Episode
number: 216
Network broadcast date: Monday,
May 31, 1965
Lake
Toplitz
Genre: Mystery drama
Author: Jim McGinn
Production number: 216
Production date: Monday,
May 3, 1965
Director: Ted Bell
Producer: not announced
Plotline: An Austrian innkeeper swears that when she was a child during WWII she witnessed Nazis dumping a trunk full of gold into a nearby lake. Even though it’s almost certainly an urban legend, tourists continue to flock to the small Austrian town — with deadly consequences.
Listen: https://archive.org/details/T5project/Theater+Five+650531+216+Lake+Toplitz+LQ.flac
Cast: Vasek Simek, Lidia Prochnicka, Theo Goetz, Claus Jurgen, Renata Mannhardt
Notes:
This was an Eastern European cast of actors that worked together in many ethnic theatrical productions as well as more mainstream productions. Lake Toplitz is a real lake in Austria, and over the decades a number of people have died searching for Nazi treasure that’s supposed to be hidden at the bottom of it. In October, 1963 a German tourist drowned while diving in the lake and local authorities then banned all diving in Lake Toplitz, which is probably the inspiration for this story.