Suspense

"Radio's Outstanding Theater of Thrills! Tales well-calculated to keep you in… SUSPENSE!"

Thriller tales (1940 -1962): Excellent Mystery Drama with an all-star cast including:

Jimmy Stewart	Gene Kelly	Charles Ruggles	Alice Frost	Jack Webb
Alfred Hitchcock	Alan Ladd	Dane Clark	Cary Grant	Susan Hayward

The commercial radio industry surrendered its dominance of broadcasting at 7:00 pm on September 30, 1962, when the Columbia Broadcasting System played its last two radio dramas. Although Radio Dramas were no longer competitive in gaining sponsor support, you have to admire Radio for going out with one of its best shows ever, Suspense.

Debuting on July 22, 1940, Suspense presented some of the best stories of the thriller genre. Although classic short stories and novellas were sometimes adapted, many of the best Suspense scripts were original radio plays created for the show. 

An impressive element of Suspense was the array of A-List Hollywood Stars that the show attracted. Cary Grant told an interviewer that, "If I ever do any more radio work, I want to it on Suspense, where I get a good chance to act." Not only did the actors get a chance to stretch their dramatic skills, but they were also often allowed to act "against type". Jack Benny appeared as a calculating killer. Fibber McGee and Molly' face off against a cold-blooded killer (Jim Jordan turns out to be a hard-as-nails police captain rather than his usual busybody Fibber). Lucille Ball appears as a scheming (and sometimes murderous) dancehall girls and also as an embezzling bank employee. Eve Arden plays a murderous rejected woman. Other big-names to appear on the show include Rita Hayworth, Peter Lorre, Vincent Price, Charles Laughton, Loretta Young, Lillian Gish, Gene Kelly, Alan Ladd, Ida Lupino, Olivia de Havilland, Orson Welles, James Stewart, and many more.

Rightly considered one of Radio's greatest programs, the relationship between Suspense and the motion picture industry is undeniable. In 1939, David O. Selznick enticed Britain's "Master of Suspense", Alfred Hitchcock, to relocate to Hollywood. In his first project on this side of the pond, Rebecca (1940, Selznick International Pictures) Hitchcock solidified his reputation as a master of the psychological thriller. As his second, Foreign Correspondent (1940, United Artists) was nearing release, CBS Radio approached the filmmaker about directing his first radio broadcast for the Forecast summer series.

Forecast was a network testbed that not only filled airtime while the regularly scheduled programs were on summer break, it also gave the network a way to judge whether different concepts might be commercially successful. Hitchcock chose to adapt the story from his first successful film, The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog (1927, Silent, Gainsborough Pictures), a different look at the Jack the Ripper legend. The network pulled out all the stops to ensure that Hitchcock's program would be a hit by hiring movie stars Herbert Marshall and Edmund Gwenn (who also worked on Correspondent) and Radio Row icon Lurene Tuttle.

The Forecast broadcast on July 22, 1940, set the tone for the coming decades of Suspense. Other elements were added (and sometimes dropped) such as one of the earliest "Horror Hosts" with Joseph Kearns appearing as "The Man in Black" (Ted Osborne substituted twice in 1943).

The tone set by Hitchcock in The Lodger would be amplified with the March 25, 1943 broadcast of a radio play written for the series by Lucille Fletcher, "Sorry, Wrong Number" starring Agnes Moorehead. Ms. Moorehead had been a part of Orson Welles' Mercury Theatre troupe, and her performance as a bed-ridden victim was absolutely chilling (Moorehead would perform the script seven times on Suspense). Another Lucille Fletcher script was "The Hitch Hiker" starring Orson Welles as a cross country driver who cannot escape a mysterious pursuer.

Beyond big Stars and great scripts, the thing that a program needs to ensure a long run is enthusiastic sponsors. Suspense was sustained by the network for its first season but in December 1943, Roma Wines began writing the checks. He idea was that if you were sophisticated enough to listen to "Radio's Outstanding Theatre of Thrills", you were sophisticated enough to serve something as exotic as Roma Wines to your guests. Roma claimed to be the largest winery in America, and at the time, was certainly the biggest in California.

Autolite Automobile Parts picked up sponsorship of the series in July 1948 and used Harlow Wilcox as their commercial spokesman. Harlow was not a part of the story like he was on Fibber McGee and Molly, but his enthusiasm for the product came through in a most entertaining fashion.

Through the years, various directors were enlisted to create the show. Anton Leader directed in the late 1940s, and Norman Macdonnell, producer/developer of The Adventures of Phillip Marlowe and Gunsmoke did stints in the 1950s. William M. Robson, another radio great known for his writer/director credentials, finished the series in Hollywood in the late 1950s, but the show continued from New York with radio's best actors under the production/direction of Bruno Zirato, Jr.

"Radio's outstanding theater of thrills" was just that. It was not a show about crime or detection like many others, nor was it a melodramatic horror show. In quality and tone, it's closest rival was Escape. Throughout its long run, Suspense was dedicated to the excellent script in which a normal person becomes involved in a situation that becomes beyond control. As the intro said, "We invite you to enjoy stories that keep you in .... SUSPENSE!

SUSPENSE also stars:
Agnes Moorehead	Charles Laughton	Eve Arden	Rita Hayworth	Peter Lorre
Vincent Price	William Conrad	Loretta Young	and many, many more!

Fans of Suspense may also enjoy the concise Best of Suspense Collection which contains listeners' favorite episodes.  For other similar series see also Dark Fantasy, Escape, Inner Sanctum, Adventures by Morse, Lights Out, Mysterious Traveler, Mystery in the Air, The Whistler, and Weird Circle. See also the compiled collection, Best of Suspense, which includes some of OTRCAT's favorite episodes from this epic series.