Original Airdate: July 16, 1948 (Starring Alan Ladd w/Sylvia Picker)
A series of practical jokes threatens the life of an heir.
Holiday’s assistant Suzy picks up the mail at the Star-Times box as usual and one peculiar note inside reads:
Dear Dan,
Knowing your Box 13 angle, I hope that what I have to offer is intriguing enough to tempt you, at least I think it can be interesting. As a matter of fact Dan, this thing has got to the point now where it’s becoming downright vicious; it scares me. What the thing is I’ll tell you when and if I see you…
Writer: Oran Blackstone
Producer: Vern Carstensen
Director: Richard Sanville
Music: Rudy Schlager
Alan Walbridge Ladd was born in 1913 in Hot Springs, Arkansas, the only child of Ina Raleigh and Alan Ladd, a freelance accountant. His mother was English, from County Durham, and his paternal grandparents were Canadian. His father died when he was four. At age five, he burned his apartment playing with matches, and his mother moved them to Oklahoma City. He was malnourished, undersized, and nicknamed Tiny. His mother married a house painter who moved them to California. When he was just eight, he went to work picking fruit, delivering papers, and sweeping out stores. In high school, he discovered track and swimming. By 1931 he was training for the 1932 Olympics, but an injury put an end to those plans. He opened a hamburger and hot dog stand called Tiny's Patio, and later worked as a grip at Warner Brothers Pictures. He married his friend Midge in 1936, but couldn't meet her financial expectations, so they lived apart. In 1937, they shared a friend's apartment and had a son, Alan Ladd Jr., but his destitute alcoholic mother moved in with them and eventually committed suicide from ant poison.
His size and "coloring" were regarded as not right for movies, so he worked hard at radio, where talent scout and former actress Sue Carol discovered him early in 1939. After a string of bit parts in "B" pictures and an unbilled part in Orson Welles' classic Citizen Kane (1941), he tested for This Gun for Hire (1942). His fourth-billed role as psychotic killer Raven made him a star. However, he was drafted into the military in January 1943 yet discharged in November with an ulcer and double hernia.
Throughout the 1940s his tough-guy roles packed audiences into theaters, and he was one of the very few males whose cover photos sold movie magazines. In the 1950s, he was performing in lucrative but unrewarding films, an exception being Shane in 1953. By the end of the 1950s, however, liquor and a string of mediocre films had taken their toll.
In November 1962, he was found unconscious lying in a pool of blood with a bullet wound near his heart, a probable suicide attempt. In January 1964 in Palm Springs, California he was found dead, apparently due to “an accidental” combination of alcohol and sedatives.