What happens
In this Screen Director's Playhouse adaptation of Backstreet, Ray Smith, a popular Cincinnati shopkeeper, meets Walter Saxell, a banker from New Orleans, on a spring day in the nineteenth century. Charles Boye and Mercedes McCambridge star, and the episode aired on May 24, 1951. The two spend an evening together, share a picnic, and begin a romance that is complicated by Walter's obligations elsewhere and by Ray's uncertain prospects. Years later they meet again in New York, where Walter has built a successful career and Ray works as a designer, and their old feelings return.
Cincinnati in the 19th century, then New York several years later
Characters: Ray Smith, Walter Saxell, Ed Porter, Harry Niles, Uncle Felix, Corrine
Listen for: Ray's teasing exchanges with Walter at the restaurant, and the picnic conversation about clouds and the places they would like to live.
Written from the episode itself; it never gives away the ending. Every recording is remastered for the stream: cleaned of rumble, hiss and mains hum (and the old TV whine where we found it), then levelled in two passes to steady broadcast loudness, so one show is never quieter than the next.