Friday Night Noir - Suspense (The A.B.C. Murders) & Suspense (Sorry, Wrong Number)

This week on Friday Night Noir, two broadcasts from the same landmark month of CBS's Suspense — aired one week apart in May 1943, at the moment the series was establishing itself as the finest anthology drama on American radio.

We begin with "The A.B.C. Murders," broadcast 18 May 1943, an adaptation of Agatha Christie's 1936 Hercule Poirot novel. A killer stalking England alphabetically — Andover, then Bexhill, then Churston, each victim announced in advance by a taunting letter signed only "A.B.C." — gives Christie's plot a ticking-clock urgency that suits the half-hour radio format extraordinarily well.

Then, exactly one week later, came "Sorry, Wrong Number," broadcast 25 May 1943 and starring Agnes Moorehead as Mrs Stevenson — a bedridden woman who picks up her telephone one evening to hear two men on a crossed line calmly planning a murder scheduled for eleven-fifteen tonight. Moorehead performed the role seven times between 1943 and 1960; the 1943 broadcast is the original, and to many listeners it remains the definitive version.

Two broadcasts from the same extraordinary month, when Suspense was proving what the genre could do. Settle in with the lights low.

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