Suspense - The Pasteboard Box (#175)
Channel: Old Time Radio Researchers
Date: 10/07/2023

Suspense - 01/17/46, episode 175
Brought to you by the Old Time Radio Researchers, courtesy of The Suspense Project

Joseph Cotten stars in this disturbing play about a man who decides to murder his twin brother and assume his identity. The pasteboard box is used to dispose of the dismembered body, but can’t fit the head. Cotten’s character spends a lot of time trying to get rid of that box. The bigger challenge in the production is that Cotten plays the twins and has to do so in a way that the listener can distinguish between them… which he does.

“Pasteboard” was, and still is, a type of cardboard. The word is used less often today. It is not the same as corrugated board, but people used “pasteboard” as a generic name for all types of paper boards. 

This was Joe Grenzaback’s first and only Suspense script. He also wrote for The First Nighter, Grand Marquee, and likely had many uncredited submissions for those and other series. Grenzaback also wrote stage plays. A popular one for theater groups was written in 1951, Sing Ho for a Prince!, based on the story of Sleeping Beauty. He also had another popular play in the 1960s for theater groups, Old King Cole. For television, one of his scripts was used on Alfred Hitchcock Presents. He wrote many stories for Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine and Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine.

Three recordings have survived. The west coast studio recording “(WC)” is the best. The Armed Forces Radio Service recording (#138) is also a fine recording. An aircheck from KQW in San Jose, California has also survived, but it is the least of the three recordings. The AFRS recording is drawn from the missing east coast broadcast. Times are approximate:

WC 16:33 “..it was gone...somehow I got home”

AFRS 13:58 “...it was gone...somehow, somehow I got home”

This story was included in Suspense Magazine #3. A PDF of the story can be downloaded on this page.

The cast: JOSEPH COTTEN (Jack & Walter Parselle), Elliott Lewis (Bank clerk / laughing ferry passenger), Wally Maher (Detective Lieutenant), Jerry Hausner (Ferry passenger), Ian Wolfe (Man in store), Horace Willard (Williams), Joe Kearns (Signature Voice / Store clerk), unknown (Police sergeant), Tommy Bernard? (First boy), Joel Davis? (Johnny, the second boy), unknown (Helen Winters)

For more information visit https://suspenseproject.blogspot.com/2023/07/1946-01-17-pasteboard-box.html