The basic setup: An office worker goes into hiding as a nightclub singer after becoming an unwilling accomplice in a fatal holdup. This script was substantially improved when it was reworked as a Christmas episode the following year, and that episode was reused three Christmases later with further refinements. Radio writers reusing their own ideas was sometimes a very good thing!
1947-03-17 "Mavis Cameron Disappears"
Produced by George W. Allen
Story by Edward Bloodworth, music by Wilbur Hatch
Announcer: Marvin Miller / Whistler: Bill Forman
Cast (credited): Isabel Jewell, Tony Barrett
script reworked as 1948-12-26 "Delayed Christmas Present"
Produced by George W. Allen, directed by Gordon Hughes
Story by Edward Bloodworth, music by Wilbur Hatch
Announcer: Marvin Miller / Whistler: Bill Forman
Cast (credited): Joan Banks, Jack Petruzzi
Cast (ear): Bill Bouchey as Fontaine, Harry Bartell (?) as Spanish Pete and Bill the bartender
which was in turn reused as 1951-12-23 "Christmas Gift"
Produced and directed by George W. Allen
Story by Ed Bloodworth, music by Wilbur Hatch
Announcer: Marvin Miller / Whistler: Bill Forman
Cast: Betty Lou Gerson, Bill Conrad, Bill Bouchey, Marvin Miller, Britt Wood (harmonica)
The story (1947): After bank worker Mavis Cameron sings a number on a night out with friends, gambler Dan Spinelli compliments her voice and talks her into going with him to a club where he can introduce her to some show people. She's skeptical, but they have a good time, until Mavis hears a song that reminds her of her fiancé, a doctor who's still overseas. On the way home, with Mavis at the wheel of Dan's car, Dan complains of a headache and asks her to stop at a sandwich shop so he can get some aspirin. As she waits, she hears shots, and then Dan jumps back into the car with a gun in his hand and tells her to get going.
Mavis offers to trade Dan her silence for her life. Dan says he doesn't want to kill her, he wants to marry her so she can't testify against him. Mavis won't break her promise, and she knows her story would sound phony. But she won't marry Dan, and she won't get her fiancé mixed up in this mess. She decides the only thing to do is to to skip town.
Six months later Mavis is singing at a nightclub in Brooklyn under the name Doris Trent when Dan show up. He accuses her of sending a note to the police about the holdup, and insists on marrying her tonight. And in case she's thinking of a double-cross, there's a written confession in his pocket telling how she helped him pull the job. Mavis calls the police, but Dan stops her before she can say anything. As he prepares to kill her after all, Mavis's manager appears and offers to call the cops on this guy who's bothering her. So that Dan won't shoot the manager, Mavis says no, he's just another wolf, and the manager tells Dan to beat it. As Dan waits for her out front, Mavis slips out the back.
Five months later, Mavis is singing at a night spot south of the border under the name Lily Grey. The proprietor tells her that an American gentleman wants to buy her some champagne. The American says he's finally caught up with her... Mavis Cameron.
The twist (1947): Mavis says her name is Lily Grey. The man says his name is Detective Sergeant James Fontaine, and he knows the false names she's used. Mavis says she used to work with Mavis Cameron, and the customers used to mix them up too. She could tell Fontaine about her.
After hearing the story, Fontaine calls Mavis "Miss Grey" and asks if she thinks "Miss Cameron" will ever come back to clear things up. Mavis thinks she will, some day. Fontaine remarks that he always figured the confession they found on Spinelli was a phony. Dan Spinelli died in a shootout with the Brooklyn police about five months ago, when the police came to investigate a mysterious phone call from a nightclub.
The story (1948/1951): Mary Winslowe (Mary Winston in 1951) is a hostess at a night spot in Panama City under the name of Candy Porter, hiding from her past. The proprietor tells her to let an American gentleman buy her some champagne. The gentleman, Mr. Fontaine, says he came here after her... Mary Winslowe.
Mary insists that her name is Candy Porter, but she used to work with Mary Winslowe, the customers used to mix them up too. She could tell Fontaine about her.
Mary begins her story, and the events play out as in 1947: a year ago, Mary sang a number at a company Christmas party and then got picked up by a gambler named Joe Clarke (or Joe Collins). They had a good time until the music reminded her of her absent doctor fiancé; as Mary drove home, Joe held up a drive-in and killed a man; Mary traded her silence for her life, and then skipped town. This time, the car belonged to Mary's fiancé, increasing her concern about getting him involved; and Joe didn't propose marriage until he caught up with her in Brooklyn, saying at first only that she was guilty too and they were partners. After the run-in in Brooklyn, Mary's manager helped Mary escape and got her a job in Denver.
"Candy Porter" finishes her story by telling Fontaine that that's where she met Mary Winslowe, in Denver, billed as Gladys James. Mary left one day and she never saw her again. Fontaine doesn't seem to believe her.
The twist (1948/1951): Fontaine calls Mary "Miss Porter" and asks if she thinks "Mary Winslowe" will ever come back and clear things up. Mary thinks she might, some day. After Fontaine tells her of Joe Clarke's death, Mary says if she ever sees Mary Winslowe again, she'll tell her about the Christmas present she got from a swell cop named Fontaine. Fontaine says he's not a cop. He's a private investigator working for Mary's fiancé, who's in love with her and just wants her to come home.
Evolution of a Christmas Episode
The most significant improvement between "Mavis Cameron Disappears" and "Delayed Christmas Present" is the change to a flashback structure. The last act of "Mavis Cameron" is pretty weak: it's a little tedious listening to Mavis give a summary of a story we've just heard, and it's hard to buy that Fontaine would come around so quickly. In the later two episodes, it makes for a better story to open with Mary in hiding, quickly get to the suspense of her being found out, and then learn her story as Fontaine learns it.
The Christmas angle also works well, adding poignancy to Mary's being lonely and far from home. It's particularly effective in 1951, with the Whistler's opening narration about the Christmas spirit touching even a place like Pete's Cantina, and the addition of the character of Sailor Reynolds, who has no dialogue but plays "White Christmas" on the harmonica and brings back memories for Mary.
This latter change reflects how the song takes on a more important role in the story each time. In "Mavis Cameron," we hear "You Belong to My Heart" on the piano in the last act while Mavis tells Fontaine her story; but the dialogue and narration don't mention her hearing the song after the night of the shooting.
In "Delayed Christmas Present," there are church bells playing "Adeste Fideles" during the opening narration. We hear "White Christmas" on the piano under the beginning of Mary and Fontaine's dialogue at the beginning of the second act, without the song being mentioned; and then again at the beginning of the third act, as the Whistler says "And as the piano player across the floor plays the tune he's played a thousand times in the last two weeks..." Both times, the piano plays only the second stanza, and in the last scene the song ends under the dialogue "Like it here?" / "No." / "That's what I figured."
In "Christmas Gift," we hear the harmonica playing both stanzas of "White Christmas" during the Whistler's opening narration, and the narration mentions the strolling soloist Sailor Reynolds playing a Christmas melody that brings back memories of happier Christmas Eves. The harmonica comes in again under the opening narration of the last act, and the Whistler says: "'White Christmas.' If Sailor Reynolds knew what that song did to you, the memories it brings back, he'd play something else, wouldn't he, Mary?" The solo harmonica rendition of the song is more plaintive and more present to the ear than the piano in the previous episode, and again Wood plays the whole song. The penultimate line ending merry and bright is heard as Fontaine calls Mary "Miss Porter"; the song draws to a close and then ends with a flourish ascending two octaves—as Mary's voice rises in pitch on "And you... believe me?"
Another striking improvement between the two similar Christmas episodes is the ending of the second act. In "Delayed Christmas Present," Fontaine ends the second act with "You know something, you ought to be writing stories for the movies." This is a weirdly harsh thing to say when he's going to be on her side after the break! The dialogue at the end of the second act in "Christmas Gift" still presents an apparent defeat, but leaves more room for Fontaine to go along with her story after all: "You don't believe me, do you?" / "If you were in my position, would you believe a story like that?" / "No, I don't suppose I would."
The last words of "Mavis Cameron Disappears" are "Funny thing about it was they never did find out who put in that call to the police." Again, this is weak, especially since we understood at the beginning of the line that it was Mavis's aborted phone call—Dan being dead is an okay twist, but this sentence doesn't make for a very dramatic ending. The additional twist of Fontaine's being a private detective hired by Mary's fiancé is a definite improvement in the later episodes.
Some of the dialogue at the very end of "Delayed Christmas Present," though, is more effective than in the later "Christmas Gift," especially the very last line: "But I think maybe, before next Christmas... Well, I think I'll find Mary Winslowe again." The 1951 episode ends on the less poignant and less interesting "Merry Christmas, Miss Porter. Happy New Year." And it's odd that the second time, she doesn't ask Fontaine to bring her back to the States, so we're left without a definite idea of how or when she's going to prepare herself to return home.
One more interesting change between the two flashback episodes. The narration of both starts out following what I've spoken of as the general pattern for this era of The Whistler, speaking to the protagonist in second person present tense. In "Delayed Christmas Present," the Whistler sets the scene of Mary's flashback in second person past tense and then shifts back into second person present tense, narrating most of the story in present tense as usual. But in "Christmas Gift," he switches to past tense for the flashback and stays there until the action returns to the present, narrating all Mary's past actions in past tense as she remembers how she got to where she is today.
(Bloodworth's script for 1949-12-25 "Letter From Cynthia", reused as 1952-04-07 "Saturday Night", also has an extended flashback, which the Whistler opens in past tense and then narrates in present tense both times.)
Further comparison/notes:
The "Mavis Cameron Disappears" script in the SPERDVAC library shows some interesting penciled changes, including deleted lines which did make their way into one or both of the later episodes! In the opening narration, "annual bank party" is replaced with "night when Mavis and four of the girls at the bank had dinner"—and in the later episodes, it was a company Christmas party. There's about a page of dialogue between Mavis and Dan at the cocktail bar which was cut from "Mavis Cameron"; most of that dialogue is used in "Delayed Christmas Present," and it's used again minus a couple lines in "Christmas Gift."
In "Delayed Christmas Present," Mary suggests that the note to the police about the holdup might have been written by one of Joe's enemies trying to get him in trouble. This is the only episode of the three that proposes any explanation for the note, since Mavis/Mary didn't write it and apparently nobody else could have.
- One point on which I prefer the 1947 episode to the later two is the casting of Tony Barrett as the gangster—mostly just because I think he's got the cutest voice, so it's easier for me to believe the heroine would let him pick her up! The "Mavis Cameron" script introduces Dan as "(A GANGSTER..BUT A SUPER SMOOTHIE)", and later has the dialogue direction "(NOW THE DEFINITE GANGSTER)"; Barrett does well with that switch from friendly to deadly, whereas I feel like Petruzzi and Conrad come off as more tough from the beginning.
Script page 2 / page 10.
A "smoothie" is a guy who is smooth in the sense of being suave and a good talker.... although nowadays a "super smoothie" sounds like something that probably has açaí in it.
In all three versions of this story, Mavis/Mary offers Fontaine a cigarette when they first meet, and he turns her down; then, just before he calls her by her assumed name, she offers again and he accepts. It's a subtle accompaniment to his rejecting and then accepting her story, and in the two flashback episodes it works as a nice bit of bookending.
The nostalgic song in "Mavis Cameron Disappears" was a popular hit in Mexico, written by Mexican composer Agustín Lara in 1941 as "Solamente una vez." The Walt Disney studio had decided as early as May 1943 to use "Solamente una vez" in their second Latin-American film, and the song took off in the United States after it was heard in Disney's The Three Caballeros (Dec 1944, US premiere Feb 1945) with new English lyrics as "You Belong to My Heart."
In 1947, Dr. Clint Rogers, M.D., is "still overseas." In 1948, Dr. Frank Wilson, M.D., is "in the Philippines. Research." In 1951, Dr. Frank Wilson is "in Korea. ... Army doctor."
Personnel notes:
Episode writer Ed Bloodworth was production supervisor of The Whistler for the Barton A. Stebbins Advertising Agency, which handled the Signal Oil radio account. Bloodworth was instrumental in selecting scripts to be used on the program, so it makes sense that he would end up writing (and using!) some scripts of his own. I haven't found any mention of Bloodworth's writing for programs other than The Whistler, but his script for 1950-04-02 "Lady with a Key" was reused for the first episode of the weekly Masters of Mystery program on Mystery Time, 1956-05-02. (Radio Mirror of August 1956 says "the program highlights the best of crime fiction authored by America's foremost mystery writers: George Fass, Edward Bloodworth, Jerry McGill, John Shaw and Louis Estes." Really??)
Britt Wood, the harmonica player in "Christmas Gift," was born in 1893 and entered showbiz at the age of five. Often billed as "The Boob and His Harmonica," Wood performed regularly as a vaudeville single from the early 1910s up through the late 1930s, and did some vaudeville as late as 1951. He became a film actor in the late 1930s and primarily played supporting roles in Westerns, including comic sidekick Speedy McGinnis in five Hopalong Cassidy pictures. Wood has few known surviving radio credits, but I'd be surprised if he didn't do additional radio acting (such as uncredited Whistler appearances which I didn't catch). He starred in the musical variety radio program Rhythm Inn in 1944.
On The Whistler, Wood was sometimes heard in folksy-old-guy roles such as the lunch counter man in 1951-11-25 "The Clay Tree" and the bartender in 1952-01-06 "Episode at Thunder Mountain"—and, as a composer, he collaborated with Ed Bloodworth on the songs performed by Roberta Linn in 1952-11-30 "So Soon" and 1954-09-19 "Song Team". (The song "So Soon" was, by some accounts, composed expressly for the sake of Bloodworth's story about a composer murdering a lyricist. The song in "Song Team" was released as a record the same month the episode aired, and I expect Bloodworth reused the story for the sake of the new song. After Signal Oil's sponsorship of The Whistler ended in October of '54, Bloodworth worked on Linn's new program.) Wood and Bloodworth also wrote the song "Slade" for the 1953 Western movie Jack Slade, and that song was used in The Whistler 1953-11-15 "Fading Star".
The 1950 film Hollywood Varieties features a bit of vaudeville from "Mr. Show Business himself, Mr. Britt Wood!" His act begins at about 35:49 in this YouTube video of the movie.
"Mavis Cameron Disappears" is the first known Whistler episode with Tony Barrett. Born Martin Lefkowitz to theatrical parents in 1916, Barrett was a professional ballroom dancer before switching to acting sometime between 1942 and 1944. He was a very busy New York radio actor (reported to have done as many as six shows in one day!) and was noted for his facility with different accents. Barrett came to Hollywood in January 1946, where he became a contract player for RKO and continued as a prolific and versatile radio actor. He also wrote some radio scripts, and later became successful as a television writer. To my knowledge Barrett is in a total of seven surviving Whistler episodes, including 1955-06-23 "The Cliffs of Weyrum" (credits missing from surviving recording), and was likely also in the missing episodes of 1953-01-25 and 1953-04-05.
Before threatening her in "Mavis Cameron Disappears," Tony Barrett romanced Isabel Jewell in his second motion picture, Born to Kill (until both got murdered less than ten minutes in). The movie was filmed in May–June 1946 but was released on 3 May 1947, a month and a half after the pair were heard on The Whistler.
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| Tony Barrett, Isabel Jewell, and Claire Trevor in Born to Kill (RKO, 1947) |
A point of law:
After Dan proclaims his intent to marry Mavis in "Mavis Cameron Disappears," the Whistler's narration says:
Now you're beginning to see what you're up against, aren't you, Mavis? Of course what Dan told you about wives not being permitted to testify against husbands isn't true. Not when the action occurs before marriage. But you don't know that, do you...and it wouldn't help much if you did.
It's unusual during this era of The Whistler for the Whistler to tell the protagonist information they don't know—and it's even more unusual for him to just go around imparting general knowledge!
The Whistler is correct here because the shooting took place in Chicago. Spousal privilege in Illinois law is (and was in 1947) a confidential communications privilege, similar to attorney-client privilege. It applies to confidential communications between spouses (which essentially includes any communication between spouses outside of certain narrow limits, and may also include acts performed in the spouse's presence). The privilege applies only to communications made while the parties are formally married, and (as with the attorney-client relationship) continues to apply to those communications even if the marriage has since ended. Even if Mavis married Dan, they were not married when she found out about the shooting, so she could be a witness against him in an Illinois court.
California law, on the other hand, has (and had) marital testimonial privilege, holding that "neither husband nor wife is a competent witness for or against the other in a criminal action or proceeding to which one or both are parties, except with the consent of both..."; exceptions include crimes by one spouse against the other or against their children. This privilege applies based on whether the parties are married at the time of the criminal action or proceeding. In "Delayed Christmas Present" and "Christmas Gift," the shooting took place in Los Angeles, which means that if Mary were married to Joe, she could not be a witness against him, even though they weren't married when the crime occurred.
The line quoted above does not occur in the two later scripts—but I expect this change wasn't so much because of the different setting, as because it just adds unnecessary confusion. (And that's without even getting into the question of whether a marriage under coercion would be valid, or how readily one could get out of such a marriage!) As the Whistler points out, when a murderer's trying to get you to marry him or else, the legal details don't make much difference.
Additional listening:
There's another trio of surviving Whistler episodes with a similar pattern, fairly close to these three in time. 1947-03-31 "The Blank Wall" was significantly reworked (including an entirely different ending) as 1948-10-31 "Letter From Yesterday", and then that story was reused with smaller changes as 1951-09-09 "Guilty Conscience". The two later episodes are credited to Edward Bloodworth. Oddly, the credits in 1947-03-31 "The Blank Wall" do not list a writer; the 1955 Whistler TV episode "The Blank Wall" (which sounds like it was based on the 1947 radio episode, not the later two) is credited on IMDb to Joel Malone.
