A LONG OVERDUE HISTORY AND APPRECIATION OF ABC RADIO'S 1964-1965 AUDIO SERIES
(This blog presents the chronological history of T5 and is best enjoyed by reading the very first post and proceeding to the next one, and then the next one, etc.)
Episode
number: 15
Network broadcast date: Friday,
August 21, 1964 Molecule
Masquerade Genre: Comedy mystery Author: Sherman H. Dryer
Production number: 22
Production date: Wednesday,
July 22, 1964
Director: Warren Somerville
Plotline: Scott Douglas returns home
from work to discover he is guilty of a murder committed halfway around the
world. As he and his wife unravel the mystery, they discover there really are
two Scott Douglases and everything they thought they knew about the universe is
about to change.
Episode
number: 14
Network broadcast date: Thursday,
August 20, 1964 Your
Time is Up Genre: Human interest drama Author: Raphael David Blau
Production number: 9
Production date: Thursday,
July 2, 1964
Director: Warren Somerville
Plotline: Nothing’s gone right since
Rhoda left New York for the country. She lost a child. Her marriage is on the
rocks. And now her lover wants to end their affair. Her one ray of hope? The
strange vision that haunts her, predicting her husband’s tragic death in a
train crash. Could it be the escape she’s been waiting for? Or a descent into
even more misery?
Episode
number: 13
Network broadcast date: Wednesday,
August 19, 1964 Ring
of Evil Genre: Social drama Author: Raphael David Blau
Production number: 19
Production date: Friday,
July 17, 1964
Director: Ted Bell
Plotline: After a series of obscene
phone calls, Lorraine desperately searches for help. The police have no leads
and her friends are useless, so she takes matters into her own hands by turning
the tables on this creep. But as she draws him deeper into her own web of
seduction, the horrifying truth starts to become clear.
Episode
number: 12
Network broadcast date: Tuesday,
August 18, 1964 The
New Order Genre: Science fiction Author: Don Haring
Production number: 15
Production date: Monday,
July 13, 1964
Director: Ted Bell
Plotline: The first law of robotics is
that a robot shall not harm a human. But when a scientist at a robot factory
removes this from their new line, it sets off a robot revolt that threatens to
take over the world.
Episode
number: 11
Network broadcast date: Monday,
August 17, 1964 The
Fun Party Genre: Topical comedy Author: Phyllis Coe
Production number: 16
Production date: Tuesday,
July 14, 1964
Director: Warren Somerville
Plotline: Carl Wyatt muddles through a
dull, colorless life in his small apartment until he receives a call out of the
blue — one of his downstairs neighbors is throwing a party and they’d like him
to attend. As if by magic, once he’s surrounded by these sophisticated,
beautiful people, he becomes wittier and more charming. But can he resist his
old habits long enough to stay one of the “Golden People”?
Episode
number: 10
Network broadcast date: Friday,
August 14, 1964 The
Stranger Genre: Psychological drama Author: Robert Cenedella
Production number: 18
Production date: Thursday,
July 16, 1964
Director: Warren Somerville
Plotline: A couple discovers a stranger
living in their guest room who swears one of them invited him to stay for a
week — he just won’t say which one. When he refuses to leave, it sets off an
escalating battle of wills that threatens to change the marriage forever.
Episode
number: 9
Network broadcast date: Thursday,
August 13, 1964 Melodrama Genre: Comedy drama Author: Robert Cenedella
Production number: 8
Production date: Wednesday,
July 1, 1964
Director: Ted Bell
Plotline: Desperate for a good mystery,
a Broadway producer gets more than he bargained for when an aspiring ingenue
arrives at his door with a story of fraud and murder.
Episode
number: 8
Network broadcast date: Wednesday,
August 12, 1964 Jump,
Jump Genre: Topical drama Author: Raphael David Blau
Production number: 4
Production date: Wednesday,
June 24, 1964
Director: Ted Bell
Producer:
Plotline: Depressed that his novel isn’t
connecting with audiences, a young writer decides to jump off a building. While
a police officer tries to talk him off the ledge, the crowd below cheers for
him to jump. Has the novelist finally found his crowd pleaser?
Episode
number: 7
Network broadcast date: Tuesday,
August 11, 1964 Big
Dog Genre: Psychological drama Author: Richard McCracken
Production number: 11
Production date: Saturday,
June 6, 1964
Director: Warren Somerville
Plotline: Once a star of stage and
screen, Leslie Adams now struggles to get acting work thanks to his terrible
memory. But when his studio executive nephew invites him to an exclusive party
that promises to be filled with Hollywood power players, Leslie sees his chance
to get back on top. Too bad an unexpected guest has other plans.
Episode
number: 6
Network broadcast date: Monday,
August 10, 1964 Rebellion
Next Week Genre: Comedy melodrama Author: Robert Cenedella
Production number: 5
Production date: Thursday,
June 25, 1964
Director: Warren Somerville
Plotline: A high school English teacher
discovers that one of his air-headed students is in fact part of a race of
super-intelligent mutants, disguised as teenagers and plotting to take over the
world.
Episode
number: 5
Network broadcast date: Friday,
August 7, 1964 The
$245,000 Smile Genre: Crime comedy Author: Richard Holland
Production number: 6
Production date: Monday,
June 29, 1964
Director: Ted Bell
Plotline: A woman arrives at an escort
service looking for a gigolo with very particular features. Why? Because she
and her husband have very particular plans for his corpse.
Episode
number: 4
Network broadcast date: Thursday,
August 6, 1964 Homecoming Genre: Psychological drama Author: George Bamber
Production number: 7
Production date: Tuesday,
June 30, 1964
Director: Warren Somerville
Plotline: Since her husband died, Agatha
has prayed for his return. But when her prayers are answered and he shows up in
the middle of the night, she’s reminded of just how miserable life with him
was.
Episode
number: 3
Network broadcast date: Wednesday,
August 5, 1964 Terror
from Beyond Genre: Science fiction Author: Robert Newman
Production number: 2
Production date: Wednesday,
June 17, 1964
Director: Warren Somerville
Plotline: A group of scientists
establish contact with intelligent life on the moon, only to have that life
reach back down to Earth and possess one of them.
Episode
number: 2
Network broadcast date: Tuesday,
August 4, 1964 House
of Cards Genre: Topical drama Author: George Bamber
Production number: 3
Production date: Tuesday,
June 23, 1964
Director: Warren Somerville
Plotline: Months after a nuclear bomb left the
outside world a radioactive wasteland, time, food, and oxygen begin to run out
on a young couple and two children who stayed safe in a fallout shelter.
Despite the severe radiation and temperatures too high for humans to exist
outside, the family hears a persistent scratching sound at the shelter door...
Network broadcast date: Monday,
August 3, 1964 Hit
and Run Genre: Action melodrama Author: Robert Cenedella
Production number: 1
Production date: Tuesday,
June 16, 1964
Director: Ted Bell
Plotline: A cold-blooded hood scoffs at
the law, knowing his powerful brother will always protect him. But when a young
girl gets caught up in a deadly traffic accident with him, the hood discovers
his brother’s power has its limits.
NOTE: THIS POST IS BEING REVIEWED FOR CORRECTION AND ENHANCEMENT as of 2/14/2022 -- PLEASE CHECK BACK AT THE END OF FEB 2022
Wyllis Cooper, creator of Lights Out and Quiet, Please, carved out a special place in the history of radio's golden age. He died in 1955... so how could he play a role in T5 nine years after his passing?
T5 exec producer Ed Byron worked for AFRS at the same time Wyllis Cooper did for 1943's series This is the Army.They
stayed in touch all those years. Copper died in 1955. As we're doing the
T5 research on episodes we found ourselves at the good website OTR Plot Spot and found this note for episode 80 "A Nothing Place"...
Actor Frank Thomas's script brazenly steals its plot and three characters from a 1949 TV play by Wyllis Cooper that got rave reviews in Variety and Billboard.
Thomas, who played the bellhop role in the original and a 1950
rebroadcast, changes the dialogue, incidents, and ending enough so that
it's not a direct plagiarism, but the result is pedestrian and
uninvolving. Given that Cooper used to write for NBC's Empire Builders,
among the first coast-to-coast drama series, it seems fitting to find a
story of his hidden away in one of network radio's last anthology
programs. --- Anonymous
(Frank Thomas, btw, is "Frankie Thomas" of TV Tom Corbett, Space Cadet fame, who wrote 8 T5 scripts and acted in 7 episodes).
Okay,
so Frankie Thomas remembered a Cooper TV play he was in, needed an idea
for a script, and used some plot aspects to write a T5 play. We now know he probably did so with Ed Byron's urging or at least his blessing!
Researcher Karl Schadow mentioned he saw an article in a 1964 trade mag that says Ed Byron was looking for unused Quiet, Please scripts and the TV show Volume One that Wyllis Cooper did.
I tried to find as much information as I could about Volume One. There were 6 episodes, and we only have plotlines for 1 and 6. They had no titles but were called "Number 1" or "Number 6". The program was seen only in the New York metropolitan area, and should be considered "experimental." It was originally intended to be the TV version of Quiet, Please but the title was changed. When V1 started, it overlapped the end of QP's final season by about two weeks.
Karl
located the trade mag clip, and here's the essential paragraph.
Byron was at an April 1964 trade event and had just been hired to be EP
for the brand new T5 that was months away.
1964-04-08 Radio-Television Daily
Now we get suspicious. It was not Frankie T ripping off Cooper, it
was Bryon who probably started the conversation with Thomas that led to
the script. It turns out not to be a "brazen steal" but a Byron interest and a subtle homage to Cooper! The small magazine clip was the key that opened the door to this new perspective. Considering the notes to T5 writers (graciously supplied by Generic Radio Workshop and script collector Larry Groebe), it's clear that Byron is looking for scripts that can use the techniques and style of Cooper to mix in with the more traditional scripting, such as using stream-of-consciousness and creative use of narration.
Thomas performed the Bell Hop script TWICE, once on Volume One and then as the fourth episode on the TV version of Escape that Wyllis Cooper ran. Yes, Escape had a TV version that people forget perhaps because it was not memorable and was not on the air for long.
Therefore, Thomas knew the Bell Hop script very well, even if it was more than a decade ago, and could come up with a plotline inspired by the story.
The BIG question -- were other Cooper-inspired plotlines that found their way into T5 scripts? We are suspicious but may never know...
One of the six Volume One episodes
was recently put on YouTube. It's "Number Four." Cooper is on camera
and introduces the program. If you've never seen him or heard him before,
here's your chance! https://youtu.be/7Ed-P_VmQwI (MANY THANKS to David Rosenfield who brough this to our attention at the Old Time Radio Researchers Facebook page)
The script used in this video was a Quiet, Please script from just a few weeks earlier. The
V1 show was very experimental and from what we can tell was only in the
NY metro area. This gave them the ability to use the same scripts on
shows with wider geographic coverage, if not national, as Escape and also the Cooper TV series Stage 13.
We're doing our best to find plot descriptions of all of these series and match them up with T5.
It could be just this one episode. Byron was obviously familiar with
the series and his late old friend's work, and if he told the press that
Cooper's work could inspire scripts, he probably told many, many
others in the T5 range of writers. You never know what inspires some of these radio scripters, and if
they saw a Cooper endeavor and were inspired, they could have meandered
a different direction by the time they got to page 3, but it was Cooper who helped get their creative juices flowing.
Wyllis Cooper resources
Wyllis Cooper Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wyllis_Cooper Wyllis Cooper IMDB https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0178459/?ref_=tt_ov_st Quiet Please tribute site https://www.quietplease.org/ Volume One log http://ctva.biz/US/Anthology/VolumeOne.htm Volume One IMDB https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0041070/ Escape TV log http://ctva.biz/US/Anthology/Escape1950.htm Stage 13 log http://ctva.biz/US/Anthology/Stage13.htm
