Radio Recap: Hollywood Star Playhouse

Not too long after NBC's Radio City Playhouse ran its course, CBS launched a different kind of dramatic playhouse: Hollywood Star Playhouse. Those two programs are quite the contrast; Radio City Playhouse prided itself on having no particular theme or major stars. But Hollywood Star Playhouse brought big stars to radio - and it had a consistent theme: it was a suspense series. In fact, it was very much like another CBS program: Suspense.

Hollywood Star Playhouse ran on all three major networks -the 1950-51 season on CBS, 51-52 on ABC and 52-53 with NBC. It's interesting that there's very little of the show in circulation, considering how late it was; it was a transcribed program, you'd think there'd be a near-complete supply of episodes yet - no.

The stars who appeared on the show were pretty much the same names you'd expect on Suspense: Barbara Stanwyck, James Stewart, Ray Milland, Mickey Rooney, Joseph Cotten. To say nothing of radio players like William Conrad and Stacy Harris in supporting roles. The performances are great, so it's definitely a pity that so much of the series is missing today.

The stories themselves are quite good; several were written by Maurice Zimm (who'd written the great "Return Trip" for Suspense). One of Zimm's scripts, "A Question of Time" was adapted into feature film format as Jeopardy, starring Barbara Stanwyck (though Babs wasn't in the original radio version); that led Zimm to a full-time career in film.

However, the most famous spin-off of Hollywood Star Playhouse isn't the movie - it's The Six Shooter. It originated as an episode during the show's NBC run and then became an ongoing series. The Six Shooter was an unusual radio western in that it was very gentle; although it aimed for the same type of realism as CBS' Gunsmoke, it wasn't quite as violent.

The highlights of this series? There are a few. "A Question of Time" and "The Six Shooter" are good, but so are Vincent Price's unusual bullfighting drama "The Hour of Truth"; and maybe your only chance to hear Joseph Cotten in a science fiction drama is "The Tenth Planet" (it's a very 50s sci-fi story but Cotten sells it). Possibly the creepiest episode is "Haunt Me Not," which makes for some good late night listening.

I've often wondered why NBC resisted trying to mimick the success of CBS' Suspense. They had their own dramatic shows similar to Lux Radio Theater, but despite the huge postwar success of Suspense, NBC didn't really get into it until very late in the game, and even then, Hollywood Star Playhouse originated with CBS.

31 Days of Suspense: "The Pasteboard Box"

Now and then when discussing the horror genre people will discuss the impact of what is left unseen - in films such as Cat People (1942) where the audience does not see the terrifying creature around which all the tension is generated, or the short story "Casting the Runes" by M.R. James where something the protagonist cannot perceive is haunting him to his doom. In other words, the audience is left to employ their imagination to fill in the gaps and this can often be far more terrifying than anything the creators deliberately set in front of them.

On January 17, 1946, Joseph Cotten starred in the Suspense episode "the Pasteboard Box," in which he portrays a man who kills his twin brother and assumes his place. You can download the episode from archive.org here.

The episode derives its title from the box which Cotten places his brother's decapitated head inside. In fact, he completely eviscerates his brother's corpse in order to dispose of it. Pretty ghastly stuff for a prestige CBS radio drama, no? And yet, the details of the dismemberment are left to the audience's imaginations. Their sick, twisted, macabre imaginations.

Tomorrow: "Th-they're like naughty children in a classroom! Whispering, fidgeting and laughing behind their teacher's back but blandly innocent when his gaze is turned upon them..."