I've written many times of my admiration for Wyllis Cooper's program Quiet, Please. When I first heard an episode I was astounded; how had I been an OTR fan for so long and not known of this series? Although most of the show is still available there remain tantalizing gaps in the series.
The "missing" episode I'm looking at is "Meeting at Ticonderoga" from March 15, 1948.
It's important to recall that Quiet, Please wasn't built from the same material as Inner Sanctum Mysteries, the Mysterious Traveler or even Cooper's earlier show Lights Out. Quiet, Please might best be described as a dark fantasy program. Not every episode is meant to be frightening; several are humourous; others are melancholic journeys into isolation. But always, there is Ernest Chappell, "the man who spoke to you."
This time, Chappell narrates but he isn't the lead character. The lead role belongs to a Scotsman who offers sanctuary to a killer, then learns the victim was his own cousin. Although it involves the supernatural, it isn't a scary program. It feels like a tale plucked right out of Sir Walter Scott, which might be what Cooper was trying to achieve. I won't call it a great episode of Quiet, Please but the Scottish accents make it unique and the atmosphere which Cooper creates is as tangible as anything he wrote.
You can find "Meeting at Ticonderoga" here!
Tomorrow: My hero?
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