Suspense,
an anthology drama featuring stories of mystery and the macabre,
was broadcast live from New York on Tuesday evenings from 9:30-10:00
P.M. over CBS. The original series began on 1 March 1949 and continued
for four seasons until August 1954. It was revived briefly between
March and September 1964.
Suspense
was based on the famous radio program of the same name and was
one of many early television shows that had its origin in the older
medium. The radio program began in 1942 and was broadcast weekly
from Hollywood. Scripts were generally of high quality and featured
at least one well-known stage or film performer. The famous broadcast
of 1948 entitled "Sorry Wrong Number" starred Agnes Moorehead in
a thrilling tale of an invalid woman who accidentally overhears
a telephone conversation in which arrangements for her own murder
are being discussed. For the rest of the program, she tries frantically
to telephone someone for help. A stunning concept for the aural
medium, the episode was later made into a film. In addition to such
fine writing, the radio Suspense featured outstanding music by Bernard
Herrmann and excellent production values. The program attracted
a loyal following of listeners until September 1962. When it left
the air, Suspense was the only remaining regularly scheduled drama
on commercial network radio.
The
television version of this popular show attempted to create the
atmosphere of its radio predecessor by using the same opening announcement--"And
now, a tale well calculated to keep you in. . . SUSPENSE!"--accompanied
by the Bernard Herrmann theme played on a Hammond organ rather than
by an orchestra. The television version, however, was not able to
attain the generally high quality of the radio program. Part of
the problem was the program's length. Thirty minutes hardly allowed
sufficient time to develop characters of any subtlety. And the fact
that the program was broadcast live from a New York studio severely
restricted the mobility of its actions. It seemed too that writers
sometimes offended public tastes by presenting subjects considered
to be too violent for the conservative tastes of the early 1950s.
The
first broadcast entitled "Revenge" was given a very negative review
by New York Times radio and television columnist Jack Gould. He
candidly stated that the program had more "corn than chill" and
that the drab story about a man who stabs his wife while she is
posing for a photograph gave actors "little opportunity for anything
more than the most stereotyped portrayals." Gould noted that the
most interesting thing about the program was its interspersing of
live studio material with film to show exterior actions. Despite
the interesting technique, Gould felt that the exteriors could have
been dispensed with entirely without doing harm to the story.
He also complained of the excessive verbal explanation, and dialogue
that was too simplified. He believed that the presence of pictures
should free the dialogue from exposition and allow it to be more
eloquent. As he put it, "With the pictures saying so much, the dialogue
can afford to have more substance and be more subtle." His review
concluded with a telling observation on the new medium, "The lesson
of the first installment of 'Suspense' is that among all the mass
media, television promises to demand a very high degree of compact
and knowing craftsmanship for a mystery to be truly successful."
Gould
continued to attend to the series, however, and became incensed
about another episode entitled "Breakdown." Written by Francis Cockrell
and Louis Polloch, the episode starred Ellen Violett and Don Briggs.
The story focuses on a cruel and tyrannical office boss who breaks
his neck in a plane crash and is taken for dead until just before
his body is cremated.
Gould
did not object so much to the story as to its mode of presentation.
He was particularly upset by what he called "the unrelieved vividness
of the details of death which no war correspondent would think of
mentioning even in a dispatch from a battlefield." In closing Gould
stated, "Both the sponsor, an auto accessories concern, and CBS
should be thoroughly ashamed of themselves for their behavior last
night. Mystery, murders, and suspense certainly have their place
in any dramatic form. But a sustained and neurotic preoccupation
with physical suffering for its own sake has nothing whatever to
do with good theater. It is time for everyone concerned with 'Suspense'
to grow up."
Most
Suspense episodes were more conventional than "Breakdown."
The program entitled "F.O.B. Vienna" of 28 April 1953 was fairly
typical. It starred Walter Mathau and Jayne Meadows in the story
of an American businessman who has accompanied a shipment of lathes
to Austria and is trying to keep them out of the hands of Communists.
The shipment ends up in Hamburg, and Mathau tracks it there with
the help of Meadows who plays a newspaper reporter. At the last
minute, he is able to destroy the shipment as the police arrive
to round up the Communists. The ordinary script was not, in fact,
very suspenseful and much of it cried for action impossible to depict
within the confines of the studio.
A
more successful broadcast was "All Hallows Eve" of 28 October 1952.
Based on the story "Markheim" by Robert Louis Stevenson, this is
the account of a man who murders his pawnbroker and is then visited
by the devil who urges him to kill the man's housekeeper in order
to cover up his crime. In an attempt to atone for his utterly delinquent
life, the man draws back at the last moment and tells the housekeeper
to call the police because he has just murdered her master. Thwarted
in his efforts to gain another soul, the devil disappears. Produced
by Martin Manulis, this episode made excellent use of the pawnshop
set. With its peculiar artifacts and many mirrors which reflect
the face of the murderer as he thinks guiltily about his deed, the
sense of confined space becomes central to the tale. Franchot Tone
gave an outstanding performance as the main character. Suspense
broadcast a number of other adaptations during its four years on
the air. The program drew heavily on classic mystery and suspense
offerings, including "The Suicide Club," "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,"
by Stevenson, "The Mystery of Edwin Drood," and "The Signal Man"
by Charles Dickens, and "The Cask of Amontillado" by Edgar Allen
Poe.
On
26 May 1953, Suspense broadcast its only Sherlock Holmes
story. "The Adventure of the Black Baronet" was written by Adrian
Conan Doyle and John Dickson as an extension of the original Sherlock
Holmes stories. The television adaptation was by Michael Dyne and
starred Basil Rathbone as Holmes and Martyn Green as Dr. Watson.
Jack Gould gave the program an unfavorable review saying that much
subtlety and brilliance of the Holmes character had been sacrificed
by the compression of the story into thirty minutes. He added that
Rathbone seemed unhappy with his part and that Martyn Greene was
not as effective as Nigel Bruce who had played Dr. Watson to Rathbone's
Holmes on the radio. The production was only one of many instances
in which the television version of Suspense paled in comparison
to its radio counterpart.
-Henry
B. Aldridge
