Blog-o-ween 2022: Quiet Please

It is not often that you get more than one shot at the brass ring in your life. The carousel moves pretty fast, and your horse may be going down when you need it to go up. Rarer still is the person who is capable of grabbing ahold of said ring on more than one occasion. Wyllis Cooper is just such a man.

Born in 1899 in Pekin, Illinois, Wyllis Cooper joined the U.S. Cavalry soon after graduating from high school. Unfortunately, the First World War was still being fought at the time. In 1917, he was sent to France, and he was gassed during the Meuse-Argonne Offensive. When he returned home in 1919, he became an advertising man, working in radio by the time the 1920s were in full swing.

In 1934, he created his first great radio show, Lights Out. In 1936, he left Lights Out in the more than capable hands of Arch Oboler -- he of "A Day at the Dentist" fame (see the Blog-o-ween entry for 1 October for that short, sharp tale). Cooper, like so many other successful writers, went to Hollywood. There, he wrote scripts for the Mr. Moto series, as well as Son of Frankenstein in 1939.

After moving to New York City in 1940, Cooper returned to his advertising roots, working in the radio department of Compton Advertising, Inc. In 1944, lightning struck a second time in Cooper's professional life when he created Quiet Please.

With actor Ernest Chappell behind the mic for each episode, Cooper's scripts for Quiet Please ranged from science fiction to family dramas to out and out horror. It was a rare episode of Quiet Please that required more than two or three actors. Chappell's deadpan delivery of Cooper's words were usually sufficient. What Cooper wanted for Quiet Please were actors who could act without acting. He wanted his show to sound like it was really happening. Chappell was the perfect man for the job.

By the time the show ran its course and wrapped up in the summer of 1949, Quiet Please had amassed 106 episodes of dark fantasy that radio historians consider to be the pinnacle of the artform. Here, for your listening pleasure, are three...

First up is a story about a house near the astronomical observatory at the top of Mt. Wilson. The men are planning to rob a bank and decide that the little house is the perfect place to hide their ill-gotten gains. They ask someone at the observatory what is inside the house, and they are told that there is "Nothing Behind the Door." Truer words were never spoken.

Next up is "Wear the Dead Man's Coat." This is the story of a homeless man who just wants to find a coat to keep him warm. Desperate, he kills a man and takes his coat. As he tries to avoid being noticed, he recalls an old saying from his childhood: "Wear the dead man's coat, none take note." Once again...truer words, man...truer words...

Let's end the evening with one of Quiet Please's more light-hearted episodes. This one is also perfect for this spooky season. In "Don't tell Me About Halloween," a man marries a witch, but he only needs to see her once a year...on Halloween. He spends the rest of the time dreading seeing his wife, because she will find out what he's been up to the rest of the year. She's a jealous woman, you see, and if her hubby hasn't been faithful...well...at least marriage doesn't last forever, right? Right?!

31 October: A Trio of Old Time Radio Thrills

 

Well, we done did it, good people. We made it through another October, and now it’s Halloween. We’ve spent the last month together sharing movie, book, and audio suggestions thanks to Cinematic Void’s 31 Days of Voidoween. It’s been a blast talking up my spooky selections, and I loved seeing what other people were up to, too. Thanks to folks using #cinematicvoid and #voidoween on Twitter, I’ve got a list the length of my arm filled with movies I can’t wait to check out.

Cinematic Void is ending Voidoween with a wild card. It’s up to each of us to choose a personal Halloween favorite. I’ve decided to end things with a bang - three of ‘em to be exact! Follow the links below, turn your lights down low, and enjoy some good ol’ fashioned radio drama.

First up is a trip in the wayback machine to 1948 where we’ll listen to a classic episode of Wyllis Cooper’s Quiet Please: “The Thing on the Fourble Board.” I don’t want to give too much away on this one. All I will say is that a “fourble board” is the working platform on an oil derrick. Everything about this episode - the writing, the acting, the sound design - is sheer horrific perfection. And the story’s ending is absolutely unforgettable.

Let’s go back a couple of years to 1946 and listen to an episode of one of the premier radio programs of radio’s Golden Age, Suspense. “The House in Cypress Canyon” is considered by many people to be the scariest radio program of all time. Written by Robert L. Richards, directed by William Spier, and starring Robert Taylor and Cathy Lewis, it’s the story of a young couple – James and Ellen Woods – who move into a small house in the titular canyon. From their first night in their new home, the Woodses are haunted by inhuman cries in the night. There is no explanation for what happens next. What befalls James and Ellen could happen to anyone at any time. Why, it could happen to you...

Last up is an episode of Beyond Midnight, a radio program from South Africa that ran from 1968 to 1970. The episode is an adaptation of a classic Christmas ghost story by A.M. Burrage. It is called “Smee,” and it is my very favorite ghost story. It’s has a simple story-within-a-story construction. The outer story concerns a group of friends who are preparing to play a post-dinner game of hide-and-seek on Christmas Eve. One of the party refuses to play. Jackson had a bad experience some years before at another friend’s house playing a similar game:

‘I wonder if any of you have played a game called “Smee”. It’s a great improvement on the ordinary game of hide-and-seek. The name derives from the ungrammatical colloquialism, “It’s me.” You might care to play if you’re going to play a game of that sort. Let me tell you the rules.

‘Every player is presented with a sheet of paper. All the sheets are blank except one, on which is written “Smee”. Nobody knows who is “Smee” except “Smee” himself—or herself, as the case may be. The lights are then turned out and “Smee” slips from the room and goes off to hide, and after an interval the other players go off in search, without knowing whom they are actually in search of. One player meeting another challenges with the word “Smee” and the other player, if not the one concerned, answers “Smee”.

‘The real “Smee” makes no answer when challenged, and the second player remains quietly by him. Presently they will be discovered by a third player, who, having challenged and received no answer, will link up with the first two. This goes on until all the players have formed a chain, and the last to join is marked down for a forfeit.’

The group encourages Jackson to tell the whole story, and we move into the inner tale, which is where Beyond Midnight begins its episode. The radio program uses the rules of the game – the large house, the silence, the solitude – to chilling effect. “Smee” has a wonderful ending that, although you may see it coming, is still powerful enough to elicit a shudder. Along the way, there are many moments where Jackson and his fellow players rub up against the uncanny and outré. One moment, in fact, on a staircase, involving the accidental (?) miscount of the number of players in the game made the bottom fall out of my stomach.

I hope you’ve had a good time this month following along with me. I’ve had a blast talking up my favorite Halloween tricks and treats. Stay tuned to this blog for more talk about the TV shows Wings and Tucker’s Witch. Come tomorrow, I’ll be taking part in National Novel Writing Month, and I’ll keep you up to date with how that is going. I am continuing my work on a giallo-esque thriller. I'm about 10 chapters into it, and it's been a blast so far.

So...until next time...enjoy the Horrorthon and...Happy Halloween... 

It is 11 October. There are 20 days until Halloween.

Sometimes I think I was born too late. For instance, I love listening to old time radio shows. I can only imagine what it was like to have so many wonderful stories to choose from, to hear the voices of so many terrific actors in their prime acting in well-written dramas of every genre. Could you imagine looking forward to the new episodes of The Whistler or The Abbott & Costello Show? The radio dramatization of Star Wars in 1981 was the closest I ever got to “Must Hear Radio.”

By the time the 1970s rolled around, radio drama as a viable source of entertainment was D.O.A. There were a few programs that tried to carry on the tradition, the CBS Mystery Theater and Nightfall to name a few. Though they tried to reanimate the corpse of radio theater, all these “modern” shows managed to do was to kick the last few clumps of dirt onto the casket. They sounded flabby, as if they could have used a few more rewrites. They also displayed the paucity of imagination at work in the field at the time. The producers, writers, and actors who really understood the strengths of the medium, who knew the power of the listener’s imagination when given the right “poke” with an audio cue, were in radio’s past.

To hear radio drama at the height of its power, you need to go back to the 1940s, and to hear the best of the best, you need to listen to Quiet, Please.

Wyllis Cooper (who was also responsible for the radio show Lights Out), and announcer/actor Ernest Chappell created one of the most potent, imaginative, and just plain creepy radio programs in Quiet, Please. Every show is a veritable “how-to” course for creating dread, terror, and suspense by the perfect combination of writing, acting, and sound design.

The cream of this dark crop is 1948’s “The Thing on the Fourble Board.” I’ll say nothing more about this episode for fear of ruining the surprise for those of you who have never listened to it before, save that a “fourble board” is the working platform on an oil derrick. (It is not, as I believed before I listened to the show, a large piece of furniture like a sideboard. Don’t ask me why I thought that.)

Cooper’s story is perfection. The characterization is clear and concise. We know who these people are and what they look like by how they sound. The sound design – especially the work of actress Cecil Roy – sends chills up the spine. And the ending – the ending! – is unexpected and unforgettable.

You can listen to “The Thing on the Fourble Board” here. You can follow along with the script here.

Enjoy!