The first of the one-hour shows is The Screen Director's Playhouse version of "Lifeboat" (11/16/50) with Tallulah Bankhead recreating her original role. "Spellbound" (1/25/51) on the same series offers Joseph Cotten and Mercedes McCambridge in the Peck and Bergman roles; while Studio One's "The Thirty Nine Steps" (3-23-48) stars Glenn Ford and Kathleen Cordell in the leads. Academy Award's "Strangers on a Train" (12/2/51) gives us Ray Milland and Frank Lovejoy in the roles created by Farley Granger and Robert Walker. All of these are extremely well done, forced (of course) by time considerations to leave out certain events shown in the film (such as the actual murder of the wife by psychopath Bruno in "Strangers").

The half-hour shows are not nearly as satisfying, being forced to rush the plots almost to the point of mere outlines of the originals. There is the very first airing of a Suspense show, "The Lodger" (7/22/40) with Herbert Marshall, Academy Award's "Foreign Correspondent" (7/24/46) with Joseph Cotten, The Screen Guild Players "Rebecca" (11/18/48) with John Lund and Loretta Young in the Olivier and Fontaine roles, and Academy Award's "Shadow of a Doubt" with Cotten in his original role.

The acting is mostly very good in all eight of these broadcasts; but as I said, you will find the longer versions more satisfactory. Still they are all part of the best of old-time radio's golden history.

Summary of Alfred Hitchcock (Radio Spirits and the Smithsonian)

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