Suspense: 03/09/53, episode 502
Brought to you by the Old Time Radio Researchers, courtesy of The Suspense Project
Herbert Marshall stars in a Wilkie Collins story adapted by Sam Rolfe. Collins drew his plot from a real-life wrongful murder conviction in Vermont in the early 1800s. The victim was later discovered to be alive. Collins does not follow that case but uses some of the facts and themes in the story.
Marshall portrays an English lawyer who heads for a long rest to visit distant relatives at a New England farm. His doctor told him “Your disease is overwork. Your cure is rest. Your alternative is death.” The doctor explained and warned that excitement would kill him, and thought the trip sounded dull enough to effect a cure. The moment he finally arrives at the farm, he is aware of an atmosphere of tension and violence among the family group. He’s barely there a day when he realizes he’s walked into a perfect setting for a murder that includes a secret love affair and a lime kiln where bones are discovered that might be a missing farm worker. That worker is the farm overseer who seems to have annoyed everyone in the story.
That lime kiln comes into the story early, and its presence makes for a predictable plot. Old farms at that time had kilns to make quicklime and enrich the soil to stimulate plant growth and health. Quicklime also developed a reputation for helping to destroy flesh, leaving just bones behind. It was a favorite element of crime stories that involved the destruction of evidence of murder. Small kilns were obsolete over time as manufacturing plants could make the product more predictable and with lower costs. Many old farms still had them.
This is the first Wilkie Collins story to be adapted for Suspense. The next will be the two-part Collins classic The Moonstone and the last will be the final Auto-Lite episode, Terribly Strange Bed. Collins was often compared to and was a contemporary of Charles Dickens.
The Boorn Brothers murder case that inspired the story has an interesting legal background as the first wrongful conviction and exoneration.
This is Sam Rolfe’s second series script. He wrote the underappreciated Too Hot to Live. He went on to have a very successful career.
The cast: HERBERT MARSHALL (Philip), Mary Jane Croft (Naomi), Lamont Johnson (Silas), Jeanette Nolan (Lettie), Joe Kearns (John), Larry Thor (Narrator)
COMMERCIAL: Jerry Hausner (Stan), Harlow Wilcox (Announcer), Sylvia Simms (Operator)
For more information visit [ Ссылка ]
