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| Suspense | |
|---|---|
Romney Brent in the episode "A Cask on Amontillado" (1949) | |
| Genre | Anthology drama |
| Directed by | Robert Mulligan (1952-54) Byron Paul (1953) John Peyser (1950) Robert Stevens (1949-52) |
| Presented by | Rex Marshall |
| Composer(s) | Henry (Hank) Sylvern Bernard Herrmann |
| Country of origin | United States |
| Original language(s) | English |
| No. of seasons | 6 |
| No. of episodes | 260 |
| Production | |
| Executive producer(s) | William Dozier (1953) |
| Producer(s) | Robert Stevens (1949-52) John Peyser (1950) Martin Manulis (1952-54) David Heilweil (1954) |
| Running time | 25 min. (1949 pilot episode) 30 min. (March 1, 1949-Aug. 17, 1954) |
| Release | |
| Original network | CBS |
| Picture format | 4:3 Black-and-white |
| Audio format | Mono |
| Original release | 6 January 1949 – 17 August 1954 |
Suspense is an American television anthology series that ran on CBS Television from 1949 to 1954. It was adapted from the radio program of the same name which ran from 1942 to 1962. Like many early television programs, the show was broadcast live from New York City. It was sponsored by the Auto-Lite corporation, and each episode was introduced by host Rex Marshall, who promoted Auto-Lite spark plugs, car batteries, headlights, and other car parts.
An anthology series is a radio, television or book series that presents a different story and a different set of characters in each episode or season. These usually have a different cast each week, but several series in the past, such as Four Star Playhouse, employed a permanent troupe of character actors who would appear in a different drama each week. Some anthology series, such as Studio One, began on radio and then expanded to television.
Autolite or Auto-Lite is an American brand of spark plugs and ignition wire sets. Autolite products are sold in the United States, Canada, Mexico, and Australia. Until 2011, the Autolite brand was a part of Honeywell's automotive Consumer Products Group, along with FRAM and Prestone. Since then, it has been manufactured and marketed by FRAM Group, which is a constituent company of the Auckland, New Zealand-based investment firm Rank Group. Autolite has been the official spark plug of NASCAR since April 2000.
Rex Marshall, was an American actor, television announcer, and a radio personality for 46 years. His career began in Boston, Massachusetts as a reporter for a radio station and ended in White River Junction as the owner of his own radio station.
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Some of the early scripts were adapted from Suspense radio scripts, while others were original for television. Like the radio program, many scripts were adaptations of literary classics by well-known authors. Classic authors such as Edgar Allan Poe, Agatha Christie, and Charles Dickens all had stories adapted for the series, while contemporary authors such as Roald Dahl and Gore Vidal also contributed. Many notable actors appeared on the program, including Bela Lugosi, Boris Karloff, Cloris Leachman, Brian Keith, Franchot Tone, Robert Emhardt, Leslie Nielsen, Lloyd Bridges, and many more.
Edgar Allan Poe was an American writer, editor, and literary critic. Poe is best known for his poetry and short stories, particularly his tales of mystery and the macabre. He is widely regarded as a central figure of Romanticism in the United States and of American literature as a whole, and he was one of the country's earliest practitioners of the short story. He is generally considered the inventor of the detective fiction genre and is further credited with contributing to the emerging genre of science fiction. He was the first well-known American writer to earn a living through writing alone, resulting in a financially difficult life and career.
Dame Agatha Mary Clarissa Christie, Lady Mallowan, was an English writer. She is known for her 66 detective novels and 14 short story collections, particularly those revolving around her fictional detectives Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple. Christie also wrote the world's longest-running play, a murder mystery, The Mousetrap, and, under the pen name Mary Westmacott, six romances. In 1971 she was appointed a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) for her contribution to literature.
Charles John Huffam Dickens was an English writer and social critic. He created some of the world's best-known fictional characters and is regarded by many as the greatest novelist of the Victorian era. His works enjoyed unprecedented popularity during his lifetime, and by the 20th century critics and scholars had recognised him as a literary genius. His novels and short stories are still widely read today.
The program was a live television series, but most episodes were recorded on kinescope. However, only 90 of the 260 episodes survive today. The rest were destroyed and no longer exist in any format. [1]
Live television is a television production broadcast in real-time, as events happen, in the present. In a secondary meaning, it may refer to streaming television over the internet. In most cases live programming is not being recorded as it is shown on TV, but rather was not rehearsed or edited and is being shown only as it was recorded prior to being aired. Shows broadcast live include newscasts, morning shows, awards shows, sports programs, reality programs and, occasionally, episodes of scripted television series.
Kinescope, shortened to kine, also known as telerecording in Britain, is a recording of a television program on motion picture film, directly through a lens focused on the screen of a video monitor. The process was pioneered during the 1940s for the preservation, re-broadcasting and sale of television programmes before the use of commercial broadcast-quality videotape became prevalent for these purposes.
