Suspense - Lady In Distress

(4.4 stars; 7 reviews)

"I Want You To Kill My Husband" Suspense - Lady In Distress May 1, 1947 The epitome of the femme fatale, in the Suspense episode Lady In Distress, Ava Gardner's character leads the men in her life to their destruction.  This is not unusual for her characters of this period; in Robert Siodmak's 1946 'The Killers', her last film prior to Lady In Distress, Ava's manipulative Kitty Collins leaves a wake of death behind her like a trail of perfume. In Lady In Distress, Ava plays Evelyn Harris, wife of policeman Ralph Harris.  The not-so-innocent target of Evelyn's double-dealing is newly escaped convict Sullivan, played by radio's Sam Spade, Howard Duff.  By a remarkable coincidence, while hitchhiking along a lonely stretch of highway, Sullivan is picked up by Evelyn Harris.  What makes this remarkable is that Evelyn's husband is the man responsible for sending Sullivan to jail.  Even more remarkable is that on this rainy night, ninety miles from home, Evelyn Harris was waiting for him. Within the first few minutes of their meeting, the sexual tension between Sullivan and Mrs. Harris is established: Out of the corner of my eye I looked him over.  He was fairly young, a little pale, and nervous.  There was no real fear there, and there was a lot of strength, of a kind.  The kind I liked. ...~ "I haven't talked to a dame– a lady, for a long time." "Like it?" ~ "Yeah.  Yeah, I do.  I don't think I ever talked to one quite like you before." "What do you mean, quite like me?" ~ "You know what I mean.  You know what you've got on the ball, every bit of it." "You like that?" ~ "I could try" The melodramatic ambience of their drive through the rain is accentuated by a foreboding musical score, one that would be at home in any of the great suspense films of the era.  The low rumble of the V8 engine pulling the conspirators toward their fate, revving higher and higher as the story accelerates, adds an underscore of characters hurtling toward a shared destiny, the relentless doom that is a hallmark of so many great noir stories. As the pair drive along the dark, lonely highway, Sullivan lets slip that he is out for revenge, and when he learns who his benefactress is, he tells her straight out: "I'm going to kill your husband, Mrs. Harris."... ..."What are you going to do with me?" ~ "I haven't quite decided yet, beautiful; I haven't quite decided." When Evelyn learns his intentions, she tells Sullivan that she wants her husband dead, that she will even help.  Is she telling the truth, or is she frightened and stalling for time?  The vengeful con can't be certain, and Evelyn does little to ease his mind.  Like so many of Ava's characters, Evelyn Harris knows the value of keeping the men in her life off-balance.  She walks the thin knife-edge between deceit and truth, as much for the purpose of keeping Sullivan guessing as for any material gain.  Sullivan may be the one with the gun, but Evelyn Harris is firmly in control. We drove on into town then.  I didn't say anything more, and neither did Sullivan.  But I knew I had him.  He was still playing cautious, but I knew I had him. Evelyn's artfulness is that of a seasoned manipulator; we soon have the feeling that a thousand others have trod the same path a thousand times.  We sense that she is looking for a white knight in a dark place, that she lives the repetitive pattern of searching for a new man to save her from the last, and that she will soon be looking for another man to save her from this one.  Until that time, she both lures and controls Sullivan, with words as sweet as warm honey alternating with ice-cold calculation. The duplicity of Evelyn Harris is put into deadly effect, but in true noir fashion, the victim may not be the intended one.  This is one of the more high-strung crime dramas of the Suspense canon, one that does not ask us to guess who the villain is (there are too many), but rather which of these dark characters is going to fall the hardest.  It's a shame that this story, like the Suspense episode The Wages Of Sin, was never filmed.  Lady In Distress and The Wages Of Sin, with their original Suspense casts, would be a femme fatale double bill that would leave the viewer breathless. It is also a shame that like Barbara Stanwyck, the star of The Wages Of Sin, Ava Gardner has only one Suspense appearance to her credit.  Ava is one of the few stars who did very little radio; this and two appearances on Lux Radio Theatre (1947's Singapore and 1952's Show Boat ) may be her only surviving dramatic performances in the medium. Links: To visit the OTRR's Suspense page, with over nine hundred episodes available, click here . For another take on this episode, from the website Escape And Suspense, click here . To visit Introduction To Old-Time Radio's Suspense page, click here . To view the entire ITOTR collection, click here . Digitally restored photo of Ava Gardner courtesy of Doctor Macro . * Note:  When Mrs. Harris uses a pay phone around the fourteen-minute mark, someone hovers around her trying to be helpful, and she tells him "Look, I know how to use a phone; you don't have to act like you're Orson Welles." Here's hoping that a Welles fan can explain the reference; if so, leave a comment. One clue might be that the interloper sounds remarkably like storekeeper Mr. Potter (Billy House) of Welles' then-latest film, The Stranger. (Could that actually be Orson Welles, uncredited?) Howard Duff, 'Sullivan' of Lady In Distress Text © 2016 W.H.Wilson (exclusive of public domain quotes from Lady In Distress)

This recording is part of the Old Time Radio collection.