Day 4 of “Twenty Days Well-Calculated to Keep You in Suspense.”

Donovan’s Brain

Dr. Patrick Corey is conducting research into whether it’s possible for a brain to live outside the human body. His early experiment with a simian brain proves unsatisfactory, but Fate steps in to provide him with a human brain—belonging to wealthy stockbroker William H. Donovan, who’s been incapacitated by a private plane crash. Corey removes the organ from Donovan and places it in a jar; soon after, the scientist finds himself absorbing some of Donovan’s traits—like smoking cigars and writing left-handed. The brain grows powerful and takes over Corey completely, manipulating him into having his wife committed to an asylum (she had pleaded with him to put an end to his experiment) and finally—in a mad grab for extreme power—forces him to perform a brain transplant operation with his son as the unwilling subject.

A spine-tingling sci-fi/horror tale based on the 1943 novel by Curt Siodmak, “Donovan’s Brain” was the first Suspense production to be broadcast in two parts (May 11 and May 18, 1944). It was also the program’s first foray into science-fiction; one of producer-director William Spier’s inviolable rules concerning the show’s stories was that that they had to have a firm grounding in reality rather than a supernatural or fantasy bent. But rules were made to be broken—the success of the earlier “The Hitch-Hiker” and “Donovan’s Brain” paved the way in convincing Spier to consider doing one or two stories from that genre a season. (Another cardinal rule of Spier’s, that the killer always be brought to justice, was tossed aside in the production of “Sorry, Wrong Number.”) When Antony Ellis took over the producer-director chores in 1954, Suspense finally began to delve more and more into horror and science-fiction stories.

“Donovan’s Brain” marked Orson Welles’ swan song on Suspense, and the actor really delivers the goods in his last appearance. He plays the part of Corey in a soft-spoken, almost Ronald Colman-ish voice while switching to harsh, guttural tones in his dual role of the millionaire Donovan. The supporting cast includes such Suspense mainstays as Jeanette Nolan, John McIntire, Hans Conried, and Jerry Hausner; interestingly enough, McIntire (who plays Corey’s colleague) would inherit the role of Corey in the hour-long version (broadcast February 7, 1948) of the play when Suspense experimented with a sixty-minute format briefly in 1948.

“Donovan’s Brain” also made several forays to the silver screen; the best-known version being the 1953 film starring Lew Ayres and future First Lady Nancy Davis (Reagan); it had been previously filmed in 1944 as The Lady and the Monster, and its third go-round was a 1962 German production called The Brain (also known as Vengeance). The author of the novel, Curt Siodmak, was no stranger to the movies, having written the story and screenplays for several of Universal’s classic horror films, among them The Invisible Man Returns (1940), The Wolf Man (1941), and Son of Dracula (1943) (the latter being directed by his brother Robert, who helmed a series of memorable film noirs during his long, distinguished career).

I think “Donovan’s Brain” is most assuredly worthy of its Best of Suspense status; it’s a first-rate radio production that—for me, at least—is far more effective than the any of the three film treatments of the same story. (Admittedly, I’ve only seen the 1953 and 1962 versions, so unless the 1944 film—and considering its Republic Studios pedigree it’s more than a little unlikely—is some sort of Casablanca-like masterpiece I’ll stand by this statement.) Some thirty-seven years after entertaining radio audiences in 1944, “Donovan’s Brain” was still receiving critical plaudits and laurels: a long-playing record release of the broadcast on the Radiola label copped the 1981 Grammy for “Best Spoken Word, Documentary or Drama Recording.”
6:46:22 PM    comment []  trackback []  

”…Wildroot brings to the air the greatest private detective of them all…”

Announcer Dick Joy sounds a little hyperbolic, but I’m convinced he speaks the truth: The Adventures of Sam Spade was the greatest private-eye series of Radio’s Golden Age. The show was as ritualized as a Kabuki play; Joy would briefly tout the merits of Wildroot Cream Oil, followed by an orchestral fanfare…and a ringing phone:

EFFIE: Sam Spade Detective Agency…

SAM: Me, sweetheart…

EFFIE: Oh, Sam! I’m glad you’re back in town!

SAM: So am I, Effie…so am I…confidentially, I didn’t think I’d make it…uh…confidentially, that is…

EFFIE: Was it dangerous, Sam?

SAM: I should say it was! Why, for the past twenty-four hours I’ve been at it hammer and tongs, over hill and dale, through shot and shell…it was enough to turn any ordinary man’s blood to ice…and his hair pure white…

EFFIE: Oh! That sounds terrifying, Sam!

SAM: I wish it had been only terrifying, Effie…it was bloodcurdling, spine-chilling, hair-raising…I was bored. It was also rural and countrified…

EFFIE: Well, what happened, Sam? Tell me!

SAM: You’ve heard of the Martin and the Coys?

EFFIE: No…

SAM: And the Boston Massacre?

EFFIE: No…

SAM: Custer’s Last Stand?

EFFIE: No…!!!

SAM: Well, put them all together and they spell…uh…what I’ll shortly be in to dictate a report which I call in the first of clever literary plagiarisms “The Farmer’s Daughter Caper”…

Then the orchestra would strike up again, and Joy would let us know that “America’s leading detective-fiction writer” Dashiell Hammett and “radio’s outstanding producer-director of mystery and crime drama” William Spier had joined forces to present another weekly episode of The Adventures of Sam Spade.

Actually, “joined forces” is stretching it a tad. Hammett did create Sam, in the classic 1930 detective novel The Maltese Falcon, and seven of the first 13 shows of Spade’s initial ABC 1946 summer run were based on some of Hammett’s short stories. But his actual participation was minimal at best; mostly involving him tooling out to the mailbox and fishing out a check issued to him for allowing his name to be associated with the radio series. (Encountering Hammett's "friend" Lillian Hellman at a party on one occasion, Duff asked Hellman what Hammett thought of the show, and she replied "Dash? Oh, I don't think he's even heard it.")

The job was left up to Spier (producer-director of Suspense) and Spade’s high-class team of writers—Jo Eisinger, Bob Tallman, Gil Doud, John Michael Hayes and E. Jack Neumann, to name a few—to make the show tick; blending hard-boiled attitude and action with a pixyish sense of street whimsy that made the series sparkle and set it far apart from the more familiar 1941 film interpretation. Spier, in fact, had originally planned to cast a Bogart-like actor in the role of Sam Spade—but Howard Duff, who ultimately landed the part, was as un-Bogart as an actor could be. Duff’s Spade was a cut-up, possessing a breezy insouciance that charmed the listening audience and soon made the dour and straitlaced Bogart Spade a mere mist in the memory.

Sam’s loyal, dedicated secretary Effie Perrine was played by actress Lurene Tuttle, who infused the character with a sweetly daffy naivete that provided the perfect counterpoint to Duff’s sarcastic Spade. You just knew deep down that Effie was in love with Sam, and their dialogue exchanges (many times ad-libbed) at the beginning and end of each show were, as James Thurber once commented about Fred Allen and Portland Hoffa, “somehow akin to The Sweetheart Duet from Maytime.” (In fact, “Goodnight, Sweetheart” was the program’s memorable closing theme.) Effie would take down the dictation of Sam’s latest “caper,” to be signed and delivered to the client (with Sam’s license number—137596), as each episode shifted back and forth between the two of them in the office and the dramatization of Sam’s working the case. Spade always clued Effie that the case had come to its conclusion with “Period. End of report.”

After its 13-week stint on ABC Radio, The Adventures of Sam Spade moved to CBS on September 29, 1946, where it was a hugely popular Sunday night smash for three years. It switched over to NBC at the beginning of the 1949-50 season, but by that time ominous, dark clouds had begun to loom on the horizon: Hammett became a target of the House Committee on Un-American Activties, and actor Duff found himself listed in Red Channels (Duff commented to Chuck Schaden in a 1975 interview: “I wasn’t even a good liberal.”). The show’s sponsor started getting cold feet and issued an ultimatum that they would not continue with the series unless Hammett’s name was removed from the credits. (They weren’t particularly wild about Duff, either.)

NBC yanked the show, but after receiving nearly 250,000 letters of protest continued the series a month or two later, replacing Duff with actor Steve Dunne. Not a particularly smart move; Dunne was a good actor but he was certainly no Spade—John Dunning commented in Tune in Yesterday that he “sounded like Sam in knee pants.” The show came to a halt April 27, 1951—but the character of Effie (not Lurene Tuttle, though) soon found work (her unemployment benefits ran out pretty quickly, I'm guessing) on Charlie Wild, Private Detective—a 1950-51 series that Wildroot put its money in after leaving Spade. (Duff was even good enough to contribute a cameo as Spade in the show's premiere broadcast of September 24, 1950, wishing the new hero mazeltov and good luck.)

Last night, in-between Suspense breaks, I listened to a pair of Sam Spade broadcasts, kicking things off with the September 26, 1948 episode “The Dick Foley Caper.” An atypically somber Sam is hired by private-eye pal Dick Foley (Frank Lovejoy) to protect him from an ex-con (Paul Frees) who murdered Foley’s partner in a jewel heist gone bad. There’s an interesting reference to Sam’s sending up Brigid O’Shaugnessey for the murder of his former partner, Miles Archer, in this episode. After that, “The Farmer’s Daughter Caper,” a very entertaining outing from September 3, 1950 involving a strange tourist court, a man buried alive—and of course, a beautiful woman. (Gunsmoke's William Conrad plays a hick sheriff in this episode, and during a dialogue exchange with Spade the detective asks him if he knows a Lt. Dundee in San Francisco, an amusing in-joke reference since Conrad also played the part of Dundee.)

Of the 245 episodes broadcast during the 1946-51 run of The Adventures of Sam Spade, only 64 of them are still around for us to listen to today (which is a pity, especially since 23 of them are from the 1950-51 Steve Dunne period). It’s a crime that a series with so much wit and charm should be in short supply, but there’s always hope—Ed Carr reported recently on the Old-Time Radio Digest that he's come across a previously uncirculated Spade episode from September 25, 1949 with the tongue-twisting title “The Chargogagogmanchogagogchabunamungamog Caper.” In the meantime, we should be thankful for what we have. Period. End of post.
6:25:43 PM    comment []  trackback []  

Raiders of the Lost Aircheck

Jack French mentions on the Old-Time Radio Digest that a new scenario--similar to the discovery of the missing The Affairs of Peter Salem excerpt last year--has cropped up, involving a recently found snippet of another long-lost OTR crime drama.

According to Jack, a friend of his named Dick Bertel hosted a program on WTIC in Hartford, CT called "The Golden Age of Radio." In March 1972, Bertel interviewed radio actress Shirley Eggleston, who brought with her about half-a-dozen airchecks of programs in which she had a prominent part. They included an episode from a 1945-47 Mutual Radio series called I Was a Convict (only one half-hour episode, "Mr. R," is known to exist) and an episode from a 1952-53 ABC show entitled A Crime Letter From Dan Dodge.

Jim Cox describes Dan Dodge in Radio Crime Fighters as similar in format to The Adventures of Sam Spade, in which detective Dodge (Myron McCormick) would dictate the details of his case in a letter to his secretary, played by Eggleston. The show premiered over ABC on October 31, 1952 and was a Friday night 8:00pm staple (sponsored by Toni Home Permanent) until February 27, 1953. There are no episodes of this series known to have survived.

Anyway, on Bertel's show, he played excerpts from those shows and recently Jack received a copy of the broadcast which runs about 55 minutes. Jack contacted Eggleston recently and asked if she still had the airchecks; she sadly reported to him that she lent the discs to a man from Massachusetts who had planned to dub them and put them into circulation. She never heard from him again and she lost his contact information during a residence change a few years ago.

So Jack has stepped into the role of Inspector Gerard and is trying to locate the Mysterious Massachusetts Man--if anyone should know of his identity, please contact Jack French or Jay Hickerson. In the meantime, Jack does have the opening three minutes of the Crime Letter From Dan Dodge episode and has sent it to Jim Widner, who will no doubt do that voodoo that he do so well and put it on his website as he did The Affairs of Peter Salem. I will keep you posted on this when I get further details.
9:03:07 AM    comment []  trackback []  

On this date in the Golden Age of Radio

From Those Were the Days:

1935 - We proudly remind you that Phil Spitalny’s All-Girl Orchestra was featured on CBS Radio this day on the program, The Hour of Charm, featuring "Evelyn and Her Magic Violin."

1940 - The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) got its very first demonstration of FM radio. The new medium, free of interference, static, and noise in thunderstorms, was developed by Major E.H. Armstrong. The first FM transmitter was put in operation in 1941. What did it broadcast? Talk, of course. Well, not "talk" per se, but lots of talking.
8:29:11 AM    comment []  trackback []