Suspense: The Face Is Familiar (

Suspense: 01/18/54, episode 534
Brought to you by the Old Time Radio Researchers, courtesy of The Suspense Project

Jack Benny makes his fourth and final appearance on the Suspense series. Each of them is special in their own way. He played a piano tuner in Murder in G Flat, a bookkeeper in A Good and Faithful Servant, a Martian in Plan X, and now a salesman in this episode.

Part of the plot of the episode The Great Train Robbery has Fred MacMurray’s character explaining that he should carry out certain tasks because his face was so plain with forgettable features that even if his description to police was accurate, he’d look like thousands of people and witnesses would never be able to identify him with certainty.

The plot of The Face is Familiar takes that to an entirely different level. In this Arthur Ross story, mobsters choose Jack Benny’s character to carry out their plans because he is so forgettable. The concept is so marvelously funny because Benny had one of the most familiar faces in show business. His photo appeared in newspapers and magazines so often that even radio listeners had a clear mental image of what he looked like. And, a running gag on the Benny show about his memorable looks was his remarkable “beautiful baby blue eyes,” which in one broadcast were described as “bluer than the thumb of an Eskimo hitchhiker.”

In this broadcast, Jack is robbing a bank… another funny juxtaposition with his radio comedy character. On radio, Jack had his own bank vault under his Beverly Hills home. It was protected by Carmichael the Bear and Ed, the guard… and a moat! One of the most financially successful and independent show business figures acts in this script like he hasn’t a clue about what’s going on in the bank in this Suspense broadcast. It’s being robbed, and he’s doing it! He admits to it, and no one believes him!

The rehearsal for The Face is Familiar began on Sunday, January 10, 1954, at 9:00 am. The recording of the drama began at 1:00 pm, concluding at 1:30 pm

It is claimed that CBS and Auto-Lite were not pleased with this script for Suspense, but it was already too close to the broadcast date to cancel. (Lewis had a mug on his desk that said “Where were you when the page was blank?” which drove much of his relationship with CBS and ad agency executives who questioned his acumen). Benny loved the story so much that he bought the rights after the radio broadcast. His television production company, “J and M” (for “Jack and Mary”) was the producer of many television series besides his own comedy show. The highly successful anthology series General Electric Theater was just one of them.

The Face is Familiar was broadcast on General Electric Theater on 1954-11-21 as the Season 3, Episode 9 offering. Benny was not the only actor to be in both the radio and television productions. Suspense stalwart Joe Kearns played a cop in the radio play and played the robbed teller in the television presentation. The program can be viewed at the Internet Archive https://archive.org/details/GE_Theate...

The radio version is generally considered to be better and funnier than the TV one. But it is fun to see Benny (and Kearns) on the screen.

The cast: JACK BENNY (Tom Jones), Sheldon Leonard (Harry Edmond), Clayton Post (Joe / Man 2), Joseph Kearns (Bank Teller / Cop), Herb Butterfield (Boss), Jeane Wood (Woman in Queue), Hy Averback (Man 1 [in Queue]), Stanley Farrar (Bank Teller 2), Larry Thor (Narrator)

COMMERCIAL: Harlow Wilcox (Announcer), unknown actor (DeSoto dealer)

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