Thriller / Drama Anthology · CBS
Suspense
Also known as: Radio's Outstanding Theater of Thrills
June 17, 1942 – September 30, 1962 · 947 broadcasts
Subtitled "radio's outstanding theater of thrills," Suspense was CBS's premier anthology of dread -- a self-contained suspense script every week, usually built around a leading Hollywood star. It ran just over twenty years, from 1942 to 1962, and its pedigree was extraordinary from the start: the audition show, an adaptation of The Lodger for the summer series Forecast in 1940, was directed by Alfred Hitchcock himself. The show's defining era belonged to producer William Spier, whose control set the house style; under Elliott Lewis in the early 1950s the material reached new sophistication. Mystery novelist John Dickson Carr adapted many early scripts, and Joseph Kearns hosted as "The Man in Black." Its most celebrated half-hour was Lucille Fletcher's "Sorry, Wrong Number" -- a bedridden woman, played by Agnes Moorehead, overhearing a murder plot on a crossed line. First aired in 1943, it was restaged seven times over seventeen years, always with Moorehead, and spawned a 1948 feature film. Honored with a Peabody Special Citation in 1946, Suspense stands among the premier dramas of radio's Golden Age, its run of landmark episodes -- from "The Hitch-Hiker" to "Donovan's Brain" -- chronicled in Martin Grams Jr.'s definitive history.
Collection status:
914 of 947 held (97% complete)
914 of 947 Suspense broadcasts available to stream.
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Episode Spine
Grouped by year. Jump to the full list below, or open a season on its own page.
- 1940 (1 episodes)
- 1942 (22 episodes)
- 1943 (50 episodes)
- 1944 (51 episodes)
- 1945 (50 episodes)
- 1946 (52 episodes)
- 1947 (52 episodes)
- 1948 (44 episodes)
- 1949 (44 episodes)
- 1950 (44 episodes)
- 1951 (46 episodes)
- 1952 (39 episodes)
- 1953 (39 episodes)
- 1954 (46 episodes)
- 1955 (52 episodes)
- 1956 (49 episodes)
- 1957 (52 episodes)
- 1958 (52 episodes)
- 1959 (50 episodes)
- 1960 (48 episodes)
- 1961 (25 episodes)
- 1962 (39 episodes)
1940
A killer is stalking women through the fog-bound streets, and no one has caught him. When a landlady rents a room to a quiet, secretive boarder, she can't shake the feeling that danger has just moved in under her own roof. (after Marie Belloc Lowndes)
1942
Paging through a book on history's most notorious poisoners, a magazine editor freezes at a portrait of a woman executed centuries ago — her face is his wife's, exactly. The resemblance is too precise to be coincidence, and he can't decide if that's the frightening part. (after John Dickson Carr)
When his daughter kills the local schoolmaster in a fit of passion, Mr. Princey doesn't call the police — he starts building a case against an innocent man instead. Family loyalty, pushed past its breaking point, becomes its own kind of crime. (after John Collier)
This Suspense broadcast, "The Life of Nellie James" (1942-07-01), starred Jeanne Cagney; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Rope" (1942-07-08), starred Richard Widmark; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
July 15, 1942
The Third Eye
thin
July 22, 1942
Witness on the Westbound Limited
thin
Alix barely knows Gerald Martin before she's married him — a courtship measured in days, not months. The honeymoon glow fades fast once her new husband's behavior turns odd, and she begins to wonder exactly who she's tied herself to. (after Agatha Christie)
A parlor seance at a school for young ladies goes horribly wrong when one student drops dead of fright on the spot. Was it a genuine brush with the beyond, or did a classmate engineer the fatal scare for reasons of her own? (after Ethel Lina White)
Mr. Mummery hasn't been feeling himself lately, and when his business partner mentions a poisoner going door to door taking cook's positions, an uncomfortable thought takes root. Could the woman preparing his meals every day be exactly the killer everyone's been warned about? (after Dorothy L. Sayers)
Amateur detective Lord Peter Wimsey talks his way into an exclusive criminal fraternity where every member hides behind a mask and answers only to a number. Unmasking them — without losing his own head in the process — is the real trick. (after Dorothy L. Sayers)
Driving alone across the country, a man keeps spotting the same hitchhiker standing at the roadside, mile after mile, state after state — a man he's never once stopped for. The impossible repetition chips away at his nerve long before he understands what it means.
A visiting doctor tours an asylum expecting routine business, but the longer he watches the staff at work, the less their methods add up. Something is being done to the patients here that has nothing to do with treatment.
Psychologist and armchair criminologist Henry Poggioli finds himself far from his usual lecture hall, untangling a murder on the island of Trinidad. Local customs and old grudges complicate a case that isn't nearly as foreign as it first appears. (after T.S. Stribling)
Over drinks at a fashionable New York club, a circle of gentlemen swap detective stories for sport — one about a coin that vanished into thin air, another about a stolen sapphire ring. Between the fiction and the fact, the lines blur more than anyone expects. (after Owen Johnson)
On the island of Zanzibar, a British consulate finds itself under quiet siege — a German agent has disguised himself as a powerful witch doctor and is turning the mainland tribes against the Crown. Exposing the impostor means beating him at his own game of fear.
A lawyer opens a letter that shouldn't exist — it's signed by a man who died twenty years ago, and it claims to hold the answer to a murder that was never solved. Reopening a cold case this cold means reckoning with the impossible.
A man strikes an outrageous wager with his own stepfather: that the older man cannot murder him within six months and get away with it. He accepts the bet fully — and agrees he'll never be told the time, place, or method of the attempt.
Behind the glass-eyed figures of a wax museum after closing time, spies are trading coded messages under everyone's nose. The exhibits may be motionless, but the danger circulating among them very much isn't.
A student of anatomy needs bodies to dissect, and the men who can supply them aren't particular about where those bodies come from. He gets his specimens — and finds himself owing debts to killers he can't easily walk away from. (after Robert Louis Stevenson)
Three years ago, a young bride stepped onto a balcony and was never seen again — no struggle, no trace, nothing. Now another new bride stands on the same balcony, and the household around her seems to be holding its breath for a repeat.
A wronged husband stops nursing his grievance and starts acting on it, engineering a scheme of revenge aimed squarely at both his unfaithful wife and the man she's been seeing. Vows, it turns out, cut both ways.
A small-town police chief nabs a fugitive wanted for murder back in Philadelphia — an easy collar, on paper. But the wanted poster, the confession, and the case itself all start to smell wrong the closer he looks. (after Dashiell Hammett)
1943
A fortune in stolen money is hiding somewhere in plain sight, and a clever crook is confident no one will ever spot it. One woman takes it as a personal challenge to prove him wrong.
A prisoner of the Spanish Inquisition wakes in absolute darkness to find the walls, the dark, and a swinging blade above him are all part of a slow-built machine of torment. Escape means outthinking a system built to make it impossible. (after Edgar Allan Poe)
A traveling carnival illusionist known for reading palms and conjuring the departed falls hard for a sightless young woman and marries her. Their contentment doesn't sit well with a jealous competitor in the same trade, who schemes to break up the match -- or worse -- before the story's dark turn.
Somewhere between California and New York, George Javeny becomes convinced a one-armed stranger is trailing his car with murder on his mind. Whether the threat is real or a trick of a long, lonely highway, he can't afford to be wrong.
A doctor sets out to test a chilling theory — that a person already contemplating suicide can be talked into committing murder first. Once he's satisfied the idea works, he realizes it might work rather well for him personally.
This Suspense broadcast, "The Hangman Won't Wait" (1943-02-09), starred Sidney Greenstreet; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier, though the broadcast log notes: FIRST HALF ONLY.
Four contented years into her marriage, Lucia Durant watches everything unravel when her husband's half-sister moves into the house. Soon after, her health starts failing by degrees, and she becomes convinced the two of them are working together to kill her.
This Suspense broadcast, "Will You Walk into My Parlor?" (1943-02-23), starred Cedric Hardwicke, Geraldine Fitzgerald; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
An insurance investigator built his career catching arsonists — and now the evidence in a fresh string of fires keeps pointing toward someone far too close to home: his own wife. Proving it means destroying his marriage either way. (after Cornell Woolrich)
This Suspense broadcast, "The Phantom Archer" (1943-03-09), starred Ralph Bellamy; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
On the first night of an ocean crossing, a new bride wakes to find her husband gone from their cabin — and every crew member she asks insists he was never booked on the ship at all. She has to decide whether to trust her own memory or a conspiracy determined to erase him.
A mystery novelist who's spent his career inventing criminals suddenly finds himself surrounded by real ones, with his life riding on how well his research actually holds up. His sharp-tongued secretary isn't making the ordeal any calmer.
A wrong number connects a man to a voice he never expected to hear again — his wife's, who has been dead for some time. The line stays open just long enough to make him question which of them is wrong about that.
Mid-performance of Macbeth, an actor collapses with a very real knife wound — inflicted, as far as anyone can tell, by no one standing near him. The stage's own curses start to feel less theatrical once the impossibility sets in.
A young woman stands to inherit a fortune on one condition: her sanity must hold until her twenty-first birthday. As the date approaches, a portrait in the house begins changing in small, impossible ways that only she seems to notice.
Aboard a train bound for the French Riviera, a niece keeps close watch over her wealthy aunt and the medium she's convinced is running a con. Proving the fraud turns out to be far more dangerous than simply suspecting it.
Sophronia Winters gave the best years of her life to nursing an ailing father, and now that duty's finally behind her, she heads to Florida chasing sunshine and a second chance at happiness. Hiram seems to be exactly the answer to her prayers — or he seems to be.
A transatlantic flight crew finds a corpse aboard before they've even reached cruising altitude — and matters only worsen from there, as the plane veers off course, the cockpit turns up empty, and a Nazi agent is somewhere among the passengers.
A dealer in antiques has made a career out of quiet blackmail, and when he senses his mark is done paying, he issues a warning instead of a plea: kill him, and he'll return from beyond the grave within thirty minutes to settle the score. Whether that's bravado or a genuine promise is left for his target to gamble on.
Traveling salesman Alexander Bonaparte Cust suffers blackouts, a lingering souvenir of an old head injury — ordinary enough, until he notices that somebody turns up dead in every town where one of his lapses occurs. He can't prove his own innocence when even he isn't sure of it. (after Agatha Christie)
Confined to her bed with only a telephone connecting her to the world, Mrs. Stevenson picks up a crossed line and overhears two strangers calmly plotting a killing. The police brush her off as hysterical, leaving her to piece together, alone, whether the murder they're planning is her own.
One murderer slipped through a veteran prosecutor's fingers years ago, and the case has never stopped gnawing at him. To finally close it, he enlists an ally no courtroom would ever recognize — the restless spirit of the victim herself. (after Rupert Croft-Cooke)
A bachelor party takes a grim turn when a corpse turns up uninvited — and grows stranger still when the very apartment where it happened, canaries and all, seems to vanish afterward as if it never existed.
Drowning in debt, a dude ranch's husband-and-wife owners pin their hopes on a wealthy guest for a loan. Come morning the husband swears the money's secured — but his wife discovers the guest himself vanished sometime in the night, and the arithmetic stops adding up. (after Cornell Woolrich)
A quiet village falls under siege from a menace no one can see — footsteps, doors, violence, all attributed to a figure that supposedly isn't there at all. Whether the invisibility is real or a story someone wants believed is the question that matters.
Uncle Henry has vanished, and his wife has gone strangely quiet about it. Between a syringe tucked away in a drawer, a patch of freshly turned earth in the garden, and footsteps in the house after dark, his niece and her husband start piecing together an explanation nobody wants to say out loud.
Debutante Ginny Trowbridge wants to help her detective boyfriend land the promotion he's chasing, so she takes it upon herself to bait the serial killer he's been hunting into the open. It's a plan built entirely on nerve, and precious little else. (after Cornell Woolrich)
A worried letter reaches investigator the Lone Wolf, warning that someone means to murder its author before a beauty pageant crowns its winner. He arrives too late: the woman is already dead, floating in the swimming pool, leaving him to work out who wanted her gone.
A doctor convinced that only five safeguards keep ordinary people from killing sets out to prove his theory by handpicking five strangers and pushing each toward murder, certain at least one safeguard will hold firm. His experiment doesn't end the way his research predicted.
A man's dreams pull him steadily backward in time, into an intimate friendship with Alexander Hamilton and toward the fateful duel that awaits him against Aaron Burr--history replaying itself, night after night, in his sleep.
A man drowns an insufferable colleague in his own ornamental fountain, staging the death to look like a drunken misstep. The arrangement holds--until a detective arrives at the estate and starts picking apart just how accidental that "accident" really was.
Confined to her bed with only a telephone connecting her to the world, Mrs. Stevenson picks up a crossed line and overhears two strangers calmly plotting a killing. The police brush her off as hysterical, leaving her to piece together, alone, whether the murder they're planning is her own.
A collaborator in Nazi-occupied Denmark starts getting mysterious mail forecasting his own death -- specifically, that he'll take his life on a date tied to the monarchy's calendar. At first dismissed as a crank's threat, the prediction starts to look uncomfortably well-informed as the day draws near.
Surfacing from a drug-induced blackout, a young man realizes he may have killed someone during the hours he can't remember--and he has only a handful of hours left to piece together what actually happened before the truth catches up with him.
An attorney grows convinced that his client is about to marry a man who has poisoned his way into fortunes before, and plans to do it again--this time for her estate. Can he prove it before the wedding seals her fate?
An innocuous newspaper ad pulls a young woman into a strange assignment: track down and lure in one of several heirs to a dead eccentric's fortune. What she isn't told is that the heirs are hunting each other, each willing to kill--and not one of them knows what the others look like.
A celebrated big-game hunter washes ashore on a remote island owned by a fellow enthusiast of the chase--except this host has grown bored with ordinary prey and hunts only the most cunning quarry of all: other people.
Somewhere along eight miles of open, unbroken track between two stations, an entire train simply vanishes--engine, cars, passengers, and all--leaving investigators to explain a disappearance that shouldn't be physically possible.
Alix barely knows Gerald Martin before she's married him — a courtship measured in days, not months. The honeymoon glow fades fast once her new husband's behavior turns odd, and she begins to wonder exactly who she's tied herself to. (after Agatha Christie)
A brush with death leaves one man with an uncanny gift--an inability to stay silent whenever he hears a falsehood--and a strange new certainty about things he shouldn't know. When he moves into the home of a doctor and his wife, that gift starts unsettling everyone around him.
When a plunging elevator traps five men in the wreckage, rescuers pull out four survivors and one victim--shot, not crushed. The four insist they saw nothing, and police are ready to call it suicide, but the dead man's father refuses to let the case close that easily.
An employee plots the perfect murder of his condescending boss, engineering an alibi so airtight that the killing not only goes undetected but earns him a promotion. The plan works flawlessly--it's his own conscience that starts to unravel him.
On the first night of an ocean crossing, a new bride wakes to find her husband gone from their cabin — and every crew member she asks insists he was never booked on the ship at all. She has to decide whether to trust her own memory or a conspiracy determined to erase him.
Desperate for cash, a black-market dealer decides murdering an associate and pinning the blame on someone else is the cleanest way to solve his money troubles. Naturally, the scheme doesn't unfold nearly as cleanly as he'd hoped.
A spy operating deep inside Nazi Germany grows increasingly certain that the Gestapo has picked up his trail, and every ordinary encounter starts to feel like the one that will expose him.
A fall on the sidewalk knocks one man cold--and when he comes to, three entire years of his life have vanished from memory. Piecing together what happened in that missing stretch, he discovers he built a whole second life he never knew about, one that may include a murder.
An insurance investigator built his career catching arsonists — and now the evidence in a fresh string of fires keeps pointing toward someone far too close to home: his own wife. Proving it means destroying his marriage either way. (after Cornell Woolrich)
When his daughter kills the local schoolmaster in a fit of passion, Mr. Princey doesn't call the police — he starts building a case against an innocent man instead. Family loyalty, pushed past its breaking point, becomes its own kind of crime. (after John Collier)
A mild-mannered botany professor quietly digs a pit in his cellar, ostensibly for a plant project, while his sharp-eyed wife busies herself planning their holiday travel. The hole, as it happens, is exactly the right size for a body.
A parlor seance at a school for young ladies goes horribly wrong when one student drops dead of fright on the spot. Was it a genuine brush with the beyond, or did a classmate engineer the fatal scare for reasons of her own? (after Ethel Lina White)
1944
A man boards a roller coaster very much alive and disembarks strangled to death--an impossible murder, given that he rode the entire course alone in the back seat, hurtling along at speeds that should have made killing him unthinkable.
A taxi dancer at a Manhattan dance hall learns that a fellow dancer and close friend has become the latest victim of a killer preying on women in her line of work. When police ask her to serve as bait, she has to decide how far she's willing to go to catch him.
A woman is found dead in a theatrical rooming house, and the detective gathers every resident under one roof to sort out what happened. It's a blind lodger who breaks the case open--unable to see a thing, he heard every sound of that night and can recount it exactly.
A man turns up murdered over what looks like a stolen diamond, but the real puzzle isn't who did it--it's how. He died alone in a room locked from the inside, windows sealed, with two witnesses stationed outside the only door who swear nobody passed through it.
Convinced she's about to die, a woman walks into a funeral parlor and calmly orders her own coffin. The alarmed mortician calls the police, fearing a suicide in the making, and the detective who investigates finds her sharing a house with a sister whose grip on reality seems none too steady.
Mr. Mummery hasn't been feeling himself lately, and when his business partner mentions a poisoner going door to door taking cook's positions, an uncomfortable thought takes root. Could the woman preparing his meals every day be exactly the killer everyone's been warned about? (after Dorothy L. Sayers)
Desperate for fifteen hundred dollars before the clock strikes midnight -- the price of staying alive -- a young man turns to his mother, only to learn her savings are already gone. Cornered, he starts weighing increasingly dangerous options to raise the sum in time.
Confined to her bed with only a telephone connecting her to the world, Mrs. Stevenson picks up a crossed line and overhears two strangers calmly plotting a killing. The police brush her off as hysterical, leaving her to piece together, alone, whether the murder they're planning is her own.
A painter who happened to witness a killing finds the culprit's face has slipped entirely from memory, even though he's sure it was a woman standing over the body. He sets brush to canvas anyway, sketching everything but her features, gambling that finishing the portrait will shake the missing detail loose.
An ex-convict takes a job with the very law firm run by the partner who once put him behind bars. When that partner turns up murdered, suspicion lands squarely on him, and he has to clear his name before he's sent back to prison for a crime he didn't commit.
A family's quiet life is upended when the wife's long-absent brother returns, claiming he's mastered occult powers during years studying in India. He has ambitions to open an asylum where he can put those unsettling abilities to use on the patients in his care.
A film director's crime pictures draw skepticism from a detective who doesn't think they ring true--so the detective takes him to the morgue to view the body of a notorious hired killer. Fascinated, the director starts digging into the dead assassin's life, determined to build his next picture around it.
Late one night, an engineer radios a colleague isolated at a secretive research station tucked in the Vermont mountains -- and instead of conversation, hears a stranger's cough and then gunfire before the connection goes dead. He heads north himself rather than wait for answers that clearly aren't coming over the air.
With no family to miss her and no one to ask questions, a young woman answers a want ad that pulls her straight into the middle of a scheme run by a pair of Nazi agents.
A carnival mind-reader and medium wins the heart of a blind woman and marries her, only to draw the jealousy of a rival showman in the same racket -- a tale of obsession under the big top that builds toward tragedy.
A skilled forger enlists in the army as a way of staying one step ahead of the law, only to realize he's now bound for the front lines. When he spots the chance to swap identities with a dead soldier, it looks like the perfect second escape.
Somewhere between California and New York, George Javeny becomes convinced a one-armed stranger is trailing his car with murder on his mind. Whether the threat is real or a trick of a long, lonely highway, he can't afford to be wrong.
A vain, theatrical actor sets his sights on a leading lady still grieving the presumed death of her husband a year past. Just as she's finally ready to return to the stage opposite him, the husband she mourned turns up very much alive, as if walking back from the grave.
Presumed murdered by a close friend, a young man vanishes from his own life story--until he reappears three years later, very much alive. The question that follows him home is whether he's really who he claims to be, or an impostor angling for an inheritance.
After a fatal car crash, an ambitious scientist keeps a ruthless tycoon's brain alive in his laboratory, convinced the breakthrough will one day save countless lives. The brain, unfortunately, has ambitions of its own--and saving lives isn't among them.
After a fatal car crash, an ambitious scientist keeps a ruthless tycoon's brain alive in his laboratory, convinced the breakthrough will one day save countless lives. The brain, unfortunately, has ambitions of its own--and saving lives isn't among them.
A young woman sets her sights on marrying a recently widowed socialite whose Philadelphia mansion was built around an enormous pipe organ, its music felt through every room. When his two children come home from boarding school hinting at what might be concealed inside those towering pipes, the house starts to feel far less welcoming.
Plagued by headaches and nightmares that refuse to let up, a millionaire tycoon finally turns to a psychiatrist for answers--and opens the door on whatever has really been troubling his mind.
A man's dreams pull him steadily backward in time, into an intimate friendship with Alexander Hamilton and toward the fateful duel that awaits him against Aaron Burr--history replaying itself, night after night, in his sleep.
When her purse is snatched in a crowded subway station, a woman's cries bring a stranger running to retrieve it for her. She thanks him and boards her train--only to discover, once she's settled in, that ten thousand dollars belonging to someone else has somehow found its way into her bag.
A priest calls on a former pupil, now a journalist, who says a stranger cornered him days earlier with a bizarre demand: hand over two specific Bibles and help him find something called "the walls of Jericho." The priest knows nothing of either--leaving the journalist to work out just what his visitor was really after.
A composer completes an original piece straight from his own imagination, only to learn that someone else has already written the identical composition, note for note. He sets out to understand how two minds could possibly land on exactly the same music.
Through the pages of a cryptic diary, a grieving father lays out his single obsession: hunting down and killing the hit-and-run driver who took his only child's life. (after Nicholas Blake)
Buried in gambling debts, a boxing manager is forced to sign his prize fighter over to the man he owes. But when the boxer announces plans to marry and leave the country, the deal threatens to collapse--and with it, the manager's own life.
An elderly woman approaches a young fairgoer with an easy offer: come live in her house as a companion, for pay far better than the light duties deserve. She takes the job and moves in without hesitation--only to grow convinced that someone else is hidden in the house with her, and that leaving may not be so simple after all.
One murderer slipped through a veteran prosecutor's fingers years ago, and the case has never stopped gnawing at him. To finally close it, he enlists an ally no courtroom would ever recognize — the restless spirit of the victim herself. (after Rupert Croft-Cooke)
On a train, a chance companion tells Mr. Pender he has no patience for mystery novels, since real murderers get caught--he's interested only in the ones who don't, and describes in careful detail how a killing can be made to look like natural causes. Soon after, a string of deaths matching those exact methods begins turning up, with the same stranger somehow present each time.
Sophronia Winters gave the best years of her life to nursing an ailing father, and now that duty's finally behind her, she heads to Florida chasing sunshine and a second chance at happiness. Hiram seems to be exactly the answer to her prayers — or he seems to be.
Convinced his daughter's death was no suicide but a carefully staged murder, an aging stage actor sets an elaborate trap: a lavish dinner party gathering every friend and colleague from her theatrical circle. Somewhere at that table sits the killer he intends to unmask before the night is through.
Fleeing a violent gangster husband, a woman slips away to Havana with the man she loves, hoping for a fresh start on the island. Their first night together barely ends before she's found stabbed in the back — and the evidence points straight at him. (after Cornell Woolrich)
A hired companion expects her ocean crossing home to be a quiet, mournful one — she's escorting her late employer's coffin for burial and hoping to recover from the loss. Then word spreads that a notorious 'blackout killer' may be aboard, and a shadowy figure keeps turning up near the lifeboats whenever she's alone.
A newlywed's first real quarrel ends with his wife storming out and flinging back a bitter threat — that he'll never lay eyes on her again. He shrugs it off, certain she's simply cooling down at her mother's house, until a phone call reveals she never arrived there at all. (after Cornell Woolrich)
Occupied France is gripped by a string of unsolved killings, and a doctor's wife finds herself circling an unthinkable question. Could the man she married — the one healing patients by day — be the murderer the whole region fears after dark?
Buried in gambling debts, an insurance man kills his wife rather than accept her refusal to hand over the money she's hidden away. Getting rid of a body is one problem; getting away with it for good is another — yet fate seems to hand him one lucky break after another. How long can that luck possibly hold?
A jaded foreign correspondent snaps what should be a routine photograph of a stranger drinking alone in a Lisbon bar — and gets an explosively violent reaction in return. Chasing down why that one candid shot provoked such fury pulls him into something far more dangerous than he expected.
After a quarrel at home, a man escapes to an operetta and loses himself in its lead role, convinced he's actually the dashing prince on stage — and that only one particular woman in the audience truly sees it in him. His fantasy hardens into obsession, and freeing himself for her means getting rid of his wife.
With her husband locked away for a crime he swears he didn't commit, a devoted wife launches her own investigation to clear his name. Her hunt leads her to a man who may well be the real killer — and, inconveniently, someone she can't help falling for. (after Cornell Woolrich)
A decade after her testimony helped convict a vengeful criminal, a woman still flinches at his long-ago vow to make her pay. When a new elevator operator moves into her building, she becomes certain he's the same man, somehow free — though whether he's real or a fear grown too large to see past is another question entirely.
Surfacing from a drug-induced blackout, a young man realizes he may have killed someone during the hours he can't remember--and he has only a handful of hours left to piece together what actually happened before the truth catches up with him.
A nightclub singer working the Brazilian circuit starts noticing things that don't quite add up about the men who sign her paychecks. Slowly, an uneasy suspicion takes hold: she may be performing every night for a Nazi operation.
When his sister flees her brutal husband, a protective brother hides her away — but the man tracks them down anyway. Jimmy returns one day to find him dead on the floor and his sister too shaken to explain what happened, leaving him to somehow make the body disappear before either of them takes the blame.
A man drowns an insufferable colleague in his own ornamental fountain, staging the death to look like a drunken misstep. The arrangement holds--until a detective arrives at the estate and starts picking apart just how accidental that "accident" really was.
A fall on the sidewalk knocks one man cold--and when he comes to, three entire years of his life have vanished from memory. Piecing together what happened in that missing stretch, he discovers he built a whole second life he never knew about, one that may include a murder.
A killer is stalking women through the fog-bound streets, and no one has caught him. When a landlady rents a room to a quiet, secretive boarder, she can't shake the feeling that danger has just moved in under her own roof. (after Marie Belloc Lowndes)
An actor who's grown sick of playing a fictional stage strangler finally gives his last performance in the role — only to be struck down by falling debris during an air raid on his way out of the theater. The blow to his head leaves him convinced he isn't acting anymore: he really is the killer he used to play.
A once-celebrated stage actress living in seclusion receives a rare visitor — a retiring vicar bringing along the young curate meant to succeed him — and recounts her theatrical rise, including the rival she loved to upstage and the slap that rivalry once earned her. That same rival was later found stabbed to death, and the old woman's calm telling of the story leaves the question of guilt hanging in the air.
1945
This Suspense broadcast, "I Had an Alibi" (1945-01-04), starred Keenan Wynn; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Drive-In" (1945-01-11), starred Nancy Kelly; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
An elderly woman, living alone, hires a soft-spoken young man to come clean her house, glad of both the help and the company. He seems harmless enough at first glance — but harmless is rarely the whole story in a house like this one.
This Suspense broadcast, "Drury's Bones" (1945-01-25), starred Boris Karloff; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
A celebrated big-game hunter washes ashore on a remote island owned by a fellow enthusiast of the chase--except this host has grown bored with ordinary prey and hunts only the most cunning quarry of all: other people.
This Suspense broadcast, "A Tale of Two Sisters" (1945-02-08), starred Nancy Kelly, Claire Trevor; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Sell Me Your Life" (1945-02-15), starred Lee Bowman; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "John Barbey and Son" (1945-02-22), starred Thomas Mitchell; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "My Wife Geraldine" (1945-03-01), starred Edward G. Robinson; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
A rising man inside a crime organization joins forces with a reform-minded political idealist, and together they set out to topple the very gangster he's spent his career serving. Loyalty and ambition pull in opposite directions as the scheme to unseat the boss takes shape. (after James M. Cain)
This Suspense broadcast, "Cricket" (1945-03-15), starred Margaret O'Brien, Dame Mae Whitty; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Heart's Desire" (1945-03-22), starred Lloyd Nolan; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Taming of the Beast" (1945-03-29), starred Nancy Kelly, Helmut Dantine; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "A Guy Gets Lonely" (1945-04-05), starred Dane Clark; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Pearls Are a Nuisance" (1945-04-19), starred William Bendix, Alan Joslyn; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier, though the broadcast log notes: SHOW OF 4-12 PRE-EMPTED due to President Franklyn D. Roosevelt's Death proceedings.
A young woman stands to inherit a fortune on one condition: her sanity must hold until her twenty-first birthday. As the date approaches, a portrait in the house begins changing in small, impossible ways that only she seems to notice.
This Suspense broadcast, "Reprieve" (1945-05-10), starred John Garfield; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Two Birds with One Stone" (1945-05-17), starred Dana Andrews; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "My Own Murderer" (1945-05-24), starred Herbert Marshall; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
Suspense staged this William Fryer Harvey tale of a stifling summer day and an unsettling coincidence twice -- with Ronald Colman in 1945 and Hans Conreid in 1948 -- though no plot synopsis survives in the sources consulted for this dossier.
A small-town police chief nabs a fugitive wanted for murder back in Philadelphia — an easy collar, on paper. But the wanted poster, the confession, and the case itself all start to smell wrong the closer he looks. (after Dashiell Hammett)
Paging through a book on history's most notorious poisoners, a magazine editor freezes at a portrait of a woman executed centuries ago — her face is his wife's, exactly. The resemblance is too precise to be coincidence, and he can't decide if that's the frightening part. (after John Dickson Carr)
This Suspense broadcast, "The Story of Ivy" (1945-06-21), starred Ann Richards; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "The Dealings of Mr. Markham" (1945-06-28), starred Henry Daniell, Joan Loring; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "The Last Detail" (1945-07-05), starred George Coulouris; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Footfalls" (1945-07-12), starred J. Carrol Naish; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Bank Holiday" (1945-07-19), starred Bonita Granville, Elliott Lewis; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Fury and Sound" (1945-07-26), starred Norman Lloyd, Mark Humbolt; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Man in the House" (1945-08-02), starred Joan Lorring; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Murder for Myra" (1945-08-09), starred Lloyd Nolan; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Short Order" (1945-08-16), starred Joseph Kearns, Gerald Mohr; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "This Will Kill You" (1945-08-23), starred Dane Clark; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Nobody Loves Me" (1945-08-30), starred Peter Lorre; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
Confined to her bed with only a telephone connecting her to the world, Mrs. Stevenson picks up a crossed line and overhears two strangers calmly plotting a killing. The police brush her off as hysterical, leaving her to piece together, alone, whether the murder they're planning is her own.
A landlady welcomes back a former tenant to his old top-floor rooms — a quiet widower with one unsettling request: that everything be arranged exactly as it was when his wife was still alive. Just how far his need for that illusion extends becomes the real question.
This Suspense broadcast, "Library Book" (1945-09-20), starred Myrna Loy; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "The Earth Is Made of Glass" (1945-09-27), starred Joseph Cotten; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Death on Highway 99" (1945-10-04), starred George Murphy, Cathy Lewis; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Beyond Good and Evil" (1945-10-11), starred Joseph Cotten; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Summer Storm" (1945-10-18), starred Henry Fonda; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "A Shroud for Sarah" (1945-10-25), starred Lucille Ball; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
An outcast, shunned and deformed, turns to forces best left alone and summons something into the world that shouldn't exist. What he's called up craves nothing but blood — and craves it without limit. (after H.P. Lovecraft)
This Suspense broadcast, "The Bet" (1945-11-08), starred Lee J. Cobb; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Murder off Key" (1945-11-15), starred Zachery Scott; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
An actor renting a room in an old boarding house starts dreaming, night after night, about the woman who lived there before him. In these visions she pleads for his help — she vanished once, and something about that disappearance was never properly solved.
After a bitter quarrel with her husband, a woman finds herself living through something impossible — an entire week seems to vanish around her. When she comes back to herself, her husband is gone and strangers have already moved into what used to be their apartment.
A young man's fiancée steps out to drop off a parcel for her employer and simply never comes back. Worse, when he starts asking questions, no one will even admit she exists — leaving him alone in a search nobody believes needs to happen. (after Cornell Woolrich)
This Suspense broadcast, "The Argyle Album" (1945-12-13), starred Robert Taylor; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Double Entry" (1945-12-20), starred Keenan Wynn, Hume Cronan; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Pink Camellias" (1945-12-27), starred Marsha Hunt; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
1946
This Suspense broadcast, "Angel of Death" (1946-01-03), starred Paul Henried; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "This Was a Hero" (1946-01-10), starred Phillip Terry, Lurene Tuttle, Howard; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "The Pasteboard Box" (1946-01-17), starred Joseph Cotten; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
An elderly woman takes on a part-time job with a publishing firm that never quite explains what the work actually involves. The vagueness needles at her until she starts to wonder exactly what — or who — she's really signed on to serve.
This Suspense broadcast, "The Long Shot" (1946-01-31), starred George Coulouris; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Too Little to Live On" (1946-02-07), starred George Murphy, Nancy Colman; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Lucky Lady" (1946-02-14), starred Fay Bainter; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Consequence" (1946-02-21), starred James Stewart; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "The Keenest Edge" (1946-02-28), starred Richard Greene; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
Fleeing a violent gangster husband, a woman slips away to Havana with the man she loves, hoping for a fresh start on the island. Their first night together barely ends before she's found stabbed in the back — and the evidence points straight at him. (after Cornell Woolrich)
This Suspense broadcast, "No More Alice" (1946-03-14), starred Paul Henried; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "The Lonely Road" (1946-03-21), starred Gregory Peck, Maria Palmer, Cathy; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Out of Control" (1946-03-28), starred Brian Donlevy; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Post Mortum" (1946-04-04), starred Agnes Moorehead, Joseph Kerns, William; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "The Name of the Beast" (1946-04-11), starred Vincent Price, Elliott Lewis; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
An insurance investigator built his career catching arsonists — and now the evidence in a fresh string of fires keeps pointing toward someone far too close to home: his own wife. Proving it means destroying his marriage either way. (after Cornell Woolrich)
Desperate to finally get her reluctant fiancé to the altar, a frustrated woman decides that willpower alone can clear her path — by wishing away, one by one, anyone standing between her and the wedding she's determined to have.
This Suspense broadcast, "Crime Without Passion" (1946-05-02), starred Joseph Cotten; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "The Clock and the Rope" (1946-05-09), starred Jackie Cooper; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "The Plan" (1946-05-16), starred Claire Trevor; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Spoils for Victor" (1946-05-23), starred Dane Clark; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "The Leading Citizen of Pratt County" (1946-05-30), starred Alan Hale; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "The High Wall" (1946-06-06), starred Robert Young; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Too Many Smiths" (1946-06-13), starred Hume Cronyn; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Your Devoted Wife" (1946-06-20), starred June Duprez; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
A busload of passengers leaving an isolated mountain asylum gets stranded when an avalanche seals off the road behind them. Being trapped is bad enough — but then someone raises the possibility that an escaped, homicidal patient is riding along with them, and no one can agree on who it might be.
This Suspense broadcast, "An Evening's Diversion" (1946-07-04), starred Leon Ames, Gerald Mohr; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Feast of the Furies" (1946-07-11), starred Sheldon Leonard, Elliot Reid; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Photo Finish" (1946-07-18), starred Michael O'Shea; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Can't We Be Friends?" (1946-07-25), starred Jerry Hausner, Irvin Lee, Elliott; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Commuter's Ticket" (1946-08-01), starred J. Carrol Naish, Howard Duff, Jim; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Dead Ernest" (1946-08-08), starred Wally Maher, Robert Bailey, Verna; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
A doctor convinced that only five safeguards keep ordinary people from killing sets out to prove his theory by handpicking five strangers and pushing each toward murder, certain at least one safeguard will hold firm. His experiment doesn't end the way his research predicted.
This Suspense broadcast, "The Great Horrell" (1946-08-22), starred Joan Lorring; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Blue Eyes" (1946-08-29), starred Hume Cronyn; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
A newlywed's first real quarrel ends with his wife storming out and flinging back a bitter threat — that he'll never lay eyes on her again. He shrugs it off, certain she's simply cooling down at her mother's house, until a phone call reveals she never arrived there at all. (after Cornell Woolrich)
This Suspense broadcast, "Hunting Trip" (1946-09-12), starred Vincent Price, Lloyd Nolan; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Till the Day I Die" (1946-09-19), starred Dane Clark; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
An employee plots the perfect murder of his condescending boss, engineering an alibi so airtight that the killing not only goes undetected but earns him a promotion. The plan works flawlessly--it's his own conscience that starts to unravel him.
This Suspense broadcast, "Three Times Murder" (1946-10-03), starred Rita Hayworth, Hans Conried, Bill; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "A Plain Case of Murder" (1946-10-10), starred John Lund, Cathy Lewis, Hans Conried; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "The Man Who Thought He Was E.g. Robinson" (1946-10-17), starred Edward G. Robinson, Verna Felton; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Dame Fortune" (1946-10-24), starred Susan Hayward, Hans Conried, William; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
A brush with death leaves one man with an uncanny gift--an inability to stay silent whenever he hears a falsehood--and a strange new certainty about things he shouldn't know. When he moves into the home of a doctor and his wife, that gift starts unsettling everyone around him.
Fed up after one too many days under his wealthy wife's thumb, a husband schemes to stage a fatal "accident" -- and collect her fortune once she's out of the way.
This Suspense broadcast, "The One Who Got Away" (1946-11-14), starred Hume Cronyn, Cathy Lewis, Hans; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Drive-In" (1946-11-21), starred Judy Garland, Cathy Lewis, Elliott; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "The Strange Death of Gordon Fitzroy" (1946-11-28), starred Chester Morris, Hans Conried, Howard; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
A young couple settle into what looks like the perfect house, with one glaring exception: a sealed closet that growls with animal sounds and leaks blood under the door. Whatever's shut inside doesn't stay contained for long — it starts working its influence on the wife in ways her husband can't explain.
This Suspense broadcast, "They Call Me Patrice" (1946-12-12), starred Susan Peters, William Johnstone, Wally; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "The Thing in the Window" (1946-12-19), starred Joseph Cotten, Jerry Hausner, Cathy; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
Alix barely knows Gerald Martin before she's married him — a courtship measured in days, not months. The honeymoon glow fades fast once her new husband's behavior turns odd, and she begins to wonder exactly who she's tied herself to. (after Agatha Christie)
1947
Letting himself into the wrong apartment by mistake, a man stumbles on two killers finishing off a woman -- and finds himself taken for the husband who hired them.
This Suspense broadcast, "The Will to Power" (1947-01-09), starred Dan Duryea, Howard Duff, Cathy Lewis; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Overture in Two Keys" (1947-01-16), starred Joan Bennett, Howard Duff, Hans; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
A prodigal son comes home to London expecting a warm welcome, and gets one from everyone in the family except the uncle he left behind.
This Suspense broadcast, "Three Blind Mice" (1947-01-30), starred Van Heflin, Cathy Lewis, William; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "The End of the Road" (1947-02-06), starred Glenn Ford; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "The Thirteenth Sound" (1947-02-13), starred Agnes Moorehead, Bill Johnstone; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Always Room at the Top" (1947-02-20), starred Ann Baxter; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Three Faces for Midnight" (1947-02-27), starred William Bendix; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Elwood" (1947-03-06), starred Eddie Bracken, Cathy Lewis; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "You Take Ballistics" (1947-03-13), starred Henry DeSilva, Jack Webb; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Waxworks" (1947-03-20), starred Raines; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Trial by Jury" (1947-03-27), starred Kelly; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "The Swift Rise of Eddie Albright" (1947-04-03), starred Phil Silvers; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Community Property" (1947-04-10), starred Kirk Douglas, Cathy Lewis; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "The Green-Eyed Monster" (1947-04-17), starred Llloyd Nolan, Cathy Lewis; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Win, Place and Murder" (1947-04-24), starred Richard Conte; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Lady in Distress" (1947-05-01), starred Ava Gardner; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Dead Ernest" (1947-05-08), starred Wally Maher; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Death at Live Oak" (1947-05-15), starred Robert Mithcum; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Knight Comes Riding" (1947-05-22), starred Virginia Bruce; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
A once-celebrated stage actress living in seclusion receives a rare visitor — a retiring vicar bringing along the young curate meant to succeed him — and recounts her theatrical rise, including the rival she loved to upstage and the slap that rivalry once earned her. That same rival was later found stabbed to death, and the old woman's calm telling of the story leaves the question of guilt hanging in the air.
This Suspense broadcast, "Make Mad the Guilty" (1947-06-05), starred Hume Cronyn; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
A movie star known for being difficult has managed to alienate the two people closest to her — her unfaithful husband and the stand-in who's finally had enough. Between them, husband and stand-in are quietly plotting to see that the star doesn't survive the production.
This Suspense broadcast, "Dead of Night" (1947-06-19), starred Elliot Reid, Cathy Lewis; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Phobia" (1947-06-26), starred Eva La Gallienne; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Money Talks" (1947-07-03), starred Alan Baxter; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Murder by the Book" (1947-07-10), starred Gloria Swanson; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Beyond Good and Evil" (1947-07-17), starred Price; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Murder by an Expert" (1947-07-24), starred Lynn Bari; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Mortmain" (1947-07-31), starred Jerome Cowan; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Quiet Desparation" (1947-08-07), starred Walter Abel; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Smiley" (1947-08-14), starred Donald O'Connor; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Murder Aboard the Alphabet" (1947-08-21), starred John Lund; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Double Ugly" (1947-08-28), starred Lloyd Nolan, June Havoc; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "The Argyle Album" (1947-09-04), starred Edmond O'Brien; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Twist" (1947-09-11), starred Michael O'Shea; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
Presumed murdered by a close friend, a young man vanishes from his own life story--until he reappears three years later, very much alive. The question that follows him home is whether he's really who he claims to be, or an impostor angling for an inheritance.
This Suspense broadcast, "The Blue Hour" (1947-09-25), starred Claire Trevor; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "The Story of Markham's Death" (1947-10-02), starred Kirk Douglas; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "The Man Who Liked Dickens" (1947-10-09), starred Richard Ney; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Self-Defense" (1947-10-16), starred Marsha Hunt; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "X-Ray Camera" (1947-10-23), starred Dennis O'Keefe; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
A struggling actress crosses paths with her rival by pure chance, deep in the New York subway system — and sees, in that unplanned meeting, an opportunity too good to pass up. What starts as coincidence turns into a plot to eliminate the competition for good.
This Suspense broadcast, "Dream Song" (1947-11-06), starred Henry Morgan; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
A man is found dead in a ventriloquist's cellar, and the detective assigned to the case turns up an unlikely witness: the ventriloquist's own dummy seems to know more about the murder than its owner is willing to say. (after Ray Bradbury)
Over drinks at a fashionable New York club, a circle of gentlemen swap detective stories for sport — one about a coin that vanished into thin air, another about a stolen sapphire ring. Between the fiction and the fact, the lines blur more than anyone expects. (after Owen Johnson)
A prisoner of the Spanish Inquisition wakes in absolute darkness to find the walls, the dark, and a swinging blade above him are all part of a slow-built machine of torment. Escape means outthinking a system built to make it impossible. (after Edgar Allan Poe)
This Suspense broadcast, "The Clock and the Rope" (1947-12-05), starred Jackie Cooper; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
Buried in gambling debts, an insurance man kills his wife rather than accept her refusal to hand over the money she's hidden away. Getting rid of a body is one problem; getting away with it for good is another — yet fate seems to hand him one lucky break after another. How long can that luck possibly hold?
When his daughter kills the local schoolmaster in a fit of passion, Mr. Princey doesn't call the police — he starts building a case against an innocent man instead. Family loyalty, pushed past its breaking point, becomes its own kind of crime. (after John Collier)
This Suspense broadcast, "Too Little to Live On" (1947-12-26), starred Ozzie Nelson, Harriet Nelson; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier, though the broadcast log notes: Last half-hour show.
1948
A fall on the sidewalk knocks one man cold--and when he comes to, three entire years of his life have vanished from memory. Piecing together what happened in that missing stretch, he discovers he built a whole second life he never knew about, one that may include a murder.
This Suspense broadcast, "The Kandy Tooth" (1948-01-10), starred Howard Duff, Lurene Tuttle, Joseph; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
A rising man inside a crime organization joins forces with a reform-minded political idealist, and together they set out to topple the very gangster he's spent his career serving. Loyalty and ambition pull in opposite directions as the scheme to unseat the boss takes shape. (after James M. Cain)
With her husband locked away for a crime he swears he didn't commit, a devoted wife launches her own investigation to clear his name. Her hunt leads her to a man who may well be the real killer — and, inconveniently, someone she can't help falling for. (after Cornell Woolrich)
This Suspense broadcast, "Bet with Death" (1948-01-31), starred Kruger, Lee Bowman; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
After a fatal car crash, an ambitious scientist keeps a ruthless tycoon's brain alive in his laboratory, convinced the breakthrough will one day save countless lives. The brain, unfortunately, has ambitions of its own--and saving lives isn't among them.
A killer is stalking women through the fog-bound streets, and no one has caught him. When a landlady rents a room to a quiet, secretive boarder, she can't shake the feeling that danger has just moved in under her own roof. (after Marie Belloc Lowndes)
This Suspense broadcast, "Beyond Reason" (1948-02-21), starred Robert Ryan, Ruth Warrick; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier, though the broadcast log notes: Anton Leader becomes producer.
This Suspense broadcast, "The House by the River" (1948-02-28), starred John Mcintyre, Dan O'Herilhy; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "In a Lonely Place" (1948-03-06), starred Robert Montgomery, Lurene Tuttle; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Nightmare" (1948-03-13), starred Eddie Bracken, William Conrad; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
A rare hour-long double bill pairing two Suspense stories. In "Wet Saturday," a cold-blooded father schemes to frame an innocent man after his daughter murders the local schoolmaster. "August Heat," adapting William Fryer Harvey, follows -- though no plot synopsis survives for that half in the sources consulted for this dossier.
A wealthy, elderly woman takes on a charming young man as her companion, delighted by his attentiveness. Her niece isn't nearly so charmed — she's grown convinced the young man is a murderer, and that her aunt has welcomed him right into the house. (after Emlyn Williams)
Mr. Mummery hasn't been feeling himself lately, and when his business partner mentions a poisoner going door to door taking cook's positions, an uncomfortable thought takes root. Could the woman preparing his meals every day be exactly the killer everyone's been warned about? (after Dorothy L. Sayers)
This Suspense broadcast, "Crossfire" (1948-04-10), starred Robert Young, Robert Mitchum, Robert Ryan; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "The Search" (1948-04-24), starred Howard Culver; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier, though the broadcast log notes: PART 1 MISSING Show of 4-17 pre-empted.
This Suspense broadcast, "The Blind Spot" (1948-05-01), starred Edmund O'Brien; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
Desperate for fifteen hundred dollars before the clock strikes midnight -- the price of staying alive -- a young man turns to his mother, only to learn her savings are already gone. Cornered, he starts weighing increasingly dangerous options to raise the sum in time.
This Suspense broadcast, "Deadline at Dawn" (1948-05-15), starred Helen Walker, John Beal; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier, though the broadcast log notes: LAST HOUR SHOW.
This Suspense broadcast, "The Last Chance" (1948-07-08), starred Cary Grant; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier, though the broadcast log notes: FIRST AUTOLITE SHOW No shows 5-22 - 7-1 Moves to Thursday 9:00pm and back to a half-hour format.
This Suspense broadcast, "Summer Night" (1948-07-15), starred Ida Lupino; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Deep into Darkness" (1948-07-22), starred Douglas Fairbanks; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "The Yellow Wallpaper" (1948-07-29), starred Agnes Moorehead; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "An Honest Man" (1948-08-05), starred Charles Laughton; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Beware the Quiet Man" (1948-08-12), starred Ann Sothern, William Conrad; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Crisis" (1948-08-19), starred Martha Scott; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Song of the Heart" (1948-08-26), starred Van Heflin; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "The Morrison Affair" (1948-09-02), starred Madeleine Carroll; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Big Shot" (1948-09-09), starred Burt Lancaster; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier, though the broadcast log notes: (Burt's first performance on radio).
This Suspense broadcast, "Hitchhike Poker" (1948-09-16), starred Gregory Peck; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Celebration" (1948-09-23), starred Robert Young, Virginia Bruce; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "The Man Who Thought He Was E.g.robinson" (1948-09-30), starred Edward G. Robinson; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Night Cry" (1948-10-07), starred Ray Milland, William Conrad; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "A Little Piece of Rope" (1948-10-14), starred Lucille Ball; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Give Me Liberty" (1948-10-21), starred William Powell; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Death Sentence" (1948-11-04), starred John Garfield, Raymond Burr; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier, though the broadcast log notes: Show of 10-28 pre-empted.
This Suspense broadcast, "Muddy Track" (1948-11-11), starred Edmund O'Brien, Ann Blythe; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
Confined to her bed with only a telephone connecting her to the world, Mrs. Stevenson picks up a crossed line and overhears two strangers calmly plotting a killing. The police brush her off as hysterical, leaving her to piece together, alone, whether the murder they're planning is her own.
A group of children playing in an open field swear they can hear a woman's screams coming from somewhere beneath the ground. Adults dismiss it as nothing but a child's overactive imagination — but the screaming doesn't stop just because no one believes them. (after Ray Bradbury)
This Suspense broadcast, "The Hands of Mr. Ottermole" (1948-12-02), starred Vincent Price, Claude Raines; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
Convinced she's about to die, a woman walks into a funeral parlor and calmly orders her own coffin. The alarmed mortician calls the police, fearing a suicide in the making, and the detective who investigates finds her sharing a house with a sister whose grip on reality seems none too steady.
This Suspense broadcast, "No Escape" (1948-12-16), starred Jimmy Cagney; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Holiday Story" (1948-12-23), starred Herbert Marshall; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Break-Up" (1948-12-30), starred William Bendix, Wally Maher; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
1949
An elderly woman, living alone, hires a soft-spoken young man to come clean her house, glad of both the help and the company. He seems harmless enough at first glance — but harmless is rarely the whole story in a house like this one.
Two close friends have quietly loved the same woman for years, and when one of them proposes and then asks the other to stand up as his best man, that request is the last straw. Rather than accept the marriage, the spurned friend sets out to murder his rival instead — and discovers that building a truly airtight alibi is harder than he expected.
This Suspense broadcast, "If the Dead Could Talk" (1949-01-20), starred Dana Andrews; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "The Thing in the Window" (1949-01-27), starred Robert Montgomery; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
A married couple driving home after a night at the movies discover they aren't alone in the car — a wanted killer has been hiding in the backseat the whole time, and now he's the one calling the shots.
This Suspense broadcast, "De Mortuis" (1949-02-10), starred Charles Laughton; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Catch Me If You Can" (1949-02-17), starred Jane Wyman; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Where There Is a Will" (1949-02-24), starred James Mason, Pamela Mason; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Lovebirds" (1949-03-03), starred Joan Fontaine; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
A man rigs a bomb in his own basement, intending to kill his wife. Before he can get clear of it, a pair of burglars catch him in the act and tie him up right there — leaving him staring at his own device, ticking down toward three o'clock, with no way to call for help. (after Cornell Woolrich)
This Suspense broadcast, "Murder Through the Looking Glass" (1949-03-17), starred Gegory Peck; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Dead Ernest" (1949-03-24), starred Pat O'Brien; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "You Can't Die Twice" (1949-03-31), starred Edward G. Robinson; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Noose of Coincidence" (1949-04-07), starred Ronald Colman; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Murder in Black and White" (1949-04-14), starred Edmund Gwenn; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "The Copper Tea Strainer" (1949-04-21), starred Betty Grable, Raymond Burr, William; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "The Lie" (1949-04-28), starred Mickey Rooney; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Death Has a Shadow" (1949-05-05), starred Bob Hope, William Conrad; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "The Light Switch" (1949-05-12), starred Claire Trevor; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Consequence" (1949-05-19), starred James Stewart; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
An insurance investigator built his career catching arsonists — and now the evidence in a fresh string of fires keeps pointing toward someone far too close to home: his own wife. Proving it means destroying his marriage either way. (after Cornell Woolrich)
This Suspense broadcast, "The Ten Years" (1949-06-02), starred Joan Crawford; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier, though the broadcast log notes: Joan refused to do this show unless it was transcribed. Being a film actress, and used to having mistakes edited out, she didn't want to look bad on live radio.
This Suspense broadcast, "The Lunch Kit" (1949-06-09), starred John Lund; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
An elderly woman finds herself terrorized inside her own home by an unseen presence that announces itself, over and over, with the same mournful whistled tune — 'Farewell to Thee.' She can't see it, can't explain it, and can't make it stop.
Chasing a ratings stunt, a radio disc jockey and a psychic researcher agree to spend the night inside a house with a body count of four suicides. What starts as showmanship for the microphone turns into something neither of them can control by morning.
This Suspense broadcast, "The Day I Died" (1949-06-30), starred Joseph Cotten; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Nightmare" (1949-09-01), starred Gregory Peck; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier, though the broadcast log notes: show of the new season. Norman MacDonnell becomes director.
This Suspense broadcast, "Chicken Feed" (1949-09-08), starred Ray Milland, William Conrad; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Last Confession" (1949-09-15), starred Dorothy McGuire; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Experiment 6r" (1949-09-22), starred John Lund, William Conrad; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Blind Date" (1949-09-29), starred Charles Laughton, June Havoc; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
An ex-convict takes a job with the very law firm run by the partner who once put him behind bars. When that partner turns up murdered, suspicion lands squarely on him, and he has to clear his name before he's sent back to prison for a crime he didn't commit.
This Suspense broadcast, "Account Payable" (1949-10-13), starred Edward Arnold; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Good Night Mrs. Russell" (1949-10-20), starred Bette Davis; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Momentum" (1949-10-27), starred Victor Mature; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "The Search for Isabel" (1949-11-03), starred Red Skelton, William Conrad; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "The Murder of Aunt Delia" (1949-11-10), starred Van Heflin; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "The Red-Headed Woman" (1949-11-17), starred Lucille Ball, Desi Arnaz; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "The Long Wait" (1949-11-24), starred Burt Lancaster; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Mission Completed" (1949-12-01), starred James Stewart; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "For Love or Murder" (1949-12-08), starred Mickey Rooney; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "The Flame Blue Glove" (1949-12-15), starred Lana Turner; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Double Entry" (1949-12-22), starred Eddie Cantor, Sidney Miller; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "The Bullet" (1949-12-29), starred Ida Lupino, Elliott Lewis, Hans; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
1950
This Suspense broadcast, "I Never Met the Dead Man" (1950-01-05), starred Danny Kaye; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Four Hours to Kill" (1950-01-12), starred Robert Taylor; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "The Escape of Lacey Abbott" (1950-01-19), starred William Powell; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Mr. Diogenes" (1950-01-26), starred Ozzie Nelson, Harriet Nelson; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Consideration" (1950-02-02), starred Rosalind Russell; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "The Butcher's Wife" (1950-02-09), starred Kirk Douglas; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Murder Strikes Three Times" (1950-02-16), starred Marlene Dietrich; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Slow Burn" (1950-02-23), starred Dick Powell; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
An insurance investigator settles in for a routine flight and strikes up conversation with a charming stranger in the next seat. By the time the plane lands, she's beginning to suspect that charm was a cover — and that she's been poisoned somewhere over the clouds.
One murderer slipped through a veteran prosecutor's fingers years ago, and the case has never stopped gnawing at him. To finally close it, he enlists an ally no courtroom would ever recognize — the restless spirit of the victim herself. (after Rupert Croft-Cooke)
This Suspense broadcast, "Motive for Murder" (1950-03-16), starred Alan Ladd, John Dehner, Edwin Max; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "One and One's a Lonesome" (1950-03-23), starred Ronald Reagan; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Blood Sacrifice" (1950-03-30), starred Joseph Cotten; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Salvage" (1950-04-06), starred Van Johnson, William Conrad; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Six Feet Under" (1950-04-13), starred Dan Dailey; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Pearls Are a Nuisance" (1950-04-20), starred Ray Milland; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "The Chain" (1950-04-27), starred Agnes Moorehead, William Conrad; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Statement of Mary Blake" (1950-05-04), starred Joan Bennett, William Conrad; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "The Man in the Room" (1950-05-11), starred John Lund, William Conrad; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Angel Face" (1950-05-18), starred Claire Trevor; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Very Much Like a Nightmare" (1950-05-25), starred Dennis O'Keefe; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "A Case of Nerves" (1950-06-01), starred Edward G. Robinson; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "The Case of Henri Vivard" (1950-06-08), starred Charles Boyer; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Deadline" (1950-06-15), starred Crawford; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "One Millionth Joe" (1950-06-22), starred Jack Carson; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Love, Honor, or Murder" (1950-06-29), starred Cathy Lewis, Elliot Lewis; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "True Report" (1950-08-31), starred Pat O'Brien; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier, though the broadcast log notes: First show if the new season. Elliott Lewis becomes Producer.
This Suspense broadcast, "The Tip" (1950-09-07), starred Ida Lupino; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Over the Bounding Main" (1950-09-14), starred Dan Dailey, William Conrad; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "The Crowd" (1950-09-21), starred Dana Andrews; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Fly by Night" (1950-09-28), starred Joseph Cotten; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "The Rose Garden" (1950-10-05), starred Miriam Hopkins; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Rave Notice" (1950-10-12), starred Milton Berle; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "The Wages of Sin" (1950-10-19), starred Barbara Stanwyck; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Too Hot to Live" (1950-10-26), starred Richard Widmark; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "The Victoria Cross" (1950-11-02), starred Herbert Marshall; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Blood on the Trumpet" (1950-11-09), starred William Holden, Baton Yarborough; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier, though the broadcast log notes: Special Trumpet effects: Ziggy Elman.
A storm strands a couple in their car on a lonely stretch of road, with nowhere to go and no help in sight. Somewhere in the woods nearby, an escaped murderer is on the loose — and the night is far from over.
This Suspense broadcast, "Going, Going, Gone" (1950-11-23), starred Ozzie Nelson, Harriet Nelson; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
A newspaper columnist, a beat reporter, and a homicide detective are each chasing the same string of unsolved killings when they're all sent the same eerie invitation: show up alone at a chapel at the stroke of midnight to meet the killer face to face. Curiosity -- or professional pride -- makes turning it down unthinkable for any of them.
This Suspense broadcast, "After the Movies" (1950-12-07), starred Ray Milland, William Conrad; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "A Killing in Abilene" (1950-12-14), starred Alan Ladd, Barton Yarborough, Parley; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Christmas for Carole" (1950-12-21), starred Dennis Day; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "A Ring for Marya" (1950-12-28), starred Cornel Wilde; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
1951
This Suspense broadcast, "Alibi Me" (1951-01-04), starred Mickey Rooney; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Vamp Till Dead" (1951-01-11), starred Ginger Rogers; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "The Well-Dressed Corpse" (1951-01-18), starred Eve Arden; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Aria from Murder" (1951-01-25), starred Ezio Pinza; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Fragile-Contents Death" (1951-02-01), starred Paul Douglas; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "The Windy City Six" (1951-02-08), starred Fred MacMurray; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "The Death Parade" (1951-02-15), starred Agnes Moorehead; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
A married couple driving home after a night at the movies discover they aren't alone in the car — a wanted killer has been hiding in the backseat the whole time, and now he's the one calling the shots.
This Suspense broadcast, "The Gift of Jumbo Brannigan" (1951-03-01), starred William Bendix; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "A Vision of Death" (1951-03-08), starred Ronald Colman; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Strange for a Killer" (1951-03-15), starred Van Johnson; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Three Lethal Words" (1951-03-22), starred Joan Crawford; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Death Pitch" (1951-03-29), starred Jack Carson; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Murder in G Flat" (1951-04-05), starred Jack Benny; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Early to Death" (1951-04-12), starred Lucille Ball, Desi Arnaz; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "The Rescue" (1951-04-19), starred James Stewart; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "The Thirteenth Sound" (1951-04-26), starred Ann Baxter; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "When the Bough Breaks" (1951-05-03), starred Rosalind Russell; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Death on My Hands" (1951-05-10), starred Phil Harris, Alice Faye; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Another Man's Poison" (1951-05-17), starred Charles Boyer; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Fresh Air, Sunshine and Murder" (1951-05-24), starred Jeff Chandler; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Over Drawn" (1951-05-31), starred Dick Powell; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Tell Ya Why I Shouldn't Die" (1951-06-07), starred Richard Widmark; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "The Truth About Jerry Baxter" (1951-06-14), starred Gregory Peck; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "The Greatest Thief in the World" (1951-06-21), starred James Mason; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
A man shot in Sweden lives just long enough to pass along a chilling warning: there's a spy buried deep inside America's nuclear weapons program. Federal agents race to identify and stop him before the secrets reach Russian hands — a case drawn from real events.
This Suspense broadcast, "The Report on the Jolly Death Riders" (1951-08-27), starred William Holden; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier, though the broadcast log notes: Elliott Lewis 8:00pm First show of the new season.
This Suspense broadcast, "The Steel River Prison Break" (1951-09-03), starred Jeff Chandler; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "The Evil of Adelaide Winters" (1951-09-10), starred Agnes Moorehead; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Neal Cream, Doctor of Poison" (1951-09-17), starred Charles Laughton; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "The Mckay College Basketball Scandal" (1951-09-24), starred Tony Curtis; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Case Study of a Murderer" (1951-10-01), starred Jeanne Crain, William Conrad, Howard; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
In Vienna in 1913, the Kaiser's counter-espionage service is hunting for a mole feeding secrets to the enemy. The hunt closes in with a bitter irony: the traitor they're chasing is the very man running the unit.
A radio writer teetering on the edge of sanity decides his boss has to die — and that the killing deserves to be captured on tape and aired for an audience to hear. Turning murder into a broadcast event is exactly as reckless as it sounds.
This Suspense broadcast, "The Flame" (1951-10-15), starred Cornell Wilde; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
Caught in the crossfire of China's civil war, a British gunboat finds itself pinned down on the Yangtze River by Communist forces bearing down from the banks. Drawn from a true incident, the story follows the crew's ordeal trying to survive a fight that was never supposed to be theirs.
This Suspense broadcast, "The Hunting of Bob Lee" (1951-10-29), starred Richard Widmark, William Conrad; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "The Trials of Thomas Shaw" (1951-11-05), starred Joseph Cotten; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "The Mission of the Betta" (1951-11-12), starred John Hodiak; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "The Embezzler" (1951-11-19), starred John Lund; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Misfortune in Pearls" (1951-11-26), starred Frank Lovejoy; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
A radio writer teetering on the edge of sanity decides his boss has to die — and that the killing deserves to be captured on tape and aired for an audience to hear. Turning murder into a broadcast event is exactly as reckless as it sounds.
This Suspense broadcast, "Blackjack to Kill" (1951-12-10), starred Victure Mature; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Case History of a Gambler" (1951-12-17), starred John Hodiak; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "The Night Before Christmas" (1951-12-24), starred Garson; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
A veteran big-game hunter turns his considerable skill on human prey, setting out alone to kill the tyrannical dictator of a small Central European nation. He acts without official sanction, driven by nothing but his own conviction that one man's death could spare countless others. (after Geoffrey Household)
1952
This Suspense broadcast, "The Case Against Loo Dock" (1952-01-07), starred Jeff Chandler, William Conrad; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Fall River Tragedy" (1952-01-14), starred Agnes Moorehead; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "The Perfectionist" (1952-01-21), starred Richard Basehart, William Conrad; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Carnival" (1952-01-28), starred Joseph Cotten; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "The Treasure Chest of Don Jose" (1952-02-04), starred J. Carroll Naish; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Odd Man Out" (1952-02-11), starred James Mason; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Track of the Cat" (1952-02-18), starred Richard Widmark; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "A Killing in Las Vegas" (1952-02-25), starred Linda Darnell; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "The Thirty Nine Steps" (1952-03-03), starred Herbert Marshall; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "A Watery Grave" (1952-03-10), starred Joseph Cotten; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "The Wreck of the Old 97" (1952-03-17), starred Frank Lovejoy; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "A Murder of Necessity" (1952-03-24), starred Robert Young; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Lady Pamela" (1952-03-31), starred Deborah Kerr; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Remember Me" (1952-04-07), starred Dan Duryea; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Mate Bram" (1952-04-14), starred Richard Widmark; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
Robert Falcon Scott and his party reach the South Pole only to find Roald Amundsen's flag already planted there. Their disappointment is only the beginning: the journey back proves far more punishing than the outward trek, testing what's left of their strength and resolve. (drawn from Scott's own expedition diary)
This Suspense broadcast, "The Shooting of Billy the Kid" (1952-04-28), starred Frank Lovejoy, William Conrad; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Frankie and Johnny" (1952-05-05), starred Dinah Shore; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "The Missing Person" (1952-05-12), starred Macdonald Carey; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
An American bomber crew flies into a combat mission over Korea, and the story follows what that single run demands of the men aboard -- nerve, teamwork, and the ever-present chance that this flight doesn't bring them home.
This Suspense broadcast, "The Death of Me" (1952-05-26), starred George Murphy, William Conrad; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Good and Faithful Servant" (1952-06-02), starred Jack Benny; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Concerto for Killer and Eye Witness" (1952-06-09), starred Elliott Lewis, William Conrad; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
Confined to her bed with only a telephone connecting her to the world, Mrs. Stevenson picks up a crossed line and overhears two strangers calmly plotting a killing. The police brush her off as hysterical, leaving her to piece together, alone, whether the murder they're planning is her own.
This Suspense broadcast, "Jack Ketch" (1952-09-22), starred Charles Laughton; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Vidocq's Final Case" (1952-09-29), starred Charles Boyer; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "The Diary of Dr. Pritchard" (1952-10-06), starred Cedric Hardwicke; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "How Long Is the Night?" (1952-10-13), starred Richard Widmark; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "The Death of Barbara Allen" (1952-10-20), starred Anne Baxter, William Conrad; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
A recitation of Lewis Carroll's verse turns out to be more than parlor entertainment: for one Southern lawyer abroad, the lines double as an unwitting cue, pulling him step by step into an assassination plot unfolding somewhere in the Balkans.
Doctor Frankenstein succeeds in creating life from lifeless matter. His closest friend, a clergyman, recoils from what he's done and urges him toward an agonizing choice: destroy what he's made before it costs everyone dearly. (after Mary Shelley)
This Suspense broadcast, "Frightened City" (1952-11-10), starred Frank Lovejoy; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Death and Miss Turner" (1952-11-17), starred Agnes Moorehead; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
A San Francisco newspaper columnist expects nothing more than a quiet ferry ride to Berkeley, until an acquaintance of an acquaintance turns up knocked cold on deck. Pulling that thread lands him in the middle of an active spy ring, far deeper than a newsman should go.
This Suspense broadcast, "The Big Heist" (1952-12-01), starred John Hodiak; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Joker Wild" (1952-12-08), starred Cathy Lewis, Elliott Lewis; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "The Man with Two Faces" (1952-12-15), starred Lloyd Nolan; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
A ship sets out to unravel the enduring mystery of the lost Franklin expedition, only to become trapped in ice itself. What began as a rescue turns into a fight for the crew's own survival through a punishing polar winter.
This Suspense broadcast, "Melody in Dreams" (1952-12-29), starred John Lund; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
1953
This Suspense broadcast, "The Mystery of Edwin Drood-Part 1" (1953-01-05), starred Herbert Marshall; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "The Mystery of Edwin Drood-Part 2" (1953-01-12), starred Herbert Marshall; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
Somewhere in a narrow, unstable stretch of seabed lies a wrecked ship and, with it, a fortune in gold -- available to anyone willing to risk the dive. The story, based on real events, follows what happens when someone decides the gold is worth the gamble.
This Suspense broadcast, "The Spencer Brothers" (1953-01-26), starred Richard Widmark, William Conrad; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
Played strictly for laughs, this science-fiction spoof flips the invasion story on its head: it's the Martians who are on edge, scrambling to figure out how to handle an oncoming wave of bothersome, unsophisticated Earthlings.
A Soviet diplomat stationed in Mexico learns he's being recalled home as a security risk -- a recall that, in practice, spells a stretch in a Siberian labor camp with little hope of return. Based on real events, the story follows his attempt to slip free of that fate and reach safety instead.
This Suspense broadcast, "The Love and Death of Joaquin Murietta" (1953-02-16), starred Victure Mature, William Conrad; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "St. James Infirmary" (1953-02-23), starred Rosemary Clooney; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "The Storm" (1953-03-02), starred Frank Lovejoy, Joan Banks; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "The Dead Alive" (1953-03-09), starred Herbert Marshall; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
An expedition sets out to conquer one of the world's highest peaks, only for the climb to curdle into something darker: a member of the party turns up murdered, with the culprit presumably still roped in among the rest.
A lonely railway signalman keeps watch over a tunnel where something otherworldly has taken to appearing -- a spectral figure that seems bent on warning him of disaster, though its meaning stays maddeningly out of reach. The visitations wear at his sanity long before their purpose becomes clear. (after Charles Dickens)
This Suspense broadcast, "Tom Dooley" (1953-03-30), starred Joseph Cotten, William Conrad; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Around the World" (1953-04-06), starred Van Johnson; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "The Great Train Robbery" (1953-04-13), starred Fred MacMurray; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Public Defender" (1953-04-20), starred Frank Lovejoy; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "The Man Within" (1953-04-27), starred Herbert Marshall; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Othello, Part 1" (1953-05-04), starred Cathy Lewis, Richard Widmark, Elliott; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Othello, Part 2" (1953-05-11), starred Richard Widmark, Elliott Lewis, Cathy; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Vial of Death" (1953-05-18), starred Lloyd Nolan; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Pigeon in the Cage" (1953-05-25), starred Dick Haymes; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "A Vision of Death" (1953-06-01), starred Ronald Colman; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "The Mystery of the Marie Celeste" (1953-06-08), starred Van Heflin, William Conrad; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
On the eve of the Spanish-American War, a young Army lieutenant is handed a near-impossible assignment: slip into Cuba and make contact with the elusive revolutionary General Garcia, with no clear way to find him and no room for failure. (after Elbert Hubbard)
This Suspense broadcast, "The Empty Chair" (1953-09-21), starred Agnes Moorehead; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Hellfire" (1953-09-28), starred John Hodiak; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
A wealthy financier survives a stroke and responds by setting himself an outsized physical challenge: scaling a glacier in the Swiss Alps that's considered essentially unclimbable. It's a story about proving something to himself when his own body has just shown him its limits. (after Charles Edward Montague)
Two Confederate officers meet for a duel, and when the first man's shot goes wide, his opponent -- owed the second shot by the code of honor -- declines to take it. Instead, he lets the debt hang unpaid, choosing his own moment to collect it. (after Alexander Pushkin)
This Suspense broadcast, "My True Love's Hair" (1953-10-19), starred Jeff Chandler; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Dutch Schultz" (1953-10-26), starred Broderick Crawford; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
A party of settlers loses its way and finds itself trapped by snow in the Sierra Nevada for the winter. As provisions dwindle to nothing, survival forces the group toward choices no one wants to make. Based on true events.
Adapted from a wartime account of the Korean conflict, this story follows the search for one vital piece of intelligence buried somewhere in the noise and confusion of the front -- a genuine needle in a battlefield haystack. (adapted from Walter Karig's wartime reporting)
This Suspense broadcast, "The Moonstone Part 1" (1953-11-16), starred Peter Lawford; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Moonstone Part 2" (1953-11-23), starred Peter Lawford; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "The Wreck of the Maid of Athens" (1953-11-30), starred Agnes Moorehead; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Trent's Last Case" (1953-12-07), starred Ronald Colman; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "The Night Before Christmas" (1953-12-21), starred Greer Garson; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
Fictionalized from the Earl of Essex's doomed uprising against Queen Elizabeth I, the story casts the two as tragic lovers whose devotion keeps colliding with their pride and their ambitions for power -- a collision that can only end badly for both.
1954
A storm strands a couple in their car on a lonely stretch of road, with nowhere to go and no help in sight. Somewhere in the woods nearby, an escaped murderer is on the loose — and the night is far from over.
This Suspense broadcast, "One Man Crime Wave" (1954-01-11), starred Dana Andrews; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "The Face Is Familiar" (1954-01-18), starred Jack Benny; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Want Ad" (1954-01-25), starred Robert Cummings; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Never Follow a Banjo Act" (1954-02-01), starred Ethel Merman; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Death at Skikerod Pond" (1954-02-08), starred Jeff Chandler; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
A test pilot flying an experimental high-altitude aircraft vanishes from radar with barely ten minutes of fuel aboard -- and reappears ten hours later, alive and unharmed, which shouldn't be possible. Harder still to accept is his account of what filled those missing hours: contact with beings from elsewhere, and a warning he's now been tasked to deliver to the rest of us.
This Suspense broadcast, "Murder by Jury" (1954-02-22), starred Herbert Marshall; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "The Barking Death" (1954-03-01), starred William Powell; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Circumstantial Terror" (1954-03-08), starred Ronald Reagan; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "The Girl in Car 32" (1954-03-15), starred Victor Mature, William Conrad; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "The Guilty Always Run" (1954-03-22), starred Tyrone Power, William Conrad; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
A divorced traveling salesman with a temper he can't quite control picks up a woman for a night out, and the evening ends in her death at his hands. What follows traces the aftermath of a violent impulse he can't take back.
This Suspense broadcast, "Grand Theft" (1954-04-05), starred David Niven; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Parole to Panic" (1954-04-12), starred Broderick Crawford; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "The Card Game" (1954-04-19), starred Richard Widmark; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "The Bertillion Method" (1954-04-26), starred Charles Boyer; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "The Giant of Thermopylae" (1954-05-03), starred Frank Lovejoy; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "The Last Days of John Dillinger" (1954-05-10), starred Van Heflin; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
Cast adrift from the Bounty with a handful of loyal crewmen, Captain Bligh navigates an open rowboat across four thousand miles of open Pacific -- an extraordinary feat of survival on its own, but only the first half of the story. What drives him through it is the promise of reckoning with the mutineers who put him there.
This Suspense broadcast, "Weekend Special-Death" (1954-05-24), starred Agnes Moorehead; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
A young married couple living under Communist rule in Czechoslovakia hears freedom described night after night on Western radio broadcasts, until the idea becomes a decision: to risk a dangerous crossing beyond the Iron Curtain, whatever the cost of being caught.
This Suspense broadcast, "A Terribly Strange Bed" (1954-06-07), starred Peter Lawford; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier, though the broadcast log notes: Last AUTOLITE sponsored show.
This Suspense broadcast, "The Earth Is Made of Glass" (1954-06-15), starred Joseph Kearns; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier, though the broadcast log notes: Show moves to Tuesday at 9:30pm and becomes sustained by CBS. Norman MacDonnell becomes new director.
This Suspense broadcast, "Sequel to Murder" (1954-06-22), starred Whitfield Connor; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Too Hot to Live" (1954-06-29), starred Sam Edwards, Paul Frees; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "The Tip" (1954-07-06), starred Lurene Tuttle; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Run Sheep Run" (1954-07-13), starred Cathy Lewis, Elliott Lewis; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Telling" (1954-07-20), starred Antony Ellis; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Destruction" (1954-07-27), starred Larry Dobkin, Paula Winslowe; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Goodnight Mrs. Russell" (1954-08-03), starred Virginia Gregg, Vic Perrin; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Never Steal a Butcher's Wife" (1954-08-10), starred Hy Averback; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "A Little Matter of Memory" (1954-09-30), starred Larry Dobkin; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier, though the broadcast log notes: Show moves to Thursday at 8:00-8:25pm. Antony Ellis becomes Director.
This Suspense broadcast, "Chicken Feed" (1954-10-07), starred Harry Bartell; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Lost" (1954-10-14), starred William Conrad, Paula Winslowe; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Rave Notice" (1954-10-21), starred Hans Conried; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Shelter" (1954-10-28), starred Vic Perrin, Joyce McCluskey; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
A doctor convinced that only five safeguards keep ordinary people from killing sets out to prove his theory by handpicking five strangers and pushing each toward murder, certain at least one safeguard will hold firm. His experiment doesn't end the way his research predicted.
This Suspense broadcast, "The Sure Thing" (1954-11-11), starred Hy Averbach; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Blind Date" (1954-11-18), starred Shirley Mitchell, Vic Perrin; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Shooting Star" (1954-11-25), starred Virginia Christine, Joseph Kerns; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
Two Confederate officers meet for a duel, and when the first man's shot goes wide, his opponent -- owed the second shot by the code of honor -- declines to take it. Instead, he lets the debt hang unpaid, choosing his own moment to collect it. (after Alexander Pushkin)
A storm strands a couple in their car on a lonely stretch of road, with nowhere to go and no help in sight. Somewhere in the woods nearby, an escaped murderer is on the loose — and the night is far from over.
This Suspense broadcast, "Pretty Girl" (1954-12-16), starred Lynn Allen, Vic Perrin; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
An American writer and his wife are unwinding on what should be a perfect holiday in the Austrian Alps when he's seized by a growing sense that disaster is on its way. Nothing around them gives him a reason for the feeling, but he can't shake it, and it starts to poison the trip.
This Suspense broadcast, "Odd Man Out" (1954-12-30), starred Ben Wright; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
1955
This Suspense broadcast, "Murder Aboard the Alphabet" (1955-01-06), starred Vic Perrin, William Conrad; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Final Payment" (1955-01-13), starred Harry Bartell, Peter Leeds; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Study of a Murderer" (1955-01-20), starred William Conrad, Charlotte Lawrence; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "The Operation" (1955-01-27), starred Hy Averbach, Mary Jane Croft; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "A Killing in Abilene" (1955-02-03), starred Parley Baer; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Diagnosis of Death" (1955-02-10), starred Jean Bates, Larry Dobkin; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "The Man with the Steel Teeth" (1955-02-17), starred John Dehner; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Waiting" (1955-02-22), starred Vivi Janis, Helen Cleve, Charlotte; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier, though the broadcast log notes: Lawrence Show moves to Tuesday at 8:00-8:25pm.
A group of children playing in an open field swear they can hear a woman's screams coming from somewhere beneath the ground. Adults dismiss it as nothing but a child's overactive imagination — but the screaming doesn't stop just because no one believes them. (after Ray Bradbury)
This Suspense broadcast, "Nobody Ever Quits" (1955-03-08), starred Tom Mckee; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "The Game" (1955-03-15), starred Sam Edwards, Gil Stratton; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "The Cellar" (1955-03-22), starred Eric Snowden; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Give Me Liberty" (1955-03-29), starred Tony Barrett; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
Neighborhood children start playing a new game they call 'Invasion,' full of rules and rituals only kids seem to understand. The adults around them find it charming, even as the game edges closer to something that might not be pretend at all. (after Ray Bradbury)
This Suspense broadcast, "Lunch Kit" (1955-04-12), starred Harry Bartell; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Speed Trap" (1955-04-19), starred Eddie Firestone, Larry Thor; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Sight Unseen" (1955-04-26), starred Terrence Demarnay, Ben Wright; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Remember Me" (1955-05-03), starred Tony Barrett, Charlotte Lawrence; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Going, Going, Gone" (1955-05-10), starred Tom Brown, Eve McVey, Joseph Kearns; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Lili and the Colonel" (1955-05-17), starred Ramsey Hill, Joan Alderson; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "I Saw Myself Running" (1955-05-24), starred Charlotte Lawrence, John Dehner; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
A schoolteacher on an ocean cruise becomes the unwilling recipient of a dying sailor's last message, and word of what she now knows travels fast. Soon she's being pursued by people determined to hear it for themselves, by whatever means that takes.
Doctor Frankenstein succeeds in creating life from lifeless matter. His closest friend, a clergyman, recoils from what he's done and urges him toward an agonizing choice: destroy what he's made before it costs everyone dearly. (after Mary Shelley)
This Suspense broadcast, "The Whole Town's Sleeping" (1955-06-14), starred Jeanette Nolan, William Conrad; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Over the Bounding Main" (1955-06-21), starred Tony Barrett; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "The Holdout" (1955-06-28), starred Harry Bartell, Parley Baer; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "The Cave-In" (1955-07-05), starred Ben Wright; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
A meteor strike breaks a spaceship apart, flinging its dozen-odd crew off into the void, each one drifting alone on a separate course with no way back together. For as long as their suit radios can still reach one another, the story lingers on what gets said between men who know exactly how much time they have left. (after Ray Bradbury)
A married couple driving home after a night at the movies discover they aren't alone in the car — a wanted killer has been hiding in the backseat the whole time, and now he's the one calling the shots.
This Suspense broadcast, "The Greatest Thief in the World" (1955-07-26), starred Ben Wright; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
A couple stranded by a storm takes refuge in a remote, forbidding castle -- exactly the wrong place to seek shelter, as it turns out. Its owner is a scientist obsessed with a death ray of his own invention, and he's been waiting for precisely this kind of opportunity: a living subject to test it on.
This Suspense broadcast, "Love, Honor or Murder" (1955-08-09), starred Charlotte Lawrence, William Conrad; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
Two men are left to winter over together at an isolated Arctic research station, cut off from everyone else until spring. Cabin fever and old grievances prove just as dangerous as the cold outside, and each man starts to wonder which threat -- the weather or his companion -- he should worry about more.
This Suspense broadcast, "The Beetle and Mr. Bottle" (1955-08-23), starred Eric Snowden; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
A newspaper columnist, a beat reporter, and a homicide detective are each chasing the same string of unsolved killings when they're all sent the same eerie invitation: show up alone at a chapel at the stroke of midnight to meet the killer face to face. Curiosity -- or professional pride -- makes turning it down unthinkable for any of them.
This Suspense broadcast, "Strange for a Killer" (1955-09-06), starred John Dehner; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "The Story of Poison" (1955-09-13), starred Joseph Kearns; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Stool Pigeon" (1955-09-20), starred John Dehner, Parley Baer, Joseph; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Frightened City" (1955-09-27), starred Harry Bartell; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Goodbye, Miss Lizzie Borden" (1955-10-04), starred Paula Winslowe, Virginia Gregg, Irene; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
A quiet evening at home turns upside down for an otherwise unremarkable family when their backyard suddenly plays host to something that fell out of the sky and defies any easy explanation. How far an ordinary household will bend to make sense of it drives the rest of the hour.
Desperate for fifteen hundred dollars before the clock strikes midnight -- the price of staying alive -- a young man turns to his mother, only to learn her savings are already gone. Cornered, he starts weighing increasingly dangerous options to raise the sum in time.
This Suspense broadcast, "To None a Deadly Drug" (1955-10-25), starred Harry Bartell, Charlotte Lawrence; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
An expedition sets out to conquer one of the world's highest peaks, only for the climb to curdle into something darker: a member of the party turns up murdered, with the culprit presumably still roped in among the rest.
America's newest nuclear submarine, carrying missiles capable of leveling New York, falls into hostile hands. With the vessel now a weapon aimed at an American city, the race is on to stop it before it can fire -- even if stopping it means destroying it outright.
This Suspense broadcast, "Once a Murderer" (1955-11-15), starred Ben Wright; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
A spy crisscrosses the country by bus, using the anonymity of the open road to pass classified defense and government information to a string of contacts working for foreign powers along the way.
This Suspense broadcast, "This Will Kill You" (1955-11-29), starred Sam Edwards; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "When the Bough Breaks" (1955-12-06), starred Virginia Gregg, Stacy Harris; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "A Present for Benny" (1955-12-13), starred Jack Kruschen; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "The Cave" (1955-12-20), starred Richard Beals, Billy Chapin, John; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "The Mystery of the Marie Celeste" (1955-12-27), starred John Dehner; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
1956
This Suspense broadcast, "The Eavesdropper" (1956-01-03), starred Lawrence Dobkin, Charlotte Lawrence; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Two Platinum Capsules" (1956-01-10), starred Stacy Harris, Edgar Barrier; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "End of the String" (1956-01-17), starred Stacy Harris; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "The Cellar Door" (1956-01-24), starred Parley Baer, Paula Winslowe; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
A ship sets out to unravel the enduring mystery of the lost Franklin expedition, only to become trapped in ice itself. What began as a rescue turns into a fight for the crew's own survival through a punishing polar winter.
This Suspense broadcast, "Variations on a Theme" (1956-02-07), starred Parley Baer; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
A young married couple living under Communist rule in Czechoslovakia hears freedom described night after night on Western radio broadcasts, until the idea becomes a decision: to risk a dangerous crossing beyond the Iron Curtain, whatever the cost of being caught.
This Suspense broadcast, "Hollywood Hostages" (1956-02-21), starred Eve McVey, Tom Brown; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
Robert Falcon Scott and his party reach the South Pole only to find Roald Amundsen's flag already planted there. Their disappointment is only the beginning: the journey back proves far more punishing than the outward trek, testing what's left of their strength and resolve. (drawn from Scott's own expedition diary)
This Suspense broadcast, "Quiet Night" (1956-03-06), starred Stacy Harris; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "The Groom of the Ladder" (1956-03-13), starred Hans Conried; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Gallardo" (1956-03-20), starred Vic Perrin, Tony Barrett; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "The Murderess" (1956-03-27), starred Cathy Lewis, John Dehner; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
In Kenya, a novice trophy hunter merely wounds a lion instead of killing it outright, leaving the animal alive, furious, and now the professional hunter's problem to solve. Finishing the job forces the seasoned professional to confront something new: real fear, on a hunt where he's supposed to be the one in control.
This Suspense broadcast, "Lonely Heart" (1956-04-10), starred Ben Wright; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "The Seventh Letter" (1956-04-17), starred Stacy Harris, Parley Baer; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "A Case of Nerves" (1956-04-24), starred Parley Baer; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
A Victorian London reporter, chasing a good story, volunteers to spend the night alone in Madame Tussaud's Hall of Murderers, surrounded by wax effigies of history's most notorious killers. It seems like harmless newspaper stunt journalism -- until the small hours suggest otherwise. (after A.M. Burrage)
This Suspense broadcast, "The Phones Die First" (1956-05-08), starred Harry Bartell; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "The Death Parade" (1956-05-15), starred Paula Winslowe; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Fragile-Contents Death" (1956-05-22), starred Vic Perrin; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "The Flame" (1956-05-29), starred Tony Barrett; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "The Twelfth Rose" (1956-06-05), starred Paula Winslowe; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "A Matter of Timing" (1956-06-12), starred William Conrad, Stacy Harris; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
Aboard a 19th-century prison ship bound for the Australian penal colonies, the convicts chained below decide they have nothing left to lose. Their revolt puts the entire vessel -- crew, cargo, and captives alike -- in mortal danger somewhere in open water. (after Weston Martyr)
This Suspense broadcast, "The Treasure Chest of Don Jose" (1956-06-26), starred Edgar Barrier; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
In postwar London, an engineer who's been working on a top-secret aircraft project turns up dying in the back seat of a car, and no one can say how he got there. A veteran detective takes up the case, following a trail that has everything to do with the secret the dead man was keeping.
This Suspense broadcast, "Want Ad" (1956-07-11), starred Stacy Harris; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier, though the broadcast log notes: Show moves to Wednesday at 8:30-9:00pm.
This Suspense broadcast, "The Man Who Threw Acid" (1956-07-18), starred Tony Barrett, William Conrad; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "The Tramp" (1956-07-25), starred Ben Wright; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "The Massacre at Little Big Horn" (1956-08-01), starred Stacy Harris; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Double Identity" (1956-08-08), starred Vic Perrin, William Conrad; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
A man's dreams pull him steadily backward in time, into an intimate friendship with Alexander Hamilton and toward the fateful duel that awaits him against Aaron Burr--history replaying itself, night after night, in his sleep.
This Suspense broadcast, "Hold-Up" (1956-08-29), starred Joseph Kearns; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier, though the broadcast log notes: Show of 8-22 pre-empted.
A middle-aged bachelor living under Communist rule in Poland decides he's run out of legal ways to leave. Hijacking a passenger airliner, he reasons, might be his only realistic route to freedom -- and he sets about turning that desperate plan into reality.
This Suspense broadcast, "A Case of Identity" (1956-09-25), starred Parley Baer, Michael Ann Barrett; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier, though the broadcast log notes: Show moves to Tuesday 8:30-9:00pm.
This Suspense broadcast, "Waiting" (1956-10-02), starred Vivi Janis, Paula Winslowe, Charlotte; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
A miner blamed by many for a past disaster is drawn back to the very site of that catastrophe, tasked with working a vein of ore the locals consider forbidden by taboo. Old guilt and old superstition both stand in his way as he tries to finish what the taboo says shouldn't be started at all.
This Suspense broadcast, "The Prophecy of Bertha Abbott" (1956-10-16), starred Sam Edwards, Richard Crenna; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "The Doll" (1956-10-23), starred Patty McCormack; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier, though the broadcast log notes: Stars: BEGINING OF 15th YEAR ON AIR & FIRST SHOW ON TAPE. William N. Robson takes over as Producer. Features: Mary Jane Croft, Dick Beals, Dick La Grand, Louis Van Rooten and Shepard Menkin.
This Suspense broadcast, "Red Cloud Mesa" (1956-10-30), starred Reed Hadley; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
A lonely railway signalman keeps watch over a tunnel where something otherworldly has taken to appearing -- a spectral figure that seems bent on warning him of disaster, though its meaning stays maddeningly out of reach. The visitations wear at his sanity long before their purpose becomes clear. (after Charles Dickens)
Three keepers hold a lighthouse rising alone out of open water when a derelict ship wrecks against the surrounding reef and unleashes a swarm of giant rats onto the rock. Starved and unstoppable, the rats besiege the tower level after level, and the keepers watch their defenses fail one barrier at a time. (after George G. Toudouze)
This Suspense broadcast, "The Long Night" (1956-11-18), starred Frank Lovejoy, Stacy Harris, Byron; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
A hotel guest in New Orleans walks off with a Bible from his room on what seems like a whim, not realizing the book is worth far more than its cover suggests. Overnight he becomes the target of people willing to do very dangerous things to get it back.
This Suspense broadcast, "The Rim of Terror" (1956-12-02), starred Barbara Whiting, Ben Wright; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
A Confederate saboteur is strung up from a bridge by Union soldiers, and the execution seems to fail when the rope gives way beneath him. Free-falling into the river below, he has to decide, in the confusion of the moment, whether the reprieve is real -- and whether he can outrun pursuit long enough to reach home. (after Ambrose Bierce)
This Suspense broadcast, "Eyewitness" (1956-12-16), starred Howard Duff, Joseph Kearns; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
A mild-mannered botany professor quietly digs a pit in his cellar, ostensibly for a plant project, while his sharp-eyed wife busies herself planning their holiday travel. The hole, as it happens, is exactly the right size for a body.
1957
Spinning a convincing enough story, a fur trapper talks his way past a ship's captain and books passage for cargo no sane passenger list should include: one of the deadliest venomous snakes on earth. Once the animal is loose belowdecks, the voyage stops being routine for anyone aboard.
No plot synopsis survives for this broadcast in the sources consulted for this dossier -- Plot Spot could not even confirm which underlying story it adapts.
This Suspense broadcast, "Second Class Passenger" (1957-01-20), starred Sterling Hollaway; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Freedom This Way" (1957-01-27), starred Hans Conried; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Frankie and Johnny" (1957-02-03), starred Margaret Whiting, Shepard Menken; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
A couple pushes deep into an Incan tomb long considered sacred ground, ignoring warnings from the locals who know better. When their guide betrays them and seals the entrance shut, escape means threading a gauntlet of hidden traps and treacherous drops just to find any way back to open air.
This Suspense broadcast, "Murder and Aunt Delia" (1957-02-17), starred Glenn Ford; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "227 Minutes of Hate" (1957-02-24), starred Charles McGraw; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
Convicted of murdering his wife, a man is being transported toward execution when the train carrying him derails, handing him an unlooked-for shot at freedom. He seizes it — not to run for good, but to track down the real killer who let him take the blame.
Rumors of a hidden diamond mine draw two men into the desert, even though everyone who has gone looking before them has simply vanished without a trace. Locals blame a long-dead cavalry officer, still said to patrol the site and drive off anyone who trespasses.
A test pilot flying an experimental high-altitude aircraft vanishes from radar with barely ten minutes of fuel aboard -- and reappears ten hours later, alive and unharmed, which shouldn't be possible. Harder still to accept is his account of what filled those missing hours: contact with beings from elsewhere, and a warning he's now been tasked to deliver to the rest of us.
This Suspense broadcast, "Shooting Star" (1957-03-24), starred June Lockhart; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "A Good Neighbor" (1957-03-31), starred Jeff Chandler, Virginia Gregg; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "The Vanishing Lady" (1957-04-07), starred Vanessa Brown; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Thou Shalt Not Commit" (1957-04-14), starred Victor Jory; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Chicken Feed" (1957-04-21), starred Lloyd Bridges; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
Soviet agents pressure a celebrated Hungarian physician into fleeing westward — not toward freedom, but toward a job they need done. Waiting for him across the Austrian border is a former patient he's been ordered to kill.
This Suspense broadcast, "Celebration" (1957-05-05), starred Joy Lefleur; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Tarawa Was Tough" (1957-05-12), starred John Lund; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Death and Miss Turner" (1957-05-19), starred Agnes Moorehead; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "The Big Day" (1957-05-26), starred John McIntyre; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Crossing Paris" (1957-06-02), starred Hans Conried, John Dehner; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "The Green and Gold String" (1957-06-09), starred Vincent Price; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Trial by Jury" (1957-06-16), starred Nancy Kelly; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "A Load of Dynamite" (1957-06-23), starred Bartlett Robinson; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "The Yellow Wallpaper" (1957-06-30), starred Agnes Moorehead; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Alibi" (1957-07-07), starred Everett Sloane; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
Running a wartime salvage operation off the English coast, a crew hauls survivors out of the Channel's wrecked shipping. Only after they've brought one man aboard do they realize he's a German agent with sabotage on his mind.
This Suspense broadcast, "America's Boyfriend" (1957-07-21), starred Mercedes McCambridge; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Murder on Mike" (1957-07-28), starred Raymond Burr; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Fleshpeddler" (1957-08-04), starred De Forest Kelly; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Pigeon in the Cage" (1957-08-11), starred Lloyd Bridges, Ellen Morgan; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Peanut Brittle" (1957-08-18), starred Skip Homeier, John Dehner; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
A stubborn South American plantation owner refuses to abandon his land even as a vast, devouring column of army ants closes in on it. What follows is a brutal test of engineering and will against sheer, unstoppable numbers. (after Carl Stephenson)
A former pilot signs on for an experimental program that cuts off the senses entirely, hoping to test whether isolation can sharpen psychic ability. What he finds in the silence proves far stranger, and far more dangerous, than he expected.
This Suspense broadcast, "Old Army Buddy" (1957-09-08), starred Victor Jory; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Night on Red Mountain" (1957-09-15), starred Richard Crenna, Anne Diamond, Norma; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Shadow on the Wall" (1957-09-22), starred Jackie Kelk; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Vamp Till Dead" (1957-09-29), starred Venessa Brown; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
A mishap at a remote nuclear testing ground sets an armed device ticking toward early detonation. With the countdown running and no way to simply walk away, the crew on site has to find a fix before time runs out.
This Suspense broadcast, "The Well-Dressed Corpse" (1957-10-13), starred Margaret Whiting, William Conrad; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
Confined to her bed with only a telephone connecting her to the world, Mrs. Stevenson picks up a crossed line and overhears two strangers calmly plotting a killing. The police brush her off as hysterical, leaving her to piece together, alone, whether the murder they're planning is her own.
An explorer stumbles into a hidden valley deep in South America, home to a people who have lived for generations without sight. When he falls for one of the village women, her neighbors decide the one flaw left to correct is the stranger's working eyes. (after H.G. Wells)
This Suspense broadcast, "Firing Run" (1957-11-03), starred Ruth Hussey; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
A prisoner of the Spanish Inquisition wakes in absolute darkness to find the walls, the dark, and a swinging blade above him are all part of a slow-built machine of torment. Escape means outthinking a system built to make it impossible. (after Edgar Allan Poe)
This Suspense broadcast, "The City That Was" (1957-11-17), starred Francis X. Bushman; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "The Star of Thessaly" (1957-11-24), starred Ray Noble; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Jet Stream" (1957-12-01), starred Frank Lovejoy; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Speed Trap" (1957-12-08), starred Everett Sloane, William Conrad; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
A Confederate saboteur is strung up from a bridge by Union soldiers, and the execution seems to fail when the rope gives way beneath him. Free-falling into the river below, he has to decide, in the confusion of the moment, whether the reprieve is real -- and whether he can outrun pursuit long enough to reach home. (after Ambrose Bierce)
No episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this Suspense broadcast, "Dog Star" (1957-12-22); the broadcast log notes: First Radio appearance of Evelyn Rudy. Christmas Program.
This Suspense broadcast, "Never Steal a Butcher's Wife" (1957-12-29), starred Cathy Lewis, William Conrad; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
1958
After a bitter quarrel with her husband, a woman finds herself living through something impossible — an entire week seems to vanish around her. When she comes back to herself, her husband is gone and strangers have already moved into what used to be their apartment.
This Suspense broadcast, "The Island" (1958-01-12), starred John Lund; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "The Crowded Void" (1958-01-19), starred Bartett Robinson, John Dehner; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
An actor renting a room in an old boarding house starts dreaming, night after night, about the woman who lived there before him. In these visions she pleads for his help — she vanished once, and something about that disappearance was never properly solved.
This Suspense broadcast, "The Silver Frame" (1958-02-02), starred Charles McGraw; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "The Long Shot" (1958-02-09), starred Herbert Marshall; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "One Chef Well Done" (1958-02-16), starred Maurice Marsac; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Five Buck Tip" (1958-02-23), starred Karl Swenson, Cathy Lewis; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Never Follow a Banjo Act" (1958-03-02), starred Margaret Whiting; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "The Chain" (1958-03-09), starred Agnes Moorehead, Jay Novello; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
In Kenya, a novice trophy hunter merely wounds a lion instead of killing it outright, leaving the animal alive, furious, and now the professional hunter's problem to solve. Finishing the job forces the seasoned professional to confront something new: real fear, on a hunt where he's supposed to be the one in control.
This Suspense broadcast, "Affair at Loveland Pass" (1958-03-23), starred Jim Ameche, Vanessa Brown; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
Convinced she's about to die, a woman walks into a funeral parlor and calmly orders her own coffin. The alarmed mortician calls the police, fearing a suicide in the making, and the detective who investigates finds her sharing a house with a sister whose grip on reality seems none too steady.
This Suspense broadcast, "Just One Happy Little Family" (1958-04-06), starred Ray Noble, Lee Patrick; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Win, Place or Die" (1958-04-13), starred Frank Lovejoy; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Alibi Me" (1958-04-20), starred Stan Freberg; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Winner Lose All" (1958-04-27), starred John Lund; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Sundown" (1958-05-04), starred Jackie Kelk; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Subway Stop" (1958-05-11), starred Skip Homeier; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
Neighborhood children start playing a new game they call 'Invasion,' full of rules and rituals only kids seem to understand. The adults around them find it charming, even as the game edges closer to something that might not be pretend at all. (after Ray Bradbury)
A beatnik known on the street only as 'The Tennis Shoe' finds himself the prime suspect in a killing he had nothing to do with, with little more than his own nerve to clear his name.
This Suspense broadcast, "Rave Notice" (1958-06-01), starred Vincent Price; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
An invisibility experiment goes sideways when its chimpanzee test subject slips its cage and vanishes into the world unseen. One of the lab's less scrupulous employees dons the same treatment to chase it down — and figures, since no one can see him anyway, he might as well help himself along the way.
This Suspense broadcast, "Strange for a Killer" (1958-06-15), starred Dan O'Herlihy; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "The Last Kilometer" (1958-06-22), starred Marsha Hunt; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Rain Tonight" (1958-06-29), starred John McIntyre; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Rub Down and Out" (1958-07-06), starred Lloyd Bridges, William Conrad; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "The Long Night" (1958-07-13), starred Frank Lovejoy, Barney Philips, Peter; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
A man has worked out exactly how he'll kill his best friend and take the man's wife for himself. Just as he raises the gun, though, an experimental drug he's taken finally takes hold, opening his mind to everyone's thoughts and throwing his careful plan into chaos.
This Suspense broadcast, "The Steel River Prison Break" (1958-07-27), starred Bartlett Robinson; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
With the world teetering toward a third world war, the military races to put up a satellite that could silence every enemy transmission on the ground. One of the scientists building it is visited by the ghost of an old army comrade, who wants the whole project stopped.
Sophronia Winters gave the best years of her life to nursing an ailing father, and now that duty's finally behind her, she heads to Florida chasing sunshine and a second chance at happiness. Hiram seems to be exactly the answer to her prayers — or he seems to be.
This Suspense broadcast, "The Bridge" (1958-08-17), starred Cathy Lewis; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Remember Me?" (1958-08-24), starred Jackie Cooper; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "The Whole Town's Sleeping" (1958-08-31), starred Agnes Moorehead, William Conrad; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "The Man Who Won the War" (1958-09-07), starred Herbert Marshall; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
A troop of U.S. cavalrymen rides deep into Sioux territory on a search-and-rescue mission, fully aware that every mile takes them further into hostile, unforgiving ground.
This Suspense broadcast, "No Hiding Place" (1958-09-21), starred Jim Ameche; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
A mishap at a remote nuclear testing ground sets an armed device ticking toward early detonation. With the countdown running and no way to simply walk away, the crew on site has to find a fix before time runs out.
In an unnamed country at an unspecified time, a squad of secret police tightens its net around the last holdout of a resistance cell, closing in for what looks like the rebels' final stand.
This Suspense broadcast, "The Treasure Chest of Don Jose" (1958-10-11), starred Raymond Burr; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
Three keepers hold a lighthouse rising alone out of open water when a derelict ship wrecks against the surrounding reef and unleashes a swarm of giant rats onto the rock. Starved and unstoppable, the rats besiege the tower level after level, and the keepers watch their defenses fail one barrier at a time. (after George G. Toudouze)
This Suspense broadcast, "Headshrinker" (1958-10-25), starred Helmut Dantine, Nina Foch; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Dealings of Mr. Markheim" (1958-11-01), starred James Mason, Pamala Mason; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Two for the Road" (1958-11-08), starred William Conrad, Charles McGraw; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Affair at Aden" (1958-11-15), starred Frank Lovejoy; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Dear Niece" (1958-11-23), starred Lee Patrick; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier, though the broadcast log notes: Show moves to Sunday 5:30pm.
This Suspense broadcast, "A Statement of Fact" (1958-11-30), starred Cathy Lewis, William Conrad; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Tom Dooley" (1958-12-07), starred Robert Horton; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "For Old Times Sake" (1958-12-14), starred John Lund, Virginia Gregg; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Out for Christmas" (1958-12-21), starred Raymond Burr; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
A small-time crook pawns his wife's jewelry to buy a watch rumored to bend time to its own schedule. He's certain he's finally found the perfect angle for getting away with anything — until he learns that controlling time comes with a price of its own.
1959
This Suspense broadcast, "Don't Call Me Mother" (1959-01-04), starred Agnes Moorehead; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Night on Red Mountain" (1959-01-11), starred Richard Crenna; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Ride Down Cajon" (1959-01-18), starred William Bishop; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Four of a Kind" (1959-01-25), starred Elliott Reid; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
A researcher perfecting a technique to shrink cancerous cells makes the reckless choice to try the process on himself. The results are not what he hoped for.
This Suspense broadcast, "Death Notice" (1959-02-08), starred Victor Jory; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
A lonely railway signalman keeps watch over a tunnel where something otherworldly has taken to appearing -- a spectral figure that seems bent on warning him of disaster, though its meaning stays maddeningly out of reach. The visitations wear at his sanity long before their purpose becomes clear. (after Charles Dickens)
This Suspense broadcast, "Star over Hong Kong" (1959-02-22), starred Marie Wilson, Ben Wright; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
A Victorian London reporter, chasing a good story, volunteers to spend the night alone in Madame Tussaud's Hall of Murderers, surrounded by wax effigies of history's most notorious killers. It seems like harmless newspaper stunt journalism -- until the small hours suggest otherwise. (after A.M. Burrage)
This Suspense broadcast, "The Madman of Manhattan" (1959-03-08), starred Myron McCormick; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Death in Box 234" (1959-03-15), starred Frank Lovejoy; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Script by Mark Brady" (1959-03-22), starred Marie Windsor; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "John Barbey and Son" (1959-03-29), starred John McIntyre; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Too Hot to Live" (1959-04-12), starred Van Heflin; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier, though the broadcast log notes: Show of 4-5 pre-empted.
This Suspense broadcast, "See How He Runs" (1959-04-19), starred Jim Backus; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Deep, Deep Is My Love" (1959-04-26), starred Lloyd Bridges; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Amateur" (1959-05-03), starred Jackie Cooper; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
A storm strands a couple in their car on a lonely stretch of road, with nowhere to go and no help in sight. Somewhere in the woods nearby, an escaped murderer is on the loose — and the night is far from over.
This Suspense broadcast, "A Friend of Daddy's" (1959-05-17), starred Frank Lovejoy; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Spoils for Victor" (1959-05-24), starred Robert Horton; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
Restless for something bigger than army life, two soldiers strike out past British India's frontier, determined to carve a kingdom of their own out of the tribal lands beyond it. Ambition and sheer nerve carry them further than either could have planned. (after Rudyard Kipling)
A prisoner of the Spanish Inquisition wakes in absolute darkness to find the walls, the dark, and a swinging blade above him are all part of a slow-built machine of torment. Escape means outthinking a system built to make it impossible. (after Edgar Allan Poe)
This Suspense broadcast, "Drive-In" (1959-06-14), starred Margaret Whiting; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Ivy Is a Lovely Name" (1959-06-21), starred Frank Lovejoy; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Analytical Hour" (1959-06-28), starred Jack Carson; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Blood Is Thicker" (1959-07-05), starred Everett Sloane; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Eyewitness" (1959-07-12), starred John Lund; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
A Confederate saboteur is strung up from a bridge by Union soldiers, and the execution seems to fail when the rope gives way beneath him. Free-falling into the river below, he has to decide, in the confusion of the moment, whether the reprieve is real -- and whether he can outrun pursuit long enough to reach home. (after Ambrose Bierce)
A decade after her testimony helped convict a vengeful criminal, a woman still flinches at his long-ago vow to make her pay. When a new elevator operator moves into her building, she becomes certain he's the same man, somehow free — though whether he's real or a fear grown too large to see past is another question entirely.
This Suspense broadcast, "Red Cloud Mesa" (1959-08-02), starred Joseph Cotten; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Everything Will Be Different" (1959-08-09), starred Cathy Lewis, Peter Leeds; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
A beatnik known on the street only as 'The Tennis Shoe' finds himself the prime suspect in a killing he had nothing to do with, with little more than his own nerve to clear his name.
This Suspense broadcast, "Headshrinker" (1959-08-23), starred Agnes Moorehead; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier, though the broadcast log notes: LAST ROBSON, SHOW MOVES TO N.Y. next week.
This Suspense broadcast, "A Matter of Execution" (1959-08-30), starred Peter Lazer, Santos Ortega, Ginger; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier, though the broadcast log notes: Jones Series returns to New York.
This Suspense broadcast, "After the Movies" (1959-09-06), starred Kevin McCarthy; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Death and the Escort" (1959-09-13), starred Don Mclaughlin, Elspeth Eric; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "The Beetle and Mr. Bottle" (1959-09-20), starred John Gibson; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Room 203" (1959-10-04), starred Ellen McCrea, Bernard Grant, Ralph; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier, though the broadcast log notes: Bell. Show of 9-27 pre-empted.
This Suspense broadcast, "Infanticide" (1959-10-11), starred Santos Ortega, Ralph Bell; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
Pressured to breathe new life into his flagging comic strip, a cartoonist dreams up a fresh villain — modeled, more than he first realizes, on the imaginary bogeyman that terrified him as a small child. The past he thought he'd outgrown starts bleeding onto the page.
This Suspense broadcast, "Easy Victim" (1959-10-25), starred Paul Mcgrath, Elpeth Eric, Robert; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
The first man to leave Earth's atmosphere finds the experience so overwhelming — the weightlessness, the wonder, the sheer freedom of it — that when it comes time to bring him home, he wants no part of returning to the ground.
This Suspense broadcast, "The Last Trip" (1959-11-08), starred Ralph Bell, Connie Lembke; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Companion" (1959-11-15), starred Virginia Payne, Elizabeth Lawrence; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "The Thimble" (1959-11-22), starred Joe DeSantis, Teri Keane, Whitfield; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
A stubborn South American plantation owner refuses to abandon his land even as a vast, devouring column of army ants closes in on it. What follows is a brutal test of engineering and will against sheer, unstoppable numbers. (after Carl Stephenson)
This Suspense broadcast, "Dynamite Run" (1959-12-06), starred Mason Adams, Larry Haines; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
An explorer stumbles into a hidden valley deep in South America, home to a people who have lived for generations without sight. When he falls for one of the village women, her neighbors decide the one flaw left to correct is the stranger's working eyes. (after H.G. Wells)
A GI thumbs a lift on a lonely wartime road one Christmas Eve, only for the truck's driver -- a fellow serviceman on a strange errand of his own -- to turn the ride into something far stranger than a simple favor.
This Suspense broadcast, "Moonlight Sail" (1959-12-27), starred Frank Thomas, Luis Van Rooten; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
1960
Neighborhood children start playing a new game they call 'Invasion,' full of rules and rituals only kids seem to understand. The adults around them find it charming, even as the game edges closer to something that might not be pretend at all. (after Ray Bradbury)
This Suspense broadcast, "The Long Night" (1960-01-10), starred Ellen McCrea, Bill Adams, Sam Gray; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "The Time, the Place, and the Death" (1960-01-17), starred Eric Dressler; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Turnabout" (1960-01-24), starred Leonard Stone; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "End of the Road" (1960-01-31), starred Bernard Grant; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
Confined to her bed with only a telephone connecting her to the world, Mrs. Stevenson picks up a crossed line and overhears two strangers calmly plotting a killing. The police brush her off as hysterical, leaving her to piece together, alone, whether the murder they're planning is her own.
This Suspense broadcast, "Crank Letter" (1960-02-21), starred Lyle Sudrow, Les Damon; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Lt. Langer's Last Collection" (1960-02-28), starred Frank Mellano, Murrey Forbes; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Sleep Is for Children" (1960-03-06), starred Elspeth Eric, Ralph Bell, Mason Adams; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Revolution" (1960-03-13), starred Phillip Meader, Rosemary Rice; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Talk About Caruso" (1960-03-20), starred Mason Adams, Robert Dryden, Stuart; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "A Coffin for Mr. Cash" (1960-03-27), starred Leon Janney, Mandel Kramer; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
Spinning a convincing enough story, a fur trapper talks his way past a ship's captain and books passage for cargo no sane passenger list should include: one of the deadliest venomous snakes on earth. Once the animal is loose belowdecks, the voyage stops being routine for anyone aboard.
This Suspense broadcast, "Two Horse Parlay" (1960-04-10), starred Lyle Sudrow, Ellen McCrea; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
Washington's military and civilian leadership receive an ultimatum from an unnamed foreign power: capitulate by dusk, or a nuclear strike follows. The clock-race drama that follows plays out at the highest levels of government under an impossible deadline.
This Suspense broadcast, "One More Shot" (1960-04-24), starred Joseph Julian, Frank Thomas, Jim Boles; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Bitter Grapes" (1960-05-01), starred Phillip Meader, Rita Loyd; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "The Legend of Robbie" (1960-05-08), starred Larry Robinson, George Matthews; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Deadman's Story" (1960-05-15), starred Kevin McCarthy, Sam Gray; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Out the Window" (1960-05-22), starred Santos Ortega, Ginger Jones; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "The Perfect Plan" (1960-05-29), starred George Petrie, Elizabeth Lawrence; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Two Came Back" (1960-06-05), starred Robert Readick, Connie Lembke, Richard; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Elementals" (1960-06-12), starred Phillip Meader, Santos Ortega, Ellen; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Sixty Grand Missing" (1960-06-19), starred Bernard Grant, Ralph Bell; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Daisy Chain" (1960-06-26), starred Joan Lorring, John Clark, Jane Ross; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Bon Voyage" (1960-07-03), starred Robert Readick; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
A crew of space explorers sets down on a distant world expecting to find a living civilization, and instead finds a graveyard — scorched, silent ruins where an entire culture once stood.
This Suspense broadcast, "Memorial Bridge" (1960-07-17), starred Robert Dryden, Charlotte Manson, Sam; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Cold Canvas" (1960-07-24), starred William Redfield, Ginger Jones; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "End Game" (1960-07-31), starred Santos Ortega; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "The Big Dive" (1960-08-07), starred Leon Janney, Rosemary Rice, Sam Gray; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Night Ferry to Paris" (1960-08-14), starred William Redfield, Robert Dryden; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Truck Stop" (1960-08-21), starred Mandel Kramer, Larry Haines, Teri; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "The Girl in the Powder Blue Jag" (1960-08-28), starred Rita Loyd; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "A Rest for Emily" (1960-09-04), starred Abby Lewis, William Smith, Ralph Bell; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Rakovsky's Rubles" (1960-09-11), starred Santos Ortega; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "A Statement of Fact" (1960-09-18), starred Rita Lloyd; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
Two men build a time machine and travel back to 1908 with one goal in mind: eliminate a young Adolf Hitler before he can ever rise to power and set the Nazi era in motion.
This Suspense broadcast, "Ivy Is a Lovely Name for a Girl" (1960-10-02), starred Phillip Meader; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Witness for Death" (1960-10-09), starred William Redfield, Frank Thomas jr; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Inferno" (1960-10-16), starred Mandel Kramer, Richard Holland, Ellen; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
A decade after her testimony helped convict a vengeful criminal, a woman still flinches at his long-ago vow to make her pay. When a new elevator operator moves into her building, she becomes certain he's the same man, somehow free — though whether he's real or a fear grown too large to see past is another question entirely.
This Suspense broadcast, "The City That Was" (1960-10-30), starred Michael Kane, Bernard Grant; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
A struggling pulp writer can't get any work done for the strange, beautiful singing drifting down from the apartment above his own. When curiosity finally sends him upstairs to meet the singer, her husband coldly informs him that she's been dead for years.
This Suspense broadcast, "The Man Who Murders People" (1960-11-13), starred Vivian Smollen, George Petrie; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Night on Red Mountain" (1960-11-20), starred Mandel Kramer, Lawson Zerbe, John; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Home Is Where You Find It" (1960-11-27), starred Mandel Kramer; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
1961
This Suspense broadcast, "Call Me at Half Past" (1961-06-25), starred Bernard Grant, Elspeth Eric, Frank; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier, though the broadcast log notes: Milano, Freddy Chandler, Jack Grimes, Lawson Zerbe, Sarah Fussell BEGINNING OF NEW RUN SUSPENSE returned on Sundays at 6:35-7:00pm. Bruno Zirato jr. became the new Director.
This Suspense broadcast, "Night of the Storm" (1961-07-02), starred Rosemary Rice; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Epitaph" (1961-07-09), starred Paul McGrath; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "The Man Who Knew How to Hate" (1961-07-16), starred Leon Janney, Joan Lorring; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Stranger with My Face" (1961-07-23), starred Bernard Grant; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "You Can Die Laughing" (1961-07-30), starred Larry Haynes, Evelyn Juster; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
A couple settle happily into a charming rented house in the country, only to start receiving phone calls from an unseen caller with a distinctly otherworldly edge — one who wants them out, and isn't shy about saying so.
This Suspense broadcast, "Murder Is a Matter of Opinion" (1961-08-20), starred Phillip Meader, Bill Lipton; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier, though the broadcast log notes: Show of.
This Suspense broadcast, "Sold to Satan" (1961-08-27), starred Kermit Murdock; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
Every parent has wondered what their children are really up to behind a closed bedroom door. For one family, the answer turns out to be considerably more ambitious than any ordinary secret — nothing less than a scheme to take over the world.
Touring through Mecca, a couple brushes off a shopkeeper's frantic warnings and buys a small green idol as a keepsake. The vendor insists the statuette carries the ancient curse of Ramkar, and the couple is about to learn he wasn't exaggerating.
This Suspense broadcast, "The Man in the Fog" (1961-09-24), starred Robert Dryden, Ethel Everett; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "No Hiding Place" (1961-10-01), starred Court Benson, Grace Matthews; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Dreams" (1961-10-08), starred Phillip Sterling; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Seeds of Disaster" (1961-10-15), starred Bernard Grant; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "A Witness to Murder" (1961-10-22), starred Joan Lorring, Leon Janney; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Death of an Old Flame" (1961-10-29), starred Larry Haynes, Teri Keane, Ralph Bell; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
A wronged husband stops nursing his grievance and starts acting on it, engineering a scheme of revenge aimed squarely at both his unfaithful wife and the man she's been seeing. Vows, it turns out, cut both ways.
This Suspense broadcast, "The Imposters" (1961-11-12), starred Reynold Osborne, Cherita Bauer; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
Two treasure hunters finally track down a legendary lost city of gold buried deep in Mayan territory. What's waiting for them in its depths turns the discovery of a lifetime into a trap neither of them may escape.
This Suspense broadcast, "Man Trap" (1961-11-26), starred Don McLaughlin, Ralph Bell; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "The Luck of the Tiger Eye" (1961-12-03), starred Joan Lorring, Leon Janney; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "And So to Sleep My Love" (1961-12-10), starred William Redfield; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Yuletide Miracle" (1961-12-17), starred Larry Haynes; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Old Man" (1961-12-31), starred Leon Janney, Reynold Osbourne; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier, though the broadcast log notes: Show of 12-24 Pre-empted for a Christmas special.
1962
This Suspense broadcast, "Breakthrough" (1962-01-07), starred Adelaide Klein, Phillip Sterling; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Feathers" (1962-01-14), starred Lawson Zerbie; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
In an overcrowded, tightly managed future, a poet is condemned to die for a single crime: being unnecessary, one more life a machine-run society has decided it no longer has room for.
This Suspense broadcast, "Please Believe Me" (1962-01-28), starred Joan Lorring, Robert Readick; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Friday" (1962-02-04), starred Ivor Francis; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "The Man Who Went Back to Save Lincoln" (1962-02-11), starred Ian Martin, Jim Boles, Ralph Bell; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Old Boy Friend" (1962-02-18), starred Elspeth Eric, Joe Julian; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Date Night" (1962-02-25), starred Rosemary Rice; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
A scientist deep in his research on solar power, tired of human emotion getting in the way of his work, builds a robot to assist him instead. The fix solves one problem neatly and creates several worse ones.
A private investigator is hired to track down a gravely ill man who disappeared years earlier and has long been presumed dead. The trouble is, someone claiming to be him has just reached out to his attorney.
This Suspense broadcast, "Perchance to Dream" (1962-03-18), starred Paul McGrath; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
Idle daydreaming on a park bench spins into a vivid imagined murder for one man -- until he's unexpectedly hired onto the traveling vaudeville act run by the very performer he'd cast as the killer in his head. Working alongside him only deepens a growing conviction that the act's next target for real violence is his own assistant.
An ordinary man crosses paths with a flying saucer, and its occupant hasn't come to sightsee. The visitor has arrived to pass judgment on humanity — and may be prepared to wipe the planet clean if it fails the test.
This Suspense broadcast, "Let There Be Light" (1962-04-08), starred Ivor Francis; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Brother John" (1962-04-15), starred William Redfield; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
A tight-fisted tycoon disowns his nephew rather than bankroll the young man's archaeological dig in Egypt, dismissing the whole venture as a waste of family money. His scorn comes back to haunt him when a mummy's bone arrives in the mail, an ancient curse attached.
Newly cured of a delusion that once had her hearing ghosts speak in her sleep, a woman is relieved to leave the whole episode behind. Her husband's idea of a relaxing getaway, though, is a trip to the North Carolina cove where Blackbeard is said to have buried his treasure.
Renting a remote house in the country, a man notices a woman in a red dress rocking quietly on his property. He walks over to greet her, and she's simply gone — but the chair keeps rocking all on its own.
This Suspense broadcast, "Hide and Seek" (1962-05-13), starred Jackson Beck, William Redfield; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Dagger of My Mind" (1962-05-20), starred Leon Janney, Claire Neison; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "That Real Crazy Infinity" (1962-05-27), starred Jack Grimes, Richard Holland; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Stand-in for Murder" (1962-06-03), starred Teri Keane, Larry Haines; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier, though the broadcast log notes: Fred Hendrickson becomes Director.
A scientist's fixation on the paranormal is a constant source of frustration for the government officials overseeing his work. It turns out to be exactly the right skill set, though, once an enemy agent decides to kidnap him.
This Suspense broadcast, "Lunatic Hour" (1962-06-17), starred George Matthews; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "With Murder in Mind" (1962-06-24), starred Jack Kruschen; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
A couple stranded by a storm takes refuge in a remote, forbidding castle -- exactly the wrong place to seek shelter, as it turns out. Its owner is a scientist obsessed with a death ray of his own invention, and he's been waiting for precisely this kind of opportunity: a living subject to test it on.
Passing through a remote stretch of Appalachia, a couple stumbles onto a family observing an old mountain custom: consuming the sins of a relative who has just died, so his soul can pass on unburdened. Before the night is over, the visitors are drawn into the ritual themselves.
This Suspense broadcast, "Snow on 66" (1962-07-15), starred Jim Blaine, Grayson Hall; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Next Murder" (1962-07-22), starred Joseph Julian, Lawson Zerbe; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Weekend at Gleebes" (1962-07-29), starred Raymond Edward Johnson; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "Run Faster" (1962-08-05), starred Bill Lipton, Jimmie Blaine; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
A sailor on leave meets a dance hall girl who is the spitting image of the woman he lost years before. Stranger still, she can't quite shake the feeling that she already knows him too.
This Suspense broadcast, "Pages from a Diary" (1962-08-19), starred Jim Backus, Hennie Backus; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
An embezzler and his wife, fleeing the law across the desert, take shelter with an old hermit who spins them a tale of a treasure-laden Spanish galleon buried somewhere nearby. It's a tempting enough story to make them forget, if only for a moment, exactly what they're running from.
Before he dies, a father insists on having a bell installed inside his own tomb, in case he should ever need help from beyond it. His son-in-law dismisses the request as an old man's fading grip on reality — until the bell starts ringing.
An astronaut comes home from a stint in space to find that the world he left behind isn't quite the one waiting for him — changed in ways he never expected and can't easily explain.
This Suspense broadcast, "The Golden Years" (1962-09-16), starred Peter Fernandez, Rosemary Rice; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
This Suspense broadcast, "At the Point of a Needle" (1962-09-23), starred Betty Garde, Walter Kensella; no episode synopsis survives in the free sources consulted for this dossier.
An Irishman inherits a grand old manor and can't understand why no one wants to rent it — until he's forced to reckon with the ancestor's ghost still very much in residence.
The Story
Subtitled "radio's outstanding theater of thrills," Suspense was CBS's premier anthology of dread -- a self-contained suspense script every week, usually built around a leading Hollywood star. It ran just over twenty years, from 1942 to 1962, and its pedigree was extraordinary from the start: the audition show, an adaptation of The Lodger for the summer series Forecast in 1940, was directed by Alfred Hitchcock himself. The show's defining era belonged to producer William Spier, whose control set the house style; under Elliott Lewis in the early 1950s the material reached new sophistication. Mystery novelist John Dickson Carr adapted many early scripts, and Joseph Kearns hosted as "The Man in Black." Its most celebrated half-hour was Lucille Fletcher's "Sorry, Wrong Number" -- a bedridden woman, played by Agnes Moorehead, overhearing a murder plot on a crossed line. First aired in 1943, it was restaged seven times over seventeen years, always with Moorehead, and spawned a 1948 feature film. Honored with a Peabody Special Citation in 1946, Suspense stands among the premier dramas of radio's Golden Age, its run of landmark episodes -- from "The Hitch-Hiker" to "Donovan's Brain" -- chronicled in Martin Grams Jr.'s definitive history.
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