Quiet, Please
Earning relatively little notice during its initial run, Quiet, Please has since been praised as one of the finest efforts of the golden age of American radio drama.
"[1] Similarly, radio historian Ron Lackmann declares that the episodes "were exceptionally well written and outstandingly acted",[2] while John Dunning describes the show as "a potent series bristling with rich imagination.
Writer Harlan Ellison, a longtime Quiet, Please fan, writes that the programs were "backed by sound effects and music…but it was essentially Chappell, just speaking softly.
Then, the show's theme music was played, a dirgey, funereal organ and Novachord version of a portion of the second movement of César Franck's 1899 Symphony in D Minor.
The introduction established the sparse, understated tone of the show, and has inspired collectors and reviewers to remark upon Cooper's use of the dramatic power of silence.
Though the general thrust of the stories were fantasy, horror and suspense, Cooper's Quiet, Please scripts covered a broad thematic range, including romance, science fiction, crime, family drama and humor (some of it quite self-deprecating).
Dunning describes the show as "outstanding dark fantasy;"[3] Hand notes that this description is broadly accurate, but that there are a few humorous or sentimental Quiet, Please episodes which "aren't particularly 'dark'".
"[1] Regardless of content, most episodes had a dreamlike, surreal quality, where odd or paranormal events were not always explained: Dunning wrote that the show's "characters walked in a fuzzy dream world where the element of menace was ripe and ever present.
Most notably, radio star Claudia Morgan (longtime voice of Nora Charles on The Adventures of the Thin Man, and not coincidentally, Ernest Chappell's wife) was an occasional female lead, usually in tragic romances, and was heard in the final show (the appropriately titled "Quiet, Please," a meditation on war and peace).
[5] J. Pat O'Malley, later a familiar TV character actor, was another frequent voice, heard in more than a dozen shows throughout the run, beginning with the first broadcast "Nothing Behind the Door."
Compared to other contemporary radio dramas, Quiet, Please used fewer sound effects and less dialogue, relying instead on first person narration to drive each play.
The show's keyboardist (Albert Berman for most of the episodes), however, arguably utilized the instruments in a more innovative way than others—not only for punctuation of climactic moments, but also as an element of the scripts, as in the lazy, boogie woogie riffs in the clandestine casino scenes in "Good Ghost" (24 November 1948).
Another pair of episodes, though not directly sequels, both feature an enchanted watch that allows its bearer to time travel: ("It's Later Than You Think" (8 February 1948) and "Not Responsible After Thirty Years" (14 June 1948) Despite some positive reviews (and a loyal audience that might be classified as a cult following, based on Crosby's claim the network received more requests from fans for Quiet, Please scripts than for any other radio program) the show never established itself and never attracted a sponsor.
According to Hand, Cooper's script for the episode was dizzyingly multilayered, blending authentic details of oil rig workers' daily activities, with elements of what might be termed "subterranea" or Hollow Earth lore, yet managing to faintly invoke nautical stories like the kraken.
In 2004, at the Sacred Fools Theater Company in Los Angeles, Corey Klemow directed stage adaptations of two of the best-regarded Cooper scripts, The Thing on the Fourble Board and Whence Came You?
Hand writes that Cooper "enjoys creating roles for the audience: passive listener, surreptitious eavesdropper, or even someone implicated in the action of the story itself.
Esau relates the tale of his girlfriend's odd fate after she discovered a conquistador's armor while exploring a well in Arizona, but he is repeatedly interrupted by her brother, who arrived uninvited for the broadcast.
Stating that he would happily copy any episodes for Emily, Chappell further wrote that "It took a lot of hours to make the tape transfers but I got a big thrill out of hearing them all over again and I want to say that there were many occasions when my emotions blew up and I just plain bawled.
Ellison's recollection is a little inaccurate: he relates the story being broadcast "early in the Forties" on Quiet, Please when it was in fact a late-1940s episode of another series, The Mysterious Traveler.
In 2004, Ellison took part in a recreation of the "Five Miles Down" script (by Robert Arthur and David Kogan, not Wyllis Cooper) at a convention of the Society to Preserve and Encourage Radio Drama, Variety and Comedy.
[11] In the October 17, 1948 episode titled "And Jeannie Dreams of Me" the Stephen Foster song Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair figured prominently.
