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[Mike Hobart]

SUSPENSE 1954-01-18 "The Face is Familiar"

One of the rare comical episodes of Suspense. Arthur Ross (writer) Elliott Lewis (director) and guest star Jack Benny combine to give us a whimsical thriller about a talkative small-town nobody who runs into an old acquaintance... who happens to be a bank robber.

Jack is soon playing the leading role in a hold-up without knowing it. The robbers' theory is that he's such a boring and unmemorable type that none of the witnesses will even be able to describe him!

Not bad at all.
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tuned in from down under

[Mike Hobart]

SUSPENSE March 2, 1953 "The Storm"

One of those rare stories that demonstrates you don't need a murder or even a crime to make an engrossing plot. While Larry Thor's narrator traces the birth of a hurricane, Frank Lovejoy plays an egotistical entertainer who is concerned only with his own celebrity status. The two collide at the finish, but to my surprise the ending is implicit rather than explicit (I personally expected the neon sign with his name in lights to fall on him!)

Nice work by scriptwriter Richard Chandlee and director Elliott Lewis.

[Not to be confused with the Suspense episode "Summer Storm".]
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tuned in from down under

[catfreak]

Here are pretty decent copies of the two episodes reviewed by Mike:

Suspense 1954-01-18 (535) The Face is Familiar

Suspense 1953-03-02 (502) The Storm

Enjoy!

V.....
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  at 9:05am on Jan 27th, my buddy left me
                 R.I.P. my loving friend
A righteous man regards the life of his animal

[Mike Hobart]

SUSPENSE September 30, 1954 "A Little Matter of Memory" was based on the story by James Helvick and adapted for Suspense by James Poe.

Edward and his wife, Joan, are staying in an isolated cottage on the Moors while Edward convalesces from ill health. One day, while they are out for a walk, they return to find two notes on their door. One is a threatening letter, and the other is a warning from the local curate about a dangerous maniac on the loose. Both promise to come back later that evening. How will they know which one is which?

Very tense beginning and middle with some quintessential radio drama scenes, but the Third Act problems are nigh insurmountable. Having set the plot in motion, there are only a couple of ways that it can end. But kudos to Norman MacDonnell who produced and directed. Lawrence Dobkin played Edward and Paula Winslowe played Joan. Also appearing were Edgar Barrier, Joseph Kearns, and Richard Peel.

James Helvick was a pseudonym for Francis Claud Cockburn (1904-1981), a British journalist and novelist who wrote an interesting book about the phenomenon of the best-selling novel. (He was also the cousin of Evelyn Waugh.)
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tuned in from down under