The Whistler 1950-10-22 "The Wall" / 1954-08-29 "Quadrangle"

The Whistler 1950-10-22 "The Wall" (story reused as 1954-08-29 "Quadrangle")

The basic setup:  A man is bound to his aunt's old house by the fear that her renovations will uncover the deadly secret hidden inside the stone wall.

Produced and directed by George W. Allen, story by Adrian Gendot
Whistler:  Bill Forman
Announcer:  Marvin Miller
Cast (credited):  Don Randolph, Jean Tatum, Norma Varden

The surviving recording of "Quadrangle" has no credits, but it sounds like John Dehner in the lead.

The story:  Channing House, on the edge of Cartertown, with its wide, high surrounding wall, is a popular subject for artists.  Hypatia Channing lives there alone with her nephew Geoffrey since Colonel Channing's death five years ago.  A caretaker, Sam Lewis, also lives on the property, and Hypatia is always having him renovate the house and grounds, claiming that the sound of the hammer and saw keeps her husband's memory alive.

Geoffrey Channing's friend Ned introduces him to Leah Munsen, an artist who has come to paint Channing House.  Their conversation turns to the wall.  Ned tells Leah the stone wall is hollow, and he wonders when the old lady is going to get around to tearing it down.  Geoffrey hopes she won't go that far.  Because Colonel Channing really didn't drown while on a fishing trip with Geoffrey.  Geoffrey killed him in a rage and hid his body inside the wall.  The wall has been on his mind these five years, and he stays close to home in fear that Aunt Hypatia will demolish it and reveal his lie.

As the weeks go by, Geoffrey has fallen in love with Leah.  He doesn't want her to leave Cartertown, but she wants to travel and pursue her artistic career.  She wants him to go with her... if he can.  Geoffrey decides he must free himself of Channing House.  That night, he learns that Aunt Hypatia plans to begin demolishing the wall in the morning.

Rainy weather sets in, delaying work on the wall, and Hypatia puts Sam to work on the staircase instead.  After days of rain, Geoffrey seizes an opportunity to poison his aunt's bedtime drink with her own sleeping powders, knowing her death will be taken for an accidental overdose.  Some time after bidding her good night, he hears her scream as she falls down the stairs.  She's dead, and Geoffrey didn't do it.

Or did he?  He rushes upstairs to make sure.  The poisoned drink is untouched.  As he moves to get rid of it, he's startled by the doorbell and spills the drink on Aunt Hypatia's pillow.  He quickly hides the stained pillow in his room and goes downstairs to answer the bell.  It's Judge Fuller, Hypatia's attorney, who had an appointment to see her on a financial matter.  They call the police, and the sheriff pronounces her death accidental.

The twist:  The sheriff returns after a talk with Sam, and tells Geoffrey that Sam thinks Hypatia was pushed down the stairs, and Geoffrey pushed her.  It turns out Colonel Channing hid a large sum of money in the house before he died, and never got around to telling his wife where.  That's why she's been having the house torn apart—and she was sure Geoffrey was only sticking so close to home in order to get his hands on the money.  Today Sam found $50,000 in the staircase and handed it over to her, and now it looks like Geoffrey killed his aunt for the money.

Geoffrey protests that he didn't know about any money.  But no jury will believe that:  the police found the whole $50,000 right where he put it, stuffed in a bureau drawer in his bedroom closet, hidden inside his aunt's pillow.

Some changes between "The Wall" and "Quadrangle": 

• The aunt's name is changed from Hypatia to Agnes.

• Some of Ned's gossip is removed from the first scene, including his speculation that the old lady was happy to be rid of her husband.

• In "The Wall," Geoffrey apparently fought with and killed his uncle because his uncle didn't approve of the woman Geoffrey wanted to marry—and then they married after his death and the marriage didn't last.  In "Quadrangle," the dialogue between Geoffrey and Leah that reveals this backstory is omitted, and the Whistler's narration just establishes right away that Geoffrey killed his uncle because he refused to lend him $5000.

• In "The Wall," Geoffrey puts his aunt's sleeping powders in a hot buttered rum; in "Quadrangle," it's hot chocolate.  Her line "Then I could throw away my sleeping powders" makes a little more sense the first time!

• "Quadrangle" omits some other lines of dialogue from "The Wall," including the information in this exchange (dialogue in italics is heard in "The Wall" only):

NED.
The wall's hollow, right Geoff?
 
GEOFFREY.
Yes.  It is.
 
NED.
I helped Geoff and the Colonel put it up.  Remember, Geoff?  Matter of fact you finished it up alone, didn't you?  Not long after the old fellow died.
 
GEOFFREY.
That's right.  I finished the wall alone.
 
WHISTLER.
You want to scream the words, don't you, Geoffrey?

• The Whistler's final narration in "The Wall" includes the sentence "An accidental death, and in the sheriff's own words, you had absolutely nothing to do with it."—which sounds odd, because the sheriff didn't specifically say Geoffrey had nothing to do with it.  The narration is rephrased to make more sense in "Quadrangle":  "Aunt Agnes' death was an accidental one in the sheriff's own words.  While you had planned to poison her with an overdose of sleeping powders, you had absolutely nothing to do with it." 

Connections:  Gendot's later script for 1951-07-01 "The House on Hainsley Boulevard" hearkens back to "The Wall."  That story also involves a young man living in an old family home with his aunt, his uncle having walked out and disappeared eight years ago.  In "The Wall," the protagonist is afraid to move away because he actually killed the Colonel and hid the body on the property; in "The House on Hainsley Boulevard," the protagonist suspects that his aunt is reluctant to move because she actually killed the Captain and hid the body on the property!  He's apparently mistaken; this uncle presumably really did disappear of his own accord.

For another Adrian Gendot Whistler story involving the idea of preserving a landmark in order to conceal murder evidence, see 1951-11-25 "The Clay Tree."

And, going off on a tangent from that episode, see 1951-02-18 "Man in the Storm" for another Gendot story in which a man tries desperately to protect a piece of real estate, apparently from noble motives but really in order to prevent his own crimes from coming to light.

Additional listening:  Other Whistler episodes in which the intended murder victim dies before consuming the poison given them by the protagonist include 1944-12-18 "Windfall" by Harold Swanton and 1951-09-16 "A Matter of Patience" by George Adrian and Carol Nicks.

See also 1950-04-16 "Murder in Mind" by Dick Anderson for another episode in which the intended murder victim dies accidentally and the protagonist fears being blamed.

A list of Signal Oil references in The Whistler

1945-10-08 Death Laughs Last (Harold Swanton)

 "Where'd you say the mailbox is?"
 "There's one down the road at the next corner.  Right by the Signal Oil station."

1945-04-02 The Return of the Innocent (J. Donald Wilson)

"Well, I gotta run along now.  If you want me, I'll be at my cabin a half-mile up the mountain.  Just up the main road, and turn off when you come to the big Signal Oil station."

1946-04-08 Terror Stricken (Walter Jensen)

"I'll pick you up in front of the Signal station at Runyon and Broadmoor tomorrow morning at eight, right?"

1946-07-15 Custom-Built Blonde (Will Pryor)

"Their car jumped a curb and crashed through a Signal Oil billboard about an hour ago.  Stafford was crumpled over the wheel with a couple of bullets in him, and Burton was sittin' next to him, dead from a couple of slugs."

1946-08-26 Brief Pause for Murder (Lou Houston and Bill Forman)

"Let's see, at 9:45 we've got the Signal Oil sports broadcast on the net from Hollywood, then we take Murder Manor from New York..."

(In the 1946-09-08 Chicago production and the 1949-09-11 Signal production of Brief Pause, they've "got a band on the net from Hollywood" instead.)

1947-02-24 Eight to Twelve (Joel Malone and Harold Swanton)

"And another thing, your gasoline gauge looks almost empty.  There's a Signal Oil station on the next corner, perhaps we'd better stop."

1948-12-19 The Hangtree Affair (Joel Malone and Adrian Gendot)

"Look, how do you get out there to the cemetery?"
"Oh, easy, just go right down the end of C street here, and then turn left by the Signal oil station and go up the road...."

1949-03-13 Search for Maxine (Harold Swanton)

"Alvarado Street, Ted, that's where she was.  Probably in that big apartment house opposite the Signal Oil station on the corner."

(When this story was used as Four Hours to Kill on Phillip Morris Playhouse 1949-05-13, Suspense 1950-01-12, and Murder by Experts 1950-06-19, Ted deduces that the girl lives somewhere around 71st Street, "an apartment, maybe a residential hotel, facing Central Park.")

1949-07-24 The Hermit (Ben S. Hunter)

"Uncle Ben, this gentleman's car ran out of gas.  He wonders if he might use the phone."
"I wanna call the Signal station down the road."

1949-09-25 Incident at Arroyo Grande (David H. Ross)

"Finally, several miles down the road, you approach an intersection.  And there near the lights of a Signal Oil station, what you see helps to calm your nerves..."

1950-07-02 Quiet Sunday (Bernard Girard and Zane Mann)

"Well, I--I just don't want you to be late!  [Changing the tire]'ll only take a minute.  Besides, there's a Signal service station in the next block!"

(In the original 1946-06-10 production of Quiet Sunday, this line ends after "It'll only take me a minute.")

1951-11-04 Man on the Run (Adrian Gendot)

"Well, it shouldn't take you more than twenty minutes or so.  Just turn off the main highway three miles past Denton, at the Signal service station."

1952-03-09 Breakaway (Adrian Gendot)

"You the fellow that put in the call?"
"Yeah.  Me and my partner run the Signal gas station down the road."

1952-04-06 Element X (Adrian Gendot)

"My place is all by itself, just past that Signal Oil station, on the beachfront."

(In the 1955-02-13 production of Element X, his place is "all by itself, just past the Mar Vista turnoff on the beachfront...")

1954-02-28 Feature Story (no credits on surviving recording)

"Say tell me, where would be a good place for us to stay a day or so, huh?"
"Best place around here is the Desert Motel, just at the edge of town, right next to that big Signal station."

1954-08-01 Borrowed Future (Adrian Gendot)

"Oh, there's a Signal station up ahead.  You can call him from there."

1954-09-12 Landslide (story reused from 1952-03-09 Breakaway)

"You the fellow who put in the call to my office?"
"Yeah, I work at the Signal gas station down the road."

Bonus: an apparent slip of the tongue in 1949-04-03 The Rawhide Coffin.  Instead of "single room," it sounds like the hotel clerk says,

"We'll let you have the very next Signal room that's vacant!"

The Whister (vs. The Unexpected), 1946-08-19 "Delivery Guaranteed"

The Whistler 1946-08-19 "Delivery Guaranteed"  (listen here)

The basic setup:  A man kills his wife, hides her body in a trunk, and calls the express company to ship the trunk to where he can dispose of the body.  Things keep going wrong.  Elliott Lewis gives an entertaining performance as a character who spends much of the episode on the brink of hysterics!

Produced by George W. Allen, written by Robert Libbott and Frank C. Burt
Whistler:  Bill Forman
Announcer:  Marvin Miller
Cast (credited):  Elliott Lewis, Lurene Tuttle
Cast (ear):  Charles Calvert as the first express man

The story:  Phillip Linden is looking forward to two weeks in the high Sierras with his wife Cathy, hoping the trip will repair their failing romance.  He arrives home to find Cathy packing a large old wardroom trunk:  she's not going with him, she's going to Reno for a divorce.  He tries to stop her from leaving, and in the quarrel he impulsively strangles her to death.

Philip hides Cathy's body in her own trunk and calls the express company to have it shipped to the mountain cabin, figuring he can drop the body off a cliff and tell everyone she disappeared while hiking.  After the express men leave with the trunk, a policeman shows up!  It's their next-door neighbor Charlie, who's excited about his new job as a policeman and wanted to say goodbye to Philip and Cathy before their trip.  Phillip lies and fends him off, and as Charlie leaves, the express men come back with the trunk, saying it's not packed right and he'll have to repack it.

Phillip realizes the key is inside the trunk. As he prepares to force the lock, Charlie comes back for something he forgot.  Charlie insists on helping Phillip repack the trunk.  He gets it open, and it's the wrong trunk.  Phillip phones the express company about the mixup, and the clerk says they do have his trunk, but the label has come off and he'll have to verify the contents.  They'll just open it up....  Phillip hangs up the phone and tells Charlie all.

The twist:  Back at the express company, the man has found the shipping label on the bottom of the trunk and they don't need to open it after all.  What to do now?  Ship it to the address on the label.  That's their motto:  delivery guaranteed!

Miscellaneous notes:  Elliott Lewis plays a man who murders his wife Cathy.  Maybe it's for the best that Cathy Lewis didn't play the female lead this week!

Another version:  Libbott and Burt reused this story for the fifteen-minute program The Unexpected, 1948-11-07 "Handle With Care."  That episode is much weaker than the Whistler episode, and listening to both is an interesting study in pacing.

For "Handle With Care," the story is compressed so that there are fewer distinct events between the murder and the confession, which means we don't get the mounting tension that comes from things going wrong over and over again.  We also lose a lot of dialogue that wasn't strictly essential to the plot, but that helped build a sense of impatience--such as Phillip looking up and dialing the number for the express company, and a lot of his forced casual conversation with Charlie.

There's also less time to hear how Philip reacts emotionally to the murder and subsequent events, and less time to develop the relationship between him and Cathy in the first scene--for instance, she just says she never loved him, rather than explaining that "a woman will say a lot of things when she's twenty-five and starting to wonder if she's ever going to get a husband."  And while it's true Barry Sullivan had less to work with, his performance sounds downright sedate compared to Elliott Lewis's--which in itself makes the episode less interesting, since some of the best suspense in "Delivery Guaranteed" comes from the way Phillip sounds like he's about to fall apart and give himself away any second.

"Delivery Guaranteed" was the title of the Chicago Whistler broadcasts of 1946-08-18 and 1946-10-27; neither program is known to survive.

Additional listening:  See also 1946-08-21 "The Broken Chain" for another Whistler episode by Robert Libbott and Frank C. Burt in which Elliott Lewis kills his wife and then loses his grip...  and which was also reused for an episode of The Unexpected with Barry Sullivan (1947-07-11 "Mercy Killing").

Other Whistler episodes involving a body in a trunk:

• 1946-02-04 "Panic" by Harold Swanton (also featuring Elliott Lewis and Lurene Tuttle)
• 1949-04-03 "The Rawhide Coffin" by Robert Stephen Brode
• 1951-03-18 "The Jackson Street Affair" by Adrian Gendot
• 1954-07-18 "Mr. Pettibone's Last Journey" (no author credit on surviving recording)

And, for an unrelated story of a series of mishaps involving a wife in a trunk, see Suspense 1956-02-07 "Variations on a Theme" by Antony Ellis, which plays the subject for laughs!

Introduction

hi there!  You may have seen me in the Old Time Radio Lovers and The Old Time Radio Researchers groups on Facebook.  I've been listening to and studying The Whistler a lot this year, and I finally broke down and made a blog to post commentary and analysis.

I'll start off by just doing individual posts on particular Whistler episodes in no particular order, and I'll probably do other posts about that show and about other OTR and tangentially related topics--including reusing some content I've previously posted elsewhere.

I'm particularly interested in looking at connections between different stories--not only actual reused stories and recurring elements in the work of particular writers, but also tropes and themes that recur in otherwise unrelated episodes.  (I hope to keep track of oddly specific things like "episodes where the prospective murder victim dies of natural causes but the killer gets in trouble anyway," "episodes where the cops show up to arrest the person that the protagonist just murdered," "episodes where the protagonist is damned for the wrong murder," etc.)

Since the twist ending is so important to the formula of The Whistler, posts will contain spoilers!  I'll start each post with a little blurb about the basic premise of the episode, and you may want to listen to the episode before you read the whole post.