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August 15, 2025 • 29 mins
Dive into the eerie and captivating world of "Quiet Please." This iconic radio show from the golden age of radio offers a unique blend of horror, mystery, and drama that will keep you on the edge of your seat. Whether you're a fan of classic radio dramas or looking for spine-tingling stories to listen to, "Quiet Please" has something for everyone. Don't miss out on this timeless collection that will transport you to a world of suspense and intrigue.
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Episode Transcript

Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Quiet Please, Quiet Please. The Mutual Broadcasting System presents Quiet Please,

(00:40):
which is written and directed by Willis Cooper and which
features Ernest Chappel. Quiet Please for Tonight is called Sketch
for a Screenplay. I got to thinking this afternoon about Hollywood.

(01:00):
There's a lot of people don't care much about Hollywood,
and I suppose they got a right to feel any
way they wanted. But me, I always sort of liked
the place. Not Hollywood, the town especially, but what people
and pictures think of as Hollywood, all the way out
to Fox and Metro and the sealsnik Lot, all the
way back to Paramount Narcao and Columbia, out to the Valley,

(01:22):
the Universal and Warners and Republic, It's all Hollywood, the
picture people, even Hollywood itself. I wonder if the loafers
still clutter off the sidewalk outside of the Get on
Vine Street. I wonder if the hardest working newsboy in
the world is still on the corner of Hollywood and Vine.

(01:44):
Wonder if Roland is still at the parking lot back
of the Equable, and that bartender at the Derby that
always used to put the bite on you for fifty bucks.
Hollywood Boulevard at Christmas time, Santa Claus Lane with the
gold and silver trees and the lights. And in the
summer when it's eleven o'clock in Hollywood, but it's three
o'clock in New York, that makes the time to have

(02:07):
a bottle a cord of blank in the bamboo room. Yeah,
and get quite sentimental over Hollywood, especially when you're not
there and you're not ever going back. I cot was
thinking about a screenplay this afternoon when I was thinking
about Hollywood. No, it isn't written. I dobt it ever

(02:28):
will be written. But I amused myself. All I've forno
thinking about it, walking over to Harry's office with a
batch of pages under my arm, the lily and the
disk typed up all nice and neat on the yellow paper.
Maybe milk girls to normand Foster would be strolling back
to the writer's building, driping about changes their producer wanted,
and bring it back at three o'clock. Boys, and Harriet'd

(02:51):
be sitting there with his feet on the big desk,
drinking coke how many times? How many times? So sit
down in a big easy chair with a light in
near eyes, and after a while Harry finishes his cope
and takes his feet down and shuts his eyes.

Speaker 2 (03:12):
All right, what you got for?

Speaker 1 (03:13):
I just got a few pages, Harry, just the opening seat,
only a few scenes, but I think it sets.

Speaker 2 (03:17):
The mood of the thing.

Speaker 1 (03:18):
Go ahead, let's hear it. Read it to me, all right?
Long shot the Chateau Park, summer day, shooting from a
hike toward the chateau itself, which stands at the edge
of the woods, where the low hills rise against the horizon.
In the foreground, near a formal garden in the center
of which a fountain plays, is a marble statue of

(03:39):
a Greek goddess. Through the trees behind the chateau we
can dimly see other sculptured figures. The chateau itself is huge, gray,
many windows, and its conical turrets rise bravely against him.

Speaker 3 (03:53):
Oh, okay, okay, everybody knows what a French chatau looks like.
Go ahead with the story. I gotta go to the
barber shop.

Speaker 1 (03:59):
A little breeze and the south moves restlessly through the
branches of the trees, and the haze of midsummer is
on the distant hills, and all the scene comes the
sound of children at place, and this about kids kids.
I suppose it is, Harry. I suppose it is. I
remember those summers, those long happy summers when I was

(04:22):
a child. The park and the chateau were magic places.
Then when the twilight fell across the broadwoodlands and the
tiny lights sprang out in the dall windows above us,
we used to set the three of us and dream
and fired and rolland and the Gastine, and all the
paladins of France with male ghosts who were very art

(04:42):
to us. In the gathering dust, Paul and Roland blew
his horn again and again, but the king was far away,
and he did not hear.

Speaker 3 (04:53):
The mad and Roland and all the armies died in
the tut of Onto that because King Shalomid and not yet, no,
not late.

Speaker 1 (05:02):
They died.

Speaker 2 (05:03):
But when the book says he died, no, Roland did
not die any fair.

Speaker 1 (05:08):
The colonel says he didn't die. The colonel says, Roland
live forever. He Then Roland waits for the day when
Price needs him, then he would come. And the colonel says,
if we listened on a night when there's no moon,
sometime we can hear Roland Sandy's horn. Maybe see the
flights of the short dunas all in the skylight.

Speaker 4 (05:25):
Oh do you believe that fast?

Speaker 2 (05:26):
I don't know, do you, Paul?

Speaker 1 (05:28):
No?

Speaker 2 (05:29):
Of course I believe that I have had the horn.

Speaker 1 (05:31):
Who are you dream that I have had it?

Speaker 4 (05:34):
It is nice to believe that about the horn, about
Land living and being very always to come to the
aid of his people.

Speaker 2 (05:42):
I would like that. I would like to live always,
not forever, Paul.

Speaker 1 (05:48):
That wouldn't be fun.

Speaker 2 (05:49):
Yes, it would to have people when they've given up, Paul.

Speaker 4 (05:52):
It would be fun that way, Sad.

Speaker 2 (05:55):
I don't want to live forever. I don't think.

Speaker 4 (05:57):
Anybody really wants to live forever.

Speaker 2 (06:00):
What DEEP want on me be?

Speaker 1 (06:02):
And I remember that afternoon, the three of us under
the great oak tree, and the sun red and gold
beyond the hives, children together in the.

Speaker 2 (06:10):
Good days before the great plague came out.

Speaker 1 (06:12):
Of the east and swallowed up the e in happiness
of right, that all these things about just kids seen
thirty six pose, three shots, meddling Paul and Fret. I'm
wearing my going away clothes and in my hands my
belie cap be tagged with my name and destination. So
year later and more the first chair winds of bottom

(06:33):
are sweeping the leaves and the trees in the park,
and the frost has touched the flowers in the former garden.
Where we stand before the Simon fountain. There are fears
that Mad'm dies and the suspicion of 'em on Paul's chips.
For this is goodbye again.

Speaker 4 (06:49):
Wh would come back next year? One too three?

Speaker 2 (06:51):
Oh course you'd come back and meddling stop crying.

Speaker 4 (06:55):
Plenty, you said, if I am not flat shoe.

Speaker 2 (07:00):
Stop you don't know how I'll miss you matter?

Speaker 4 (07:04):
Oh why come you keep you here always?

Speaker 1 (07:08):
My mother?

Speaker 4 (07:10):
You know I wish your courts seek?

Speaker 5 (07:12):
Yeah, you come back many do come back for that?
I will that, man, I promise, go away, go away,
please Paul, goodbye, Fred good hit fall come back. I'll
come back.

Speaker 2 (07:30):
Where'd been waiting, I know till next summer. That till
next summer.

Speaker 6 (07:38):
Say you won't say that never matter? No, you love
your friend and I love you matter. No, come back, Gory,
I'll come back to you, man, Lenny, will you wait,
fad you wait for me? I'd be like home and said,
don't master her when you come back. And hundred years

(08:01):
from h how do be awaiting?

Speaker 1 (08:04):
And over the scene comes the sound of a distant horn,
not the distant horror of Rowland, protector of France, with
the striding horn of the motor car that was to
take an American child away from the scenes of his
happiest years and set him on his journey hard. And
as the two children embrace, whitting each other's faces with

(08:26):
their tears, we fade up, And then I thought of
the next few years fayed in New York Harver, and
the statue of every dissolved to a confused, tearful greeting

(08:49):
at the pier. Close up the preoccupied, garrulous mother, and
close up and embarrassed preoccupied strings your call father, a
moving shop, a train streaking Western in the night. And
montage a sati boys standing out of a train window,

(09:10):
of fountain playing in a former garden in the sunlight,
cone shaped towers against an evening sky, a girl waving
goodbye from the iron gates of a chateau. Tracks, a
giant figure and arm are brandishing a golden trumpet, and
on the soundtrack, distant distant voices combat.

Speaker 4 (09:32):
Se do you tell you say? Combart a Hunton kids
how do you waiting?

Speaker 1 (09:39):
Say, let me see that script? Fred go ahead, waited, Harry.

Speaker 3 (09:51):
Inside diploma from the University of Illinois. No, the old
men by these pleasants, and Frederick Arthur ks for us
seal of the University. Full shot The City Room, Daily Newspaper.
As Fred enters the room, the camera followed him to
the desk of the city editor, where he stops respectfully.

(10:14):
The camera moves into a close two shot of Fred
and the editor. The editor at last looks up.

Speaker 1 (10:20):
I was edited the college paper my last year in school,
and I did a column on sports for the Havana Paper.

Speaker 3 (10:25):
Dissolved to typewriter and hands at work. The camera moved
into a close close up.

Speaker 2 (10:30):
And we read by.

Speaker 1 (10:33):
Perdiery Of.

Speaker 3 (10:40):
Dissolved to close up Fred at TELEPORTI all right, turned
out and see what I can do about him.

Speaker 2 (10:46):
Dissolved to medium shot group at bar, favoring friend.

Speaker 1 (10:52):
Fred raises his glass and drinks. Here's to Hollywood, you
unlucky paper, highwood and a million dollars. There is a
weak writing movies.

Speaker 2 (11:02):
Dissolved to close up Fred's hands are a typewriter. Dissolved
to full shot.

Speaker 3 (11:08):
Carte Circle Theater at night with searchlights stabbing up into
the sky.

Speaker 1 (11:13):
At the premiere of Fred's first picture success.

Speaker 3 (11:17):
Great clouds of movie fans and the bleachers that the
stars leave their cars and great into the theater. Fred,
in a brand new dinner jacket, surrounded by a picture
of personalities, walks proudly into the theater.

Speaker 1 (11:29):
Insert the clock on the utter McKinley building.

Speaker 2 (11:35):
A great grass pendulum swings back and forth Greenland as
a reminder of death and time.

Speaker 1 (11:42):
And the image of the girl waving goodbye has been
and her voice far away.

Speaker 4 (11:52):
Why the way.

Speaker 1 (11:57):
That an answert of the calendar that reads September nineteen
thirty nine and double exposed against it. Marching men in
gray uniforms stupas dive bombing a road and the man
in a rumpled gray uniform howling in a mob and
voices shouting ziegilez stop. Shot of the French tricolor being lowered. Newsrael.

(12:22):
Shot of a man weeping in the street, entered poster
in the Hollywood Office. The poster reads wanted for murder
Adolph Chicelgruber Newsrael shot three men in uniform before the
Arch of Triumph in Paris. One with a little mustache,
a fat man, a club footed man, and they're smiling.

(12:43):
Double exposure superimposed the face of a weeping girl, and
over the picture the sound of a horn echoing from
the past of Rozzy Box, and then again the face
of a weeping girl beside a ruined, tell torn chateau
in France.

Speaker 2 (13:03):
And a word one word, wait, where's.

Speaker 1 (13:15):
Now? A stock shot of the studio gates closing from
the outside, and a quick montage of a raised hand
of a train full of soldiers and new ill fitting uniforms,
a long line of men and a doctor with a
needle marching men again on a tower, and airplanes idling
in a broad field. That was the old five old
one at Lawson Field, the first of the airborne. The

(13:37):
men who rode the storm, Bill Ryder and Bill Yarborough,
first lieutenants and Colonel Bell Lee and Bill Miley, men
with high jump boots and the curl up wings of
the paratrooper above the left blast pocket and the tower
and hanging face down in your harness and sweating out
the ground. I'm jumping from the mock ups and learning

(13:58):
how to land and list hours packing parachutes and nights
across the state line of Phoenix City bear and shooting
galleries and the shouts Geronimo when the MP showed up
with a pickups sweating out the ground on the first jump,
the jump master's voice over the roar of the plane
I heard, checking the shoot of the man next to you,

(14:21):
while the next man tried all the buckles and patted
all the buffies on your pack, and the jump master again. Oh,
and the clatter of heavy jump boots on the metal floor,
and men flinging themselves into the green space outside on
the suddennuseness of the plane, and then your hands against
the side of the door in the check that set
your spinner, and then silence, and the planes scudding away,

(14:45):
and me all alone, feeling were nothing to hold you
up with a canopy over your head, no heaviness, no way,
nothing treed him. And then the greeners rushing up at
you in a sudden vision, the girl's face in the blue,
a BUCkies turn the ground and the shoot dragging it
to you. Yank the bottom shrouds and it flooded down

(15:07):
behind you, the rider yelling girl that harns your infantry again,
and a good deal of a Tommy gun in your hands,
and the earth on their foot in somewhere a horn
calling you, and slowly the scene fades out.

Speaker 3 (15:28):
Long shot, quart of Embanication, Satan Island, Knight, an ice
covered perry boat struggles across the blackout harbor to the
end of.

Speaker 2 (15:38):
A pier, and soldiers hurry up the gang tank to
the dimly lighted.

Speaker 1 (15:42):
Interior of the pier.

Speaker 3 (15:44):
A voice calls out a man's last name. He answers
with his first name, and up the gangway to the
bowels of a ship. Jump boots on the companion way, ladders,
jump boots dangling from the upper tiers of the bunks, lights, warmth,
and great pots of coffee dissolved to long shot Convoy

(16:07):
to day, a dozen ships wallowing in a bitter North
Atlantic swell, and a grim gray cruiser standing horribly in
the week, and a horn sounding desperately across the heaving ocean.

(16:28):
I sit in Harry's office as he reads the screenplay.
I dreamed of this afternoon.

Speaker 1 (16:33):
He look out the last but he doesn't see me
in the easy chair, with a light from the window
in my eyes. I know what Harry sees. Harry sees
the boy that looked like him, the happy talkative kid.
That was Harry Junior, the boy that I last saw
here in the office when he was talking about how
USC was going to beat Notre Dame next Saturday. And

(16:56):
I know what Harry's thinking of, you, thinking about a laughing,
talkative young marine corporal who malid one too many landings
with the raiders and the white star of David out
there on that island with the name nobody can pronounce.
When Harry turns back to the screenplay and reads silently

(17:16):
for a little while, and then he looks at me,
they won't go for war stories any offering. And I
don't say anything for a second, but I think, yes,
they will go for war stories, Harry. Yes, there's still
a lot of people that haven't forgotten. Go on read

(17:42):
the screenplay, Harry. Long shot and airfield in England. Knight, Yes,
I remember that, say forty seven. That's fine as you
could see Commander Knight stars up there, must if I jumps.

Speaker 2 (18:00):
That's what I'm telling me.

Speaker 1 (18:00):
The nines at the names waiting bloat shot the man
the boating and airplane and I remember that too. I
remember the floor of the plane colored with red packs
of ammunition already to them. About and they look gray
in the half light, and then with sweaty faces, climbing

(18:23):
aboard and sitting down on the bucket seats side by
side like hick people, and went without in the street car,
not speaking, traightening their belts and sweating, sweating out a
particular medium shot in fron tower. I remember the green
white fleshing for the plane behind us as we passed

(18:43):
the power.

Speaker 3 (18:46):
Lom shot formation of the air mate and plate and
high upove block maidens and a a the sound of
'em with the sound of buil and the count tails
with the plane, the ups matching out the way to
get uh.

Speaker 1 (19:00):
It's like a dozen kie waves.

Speaker 2 (19:03):
The deal shot Jeria airplane and I did a plan would.

Speaker 1 (19:09):
Stand up in the darkness to stand up poton jerk equipment,
and the green light goes on from the cuppet.

Speaker 2 (19:20):
And nobody else jeronimo, But don't we go into the.

Speaker 1 (19:22):
Blackness broom and might jump any more time, and God
knows what would find on the ground course.

Speaker 2 (19:28):
I O two by a door, playing closer for wings.

Speaker 1 (19:32):
I'd raised their hands against the door, James. And the
darkness is sick and the hairy blowing. That's why wings
on the light face and have a tight helmet, and
I feel from the beer in the way emergency shoot.
The man in front of me trips and goes out
along some other static pie holds.

Speaker 2 (19:47):
The other white free were jump at.

Speaker 1 (19:50):
The slashes of the weather would ride things away?

Speaker 2 (19:53):
What would I jump? How would you follow leak when
the last time the jump master yells and you are
hold it, but.

Speaker 1 (19:56):
He's too late. I'd imprisoned in the dark blackness between
the heaven and Earth, alone along in the dark, and
my heart bursting. I shouted in the darkness, but there
was no answer, no answer with the mothering of the
plains that they figured the way in of the night
that wrapped itself around me like a cloak. And I

(20:21):
gave myself up to die there in space, and I
think I prayed, and I heard the sound of a
horn blowing.

Speaker 2 (20:32):
Visionly, I.

Speaker 1 (20:37):
Crashed through the roches of a tree, and the.

Speaker 2 (20:40):
Greater blackness came over me, dissolved to be him shot
or I sternly don't.

Speaker 1 (20:48):
From a tangle of underbrush a man.

Speaker 2 (20:50):
And slowly rises to his feet.

Speaker 1 (20:52):
I got out of the pursued harness somehow that was
a lot, And as I raised my hand to regulided.

Speaker 3 (21:01):
Close shot German soldier. He lies half hidden behind a tree,
and he is lowering his rifle after firing a shot.
He waves to other soldiers not seen close shin kind
of Truman. The American flows himself behind the fallen tree.

(21:22):
He peered anxiously through the bushes montage German soldiers. In
a series of short flashes, we observed German soldiers rifles
and machine guns toist completely surrounding the American. Close shot
the American. He looks out from his concealment, searching the
area carefully. Suddenly there is the crackle of a twig

(21:44):
and he leaps to his feetures Tommy gunn A already yes,
of course, Harry, he'd bustard my young man and the
young woman. Paul, that's too much of wincidents framed.

Speaker 1 (21:56):
It was.

Speaker 2 (21:58):
Well, friend said, they have a change which the offending
close at the little motor on with for bed and.

Speaker 1 (22:08):
The cross of my ring. The coats.

Speaker 2 (22:11):
Come that Fred.

Speaker 1 (22:12):
Of course, oh boy, you, I say to him, you
might I like this. Heavy lists were cooling his ice.
It was a morning in the enemy. The closed to listen.
Perhaps we needed your friend and Paul took my head

(22:35):
and smiled at me.

Speaker 2 (22:36):
You heard the horror of all I fred.

Speaker 1 (22:39):
Have heard of a great many times.

Speaker 4 (22:41):
Paul, you have not forgotten how we talked about Hollen.

Speaker 1 (22:44):
No, I haven't forgotten it. How did you find me?

Speaker 4 (22:49):
Don't you recognize a please? Sah?

Speaker 1 (22:52):
Why know?

Speaker 2 (22:53):
Miss?

Speaker 4 (22:53):
The woods behind the chateau where we all lived.

Speaker 2 (22:56):
I wouldn't have recognized. Well, we played cowboy an Indian's friend.
Remember I remember, come play, We've got to beat you
out of yet. Well, but the Germans, they kind of thoughts,
oh boy, this is our home.

Speaker 1 (23:11):
Don't you remember?

Speaker 2 (23:12):
Full the last way?

Speaker 4 (23:13):
This way?

Speaker 1 (23:15):
Has it been rough?

Speaker 2 (23:19):
Yes, it has been rough.

Speaker 1 (23:22):
Come wait, you must turn me medium shot the woods
where the three of us struggling chapters the post were
clean in the spring time. Paula head, and then Madeline
and then me. More and more pathways, some of them knew,
some of them mere traces of foot, Prince through the woods,

(23:43):
my two friends, always ahead, always leading. You came back,
of course I came back Medland.

Speaker 4 (23:50):
We knew you wouldn't paygather.

Speaker 1 (23:51):
I'd come on, come on then my quality again Twice
I heard German patrol's not too far away from us.
But we went on and on till I lost all
sense of direction, and I said, how much farther? Paul stopped.
Then this is as far as we can go with you, Fred,
But what well, what do I do now?

Speaker 4 (24:13):
You came back to last faith.

Speaker 2 (24:15):
You wouldn't know what to do. Oh no, But madelin
come Madelyn.

Speaker 1 (24:20):
Goodbye, Fred, Paul. Will I see you again?

Speaker 4 (24:25):
Yes, you would see us again? Oh yeah.

Speaker 1 (24:30):
And Madelene kissed me. It was growing dark again in
the road that led past the chateau was directly in
front of me. I knew my way from here, but
Madelene kissed me in the twilight there and again I
got the distant call.

Speaker 2 (24:48):
Of the harm.

Speaker 1 (24:50):
And I turned away from Mary went out, and she
waved once when I looked back over my shoulder, and
then she and Paul were gone, and I knew at last, Harry,
why they couldn't go any farther with me.

Speaker 3 (25:11):
Read the next scene, Harry close shot clearing two graves
with rude headboards. The camera moves into a close up
and we read the inscription Madeline du Clo, French resistance fighter,
executed by order of the German commandant Paul de Clo

(25:34):
French resistance fight our executed.

Speaker 2 (25:36):
Just can't do that thread.

Speaker 1 (25:39):
There's one more scene, Harry.

Speaker 2 (25:44):
Camera moves up and over the two graves.

Speaker 4 (25:48):
To a the.

Speaker 3 (25:52):
We read the inscription on this headwood, Private Fred of
American Parashrist killed in a single handed attack on the headquarters.

Speaker 1 (26:06):
Of the German commandant. Hand of the scene comes the
sound of children at play, Madeline and Paul.

Speaker 4 (26:17):
And me.

Speaker 1 (26:48):
You have listened too, Quiet Please, which is written and
directed by Willis Cooper. The man who spoke to you
was Ernest Chappel, and Lana Stawski was Madeline. All it
was Frank Thomas. Harry was played by James Monks. The
original music for Quiet Please as Usual was composed of

(27:08):
played by Albert Berlin. Now for a word about next week.
Here's our writer, director Willis Cooper. My story for you next.

Speaker 2 (27:18):
Week is called Sander's a quotation that you are called half.

Speaker 1 (27:26):
If you don't know the rest of it, you will
next week. And so until next week at this time,
I am quietly yours, Ernest Chapel. Friends. March is Red

(27:52):
Cross time, the time when your American Red Cross ask
your cooperation and support the Red Cross has three major
responsibilities this coming year. Disaster relief and rehabilitation, a national
blood program so that the whole blood and its derivatives
may eventually be made available free to all, and services
to veterans and their families. But Red Cross services will

(28:16):
not end there.

Speaker 2 (28:17):
You'll find the Red Cross lending a hand and building
up health and ensuring the safety of the comunity.

Speaker 1 (28:23):
Teaching simple bedside care.

Speaker 2 (28:26):
Bring either way is a good nutrition to expect the motherss, veterans.

Speaker 1 (28:29):
Brides to find and the death as well as others
in the community. Teaching how to give temporary relief to
the injury, how to rescue a person from drowning, how
to avoid accidents common in everyday experience. These are traditional
Red Cross services offered in your name. Remember, in all
it does the Red Cross depends on you. Give generously

(28:54):
and give to the nineteen forty eighth Red Cross Fund.
This program comes from New York. This is the Mutual
Broadcasting System.
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