What I watched: The ninth episode of the first season of Suspense, an anthology drama program produced and directed by Robert Stevens. This episode is based off an original script, and stars Sidney Blackmeer, Peggy Conklin, Richard Coogan and Julian Noa. It aired on CBS on Tuesday, May 10, 1949. The episode is available to view on YouTube.
What happened: We open in a life insurance company. One of the investigators is suspicious of a recent policy they paid out, believing that the claimant was killed by his widow, who married the doctor who did the autopsy, one Doc Archer (Blackmeer). We cut immediately to the insurance investigator, one Mr. Wesker (Coogan) interviewing the widow Josie (Conklin), a strangely chipper woman who calls her new husband “the doctor” and talks about accidentally falling down the stairs. It turns out “the doctor” has bought a sizeable policy on Mrs. Archer. And it turns out that Dr. Archer’s last wife died in a suspicious accident. SUSPENSE!
We meet the good doctor, a seemingly jovial man who quickly turns menacing when he notices the pack of cigarettes from the insurance adjuster. With great timing, Wesker calls to check up on Josie and ensure that she doesn’t go blabbing his theory. Dr. Archer smokes one of the cigarettes as ominous music plays. Will he get lung cancer before he can complete his plan? SUSPENSE!
Josie seems to have converted to the theory that her husband is a murderer awfully fast. She remarks that it’s like the old suspense stories she used to act in (a rather blatant wink at the audience.) Wesker quickly figures out Archer’s plan: to electrocute his wife by accidentally knocking a sunlamp into the tub. He tries it, but his aim is off. When we come back from break, Josie is receiving a telegram under her dead husband’s name. It turns out that she’s just won the Irish Sweepstakes, some sort of lottery that’s bestowed a $150, 000 prize upon her. There’s only one problem: she hasn’t entered. SUSPENSE!
They figure out that the missus’s old husband bought the ticket for her. (Man, she really did remarry quickly.) They search the house up and down for the ticket needed to claim the prize. The problem is that it’s in the breast pocket of the suit the dead husband was buried in. Dr. Archer, obsessed with the money (as you can tell by his monologue) calls up a bunch of Irish guys to dig up the body. But there’s nothing on the body, and Archer realizes that he’s stumbled into something spooky. SUSPENSE!
The lead Irish guy, Reilly, calls up Archer and says that the guards found the body and are, for some reason, doing another autopsy — one which has found arsenic poisoning. Archer writes a fake suicide note confessing to the murder, signed by Josie. He sets up his whole lamp-falling-into-bath scheme again, and seems to complete it off-screen. The doorbell rings, so he of course can’t go check to see if Josie is actually dead. He goes downstairs, runs into the cops, and it turns out that the whole thing was a set-up and that Josie wasn’t in the tub. The ridiculously circuitous plan complete, the murderer is apprehended, and Mrs. Archer once again seems oddly cheerful. We get a promo for a rendition of “The Monkey’s Paw” starring Boris Karloff, which sadly has been lost to the ages. SUSPENSE!
What I thought: Suspense brings you the story of the world’s most obvious murderer! There’s a germ of a good idea in “Post Mortem”, but the villain is established so hastily and his methods are so goofy that it’s hard to buy into the threat. It comes off as dinner theatre at best, and the performances don’t really help. I realize how hard it must have been to pace a story for a half-hour, but it’s still startling just how quick everyone jumps to the conclusion that Archer is a murderer. They probably could have spent less time on all the skullduggery in the second act, but I guess Stevens had to get the requisite shady Irishmen in. It might have all worked out if they had gotten a convincing corpse, but the body stays off-screen, and instead we’re supposed to be scared by a sunlamp.
As “Dead Earnest” played with societal discomfort around funerals, “Post Mortem” attempts to do a similar thing with the equally morbid world of life insurance. Again, there’s potential here: life insurance is, while necessary, one of our more ghoulish rituals and a ready-made motive for murder. But the investigation that Wesker performs is equally ghoulish, something that the episode doesn’t quite seem to grasp. Instead, we get caught up in a lot of silliness about lottery tickets
Also, can we talk about Peggy Conklin’s performance? She starts out as a likable, chipper protagonist. The problem is that she stays chipper the whole way through, even when she barely survives attempted murder. In other words, she’s giving a screwball romantic comedy performance in a suspense story. It’s distinctly odd, and by the end of the episode I was more scared of her than anyone else.
This heckin’ good pupper would like to talk to you about AutoLite maintenance products.
A word from our sponsors: We get another AutoLite cartoon, starring a prize showdog. The showdog’s car breaks down, but she quickly realizes the problem: she needs a new sparkplug! Once again, it’s cute, and I’m happy they put in the effort to do multiple animations.
Coming up next: Studio One brings us a Dashiell Hammett adaptation.
The Eternal Couch Potato 