always warnings about being careful about picking up riders. Also, stories about a car breakdown as a precursor to a violent crime or attack were not all that common as plotlines. Those kinds of stories became more common in later decades. Cars were not as reliable as they are in these years and required constant attention to maintenance, and there was great concern about having a breakdown in an unfamiliar area, far from a pay phone, or some kind of retail business that might be able to call for help. That means this story generated more shudders in the 1950 audience than it would today with more modern vehicles, GPS-capable smartphones, and phones in general.

Cary Grant portrays a husband and Cathy Lewis plays his wife, as they drive through a small Long Island town. They hear news on their radio about a tall, broad-shouldered, middle-aged insane woman who has escaped from a hospital and has a butcher cleaver. She has killed several persons before her incarceration and has started again. Police are on the hunt for her before she attacks again. They have set up roadblocks to inform the public and request information from drivers who may have seen her. The news is frightening, but frustrated by the traffic, the couple turns off the main highway, hoping to find a shortcut around the traffic. Bad decision. This is the exact area where the crazed woman is believed to be running amuck. Another news bulletin reports that the butchered bodies of an elderly couple were just found in their car. Halfway across the supposed shortcut, the car runs out of gas. Then, outside their car window, a flash of lightning illuminates the face of a scared woman running toward them. Panicky now, the husband rolls up his window. The woman pleads desperately for them to let her in, claiming that the insane woman is after her. Is she the threat that they fear? Or is she telling the truth about her plight and needs their help?

Writer Walter Bazar likely wrote the script while he was finishing his academic work at Columbia University’s journalism school. Upon graduation, he became a reporter for the New York Journal-American. This was the same newspaper where the notable and sometimes larger-than-life city editor Paul Schoenstein worked. (He was featured in The Big Story). He was the editor who assigned Dorothy Kilgallen to Broadway, originally against her wishes, which led to her celebrity career. Two months before this episode aired, Bazar married a co-worker in the paper’s advertising department. He would eventually be assigned to Washington, DC where he became a noted reporter covering government, science, and space program news and would sometimes appear on Sunday television news talk shows. This was his only radio script, as best can be determined. He died at age 57 in 1983.

The drama portion of this broadcast was recorded on Tuesday, 1950-11-07. Rehearsal began at 11:00 am, and the recording commenced at 2:30 pm.

Of the four times it was presented on the series, this first time with Cary Grant is probably the best. The others, however, had good casting and good performances. Two of them had real-life married couples in the lead roles, 1954-01-04 with Frank and Joan Lovejoy, and 1959-05-10 with Howard Duff and Ida Lupino. The other performance was 1954-12-09 with Harry Bartell and Virginia Gregg.

The story was also presented on the Suspense television series on 1951-03-13 and starred John Forsythe and Mildred Natwick. It can be viewed at https://archive.org/details/Suspense--On_a_Country_Road

The cast: CARY GRANT (David), Cathy Lewis (Dorothy), Jeanette Nolan (Nellie), Joe Kearns (Signature Voice / Policeman), Larry Thor (News Announcer)

COMMERCIAL: Harlow Wilcox (Announcer), Ken Christy (Senator), Sylvia Simms (Operator)

For more information visit https://suspenseproject.blogspot.com/2024/04/1950-11-16-on-country-road.html