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Now, Roma Wines present...

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Suspense!

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Tonight, Actors Blood, written and told to us by Ben Hecht and starring Frederick March.

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Suspense is presented for your enjoyment by Roma Wines.

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That's R-O-M-A, Roma Wines.

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Those excellent California wines that can add so much pleasantness to the way you live.

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To your happiness and entertaining guests.

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To your enjoyment of everyday meals.

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Yes, right now a glass full would be very pleasant.

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As Roma Wines bring you...

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Suspense!

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This is the man in black, here for the Roma Wine Company of Fresno, California.

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To raise the curtain on a presentation unique in these weekly half hours of suspense.

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Tonight from Hollywood, Roma Wines bring you a star of the first magnitude, Mr. Frederick March.

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And in person, one of America's foremost tellers of tales, Mr. Ben Hecht of Broadway and Hollywood.

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Who will appear as actor and narrator in a suspense play dealing with the mysterious death.

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And the twisted passions and loyalties of the world behind the footlights.

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And so with Actors Blood and with the performance of Frederick March, supported by Ben Hecht.

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From whom we will hear the narrative in the author's own words.

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We again hope to keep you in...

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Suspense!

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Suspense!

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Do you remember Maurice Tillio?

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Probably not.

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Only students of the theater are people old enough to have applauded the heyday of Mrs. Leslie Carter and John Drew.

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And the theatrical dialogue of the Divine Sarah would be likely to remember.

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During the years I knew him, I saw him in Harness but three times.

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Once in revival, once at a benefit.

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And the third time was the occasion of the anecdote I've set out to relate.

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By that time his only claim to fame was the fact that he was the father of Marsha Tillio.

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On a summer night in 1927, Marsha made a final exit worthy of the Tillio tradition.

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For weeks after it happened, old Tillio went around like the ancient mariner.

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Holding with his baleful eye in his mournful song whoever crossed upon his path.

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But after a while he too seemed to drop out of sight in the wake of his glamorous daughter and like her was forgotten.

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Then late one night as I was getting ready for bed, the bell to my apartment rang.

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Ben, I come with a message from the dead.

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Indeed. Well, come on in and tell me about it.

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Ben, do you believe in ghosts?

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I've got nothing against them.

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Good. I have just come from a miserable modern dress caricature of that greatest of the Bard's plays, Macbeth.

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You will scarcely credit what these upstarts have done to Shakespeare's masterpiece.

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They haven't altered the text, have they?

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You recall the fourth scene of the third act?

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Oh yes, the scene in which Banquo's ghost appears.

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Just so. In the folio edition of the play, the stage directions clearly read,

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the ghost of Banquo enters and sits in Macbeth's place.

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The foul production which I have just witnessed, the ghost does no such thing.

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It is an empty chair to which Macbeth shrieks his guilty line,

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thou canst not say I did it, never shake thy gory locks at me.

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An invisible ghost, eh? That's not so illogical.

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But what drama is there in it?

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How can we feel Macbeth's terror if it's an empty stool at which he shouts,

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Avant and quit my sight, let the earth hide thee, thy bones are mirrorless, thy blood is cold,

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thou hast no speculation in those eyes which thou dost glare with.

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The way you read those lines, sir, I have no trouble seeing this ghost.

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Thank you. Now listen, I am going to produce that scene in modern dress.

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It's not going to be a namby-pamby production such as the one I witnessed tonight.

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I am going to give a banquet at my home,

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and there is going to be a place set at the table for my daughter, Marsha.

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Look, Maurice, I'm very fond of you, but...

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You are wondering why, aren't you, my boy?

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Like Hamlet, I am but mad north-northwest.

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The empty place at the table will be purely symbolic, I assure you.

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And no apparitions will appear, not to you and me at any rate.

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I cannot guarantee what my daughter's murderer will see there.

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Marsha's murderer will be there?

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They will all be there. All who loved her, all who hated her.

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And woe to the hand that shed this costly blood.

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But if you know who the murderer is, why don't you tell the police?

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Ah, the police?

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My daughter, sir, would not have wanted so crude and sordid an epilogue to her life story.

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Like a father before her and my parents before me, she had actor's blood in her veins.

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She shall be avenged, my friend, but it will be no affair of handcuffs and policemen.

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I'll not go whining on Marsha's behalf among the cigar butts and cuspidors in some precinct station.

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No, no. Her murderer shall be unmasked at a mighty banquet on Friday next at 8.30.

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Curtain time, my friend. I'll see you there.

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Yes, yes, I'll be there.

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With Ben Hecht in person as the narrator of his own story and with Frederick Marsha's star,

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you have heard the prologue to Actors' Blood, tonight's tale of suspense.

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And now, in this brief intermission, let us picture a scene beneath a radiant Caribbean moon

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at the fashionable Hotel Nacional de Cuba in Havana.

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An American dinner guest has just raised his glass in a toast to Havana,

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its traditions, its beauty, the superb dinner and wine.

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His Cuban host replies, true, the traditions, the scenery, and the food you enjoy, they are Cuban.

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But the wine of which you speak so highly, that is of your country.

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It is the famed Roma wine made in your own California.

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Yes, it may surprise you that California produces Roma wines of such uniformly superb quality

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that they are imported by many foreign countries.

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But millions of Americans do know and enjoy the excellence of Roma wines daily with meals and when entertaining.

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These millions have made Roma, America's largest selling wines.

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They know too that Roma wines are amazingly inexpensive,

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only pennies a glass for wines of such distinguished character.

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That's because here in America you pay no high import duty, no expensive shipping charges for Roma,

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wines that combine age-old winemaking skill with modern testing and quality control.

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So ask for R.O.M.A. Roma wines made in California for enjoyment throughout the world.

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And now it is with pleasure that we bring back to our sound stage

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Mr. Ben Hecht, narrator and author of Actors Blood, starring Frederick March.

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Tonight's tale of Suspense.

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It rained on that Friday night, thunder rolled in the sky,

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and the streets were full of that picnic-like confusion which storm brings to the city.

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Waiting under the hotel awning for a taxi,

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I turned over in my mind the strange invitation that had brought me out into this wild and stormy night.

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I was rather thrilled at the prospect of old Tillio's dinner,

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for his intention was plain, to assemble a company of suspects in the murder of his daughter, Marsha,

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and he was obviously going to climax the evening by some formal accusation of guilt.

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I knew pretty well who the suspects were, and I suppose I was one of them.

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Alfred O'Shea would be there, of course.

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Alfred O'Shea.

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The man who had written Marsha Tillio's first successful play and their last.

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Broadway had its own private joke about the title of the last.

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It was called Forgotten Lady.

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It was after the final curtain of the last performance of Forgotten Lady that Alfred O'Shea chose to tell her.

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Marsha told the story at the time as a joke on herself.

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Hello, Marsha.

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Oh, why, darling, you waited for me in my dressing room.

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Like old times, I'm touched, really touched.

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Look, sweetheart, you're off stage now, so cut the burn heart. You know why I'm here.

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I do.

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All right, I'll say it again. I'll say it for the last time.

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I want a divorce. I want to marry Irina Kratznov.

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I want to marry Irina Kratznov. Oh, it's such a bad line. And from such a great playwright.

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No, dear Alfred, not for her. It would be too belittling a successor.

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Can't you see, darling, after all we've been to each other, it's...

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Why, it's like Pygmalion wanting to trade in his beautiful galatea for a wooden Indian.

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And it's no dice, huh?

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No dice, Alfred. No divorce. Not as long as I live.

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Now be a darling and help me out of this dress.

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Okay, Marsha, you've just made your own bargain.

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You can come out from behind that screen now, father.

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How did you know I was there?

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You're asthma, darling. I'm glad you're here. Even if you are a perfectly fiendish old eavesdropper.

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Here, you can unhook me since that swine refused to...

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I warned you against marrying that jack-o'-n-apes of a playwright, Marsha.

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Oh, father, you're saying I told you so. What I really wanted was to weep on your shoulder.

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Ouch!

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I'm sorry, sorry. Look here, Marsha, what are you going to do about this career of yours?

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Now, darling, please don't go into that old routine about my being the last scion of the royal family of the American theater.

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I'm nothing but a combination of your name and a playwright who specializes in shallow, brittle female leads that enable me to get applause by simply acting myself.

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Marsha, Marsha, I won't allow you to speak this way about yourself. You're a great artist.

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Oh.

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You've taken your place in the great tradition of the stage beside the immortal figures of Rachelle, Siddons, Bernhardt and Mojesta.

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Marsha, let O'Shea go. He was never worthy of you. Play Juliet next season.

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Show them you don't need a fashionable playwright and tailor-made parts to succeed. Show them you have actor's blood.

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Actor's blood? Actor's blood? I'm sick of hearing about it.

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Just because you and Mother thought it was cute to stick me out there behind the footlights at the age of five because you never had any real life.

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You didn't see any reason why your daughter should have. I'm supposed to have actor's blood.

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All right, all right, all right. I'm only thinking of you, Marsha. Only of you. But that O'Shea is a hot-headed Irishman.

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He came very near to threatening your life when you refused to do as he asked.

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Good. I wish he would kill me. I'm sick of the whole rotten business.

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Yes, O'Shea was a suspect. He would be at old Tillio's dinner. He would be seated across the table from the empty chair.

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And would he see a Banquo's ghost of Marsha Tillio? But O'Shea would be in a goodly company of suspects.

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Fritz Von Klauber would be there for sure. Fritz Von Klauber.

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Not a man I should have liked to have as an enemy that, abnormally sensitive to insult,

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Von Klauber was possessed also of an impenetrable Prussian stupidity.

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His first American production was a play called Jubilee for Spring and Marsha Tillio starred in it.

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It was the most sensational flop of the Broadway season.

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After the first night performance in the 21 Club, Marsha held her own private autopsy on Von Klauber's dead turkey.

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You see, darlings, Mr. Von Klauber, my esteemed producer, loves his turkey farm so much, he sometimes forgets he's on Broadway.

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Terrific, Marsha. How about that for my column?

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Sure, Walter. Anything at all. It's all yours.

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Marsha, Marsha. Shh, shh. Von Klauber. He's over there at the next table. He's heard every word.

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Let him hear. He's going to hear from me in the morning anyway when I start looking for a new producer.

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Go ahead, my sweet Marsha. Go ahead. Rag me in public. I could kill you for this. Do you hear me? I could kill you.

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You could, darling. Well, if my beloved husband doesn't do me in as he keeps threatening to do, perhaps I'll ask you to oblige.

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I may yet be spared the nuisance of doing the job myself.

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Marsha, I forbid you to talk like this.

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Sorry, Father. Must be the actor's blood cropping up again.

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Yes, Von Klauber would surely be present to Tilliou's ghostly dinner.

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As I got into the taxi and gave the driver Tilliou's address, my mind was still turning upon the terrible question, who killed Marsha Tilliou?

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Third on my list of suspects was a character named Maury Stein.

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Maury Stein. A one-time racing tout and small-time gangster, Maury turned his brilliant if slightly frightening talent to flesh peddling.

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That is to say, he was a theatrical agent. Marsha did two shows under his management. Both of them flops. It wasn't her fault.

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There was no belittlement of the name Tilliou. It was still an electric sign, but growing ghostly, slipping still aglow into the side streets of fame.

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Maury Stein was Marsha Tilliou's last substitute for love.

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Maury, will you stop staring at that door?

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Let's get out of here.

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Oh, relax. This is a charming room. I like it here.

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Look, chick, I said let's get out of here. Understand?

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Perfectly. I understand that Mrs. Maury Stein may come walking in that door. Perhaps she'll put two and two together about us.

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That'd make you sad, wouldn't it? Because you've signed over all your unscrupulously earned money to your good wife.

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Oh, just in case questions should be asked, you know. And if she gets any ideas, she may cut you off without a dime and then we're...

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Shut up!

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You know, I've half a mind...

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Did you hear what I said? Shut up!

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Give her so much as to pick up your coat, we're gone.

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Maury, you are a worm. A despicable, slimy little worm.

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Sister, nobody talks to Maury Stein like that and gets away with it, see? Nobody.

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There was to be one more opening night in Marcia Tilliou's career.

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And ironically enough, the three men she had caused to fear most of all her enemies were doing the honors.

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O'Shea had written it, Van Klauber was the producer, and Maury Stein had put up the money.

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I arrived backstage at the Broadhurst at 8.20 to find the three of them in hysterics.

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Ten minutes to curtain time and no Marcia.

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I found old Tilliou sitting in her dressing room, nursing his sprained ankle and very upset.

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Ben, Ben, I'm worried. For the first time, I'm really worried about Marcia.

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What's the matter?

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I don't know. We've been calling her hotel since six o'clock. She refuses to answer the phone.

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Ben, go over there. You're the only one she'll listen to.

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No Tilliou has ever missed a performance and Marcia of all people must not be the first.

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It's those villains out there who've done this.

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Spreading insidious poison like Iago, tearing at her heart with their fangs until she's afraid to go on.

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Go, Ben, try to reason with her.

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Okay, Pop, I'll do my best to bring her back.

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I trotted the three blocks to Marcia's hotel. The clerk at the desk met me with a dead pan.

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Well, Mr. Heck, Miss Tilliou hasn't come down yet. No key in her box.

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I took the elevator up. I turned left and walked down the corridor. I knocked on the door. No answer.

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Tried to knock. Door opened. And then it all added up.

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Yes, it added up to a gaudy room in shambles. Mirror smashed. Perfume bottles shattered.

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The portrait of Marcia is pureed, cut to ribbons.

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And finally it added up to Marcia herself. Cold and white and terribly beautiful.

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Lying there on the bed with three round bullet holes and a neat triangle just over the heart.

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There was no mistaking it. Marcia Tilliou was dead. Murdered.

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That was the sum total of the addition I was doing in my head as I rode in a taxi the twenty blocks from my hotel to old Tilliou's house on West 84th Street.

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Maybe I added it up wrong, but I felt sure I hadn't.

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I was even more certain when I saw old Tilliou standing there at the head of the table to greet the guests he had assembled in the promise of revealing the identity of Marcia's murderer.

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Promptly at 8.30 he made his entrance. He had brought a stranger into the room with him.

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Thank you. Thank you all of you for waiting so patiently. I trust you found your mutual company not too tiresome.

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I should like to introduce my guest of honor.

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May I present Mr. Carl Schuttler of the district attorney's office.

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Now if you will all be seated the place cards are plainly marked. Please, please do not disarrange them.

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Thank you, Alfred.

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I see one short. And who may I ask is that empty place for? Bunkwell's ghost?

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That, my dear Mr. Van Globber, is for a beloved guest known to all of you.

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Beloved guest, huh? Well, let's see now.

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Well, well, hey, listen to this. This seat has indeed been reserved for one known to all of us.

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Who is it?

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It's been reserved for Marcia Tilliou.

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Oh, please, I'd like to change my place.

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Come on, sit down, will you? Marcia will never... she was too sensible to play ghost.

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I am an old actor. With the audience seated and the curtain up, I find it hard to wait.

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Art is long, but time is fleeting, and there is one who bids me speak. Love, hear thou.

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How desolate the heart is ever calling, ever unanswered, and the dark rain falling, then as now.

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You are wondering if I really believe my daughter Marcia is present in this galaxy of her friends.

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It may be the wandering wits of an old man, but I see her sitting there, tragic and beautiful,

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about her the sound of rain and of sweet bells jangling out of tune.

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Forgive me. You have not come here tonight to hear a doting father spread his miseries before you,

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but for a stern of business, which from your courtesy or attentiveness I feel sure you have guessed.

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Mr. Schuttler asked me to tell him this matter privately, but I refused, for you are all her friends, her honorable friends,

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and I wanted you present. Who killed my daughter? Who took her life?

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There, there's the question. I have the answer. Yes, Mr. Schuttler, the murderer is here.

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He sits here among us now at my table. Shall I lock the door now, Mr. Tillew? Yes, yes, lock the door.

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Lock it tight. Leave no chance for escape. It's too late now. No power in heaven or earth can save him.

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All right, Mr. Tillew, the door's locked. My friends, is this not like a play?

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Your face is waiting for the name, the name of Iscariot the Judas. That's it, that's it.

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Clear your throat. It's a vicious worm. Look about you. Who knows? The villain may be right beside you.

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Who knows but that you may be his next victim. Mr. Tillew. I keep my promise, Mr. Schuttler.

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I have the proof, Solomon, enough to send the murderer from this table to the gallows.

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The one who killed Marsha is looking at me now. Ah, the blood on his hands, the terror in his eyes.

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I'll tell you his name. His name is...

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Let me go, let me go. He's killing me. Everybody say where you are. Not now, not now.

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The knife, the knife. Oh my God, oh my God. Tillew, where are you? He's killing me. He's killing...

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A dagger handled, protruded from old Tillew's crimson shirt front. His eyes were closed.

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We carried him into the next room and waited outside while the doctor worked over him.

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Mr. Heck? I'm Ben Heck, doctor. Will you come in, please? He's asking for you.

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Doctor, is he... The knife pierced the heart. He hasn't much longer.

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Ben, is that you, Ben? Yes, it's me. Who did it? Lean over so I can see your face.

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There, satisfied? Something fell out of my pocket. Wait, wait. What is that?

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It's a letter. I must have stuck it in the pocket of this suit the last time I wore it.

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What's in that letter, Ben? I don't know. I haven't even opened it.

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That's Marsha's handwriting. A letter from the dead. Open it, Ben. Read it to me.

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Look, you mustn't excite yourself. When was that letter mailed?

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It's a postmarked attempt. It must have been a day before she...

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Read the letter, Ben. All right. What does it say, Ben? Read it.

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Well, it says, um, Dear Ben, this is to remind you of the opening at the Broadhurst tonight.

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I hope you will be there because I sincerely believe that this is one of the greatest roles I have ever played

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and I'm so anxious to make good in it because of Father's faith in me.

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She cared. She really cared. What I thought.

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Sure she did. She'd have been proud of your performance in there this evening, too, Pop. You were great.

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Thank you, Ben. Thank you.

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Doctor! Doctor!

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Yes, Father?

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Oh. Well, that's that. He was quite an actor in his day, wasn't he?

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Yes. Quite an actor.

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How is he? How is he doing? What did he say? Did he say anything?

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He's dead. I've got a letter here that will explain everything. It's a pity I didn't find it sooner.

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I haven't had this dinner suit on since the night of Marsha's opening.

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It fell out of my pocket when I leaned over the bed in there.

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It was written by Marsha Tillio the day she died.

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It says, Ben, I'm bored, tired, hurt, sick, full of nasty things. I'd stay a while longer,

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but death seems easier and simpler than life. What are a few pills more or less to one who has swallowed so much?

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Take care of Father. He liked you the best for the last time, Marsha.

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Suicide. It's a suicide note.

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But what about the bullets?

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Can't you guess? The old man worshipped her. She was his star.

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But stars don't commit suicide. Only failures do that.

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So he fired three bullets into her dead body, slashed the painting,

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and wrecked the place to make it look like a crime of passion.

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He must have been mad as a hatter.

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He was sane. I think he really saw her as murdered by all of us,

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her so-called friends who had let her down when she needed the most.

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Do you realize that that old barnstormer was playing his death scene from the moment he came into this room tonight?

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He'd rehearsed it in his bedroom for days, sharpening away at Macbeth's old toadstabber.

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He had his lines down pat. He staged his elaborate scene this evening and killed himself

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in such a way that we'd all be raked over the coals, not only for Marsha's murder, but for his own as well.

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Well, it was a lovely piece of old-fashioned miming, but as fruitless a drama as I ever had the misfortune to witness.

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You're right, O'Shea. The plot was full of holes.

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We could have helped him a lot with the construction, but it was a great glass night.

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And so closes Actor's Blood, written and narrated by Ben Hecht and starring Frederick March.

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Tonight's study in Suspense. Suspense is produced and directed by William Spear.

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Next Thursday, same time, you will hear Mr. Brian Donleavy, a star of Suspense.

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Presented by Roma Wines, R.O.M.A. made in California for enjoyment throughout the world.

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This is CBS, the Columbia Broadcasting System.