This month’s recap from my collection of Old Time Radio (OTR) shows’ time travel episodes comes from Dark Fantasy. Broadcast on NBC’s radio network November, 1941 to June, 1942, the show was billed as an “Anthology of Supernatural Drama” and, though it ran a mere 30 shows (all written by Scott Bishop), the number of fan sites Ms. Google showed me when I searched tells me it’s still plenty popular today among OTR fans.
Now, here we go with A Letter From Yesterday….
A whistling wind and creepy organ music sets the stage as the show opens. An even creepier voice intones, “Darrrrk Fannnntasy…” like he’s Bela Lugosi welcoming you to Dracula’s castle. The music fades and we hear footsteps, a tread so heavy I’m thinking it’s Bigfoot, but no, it’s just a man entering a library in a place called “Jackson City.”
The man loudly asks a question and is immediately shushed by the librarian, because that’s what librarians do. “Can’t you read the sign?” she whispers. “Absolute quiet is required in this library.”
“My, but you read beautifully,” he says, still on the loud side, and they spar back and forth until she puts her foot down and tells him to shut it because he’s disturbing the other patrons. “Excuse me everyone, I didn’t mean to disturb you!” Bigfoot bellows, and I should be annoyed but, I don’t know, he’s so jolly and good-natured about his jerkiness I kind of like him.
We get to the point of Bigfoot’s visit. “I don’t suppose a hick library like this has any 
literature on hydrokinetics?” he asks. He follows up by mansplaining hydrokinetics until Ms. Librarian interrupts with a sniff and a list of the library’s books that will handily give him his answers. Bigfoot, whose name is Adam Chase (Ben Morris, a Dark Fantasy staple and veteran of over 300 other radio dramas), is shocked at Ms. Librarian’s knowledge and apologizes profusely. She dismisses him and sends him off to a corner with an armful of books.
At this point I’m wondering when the time travel will kick in. I mean, the verbal sparring’s been fun, but let’s get on with it. Adam’s doing some wondering too, and it’s not about hydrokinetics, it’s about the cute librarian, whose name he’s learned is Miss Marshall (Eleanor Naylor Caughron, who you may remember from such Dark Fantasy episodes as Spawn of the Sub-Human and The Thing From the Darkness). Adam’s smitten, and I’m impressed the thing he’s most smitten with is her intelligence.
Hours later, the library’s about to close and Adam’s not finished, so he asks Miss Marshall if he can check the books out. Gasp, not without a library card! They bicker in typical romance novel fashion, all quirky quips and daring dialogue, until he suggests she take the books home and he’ll come over and read them there. Wait, Dark Fantasy, are you sure this is a time travel episode and not shifting into thriller territory? Miss Marshall is suitably stunned by Adam’s request. He pleads his case. He’s an inventor and needs the books to prove his theories. If he can’t read the books now, someone else might beat him to it and get a patent first. Adam wins her over; she agrees to help out and even take dictation. He’s agog when she gives him her first name—Cecily—which was his mother’s name. Hmm, okay, so maybe this is a hint of the time travel yet to come?
Upbeat hurdy-gurdy music segues the scene to Cecily’s apartment. Apparently reading one book gives Adam the info he needs to prove his invention will work. He doesn’t mention what that invention is, but I’m hoping it’s a time machine, because, I’m impatiently tapping my foot here.
Cecily says she’s impressed by Adam’s genius and hopes he can get a patent. “Why?” Adam asks, concerned by the bittersweet note in her voice. “My father was an inventor, too,” she explains, before he was married, and someone beat him to the patent bureau hours before he got there. He was disappointed, but that wasn’t what broke him. Something happened earlier in his life, something Cecily never could figure out. Adam’s sympathetic and I’m intrigued—was time travel involved in the poor guy’s disillusionment?
Adam and Cecily work together for many weeks, prepping his still unidentified invention to bring to DC and file a patent application. Oh, they’re also dating, and it’s serious. So serious, when Cecily sees Adam off to DC, he shouts “Will you marry me?” as the train puffs out of the station. A cliché Hollywood moment, but it works. Cecily sighs a swoony yes.
Organ music that sounds like a funeral dirge leads into the next scene. Cecily enters notations into her diary that become increasingly frantic—Adam hasn’t written her, he doesn’t respond to her telegrams, and when she calls his hotel, he’s checked out. I’m frantic too. Has Adam invented a time machine and taken it into the past? Is that why she hasn’t heard from him?
Meanwhile, Cecily hears a radio news bulletin: the train from DC to Jackson City has been robbed, everything’s been taken by the bandits, including the mail. “This train robbery will remind old-timers of the dramatic train robbery on the same spot, some 50 years ago,” the news announcer says. Aha! I’m sure Adam has something to do with both robberies.
Jarring flute music cuts to 3 months since Cecily last saw Adam. She’s called, written, even gone to DC and found no trace of him. She confesses to her diary that she’s given up, when there’s a knock on the door. It’s Adam. “I had to come back,” he says. “I shouldn’t be here, since you didn’t want to see me.” Cecily’s all, WTF? I pounded the pavement, wearing out precious shoe leather in spite of wartime rationing on shoes looking for you, of course I want to see you.
“But you didn’t answer my letter,” he moans, and his story unfolds. He was too late filing a patent, someone beat him to it, just like what happened to her dad. Adam wrote to Cecily to break the news and to beg her, if she still loved him despite his failure, to come to DC where they would be married. But Cecily didn’t reply and Adam thought she’d dumped him. She’s like, duh, I do love you and I’m like, duh, you could’ve picked up the phone, no matter how much long-distance was in those days.
Adam’s still hurt and Cecily’s still wanting to dope-slap him, but eventually they figure it out—because of the train robbery, the letter never found its way to Cecily. They were victims of fate.
Sweet organ music brings us to the epilogue. Cecily’s talking at her diary again, noting that she and Adam have been married 2 months and are deliriously happy. They’ve bought this big old house Adam plans to fix it up. He’s got plenty of time, since he doesn’t seem to be gainfully employed. He calls to Cecily from the attic. She runs up to see he’s found an old mail sack full of letters postmarked January 17, 1889.
One of the letters is addressed to Cecily Drew in Youngstown, Ohio. Whoa, Adam says, that’s my mother’s name. The return address is Washington, DC, from a man named Aaron Marshall. “My father,” Cecily breathes, mystified.
The mystery is revealed when Cecily opens the letter and reads it. Aaron Marshall, having lost his chance at a patent, his dreams of fame and fortune dashed, hopes 1889 Cecily will still love him—and prove it by hurrying to DC to marry him. “I shall surely never exist if you don’t,” he wrote. Poetic, and sad, since we know the mail train was robbed and 1889 Cecily never got that letter. And we now know the thing that broke Ms. Librarian’s poor father’s heart.
Ah, irony. Librarian Cecily and Adam almost didn’t get together because the mail was stolen, and the same thing happened to his mother and her father. A bittersweet, O. Henry ending. Moral of the story, if Cecily’s father had just worn out a little shoe leather and hoofed it to Youngstown, he would’ve lost the invention but gotten the girl.
So, I liked this sweet story, and almost didn’t mind that it wasn’t, technically, a time travel. But I’m warning you, Dark Fantasy, I’m expecting a full-on timey-wimey experience from the next one of your episodes in my OTR time travel collection.
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