Episode
number: 43
Network broadcast date: Wednesday,
September 30, 1964
A Very
Private Phone Call
Genre: Comedy melodrama
Author: Robert A. Arthur
Production number: 42
Production date: Tuesday,
September 1, 1964
Director: Harry Nelson
Plotline: Mrs. Williams dotes on her much-older husband, a cruel shipping magnate who’s always insisted on doing business over the phone instead of traveling. When he dies suddenly, she finds herself waiting by the phone for the ultimate long distance call — from beyond the grave!
Listen: https://archive.org/details/T5project/Theater+Five+640930+043+A+Very+Private+Phone+Call.flac
Cast: Joyce Gordon, Gertrude Warner, Ben Yaffe, Ralph Camargo, Hal Burdick
Notes:
Though not related to a Mysterious Traveler script, Robert Arthur had used cataleptsy as a plot element in at least one MT script, a missing episode 1949-01-20 Death is My Partner. Ever since Poe used it in Premature Burial, it was a common theme for some mystery and horror writers.
A 1961 episode of Thriller with Boris Karloff that adapted the Poe story was still in the mind of TV viewers. The Suspense episode Dead Ernest is the most popular radio use of the condition in a storyline; Dead Ernest had a modestly humorous ending, this T5 episode has a very funny one, similar in style to what might have been done on the Night Gallery TV series a few years later.