The Lodger (audition)

This is Hollywood and CBS presenting forecast number four. Herbert Marshall directed by Alfred Hitchcock in the first program of a proposed new series entitled, Suspense. Tonight's forecast program, ladies and gentlemen, represents the ideal form of collaboration.

Mr. Alfred Hitchcock, brilliant English director of such outstanding motion pictures as the 39 Steps, Rebecca and foreign correspondent, was eager to create a very special type of radio drama, the suspense story. As narrator and star for his production, he thought at once of the distinguished actor with whom he had been associated in countless British film successes, Herbert Marshall.

Mr. Marshall suggested that they dramatize a certain favourite story of his. And that story happened to be the very one Mr. Hitchcock had in mind. Mrs. Bellerclan's classic in Chills, The Lager. The Lager is a work of fiction which springs from recorded fact.

A story which begins in the year 1888 in London. A London terrorized by the fifth in a succession of recent murders. It was believed that these deeds were the work of one person, a tall gaunt figure in a black in-binesque cape carrying a small narrow bag.

That meager description provided by a highly unnerved witness was the sum total of all that was known of the murderer. It was enough, however, to keep alive and alert the interest of all London. Of all those in fine quarters, and all those in small, grimy houses, as for example, Ellen Bunting.

Ellen was no different from all the other middle-aged housewives dwelling in the great city's squalid white chapel district. She knew all the known facts of the case. As Herbert Marshall will tell you, Ellen knew it was quite proper to refer to this wielder of the knife as...