Suspense: 10/05/50, episode 396
Brought to you by the Old Time Radio Researchers, courtesy of The Suspense Project

Miriam Hopkins stars in a Sumner Locke Elliott story adapted by Antony Ellis. It’s a fine presentation, and her only Suspense appearance. As a listener you’ll start to feel trapped and claustrophobic as Hopkins’ character does.

She plays “Effie,” a newly widowed woman who dies one of the strangest deaths presented on the series. The play begins with cousin Amy giving Effie’s diary to Richards, a policeman. He begins to read from the document and details about how the tragedy unfolded. Three presumably nice, quiet, old ladies live together in a neat, modest little house. Effie has come to live with her cousin, Amy. The third woman is “Miss Bone.” She has rented a room in Amy's house for many years and is always trying to impress people with stories of her travels and first hand knowledge of the world. Bone bitterly resents Effie’s intrusion into her life. Miss Bone frightens Effie with her huge, ill-tempered old cat, to which she is fanatically and strangely devoted.

She terrifies Effie further by announcing that she has a vial of deadly, Chinese poison in her room. Amy is called out of town for a few days. Effie is horrified at the thought of being left alone in the house with Bone and her taunting. The stage is set for Effie’s murder by the constant fear of poisoning. Bone, an unrepentant bully to the end, contends it was essentially just a joke and Effie took it all the wrong way. When Amy returns and finds Effie dead, she knows it was murder, no matter what Bone says.

The original title of the play was “Miss Bone.” It was changed to The Rose Garden about 10 days before broadcast.

Story author Sumner Locke Elliott was an Australian novelist and playwright who moved to California to pursue a Hollywood career. He sometimes found himself adapting British plays for radio series like Theater Guild and others because he was more familiar with them and the nuances of their language than his American counterparts. He was very active in 1950s US television writing original plays and continued writing short stories and novels. His best-known novel was the biographical Careful, He Might Hear You, published in 1963 and adapted as a movie in 1983. The Australian film won many awards and was highly regarded by critics worldwide.

His biographer, Sharon Clarke, in her 1995 doctoral dissertation for the University of Wollongong in Australia, noted that one of his favorite actresses was Miriam Hopkins. Having her appearing in one of his works was a highlight of his Hollywood life: “...the prospect of her performing in his arrangements with a play, Miss Bone, ...assured him that he had once more stepped back through the looking glass, into the world of improbable happenings.”

Byron Kane doubles as Richards and as the mean cat, “Chang”!

The closing credits include a recorded message from Milton Berle teasing the next broadcast, Rave Notice. That clip was recorded when the dramatic portions of that program were performed in July.

The cast: MIRIAM HOPKINS (Effie Trimbal), Jeanette Nolan (Miss Bone), Joe Kearns (Signature Voice / Doctor), Byron Kane (Richards / Chang the Cat), Irene Tedrow (Cousin Amy Hanson), Jeffrey Silver (Boy)

COMMERCIAL: Bert Holland (Hap), Harlow Wilcox (Announcer), Sylvia Simms (Operator), Johnny McGovern? (Johnny Plugcheck)

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