The Black Curtain: Suspense (December 2, 1943)

Suspense, old-time radio on Stupid Potato

“The Black Curtain” is an episode of Suspense, the old-time radio show, first broadcast December 2, 1943. Listen free on Stupid Potato: no sign-up, no app.

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What happens

Frank Townsend wakes on an icy Tillery Street with a head injury and no memory of the past three years. A hat and cigar case marked D.N. are not his, and a gray-eyed man draws a gun on him. Townsend goes to a bar and the apartment of a woman named Ruth, and then tries to uncover who he was. This is an episode of the radio series Suspense, broadcast on December 2, 1943, starring Cary Grant.

Tillery Street and Rutherford Street in an American city in December 1943, a bar, an apartment building, and the Dietrich estate at New Jericho.

Characters: Frank Townsend, Danny Nearing, Ruth, Bob, Mr. Dietrich, Franklin Dietrich, Elma Dietrich, Rose Dietrich

Listen for: The moment Townsend realizes the hat and cigar case belong to a man with the initials D.N., and his trip to the Dietrich house to find out what happened there.

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.