Hold Back the Dawn

This is Susan Hayward and this is Margaret Lindsey. Tonight Lady Esther presents the Screen Guild Players. Screen Guild Player Tonight Lady Esther presents the Screen Guild Players in Hold Back the Dawn. Starring Charles Boye as George Iscovescu, Susan Hayward as Emi Brown and Margaret Lindsey as Anita.

George Iscovescu tells our story. George Iscovasko tells our story. Iscovasko is my name. Georges Covasko. Most of my life I had lived in Paris, Toledo, yeah it's, you know, following the rich. Rich women to be exact.

Oh, it's an easy life if you have a deep voice and know how to look at a woman. But, it player changed all that. Rich ones headed for America and, well, I had to follow them.

Unfortunately, there had been some scandal. So I thought that better enter where I was known to the back doors you might stay. And so I went to Mexico to a little town on the edge of California.

I would see the American Consul so I thought and then I would walk right through the gates. Mr. Scavisco, your papers show that you're a Romanian. Yes. I was born in Bucharest. You know all applicants for permanent entry into the United States are admitted on quota and the Romanian quota is very small and very crowded.

I'm afraid you'll have to wait. Wait? Yes, between five and eight years. Five to eight years? Like a prison sentence. Five to eight years in that very little town. They said a border fence is 12 feet high.

To me it was a thousand miles. I waited there for months. I waited. While my money went, I waited. And I thought sometimes it would be better to be there. That's how it was that day Anita saw me standing at a little hotel bar.