Suspense

Suspense was a long-running and highly popular radio drama that aired on CBS from 1940 – 1962. Suspense mainly focused on suspense thriller-type scripts and usually featured leading Hollywood actors of the era. A short list of actors and actresses you could hear on Suspense include Orson Welles, Paul Stewart, Peter Lorre, Elissa Landi, Bela Lugosi, Agnes Moorehead, Vincent Price, Cary Grant, Lucille Ball, Ava Gardner, Anne Baxter and the list goes on and on.

Suspense was one of the premier drama programs during the Golden Age of Radio and was subtitled “radio’s outstanding theater of thrills”. It went through several major phases, characterized by different hosts, sponsors, and director/producers. Formula plot devices were followed for all but a handful of episodes: the protagonist was usually a normal person suddenly dropped into a threatening or bizarre situation; solutions were “withheld until the last possible second”; and evildoers were usually punished in the end.

Read more about the Suspense radio drama at it’s Wikipedia page.

The great quality and clarity of the episodes are thanks to Old Time Radio Digitally Restored who went and spent hours cleaning these episodes up here. You can find their home at their source on Archive.org.