"A Love Story, or An Adventure . . . or Both": The Way It Was, 22 August

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BOX 13:
THE FIRST LETTER (SERIES PREMIERE)
(MUTUAL, 1948)

Well, this is great---rain, rain, rain . . . I bet even the ducks wouldn't come out in weather like this. But me, I'm an idiot. I gotta go and take up a profession like being a writer. I couldn't take up something easy---ooooh, no, not me, I gotta be a writer so I can go out on nice, cold, wet nights, beating my brains out looking for an idea . . . idea . . . deadline . . . oh, sure, mustn't forget that ever-lovin' deadline. Hmph. What a way to make a living. I could have stayed a reporter at the Star-Times and have nights of something . . . like listening to political speeches . . . or covering the opening of a new manhole. Oh, no--not me. I have to write fiction. Do it the hard way . . . Well, I might as well take the usual hands, open the usual doors, to the usual place, hear the usual cons . . .

Thus the first words heard from disillusioned former newspaper reporter Dan Holliday (Alan Ladd), who's surrendered the journalist's life for the life of a novelist, and falls upon a somewhat unique way to find subjects about which to write: a continuous ad---known only to his scatterbrained secretary (Sylvia Picker)---in the newspaper which formerly employed him full time, asking for "adventure" . . . and often as not finding more than even he can handle, sometimes.

And the first letter to fall into Box 13 promises Holliday the adventure he seeks. A promise he almost hopes isn't kept, when he visits his correspondent, Carla Williams (possibly Lurene Tuttle), and receives only a sultry but stern instruction through her apartment building intercom to meet her at a restaurant.

Which he does, hearing her say she's being blackmailed, she's uncertain whether her tormentor's promised end really will be the end, and she's very reluctant to go to the police . . . until they find her alleged blackmailer dead, a gun with a single bullet nearby, and she calls the police after all . . . naming Holliday as an apparent suspect.

Lt. Kling: Edmund MacDonald. Additional cast: Probably Betty Lou Gerson, Alan Reed, Luis Van Rooten, John Beal. Music: Rudy Schrager. Writer/director: Ted Hediger.

CHANNEL SURFING . . .

LUM & ABNER: DICK IS LOSING CUSTOMERS TO THE ROLLING STORE (NBC BLUE, 1935)---It took a week but the boys (Chester Lauck, also Grandpappy; and, Norris Goff, also Dick) have their new rolling store on the road and well in business, which worries Dick when his customers begin calling him asking when the rolling store will visit them next. Writers: Chester Lauck, Norris Goff.

THE WHISTLER: DEATH HAS A THIRST (CBS, 1942)---Donna Jackson's (possibly Lurene Tuttle) flip suggestion of an ocean sail to revive her heavily-drinking, verbally abusive, husband (possibly Wally Maher)---who fears hereditary insanity---becomes a fatal actuality when his doctor suggests it might be just what he needs, and they're joined by his old college friend, in whom she's taken to confiding her despair---and with whom her husband fears she's fallen in love. Additional cast: Unknown, but possibly including Wally Maher, John Brown, Cathy Lewis, Frank Lovejoy. The Whistler: Joseph Kearns. Music: Wilbur Hatch. Whistling theme: Dorothy Roberts. Sound: Berne Surrey. Writer: J. Donald Wilson.