Suspense is compounded of mystery and suspicion and dangerous adventure. In this series are tales calculated to intrigue you, to stir your nerves, to offer you a precarious situation and then withhold the solution… until the last possible moment when we again hope to keep you in…Suspense!

Suspense (1942-1962) aired “Portrait Without a Face” on March 2, 1944 as the 81st of its 945 episodes.

As recounted in the introduction to the more than 50 episodes of Suspense we’ve shared over the past sixteen years, it was such a rich goldmine of superior stories that we found each one has had something unique to offer. Suspense was one of the most well produced, written, acted, and critically acclaimed of all radio shows during the Golden Age of Radio, many a film star jumping at the chance to perform in an episode, among them Cary Grant, Orson Welles, Jimmy Stewart, Susan Hayward, Vincent Price, Charles Laughton, Loretta Young, Peter Lorre, and Rita Hayworth. After many another radio show had gasped its last breath during the 1950s, Suspense (along with Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar) finally closed shop in September of 1962 whereupon radio historians proclaimed the Golden Age of Radio dead, television having become the medium of choice in America.

“Portrait Without a Face” stars radio, film, and TV actor George Coulouris (1903-1989, photo top right from 1941’s Citizen Kane). The story begins outside an Art Gallery where a woman is turned away at closing time. She begs to be let in just long enough to view a single painting for a moment, aware that many are already crowded inside to see the same currently popular painting but for very different reasons than her more ultimately important one, a reason she must keep to herself at all costs. Beside herself, she finally gives up, deciding to return the next day when the gallery is open. Little does she know that several men have been watching her secretly from afar, and they mean her no good. They, and her husband, with whom she confides upon her return home, hold different views on the very special painting that only she can decipher, and what she reports after viewing the rare piece of art will reveal a secret of much consequence, determining life and death for certain people. It is eventually revealed that the woman, her husband, and the artist who painted the enigmatic portrait have more in common than first thought, and for this small bit of backstory we see a hint of the romantic entanglement that drove the three main characters in the classic 1942 film Casablanca, though that story and this one are otherwise quite different. The painting serves as the MacGuffin, driving the plot and framing the actions and motives of the players in this dangerous game whose history is set in pre-WW II 1939 Paris.  The poor woman who finds herself at the center of this story of love, betrayal, and deceit remains our empathetic heroine as her loyalties are tugged in various directions, not realizing until the very end that being an unknowing puppet, manipulated by the two men closest to her, has led to the truth held within the “Portrait Without a Face,” but at what emotional cost to herself? This tightly written drama is a study in fine writing and definitely worth a listen.