I lhave no idea where the idea for this episode came from. Sometimes I actually can trace back ideas, but it was probably a weird dream or something. I just keep shuffling words and situations in my head until something strikes - it's like a rock tumbler. You throw everything in and wait until something strikes sparks, or until they just pop out all smooth and pretty.
Quiet Please was first broadcast on Jun 8, 1947 and its last episode ran on June 25, 1949. Total of 106 shows were broadcast, with only a very few of them repeats.
Willis Cooper created, wrote and directed Quiet Please. Though the general thrust of the stories were unrefined horror and surrealist suspense, Cooper's scripts covered a large thematic range including humor, romance, science fiction and family drama. His people stepped past the limits of reality into a fuzzy dream world where things weren't always what they seemed. A technique that was to be later called "The Twilight Zone."
Few of its happenings were never explained nor justified. Things just occurred without reason or logic. The best known episodes are "Let the Lillies Consider" and "The Thing on the Fourble Board."
Ernest Chappell was the host and star. Chappell played some ordinary fellow who gets all bollixed up with the supernatural. The cast was told to play it straight-Cooper had a pet hatred of "acting". Quiet Please used fewer sound effects and less dialogue, depending upon first person narration to drive each play. Most episodes featured no more than two or three actors.
Albert Berman provided the eerie score, which was the second movement of Franck's Symphony in D Minor. Cooper closed each week with the teaser for the next-it was done cold and without a script, but it always had grimly humorous undertones. Chappell's closing line was "I am quietly yours, Ernest Chappell."
QP was what was known as a "sustainer," that is, an unsponsored program that was sustained by the network. In the American OTR era, network radio programs that drew small audiences had trouble getting sponsors and the networks would have to sustain them until a sponsor could be found.
