WEBVTT 00:00.000 --> 00:04.000 Now, Roma Wines present... 00:12.000 --> 00:14.000 Suspense! 00:15.000 --> 00:22.000 Tonight, Actors Blood, written and told to us by Ben Hecht and starring Frederick March. 00:22.000 --> 00:29.000 Suspense is presented for your enjoyment by Roma Wines. 00:29.000 --> 00:33.000 That's R-O-M-A, Roma Wines. 00:33.000 --> 00:38.000 Those excellent California wines that can add so much pleasantness to the way you live. 00:38.000 --> 00:40.000 To your happiness and entertaining guests. 00:40.000 --> 00:43.000 To your enjoyment of everyday meals. 00:43.000 --> 00:46.000 Yes, right now a glass full would be very pleasant. 00:46.000 --> 00:49.000 As Roma Wines bring you... 00:49.000 --> 00:52.000 Suspense! 00:53.000 --> 00:58.000 This is the man in black, here for the Roma Wine Company of Fresno, California. 00:58.000 --> 01:03.000 To raise the curtain on a presentation unique in these weekly half hours of suspense. 01:03.000 --> 01:09.000 Tonight from Hollywood, Roma Wines bring you a star of the first magnitude, Mr. Frederick March. 01:09.000 --> 01:15.000 And in person, one of America's foremost tellers of tales, Mr. Ben Hecht of Broadway and Hollywood. 01:15.000 --> 01:20.000 Who will appear as actor and narrator in a suspense play dealing with the mysterious death. 01:20.000 --> 01:25.000 And the twisted passions and loyalties of the world behind the footlights. 01:25.000 --> 01:29.000 And so with Actors Blood and with the performance of Frederick March, supported by Ben Hecht. 01:29.000 --> 01:33.000 From whom we will hear the narrative in the author's own words. 01:33.000 --> 01:35.000 We again hope to keep you in... 01:35.000 --> 01:37.000 Suspense! 01:37.000 --> 01:39.000 Suspense! 01:43.000 --> 01:46.000 Do you remember Maurice Tillio? 01:46.000 --> 01:48.000 Probably not. 01:48.000 --> 01:54.000 Only students of the theater are people old enough to have applauded the heyday of Mrs. Leslie Carter and John Drew. 01:54.000 --> 01:59.000 And the theatrical dialogue of the Divine Sarah would be likely to remember. 01:59.000 --> 02:03.000 During the years I knew him, I saw him in Harness but three times. 02:03.000 --> 02:06.000 Once in revival, once at a benefit. 02:06.000 --> 02:11.000 And the third time was the occasion of the anecdote I've set out to relate. 02:11.000 --> 02:16.000 By that time his only claim to fame was the fact that he was the father of Marsha Tillio. 02:16.000 --> 02:23.000 On a summer night in 1927, Marsha made a final exit worthy of the Tillio tradition. 02:23.000 --> 02:28.000 For weeks after it happened, old Tillio went around like the ancient mariner. 02:28.000 --> 02:34.000 Holding with his baleful eye in his mournful song whoever crossed upon his path. 02:34.000 --> 02:42.000 But after a while he too seemed to drop out of sight in the wake of his glamorous daughter and like her was forgotten. 02:42.000 --> 02:47.000 Then late one night as I was getting ready for bed, the bell to my apartment rang. 02:52.000 --> 02:58.000 Ben, I come with a message from the dead. 02:58.000 --> 03:01.000 Indeed. Well, come on in and tell me about it. 03:01.000 --> 03:06.000 Ben, do you believe in ghosts? 03:06.000 --> 03:08.000 I've got nothing against them. 03:08.000 --> 03:16.000 Good. I have just come from a miserable modern dress caricature of that greatest of the Bard's plays, Macbeth. 03:16.000 --> 03:23.000 You will scarcely credit what these upstarts have done to Shakespeare's masterpiece. 03:23.000 --> 03:25.000 They haven't altered the text, have they? 03:25.000 --> 03:27.000 You recall the fourth scene of the third act? 03:27.000 --> 03:30.000 Oh yes, the scene in which Banquo's ghost appears. 03:30.000 --> 03:36.000 Just so. In the folio edition of the play, the stage directions clearly read, 03:36.000 --> 03:41.000 the ghost of Banquo enters and sits in Macbeth's place. 03:41.000 --> 03:47.000 The foul production which I have just witnessed, the ghost does no such thing. 03:47.000 --> 03:52.000 It is an empty chair to which Macbeth shrieks his guilty line, 03:52.000 --> 03:57.000 thou canst not say I did it, never shake thy gory locks at me. 03:57.000 --> 04:00.000 An invisible ghost, eh? That's not so illogical. 04:00.000 --> 04:02.000 But what drama is there in it? 04:02.000 --> 04:07.000 How can we feel Macbeth's terror if it's an empty stool at which he shouts, 04:07.000 --> 04:14.000 Avant and quit my sight, let the earth hide thee, thy bones are mirrorless, thy blood is cold, 04:14.000 --> 04:20.000 thou hast no speculation in those eyes which thou dost glare with. 04:20.000 --> 04:23.000 The way you read those lines, sir, I have no trouble seeing this ghost. 04:23.000 --> 04:29.000 Thank you. Now listen, I am going to produce that scene in modern dress. 04:29.000 --> 04:34.000 It's not going to be a namby-pamby production such as the one I witnessed tonight. 04:34.000 --> 04:37.000 I am going to give a banquet at my home, 04:37.000 --> 04:42.000 and there is going to be a place set at the table for my daughter, Marsha. 04:42.000 --> 04:45.000 Look, Maurice, I'm very fond of you, but... 04:45.000 --> 04:48.000 You are wondering why, aren't you, my boy? 04:48.000 --> 04:51.000 Like Hamlet, I am but mad north-northwest. 04:51.000 --> 04:56.000 The empty place at the table will be purely symbolic, I assure you. 04:56.000 --> 05:00.000 And no apparitions will appear, not to you and me at any rate. 05:00.000 --> 05:05.000 I cannot guarantee what my daughter's murderer will see there. 05:05.000 --> 05:07.000 Marsha's murderer will be there? 05:07.000 --> 05:12.000 They will all be there. All who loved her, all who hated her. 05:12.000 --> 05:16.000 And woe to the hand that shed this costly blood. 05:16.000 --> 05:19.000 But if you know who the murderer is, why don't you tell the police? 05:19.000 --> 05:21.000 Ah, the police? 05:21.000 --> 05:27.000 My daughter, sir, would not have wanted so crude and sordid an epilogue to her life story. 05:27.000 --> 05:33.000 Like a father before her and my parents before me, she had actor's blood in her veins. 05:33.000 --> 05:39.000 She shall be avenged, my friend, but it will be no affair of handcuffs and policemen. 05:39.000 --> 05:46.000 I'll not go whining on Marsha's behalf among the cigar butts and cuspidors in some precinct station. 05:46.000 --> 05:53.000 No, no. Her murderer shall be unmasked at a mighty banquet on Friday next at 8.30. 05:53.000 --> 05:57.000 Curtain time, my friend. I'll see you there. 05:57.000 --> 05:59.000 Yes, yes, I'll be there. 06:07.000 --> 06:12.000 With Ben Hecht in person as the narrator of his own story and with Frederick Marsha's star, 06:12.000 --> 06:18.000 you have heard the prologue to Actors' Blood, tonight's tale of suspense. 06:26.000 --> 06:31.000 And now, in this brief intermission, let us picture a scene beneath a radiant Caribbean moon 06:31.000 --> 06:35.000 at the fashionable Hotel Nacional de Cuba in Havana. 06:35.000 --> 06:39.000 An American dinner guest has just raised his glass in a toast to Havana, 06:39.000 --> 06:44.000 its traditions, its beauty, the superb dinner and wine. 06:44.000 --> 06:50.000 His Cuban host replies, true, the traditions, the scenery, and the food you enjoy, they are Cuban. 06:50.000 --> 06:54.000 But the wine of which you speak so highly, that is of your country. 06:54.000 --> 06:59.000 It is the famed Roma wine made in your own California. 06:59.000 --> 07:05.000 Yes, it may surprise you that California produces Roma wines of such uniformly superb quality 07:05.000 --> 07:09.000 that they are imported by many foreign countries. 07:09.000 --> 07:16.000 But millions of Americans do know and enjoy the excellence of Roma wines daily with meals and when entertaining. 07:16.000 --> 07:21.000 These millions have made Roma, America's largest selling wines. 07:21.000 --> 07:25.000 They know too that Roma wines are amazingly inexpensive, 07:25.000 --> 07:29.000 only pennies a glass for wines of such distinguished character. 07:29.000 --> 07:36.000 That's because here in America you pay no high import duty, no expensive shipping charges for Roma, 07:36.000 --> 07:42.000 wines that combine age-old winemaking skill with modern testing and quality control. 07:42.000 --> 07:52.000 So ask for R.O.M.A. Roma wines made in California for enjoyment throughout the world. 07:53.000 --> 07:57.000 And now it is with pleasure that we bring back to our sound stage 07:57.000 --> 08:02.000 Mr. Ben Hecht, narrator and author of Actors Blood, starring Frederick March. 08:02.000 --> 08:06.000 Tonight's tale of Suspense. 08:20.000 --> 08:25.000 It rained on that Friday night, thunder rolled in the sky, 08:25.000 --> 08:31.000 and the streets were full of that picnic-like confusion which storm brings to the city. 08:31.000 --> 08:34.000 Waiting under the hotel awning for a taxi, 08:34.000 --> 08:41.000 I turned over in my mind the strange invitation that had brought me out into this wild and stormy night. 08:41.000 --> 08:45.000 I was rather thrilled at the prospect of old Tillio's dinner, 08:45.000 --> 08:51.000 for his intention was plain, to assemble a company of suspects in the murder of his daughter, Marsha, 08:51.000 --> 08:57.000 and he was obviously going to climax the evening by some formal accusation of guilt. 08:57.000 --> 09:02.000 I knew pretty well who the suspects were, and I suppose I was one of them. 09:02.000 --> 09:05.000 Alfred O'Shea would be there, of course. 09:05.000 --> 09:07.000 Alfred O'Shea. 09:07.000 --> 09:13.000 The man who had written Marsha Tillio's first successful play and their last. 09:13.000 --> 09:17.000 Broadway had its own private joke about the title of the last. 09:17.000 --> 09:21.000 It was called Forgotten Lady. 09:21.000 --> 09:27.000 It was after the final curtain of the last performance of Forgotten Lady that Alfred O'Shea chose to tell her. 09:27.000 --> 09:31.000 Marsha told the story at the time as a joke on herself. 09:34.000 --> 09:35.000 Hello, Marsha. 09:35.000 --> 09:39.000 Oh, why, darling, you waited for me in my dressing room. 09:39.000 --> 09:43.000 Like old times, I'm touched, really touched. 09:43.000 --> 09:47.000 Look, sweetheart, you're off stage now, so cut the burn heart. You know why I'm here. 09:47.000 --> 09:48.000 I do. 09:48.000 --> 09:52.000 All right, I'll say it again. I'll say it for the last time. 09:52.000 --> 09:54.000 I want a divorce. I want to marry Irina Kratznov. 09:54.000 --> 10:01.000 I want to marry Irina Kratznov. Oh, it's such a bad line. And from such a great playwright. 10:01.000 --> 10:07.000 No, dear Alfred, not for her. It would be too belittling a successor. 10:07.000 --> 10:11.000 Can't you see, darling, after all we've been to each other, it's... 10:11.000 --> 10:16.000 Why, it's like Pygmalion wanting to trade in his beautiful galatea for a wooden Indian. 10:16.000 --> 10:18.000 And it's no dice, huh? 10:18.000 --> 10:22.000 No dice, Alfred. No divorce. Not as long as I live. 10:22.000 --> 10:25.000 Now be a darling and help me out of this dress. 10:25.000 --> 10:28.000 Okay, Marsha, you've just made your own bargain. 10:31.000 --> 10:35.000 You can come out from behind that screen now, father. 10:35.000 --> 10:37.000 How did you know I was there? 10:37.000 --> 10:43.000 You're asthma, darling. I'm glad you're here. Even if you are a perfectly fiendish old eavesdropper. 10:43.000 --> 10:46.000 Here, you can unhook me since that swine refused to... 10:46.000 --> 10:50.000 I warned you against marrying that jack-o'-n-apes of a playwright, Marsha. 10:50.000 --> 10:57.000 Oh, father, you're saying I told you so. What I really wanted was to weep on your shoulder. 10:57.000 --> 10:58.000 Ouch! 10:58.000 --> 11:03.000 I'm sorry, sorry. Look here, Marsha, what are you going to do about this career of yours? 11:03.000 --> 11:10.000 Now, darling, please don't go into that old routine about my being the last scion of the royal family of the American theater. 11:10.000 --> 11:19.000 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. 11:19.000 --> 11:24.000 Marsha, Marsha, I won't allow you to speak this way about yourself. You're a great artist. 11:24.000 --> 11:25.000 Oh. 11:25.000 --> 11:32.000 You've taken your place in the great tradition of the stage beside the immortal figures of Rachelle, Siddons, Bernhardt and Mojesta. 11:32.000 --> 11:41.000 Marsha, let O'Shea go. He was never worthy of you. Play Juliet next season. 11:41.000 --> 11:50.000 Show them you don't need a fashionable playwright and tailor-made parts to succeed. Show them you have actor's blood. 11:50.000 --> 11:55.000 Actor's blood? Actor's blood? I'm sick of hearing about it. 11:55.000 --> 12:02.000 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. 12:02.000 --> 12:07.000 You didn't see any reason why your daughter should have. I'm supposed to have actor's blood. 12:07.000 --> 12:16.000 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. 12:16.000 --> 12:20.000 He came very near to threatening your life when you refused to do as he asked. 12:20.000 --> 12:25.000 Good. I wish he would kill me. I'm sick of the whole rotten business. 12:32.000 --> 12:41.000 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. 12:41.000 --> 12:48.000 And would he see a Banquo's ghost of Marsha Tillio? But O'Shea would be in a goodly company of suspects. 12:48.000 --> 12:54.000 Fritz Von Klauber would be there for sure. Fritz Von Klauber. 12:54.000 --> 13:00.000 Not a man I should have liked to have as an enemy that, abnormally sensitive to insult, 13:00.000 --> 13:05.000 Von Klauber was possessed also of an impenetrable Prussian stupidity. 13:05.000 --> 13:12.000 His first American production was a play called Jubilee for Spring and Marsha Tillio starred in it. 13:12.000 --> 13:16.000 It was the most sensational flop of the Broadway season. 13:16.000 --> 13:25.000 After the first night performance in the 21 Club, Marsha held her own private autopsy on Von Klauber's dead turkey. 13:25.000 --> 13:32.000 You see, darlings, Mr. Von Klauber, my esteemed producer, loves his turkey farm so much, he sometimes forgets he's on Broadway. 13:32.000 --> 13:35.000 Terrific, Marsha. How about that for my column? 13:35.000 --> 13:37.000 Sure, Walter. Anything at all. It's all yours. 13:37.000 --> 13:42.000 Marsha, Marsha. Shh, shh. Von Klauber. He's over there at the next table. He's heard every word. 13:42.000 --> 13:48.000 Let him hear. He's going to hear from me in the morning anyway when I start looking for a new producer. 13:52.000 --> 14:00.000 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. 14:00.000 --> 14:06.000 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. 14:06.000 --> 14:10.000 I may yet be spared the nuisance of doing the job myself. 14:10.000 --> 14:12.000 Marsha, I forbid you to talk like this. 14:12.000 --> 14:16.000 Sorry, Father. Must be the actor's blood cropping up again. 14:25.000 --> 14:30.000 Yes, Von Klauber would surely be present to Tilliou's ghostly dinner. 14:30.000 --> 14:39.000 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? 14:39.000 --> 14:44.000 Third on my list of suspects was a character named Maury Stein. 14:44.000 --> 14:55.000 Maury Stein. A one-time racing tout and small-time gangster, Maury turned his brilliant if slightly frightening talent to flesh peddling. 14:55.000 --> 15:03.000 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. 15:03.000 --> 15:12.000 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. 15:12.000 --> 15:17.000 Maury Stein was Marsha Tilliou's last substitute for love. 15:18.000 --> 15:20.000 Maury, will you stop staring at that door? 15:20.000 --> 15:22.000 Let's get out of here. 15:22.000 --> 15:26.000 Oh, relax. This is a charming room. I like it here. 15:26.000 --> 15:29.000 Look, chick, I said let's get out of here. Understand? 15:29.000 --> 15:37.000 Perfectly. I understand that Mrs. Maury Stein may come walking in that door. Perhaps she'll put two and two together about us. 15:37.000 --> 15:43.000 That'd make you sad, wouldn't it? Because you've signed over all your unscrupulously earned money to your good wife. 15:43.000 --> 15:50.000 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... 15:50.000 --> 15:52.000 Shut up! 15:52.000 --> 15:54.000 You know, I've half a mind... 15:54.000 --> 15:56.000 Did you hear what I said? Shut up! 15:56.000 --> 16:00.000 Give her so much as to pick up your coat, we're gone. 16:00.000 --> 16:06.000 Maury, you are a worm. A despicable, slimy little worm. 16:06.000 --> 16:12.000 Sister, nobody talks to Maury Stein like that and gets away with it, see? Nobody. 16:12.000 --> 16:18.000 There was to be one more opening night in Marcia Tilliou's career. 16:18.000 --> 16:25.000 And ironically enough, the three men she had caused to fear most of all her enemies were doing the honors. 16:25.000 --> 16:31.000 O'Shea had written it, Van Klauber was the producer, and Maury Stein had put up the money. 16:31.000 --> 16:36.000 I arrived backstage at the Broadhurst at 8.20 to find the three of them in hysterics. 16:36.000 --> 16:39.000 Ten minutes to curtain time and no Marcia. 16:39.000 --> 16:44.000 I found old Tilliou sitting in her dressing room, nursing his sprained ankle and very upset. 16:44.000 --> 16:48.000 Ben, Ben, I'm worried. For the first time, I'm really worried about Marcia. 16:48.000 --> 16:49.000 What's the matter? 16:49.000 --> 16:53.000 I don't know. We've been calling her hotel since six o'clock. She refuses to answer the phone. 16:53.000 --> 16:56.000 Ben, go over there. You're the only one she'll listen to. 16:56.000 --> 17:01.000 No Tilliou has ever missed a performance and Marcia of all people must not be the first. 17:01.000 --> 17:04.000 It's those villains out there who've done this. 17:04.000 --> 17:10.000 Spreading insidious poison like Iago, tearing at her heart with their fangs until she's afraid to go on. 17:10.000 --> 17:12.000 Go, Ben, try to reason with her. 17:12.000 --> 17:15.000 Okay, Pop, I'll do my best to bring her back. 17:15.000 --> 17:21.000 I trotted the three blocks to Marcia's hotel. The clerk at the desk met me with a dead pan. 17:21.000 --> 17:25.000 Well, Mr. Heck, Miss Tilliou hasn't come down yet. No key in her box. 17:25.000 --> 17:31.000 I took the elevator up. I turned left and walked down the corridor. I knocked on the door. No answer. 17:31.000 --> 17:36.000 Tried to knock. Door opened. And then it all added up. 17:41.000 --> 17:47.000 Yes, it added up to a gaudy room in shambles. Mirror smashed. Perfume bottles shattered. 17:47.000 --> 17:51.000 The portrait of Marcia is pureed, cut to ribbons. 17:51.000 --> 17:57.000 And finally it added up to Marcia herself. Cold and white and terribly beautiful. 17:57.000 --> 18:03.000 Lying there on the bed with three round bullet holes and a neat triangle just over the heart. 18:03.000 --> 18:08.000 There was no mistaking it. Marcia Tilliou was dead. Murdered. 18:17.000 --> 18:26.000 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. 18:26.000 --> 18:30.000 Maybe I added it up wrong, but I felt sure I hadn't. 18:30.000 --> 18:41.000 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. 18:41.000 --> 18:48.000 Promptly at 8.30 he made his entrance. He had brought a stranger into the room with him. 18:48.000 --> 18:56.000 Thank you. Thank you all of you for waiting so patiently. I trust you found your mutual company not too tiresome. 18:56.000 --> 19:00.000 I should like to introduce my guest of honor. 19:00.000 --> 19:07.000 May I present Mr. Carl Schuttler of the district attorney's office. 19:07.000 --> 19:16.000 Now if you will all be seated the place cards are plainly marked. Please, please do not disarrange them. 19:16.000 --> 19:19.000 Thank you, Alfred. 19:19.000 --> 19:25.000 I see one short. And who may I ask is that empty place for? Bunkwell's ghost? 19:25.000 --> 19:32.000 That, my dear Mr. Van Globber, is for a beloved guest known to all of you. 19:32.000 --> 19:36.000 Beloved guest, huh? Well, let's see now. 19:36.000 --> 19:41.000 Well, well, hey, listen to this. This seat has indeed been reserved for one known to all of us. 19:41.000 --> 19:42.000 Who is it? 19:42.000 --> 19:45.000 It's been reserved for Marcia Tilliou. 19:45.000 --> 19:48.000 Oh, please, I'd like to change my place. 19:48.000 --> 19:53.000 Come on, sit down, will you? Marcia will never... she was too sensible to play ghost. 19:53.000 --> 20:04.000 I am an old actor. With the audience seated and the curtain up, I find it hard to wait. 20:04.000 --> 20:15.000 Art is long, but time is fleeting, and there is one who bids me speak. Love, hear thou. 20:15.000 --> 20:26.000 How desolate the heart is ever calling, ever unanswered, and the dark rain falling, then as now. 20:26.000 --> 20:35.000 You are wondering if I really believe my daughter Marcia is present in this galaxy of her friends. 20:35.000 --> 20:44.000 It may be the wandering wits of an old man, but I see her sitting there, tragic and beautiful, 20:44.000 --> 20:50.000 about her the sound of rain and of sweet bells jangling out of tune. 20:50.000 --> 20:57.000 Forgive me. You have not come here tonight to hear a doting father spread his miseries before you, 20:57.000 --> 21:05.000 but for a stern of business, which from your courtesy or attentiveness I feel sure you have guessed. 21:05.000 --> 21:18.000 Mr. Schuttler asked me to tell him this matter privately, but I refused, for you are all her friends, her honorable friends, 21:18.000 --> 21:28.000 and I wanted you present. Who killed my daughter? Who took her life? 21:28.000 --> 21:39.000 There, there's the question. I have the answer. Yes, Mr. Schuttler, the murderer is here. 21:39.000 --> 21:49.000 He sits here among us now at my table. Shall I lock the door now, Mr. Tillew? Yes, yes, lock the door. 21:49.000 --> 21:58.000 Lock it tight. Leave no chance for escape. It's too late now. No power in heaven or earth can save him. 21:58.000 --> 22:05.000 All right, Mr. Tillew, the door's locked. My friends, is this not like a play? 22:05.000 --> 22:15.000 Your face is waiting for the name, the name of Iscariot the Judas. That's it, that's it. 22:15.000 --> 22:21.000 Clear your throat. It's a vicious worm. Look about you. Who knows? The villain may be right beside you. 22:21.000 --> 22:29.000 Who knows but that you may be his next victim. Mr. Tillew. I keep my promise, Mr. Schuttler. 22:29.000 --> 22:35.000 I have the proof, Solomon, enough to send the murderer from this table to the gallows. 22:35.000 --> 22:48.000 The one who killed Marsha is looking at me now. Ah, the blood on his hands, the terror in his eyes. 22:48.000 --> 22:59.000 I'll tell you his name. His name is... 22:59.000 --> 23:04.000 Let me go, let me go. He's killing me. Everybody say where you are. Not now, not now. 23:04.000 --> 23:18.000 The knife, the knife. Oh my God, oh my God. Tillew, where are you? He's killing me. He's killing... 23:18.000 --> 23:40.000 A dagger handled, protruded from old Tillew's crimson shirt front. His eyes were closed. 23:40.000 --> 23:46.000 We carried him into the next room and waited outside while the doctor worked over him. 23:46.000 --> 23:51.000 Mr. Heck? I'm Ben Heck, doctor. Will you come in, please? He's asking for you. 23:51.000 --> 23:59.000 Doctor, is he... The knife pierced the heart. He hasn't much longer. 23:59.000 --> 24:10.000 Ben, is that you, Ben? Yes, it's me. Who did it? Lean over so I can see your face. 24:10.000 --> 24:16.000 There, satisfied? Something fell out of my pocket. Wait, wait. What is that? 24:16.000 --> 24:19.000 It's a letter. I must have stuck it in the pocket of this suit the last time I wore it. 24:19.000 --> 24:23.000 What's in that letter, Ben? I don't know. I haven't even opened it. 24:23.000 --> 24:29.000 That's Marsha's handwriting. A letter from the dead. Open it, Ben. Read it to me. 24:29.000 --> 24:33.000 Look, you mustn't excite yourself. When was that letter mailed? 24:33.000 --> 24:36.000 It's a postmarked attempt. It must have been a day before she... 24:36.000 --> 24:43.000 Read the letter, Ben. All right. What does it say, Ben? Read it. 24:43.000 --> 24:53.000 Well, it says, um, Dear Ben, this is to remind you of the opening at the Broadhurst tonight. 24:53.000 --> 25:00.000 I hope you will be there because I sincerely believe that this is one of the greatest roles I have ever played 25:00.000 --> 25:05.000 and I'm so anxious to make good in it because of Father's faith in me. 25:05.000 --> 25:14.000 She cared. She really cared. What I thought. 25:14.000 --> 25:22.000 Sure she did. She'd have been proud of your performance in there this evening, too, Pop. You were great. 25:22.000 --> 25:27.000 Thank you, Ben. Thank you. 25:27.000 --> 25:28.000 Doctor! Doctor! 25:28.000 --> 25:30.000 Yes, Father? 25:30.000 --> 25:37.000 Oh. Well, that's that. He was quite an actor in his day, wasn't he? 25:37.000 --> 25:41.000 Yes. Quite an actor. 25:41.000 --> 25:44.000 How is he? How is he doing? What did he say? Did he say anything? 25:44.000 --> 25:50.000 He's dead. I've got a letter here that will explain everything. It's a pity I didn't find it sooner. 25:50.000 --> 25:53.000 I haven't had this dinner suit on since the night of Marsha's opening. 25:53.000 --> 25:57.000 It fell out of my pocket when I leaned over the bed in there. 25:57.000 --> 26:02.000 It was written by Marsha Tillio the day she died. 26:02.000 --> 26:09.000 It says, Ben, I'm bored, tired, hurt, sick, full of nasty things. I'd stay a while longer, 26:09.000 --> 26:17.000 but death seems easier and simpler than life. What are a few pills more or less to one who has swallowed so much? 26:17.000 --> 26:22.000 Take care of Father. He liked you the best for the last time, Marsha. 26:22.000 --> 26:24.000 Suicide. It's a suicide note. 26:24.000 --> 26:25.000 But what about the bullets? 26:25.000 --> 26:30.000 Can't you guess? The old man worshipped her. She was his star. 26:30.000 --> 26:35.000 But stars don't commit suicide. Only failures do that. 26:35.000 --> 26:39.000 So he fired three bullets into her dead body, slashed the painting, 26:39.000 --> 26:42.000 and wrecked the place to make it look like a crime of passion. 26:42.000 --> 26:45.000 He must have been mad as a hatter. 26:45.000 --> 26:50.000 He was sane. I think he really saw her as murdered by all of us, 26:50.000 --> 26:54.000 her so-called friends who had let her down when she needed the most. 26:54.000 --> 27:00.000 Do you realize that that old barnstormer was playing his death scene from the moment he came into this room tonight? 27:00.000 --> 27:06.000 He'd rehearsed it in his bedroom for days, sharpening away at Macbeth's old toadstabber. 27:06.000 --> 27:13.000 He had his lines down pat. He staged his elaborate scene this evening and killed himself 27:13.000 --> 27:18.000 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. 27:18.000 --> 27:24.000 Well, it was a lovely piece of old-fashioned miming, but as fruitless a drama as I ever had the misfortune to witness. 27:24.000 --> 27:28.000 You're right, O'Shea. The plot was full of holes. 27:28.000 --> 27:48.000 We could have helped him a lot with the construction, but it was a great glass night. 27:48.000 --> 27:54.000 And so closes Actor's Blood, written and narrated by Ben Hecht and starring Frederick March. 27:54.000 --> 28:01.000 Tonight's study in Suspense. 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