Suspense - Radio’s Outstanding Theater of Thrills

Originally Aired: November 11, 1948 Suspense #314, "Muddy Track," Harry Clark is flat broke and nursing a Coke in a bar when he meets Brandy, a woman with connections to the local bookie, Augie Persian. Before the night is over, Persian offers Harry an easy job answering phones in an apartment, paying five percent of the take from his illegal betting operation. The setup seems almost too good to b...

Originally Aired: November 4, 1948 Suspense #313, "Death Sentence," stars John Garfield as Tommy, a private investigator who returns from a Brazilian vacation only to find himself in deadly trouble. Six months earlier, Tommy had captured Maxie Dunn, a killer working for crime boss Lou Cromwell, collecting a fifteen thousand dollar reward in the process. Tommy thought the killing was a private matt...

Originally Aired: October 21, 1948 Suspense #312, "Give Me Liberty," stars William Powell as Earl French, a cunning embezzler who has successfully hidden a quarter of a million dollars from authorities. While being transported to prison by train, handcuffed to a detective, French sees his chance for freedom when the train crashes. The detective becomes trapped in the burning wreckage, his legs pin...

Originally Aired: October 14, 1948 Suspense #311, "A Little Piece of Rope," stars Lucille Ball as Isabel, a con artist who preys on wealthy older men by posing as an innocent schoolgirl. Her scheme is simple yet effective: she lets respectable gentlemen pick her up near exclusive schools, waits until they drive to a secluded location, then knocks them unconscious with a blackjack and steals their...

Originally Aired: October 7, 1948 Suspense #310, "Night Cry," finds Detective Lieutenant Mark Duglin nursing a bitter grudge after being passed over for promotion in favor of his colleague, now Captain Knight. The department believes Duglin is too much of a lone wolf, too quick with his fists, and unwilling to work as part of the modern investigative team. When a murder occurs at an upscale gambli...

Originally Aired: September 30, 1948 Suspense #309, "The Man Who Wanted To Be Edward G Robinson," stars Edward G. Robinson himself in a darkly comic psychological thriller. Homer J. Hubbard is a meek, browbeaten husband who has endured twenty years of constant nagging and persecution from his domineering wife, Ada. His mundane existence takes a dramatic turn when he sees the reissue of Little Caes...

Originally Aired: September 23, 1948 Suspense #308, "Celebration," follows Todd Ward as he visits his wife Emily at a sanitarium on what she believes is their recent wedding anniversary, though in reality eight years have passed. Emily suffers from brain damage after falling down the stairs, creating pressure that distorts her grasp on reality but cannot be operated on without fatal consequences....

Originally Aired: September 16, 1948 Suspense #307, "Hitch-Hike Poker," presents a harrowing tale of betrayal on the open road. Ridge Fowler, a college student hitchhiking home, gets picked up by the seemingly affable J. Stuart Beldon, a well-dressed middle-aged man driving a canary yellow convertible. As they travel down the California coast, Beldon teaches Ridge a harmless game called license pl...

Originally Aired: September 9, 1948 Suspense #306, "The Big Shot," stars Burt Lancaster as Charlie Morton, a young mining engineer with curly blonde hair and a baby face who has learned to compensate for his innocent appearance with ruthless violence. Morton arrives in Mexico to work for Quinn on an illegal gold operation—setting up a secret stamping mill to process half a million dollars in gold...

Originally Aired: September 2, 1948 Suspense #305, "The Morrison Affair," stars Madeline Carroll as Sheila Morrison, a desperate Englishwoman seeking the help of Boston attorney Mr. Ballou. She needs advice about divorcing her husband, Dr. Paul Morrison, a prominent surgeon from a distinguished family, but she's terrified to reveal her identity. As she reluctantly tells her story, she explains how...

Originally Aired: August 26, 1948 Suspense #304, "Song of the Heart," Neil Wilson walks into a police station with a shocking confession: he has murdered his beloved Aunt Alice by smothering her with a pillow. As he tells his story to the skeptical officers, Neil explains how his carefully ordered life unraveled after meeting Muriel Jones at the company picnic. The brash, forward Muriel is unlike...

Originally Aired: August 19, 1948 Suspense #303, "Crisis," presents a harrowing tale that begins with Martha Scott's character, Mary Norquist, keeping a desperate vigil over her gravely ill baby, Kurt, who is suffering from pneumonia with a dangerously high fever of 106 degrees. With no nurses available due to a widespread epidemic and her husband Paul away on business, she must battle exhaustion...

Originally Aired: August 12, 1948 Suspense #302, "Beware the Quiet Man," Margie finds herself in a terrifying situation when she stops at Charlie's bar to wait for her boyfriend Ralph. A smooth-talking private detective strikes up a conversation and reveals he's been hired by a bank teller to investigate his cheating wife. As the detective describes his client, a quiet, unassuming man with thinnin...

Originally Aired: August 5, 1948 Suspense #301, "An Honest Man," stars Charles Lawton as Freddie, a 44-year-old store clerk whose lifelong devotion to his mother has just ended with her death. For 26 years, Freddie has worked faithfully for Mr. Kelsey, shaped by his mother's harsh childhood lesson that dishonesty is the worst sin imaginable. But after his mother's passing, Freddie experiences an u...

Originally Aired: July 29, 1948 Suspense #300, "The Yellow Wall-paper," Agnes Moorhead stars as a woman whose husband John, a doctor, has rented an isolated country house for the summer to help cure her nervous condition. Against John's orders, she keeps a secret journal to record her thoughts and feelings. Despite the beautiful grounds and his caring attention, she finds something deeply unsettli...

Originally Aired: July 22, 1948 Suspense #299, "Deep into Darkness," stars Douglas Fairbanks Jr. as Ken Matthews, an ex-convict struggling to rebuild his life in New York City after serving seven years in Joliet Penitentiary for manslaughter. Released early for good behavior, Ken follows the warden's advice to start fresh in a new city, but quickly discovers that his criminal record makes finding...

Originally Aired: July 15, 1948 Suspense #298, "Summer Night," Anna Macaulay makes a desperate phone call to her old friend Helen after years of self-imposed isolation. For nearly four years since her father's death, Anna has lived as the town's recluse in a gloomy house with locked windows and doors, shutting out the world and earning a reputation as the town's "queer one." But tonight is differe...

Originally Aired: May 15, 1948 Suspense #296, "Deadline at Dawn," brings together two desperate strangers racing against time to solve a murder before sunrise. Quinn Williams and Brickie Coleman find themselves standing over a dead man's body in a quiet apartment, knowing they must find the real killer or face incrimination themselves. As the night wears on, they frantically search for clues, foll...

Originally Aired: May 8, 1948 Suspense #295, "Life Ends at Midnight," stars Faye Bainter as Mrs. Bates, a poor, worn woman living in a miserable tenement apartment in the Chicago slums. Her troubled son Walter arrives unexpectedly from Pittsburgh, claiming to visit his mother, but he's really desperate for money. Walter has embezzled $1,500 from his employer and must repay it by midnight or face t...

Originally Aired: May 1, 1948 Suspense #294, "The Blind Spot," presents a psychological thriller centered on research pioneer Leland Rogers, who finds himself receiving mysterious threatening messages as he prepares to publish his controversial survey findings. When narrator Eric Strange arrives at Rogers' hotel suite to settle a business matter, he discovers his colleague deteriorating under the...

Originally Aired: April 24, 1948 Suspense #293, "The Search," follows Sid Latch and a young woman named Iris as they flee across the country, pursued by authorities investigating the mysterious death of wealthy cowboy Roger Miles. The pair found themselves trapped with Miles during a severe blizzard, and when the man died under suspicious circumstances in Sid's wagon, they became the prime suspect...

Originally Aired: April 10, 1948 Suspense #292, "Crossfire," brings the acclaimed RKO radio picture to life as Captain Finley investigates the brutal beating death of Joseph Samuels in a Washington, D.C. apartment. The case centers on a group of soldiers who met Samuels in a bar earlier that evening. When Montgomery returns to the apartment looking for his buddy Mitchell, he walks into a murder sc...

Originally Aired: April 3, 1948 Suspense #291, "Suspicion," presents a chilling domestic mystery when a husband becomes convinced that his household may harbor a deadly secret. The narrator, recovering from mysterious bouts of nausea and illness, becomes increasingly paranoid as news spreads about a sweet, motherly-looking poisoner on the loose—a middle-aged cook who mixed arsenic into her delicio...

Originally Aired: March 27, 1948 In Suspense #290, "Night Must Fall," charming but unsettling Dan arrives at the isolated Bramson cottage after Mrs. Chalfont, a guest at the nearby Tall Boys hotel, mysteriously disappears. Scotland Yard investigators search the surrounding forest, but it's Dan who captures everyone's attention—especially the wealthy, bedridden Mrs. Bramson. Dan works at the Tall B...

Originally Aired: March 20, 1948 Suspense #289, "Wet Saturday and August Heat," presents two chilling tales of murder and madness. In the first story, the respectable Princey family gathers in their living room on a rainy afternoon, united by a shocking secret. Millicent Princey has just killed a curate named Withers in a moment of rage after learning he intends to marry another woman instead of h...