Suspense: Four Hours to Kill (#366)
Channel: Old Time Radio Researchers
Date: 2024-03-11

Suspense: 01/12/50, episode 366
Brought to you by the Old Time Radio Researchers, courtesy of The Suspense Project

Robert Taylor returns to the series and plays an enterprising newspaperman who wants to buy a newspaper and run it on his own. He doesn’t have the money for it, so he asks his brother, a wealthy attorney, for the $5,000 he needs. The brother is not pleased, and gets nasty and insulting. Fisticuffs ensue and Taylor’s character knocks him down, but he hits his head on the corner of the fireplace. Worried, he feels for his brother’s pulse and there is none. Then he notices that the telephone is off the hook. A young woman is on the other end of the call and overheard the struggle. She also knows that it was Taylor’s character in the fight, but she does not know that the attorney is dead. Panicking, he believes that the only way to save himself is to find that woman and kill her before she learns from newspapers that the attorney dead and has the chance to tell her story to police.

The plotline becomes interesting, because it’s not someone trying to evade a killing by an unknown assailant, but an assailant looking for the right person to kill. It is unnerving how quickly he decided to pursue this line of action.

The story is by Harold Swanton who was a key writer and figure in the success of The Whistler series.

Four Hours to Kill was used on The Whistler on Sunday, 1949-03-13 with a title change to Search for Maxine. It starred Joe Kearns and Doris Singleton. It was then used on Philip Morris Playhouse just two months after The Whistler production on Friday, 1949-05-13 with Howard Duff. The repetition of this script is certainly unusual. It was produced yet again, just five months later, on the 1950-06-19 Murder by Experts series of the Mutual network. The program is missing and there are no details available about its casting.

The Swanton script was also used on television’s Four Star Playhouse with David Niven with the title Touch and Go. A syndicated version is at https://archive.org/details/FourStarPlayhouseTouchAndGo 

The cast: ROBERT TAYLOR (Ted Pomeroy), Joe Kearns (Walter / Cop / Signature Voice), Virginia Gregg (Maxine / Operator 1), Charlotte Lawrence (Anna Lee / Susan), Barney Phillips (Tough guy on phone), Vivi Janiss (Operator 2), Larry Dobkin (Guy in phone booth / Eddie), Sidney Miller (Bellboy)

COMMERCIAL: Peter Leeds (Hamhock), Harlow Wilcox (Announcer), Sylvia Simms (Operator)

For more information visit https://suspenseproject.blogspot.com/2024/03/1950-01-12-four-hours-to-kill.html