Suspense on YesterdayUSA with Walden, Larry & John, and Dr. Joe

What we discussed

This is a very leisurely discussion with a lot of kidding around, so it's not your usual podcast. But we do get to a lot of detail about Suspense history. For a more serious treatment of Suspense history, look for the YouTube video below.

Among the topics of this nearly 2-hour discussion are:

• Collector interviews I have done with Walden, SiriusXM Radio Classics host Greg Bell, the Gassmans, and radio recreation experts Joy Jackson of American Radio Theater and Mike Wheeler of Wayback Radio.
• Doing research on the radio era
• Some of the research I have been doing at Cobalt Club on The Big Story
• Recreation of the rejected Suspense script The Hand. This includes some speculative reasons why Auto-Lite rejected it and why Mike Wheeler changed the ending.
• The broadcast of Yellow Wallpaper is discussed, one of the series' more creative scripts. It turns out that the original short story has a very interesting and historic background. There is a link to the recording below.
• Edgar Scott Flohr is one of the most curious writers for Suspense with a "corkscrew past." The two scripts of his that were on Suspense are linked below. Listen for master impressionist Keith Scott's recording of the opening of an LA Times article about Flohr's 1965 arrest. There is also a link to Keith's recording below.
• Producer William N. Robson's experience with the Hollywood blacklist of the 1950s is discussed. There is a link to a letter he wrote to legendary news reported Edward R. Murrow below. The letter is just plain fascinating.

We spoke about other topics along the way. Enjoy!

Resource Pages for Suspense, Whistler and The Big Story

Suspense: https://sites.google.com/view/suspense-collectors-companion

The Whistler: https://sites.google.com/view/the-whistler-files

The Big Story: https://sites.google.com/view/thestoriesbehindthebigstory/

Suspense "Yellow Wallpaper" was Derived from a Controversial Short Story in the Late 1800s

• The author was Charlotte Perkins Gilman, who was deeply involved in feminist and socialist movements in the late 1800s and early 1900s.
• The story was published in 1892. Physicians dabbled in and flailed about in psychological issues. The field of psychology did not have its first true lab until 1879 and Freud did not start his research until 1886. Psychology was a new field and did not have any proven body of systematically gathered and analyzed knowledge at that time -- it was still very new and treatments were highly speculative. Gilman was treated with unproven methods and wrote Yellow Wallpaper to document how counter-effective they were. She did not want others to suffer the way she did.
• In current terms, the story is an indictment of the way depression was treated in those times, in what some would consider the context of societal norms that oppressed women. It was believed at the time that women could improve their symptoms by withdrawing from many tasks of everyday, even abandoning talents for certain tasks or endeavors. Essentially, Gilman was told to stop writing and that she would improve. It was when she did the opposite, contrary to medical advice at that time, that she actually improved. Nowadays, many patients with depression find that forcing themselves to be active in activities and socialization, though they may not want to at first, lessens their symptoms, and helps cope and reverse many of their problems, much like Gilman found for herself.
• Suspense writer Silvia Richards was involved in feminist and socialist movements in her time, and was likely very familiar with Gilman's work when other writers were not. In adapting the story, Richards stressed the psychological turmoil of the main character, and transformed it into a horror story. But there are still elements in the plotline and dialogue that ring true to the original. Richards, along with her ex-husband Robert (who was Suspense script editor in the 1940s), would be mentioned in Red Channels and blacklisted in the 1950s. For more information about Suspense and the blacklist, go to https://sites.google.com/view/suspense-collectors-companion/click-for-home-arrow-for-more/the-blacklist-and-suspense
• The Wikipedia page that gives background and context to the original short story is at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Yellow_Wallpaper
• The complete text of the original story... http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1952/1952-h/1952-h.htm
• The SparkNotes summary https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/yellowwallpaper/summary/

Almost 20 years after its publication, the story was still controversial. Gilman explained her reasons for composing the story in the October 1913 issue of The Forerunner, the magazine she edited...

Charlotte Perkins Gilman, "Why I Wrote 'The Yellow Wallpaper'" (1913)

• A current-day analysis of the story is at http://theconversation.com/the-yellow-wallpaper-a-19th-century-short-story-of-nervous-exhaustion-and-the-perils-of-womens-rest-cures-92302