While I was doing research on the life and career of an actress—Susan Peters—from the 1940s Golden Era of Cinema for a biography, I stumbled across the world of what has come to be known as “old time radio.” Miss Peters was renowned and celebrated in her day but is completely unknown to today’s generation, which made her—in my thinking at least—all the more fascinating.
The aforementioned research and writing project will eventually result in a two-volume biography on the young actress, respectively entitled Miss Fortune and Sitting Pretty—an incredible story of an amazing life that I hope you will check out once it is completed and published.
In the course of authoring those books—and the hundreds of hours of researching newspapers and magazines of the day—I came across the fact, insignificant as it was, that Susan had performed in a radio play written by Cornell Woolrich while she was in a wheelchair after a tragic hunting accident nearly two years earlier.
The episode aired in late December of 1946. Since that time it has never been repeated and is now largely lost to history and no script of it exists anywhere. For all intents and purposes, it has disappeared. Reading a synopsis of it, however, I was intrigued with the basic plot, although as a radio script it had little depth and even less development as a story.
It did seem to me, however, that there was the potential for a true, fully developed story that needed to be written based on this concept. Even deserved to be written, perhaps. Caged Canary has since been published. As you read, hopefully you will feel the flavor of radio drama—suspense that builds and then delivers.
