Suspense Sundays (11)

Suspense Sundays

Suspense was a radio series from 1942 to 1962, claiming to be "radio's outstanding theater of thrills."  I have a fondness for "Old Time Radio" as we call it now, and Suspense is my favorite show.  It sets up weird, dark, scary, or intriguing stories with a plot twist in the end, and all in half an hour.  And many of them had very famous stars of the Golden Age of Hollywood.  I love the old-fashion story-telling and I thought it would be fun to give a short review of an episode every Sunday.  I'll have some fun with it too, since the stories can be silly and over-the-top to modern audiences, but I hope you, dear Reader, will give it a listen sometime if the story seems interesting.

"Nothing Up My Sleeve"

Air date: January 5, 1943

Starring George Coulouris

>>Episodes here<<

Dorothy Dale visits her boyfriend at the bank where he works.  A few minutes later the bank is held up and the bank robbers assure Dorothy's boyfriend, Jerry, that he will get his cut of the money later.  But  Jerry protests that he has nothing to do with it.  Later the police catch up to the robbers and there is a shootout.  All the robbers are killed. The money is not found and it is assumed the robbers passed the money on to an accomplice. The police pick up Jerry for questioning and Dorothy has a suspicion that the nephew (Derek) of the woman she works for is involved somehow....because he used to go to school with Jerry and he has a grudge against him for some reason, and Derek is a lawyer and she seems to remember one of the bank robbers was a client of Derek's at one time.  The reasoning is kind of tenuous.  Derek is at home playing billiards when Dorothy confronts him.  He denies everything and Dorothy steps outside the room to call the police.  The police come and Derek has been in the billiards room the whole time.  Dorothy thought she saw the $80,000 dollars in Derek's suitcase but it's not there now.  Derek never left the room and there are no windows so it has to be somewhere hidden in that room.  But where?

The whole back story for this Suspense story is a bit silly.  Why does Derek hold such a grudge?  I'm not even sure there was a good reason for him to want to rob the bank. Dorothy jumps to a lot of conclusions without much evidence.  It's all really to showcase the cleverness (I guess) of how do you hide that much money in a room without preparation.  The idea is that you hide it in "invisible furniture".  Something that you see but you don't really see.  Something you would dismiss very easily.  In this case, since it is the Forties, it was hidden in a false radiator.  Okay.  I tried to guess it before they revealed it but I certainly couldn't have come up with that, so... the writer is right I guess?