Quiet, Please | Old Time Radio

Quiet, Please presents “Gem of Purest Ray,” episode 50 of Quiet, Please, originally broadcast on May 17, 1948. Written and directed by Willis Cooper for the Mutual Broadcasting System, the drama features Ernest Chappell.

A detective-sergeant’s questioning of Dr. Eleftherios Moraitis opens onto a strange account of a deep-sea expedition, a custom diving bell, and a mysterious jewel linked to the legend of Atlantis. What begins as a police interrogation becomes an unsettling voyage into ocean depths and buried knowledge.

Quiet, Please presents the original broadcast with a newly produced contextual introduction, a short closing announcement, and gently cleane...

Quiet, Please presents “Never Send to Know,” episode 40 of the series, originally broadcast on March 8, 1948. Written and directed by Wyllis Cooper for the Mutual Broadcasting System, this unusual supernatural mystery stars Ernest Chappell as private investigator Mr. Kramer.

Kramer has little use for hard-boiled detective conventions—until an unlikely client arrives: a ghost who wants his own murder solved. With money to pay but only fragments of memory to offer, the dead man sets Kramer on a strange and unsettling investigation. Edgar Stehli and Nancy Sheridan also appear.

Quiet, Please presents the original broadcast with a newly...

Quiet, Please presents “How Are You, Pal?,” episode 14 of the series, originally broadcast on September 10, 1947. Written, produced, and directed by Wyllis Cooper for the Mutual Broadcasting System, it stars Ernest Chappell as Dane.

In this unusually intimate radio mystery, Dane speaks directly to an unseen old friend—and to the audience—asking listeners to write down three words before revisiting memories of friendship, romance, and growing unease. The story uses its on-air setting to build suspense, with Pat O’Malley, Vicki Vola, and Charme Allen also featured.

Quiet, Please presents the original broadcast with a newly produced c...

Quiet, Please presents “I Have Been Looking for You,” episode 2 of Quiet, Please, originally broadcast June 15, 1947. This local archival recording comes from Wyllis Cooper’s intimate Mutual Broadcasting System fantasy series.

A man and a woman describe an uncanny lifelong sense that they have been searching for one another, drawn by a familiar voice and a presence just beyond reach. Written, produced, and directed by Wyllis Cooper, the story stars Ernest Chappell and Claudia Morgan in a romantic supernatural tale of longing, memory, and fate.

Quiet, Please presents the original broadcast with a newly produced contextual introd...

Quiet, Please presents “Symphony in D Minor,” episode 65 of Quiet, Please, originally broadcast on September 13, 1948. Written and directed by Wyllis Cooper, this Mutual Broadcasting System production features Ernest Chappell.

Ray visits Johannes, a blind psychologist, intending to pursue his own interests involving Johannes’s wife, Carol. But a tense conversation about hypnosis, free will, and an unusual sound device turns into an unsettling psychological contest. The episode also weaves in the Quiet, Please theme, drawn from César Franck’s Symphony in D Minor.

Quiet, Please presents the original broadcast with a newly produced contextual introduction, a short c...

Quiet, Please presents “Good Ghost,” episode 71 of Quiet, Please, originally broadcast on October 24, 1948. Written and directed by Wyllis Cooper for ABC, this archival installment stars Ernest Chappell as Gus, with Murray Forbes, Ruth Lass, and Arthur Kohl.

In nighttime Chicago, Gus is suddenly confronted with the strange realities of life after death. As he remains bound to the city, old rivalries, Ada, and the ominous Rollo draw him into a darkly comic and uneasy supernatural tale.

Quiet, Please presents the original broadcast with a newly produced contextual introduction, a short closing announcement, and gently cleaned/mastered audi...

Quiet, Please presents “How Beautiful Upon the Mountain,” episode 48 of Quiet, Please, originally broadcast on May 3, 1948.

In this supernatural mountain tale by writer-director Wyllis Cooper, climber Hugh Brant recalls an Everest expedition with Oxford scholar John Chandos. Beginning in Darjeeling and ascending through wind, ice, crevices, and thin air, their journey confronts the era’s haunting sense of Everest as an unconquered and perhaps unknowable presence. Ernest Chappell stars, with Roy Irving.

Quiet, Please presents the original broadcast with a newly produced contextual introduction, a short closing announcement, and gently cleaned and mastered audio for a more c...

Quiet, Please presents “Nothing Behind the Door,” episode 1 of Quiet, Please, originally broadcast on June 8, 1947. Written and directed by Wyllis Cooper, this Mutual Broadcasting System premiere stars Ernest Chappell as Ross.

During a visit to California’s Mount Wilson Observatory, Ross and two friends become fascinated by a small, fenced-off corrugated-iron building near the great telescope. Its locked door, forbidding warning sign, and the astronomer’s insistence that there is nothing inside turn an ordinary night beneath the stars into an unsettling mystery.

Quiet, Please presents the original broadcast with a newly produced contextual introduction, a short cl...

Quiet, Please presents “We Were Here First,” episode 3 of Quiet, Please, originally broadcast on June 22, 1947. Written and directed by Wyllis Cooper for the Mutual Broadcasting System, the episode stars Ernest Chappell.

An elderly, unseen narrator shares a chilling account of a long struggle against the human “giants” from the perspective of a tiny, ancient people. Moving from New Jersey to wartime China, Cooper’s darkly imaginative tale explores survival, extermination, and the dangers of a world shaped by modern weapons.

Quiet, Please presents the original broadcast with a newly produced contextual introduction, a short closing announcement, and gently...

Quiet, Please presents “Thirteen and Eight,” originally broadcast on April 26, 1948. This archival recording is identified as episode 47 of the series.

Written and directed by Wyllis Cooper, this supernatural newsroom tale follows news photographer Rocco, played by Ernest Chappell. Used to people crowding into his shots for a chance to appear in print, Rocco encounters a particularly persistent “lens louse”—one whose appearances create an unsettling problem when the film is developed. Originally heard on the Mutual Broadcasting System, the episode also features Murray Forbes and J. Pat O’Malley.

Quiet, Please presents the original broadcast with a newly prod...

Quiet, Please presents “Cornelia,” episode 5 of the classic Quiet, Please radio anthology, originally broadcast on July 20, 1947. Written and directed by Wyllis Cooper for the Mutual Broadcasting System, the drama stars Ernest Chappell as Gordon, with Anne Seymour as Cornelia and Peggy Stanley as Barbara.

In a small town remembered from the distance of adulthood, Gordon tells Alan about the years when he and Barbara seemed inseparable—until the arrival of the captivating Cornelia changed the course of their lives. A supernatural-tinged romantic drama of memory, longing, and obsession.

Quiet, Please presents the original broadcast with a newly...

Quiet, Please presents “A Night to Forget,” episode 42 of Quiet, Please, originally broadcast March 22, 1948. Written and directed by Wyllis Cooper for the Mutual Broadcasting System, it stars Ernest Chappell as John H.

A radio performer is shaken by a nightmare that leads him to Studio Fifteen, a place with an unsettling, morgue-like atmosphere. As broadcast time nears, details from the dream begin to feel uncomfortably real in this self-referential tale of supernatural radio suspense.

Quiet, Please presents the original broadcast with a newly produced contextual introduction, a short closing announcement, and gently cleaned/mastered audio for a mo...

Quiet, Please presents “Portrait of a Character,” episode 82 of Quiet, Please, originally broadcast on ABC Radio Network on January 9, 1949. Written and directed by Wyllis Cooper, the drama features Ernest Chappell, Athena Lorde, and Charles Egleston.

A talkative trumpet player brings his battered horn to an instrument-repair shop and passes the wait by recounting an unsettling story involving his employer and a mysterious couple. As his account unfolds, this eerie fantasy explores wrongdoing, watchfulness, and judgment.

Quiet, Please presents the original broadcast with a newly produced contextual introduction, a short closing announcement, and gently cleaned/mastered audio for...

Quiet, Please presents “Whence Came You?,” episode 37 of the classic radio series Quiet, Please, originally broadcast on February 16, 1948. Written and directed by Wyllis Cooper, the Mutual Broadcasting System drama features Ernest Chappell as archaeologist Austin.

Returning to Cairo from Jerusalem, Austin learns that a mysterious woman has been seeking him. Joined by his newspaper-reporter friend Abe Feldman, he follows a troubling trail from the city’s nocturnal streets to a remote Egyptian excavation, where ancient ruins and an uneasy past begin to converge.

Quiet, Please presents the original broadcast with a newly produced contextual introduction, a short...

Quiet, Please presents “I Remember Tomorrow,” episode 6 of Quiet, Please, originally broadcast July 27, 1947. In this early science-fiction drama by writer-director Wyllis Cooper, Ernest Chappell stars as Dr. Garrett Faber, a physicist with unsettling ideas about time.

Faber urgently addresses the listener with a warning about three dangerous men and a device that can look one day into the future. As criminal ambition closes in, the limits—and consequences—of knowing tomorrow become the heart of this tense first-person mystery.

Quiet, Please presents the original broadcast with a newly produced contextual introduction, a short closing announcement, and gently c...

Quiet, Please presents “Beezer’s Cellar,” episode 69 of the classic radio drama series, originally broadcast on October 10, 1948. Written and directed by Wyllis Cooper, this ABC-era production stars Ernest Chappell, Lotte Stavisky, and Warren Stevens.

Traveling with stolen money, Stanley, Marlene, and Pete hear a troubling roadside tale about an abandoned cellar beyond a cemetery. Seeking a secluded place to hide their loot, they venture into the rural darkness, where old rumors, strange sounds, and the legend of Six-Fingered Beezer heighten the tension.

Quiet, Please presents the original broadcast with a newly produced contextual introduction, a short closin...

Quiet, Please presents “Where Do You Get Your Ideas?,” episode 88 of Quiet, Please, originally broadcast on February 20, 1949. Written and directed by series creator Wyllis Cooper, this ABC sustaining broadcast features Ernest Chappell, Kathleen Niday, and Frank Thomas.

Near closing time at a neighborhood bar, an increasingly insistent patron corners a writer of fantastic radio dramas with a deceptively simple question: where does he get his ideas? The result is a darkly comic, self-referential fantasy that playfully blurs the boundaries between storytelling, performance, and reality.

Quiet, Please presents the original broadcast with a newly produced contextual introduction, a sh...

Quiet, Please presents “The Ticket Taker,” episode 4 of Quiet, Please, originally broadcast on June 29, 1947. Written and directed by series creator Wyllis Cooper, this Mutual Broadcasting System drama stars Ernest Chappell as Ernie, with Floyd Buckley as the mysterious Ticket Taker.

On a sweltering Chicago night, three men attempting to flee after a killing encounter a gaunt old man who seems to wait along the city’s transit routes. As Ernie recounts the events, the stranger’s quiet demand for a ticket becomes increasingly impossible to ignore.

Quiet, Please presents the original broadcast with a newly produced contextu...

Quiet, Please presents “Not Enough Time,” episode 18 of the classic radio series Quiet, Please, originally broadcast October 6, 1947. Written and directed by Wyllis Cooper, the episode stars Ernest Chappell.

Garage mechanic Walter McCoy explains why he destroyed the time machine he spent four years building. Transported from 1947 Pekin, Illinois, to the same area fifty years earlier, Walter faces a mounting race against time amid a vividly realized 1897 small-town setting. Nancy Sheridan and Donald Briggs co-star.

Quiet, Please presents the original broadcast with a newly produced contextual introduction, a short closing announcement, and gently cleaned and mastered audio for...

Quiet, Please presents “Inquest,” episode 7 of Quiet, Please, originally broadcast on August 3, 1947. Written and directed by Wyllis Cooper for the Mutual Broadcasting System, the drama stars Ernest Chappell as William Ross.

Ross faces a coroner and an oddly assembled jury to account for a violent family incident involving his sister Eileen and her husband, Arthur. As he recounts old resentments, financial strain, and mounting tensions, the inquest takes on an increasingly unsettling atmosphere. James Van Dyk co-stars as the Coroner.

Quiet, Please presents the original broadcast with a newly produced contextual introduction, a short closing announcement, and...

Quiet, Please presents “The Room Where the Ghosts Live,” episode 32 of the classic radio series, originally broadcast on January 12, 1948. Written and directed by Wyllis Cooper, this early Mutual Broadcasting System installment stars Ernest Chappell as Lawrence, with Claudia Morgan and James Van Dyke.

Snowbound in an old house without working utilities, a gravely wounded man tells his skeptical doctor of strange nighttime sounds, an impossible door, and the unsettling history concealed within the walls. A tense, intimate supernatural tale told in Quiet, Please’s distinctive first-person style.

Quiet, Please presents the original broadcast with a newly produc...

Quiet, Please presents “Quiet, Please,” episode 43 of the classic radio series Quiet, Please, originally broadcast March 29, 1948. Written and directed by Wyllis Cooper, the episode features Ernest Chappell.

In this somber science-fiction parable, a Martian survivor recalls the world Mars once was and reflects on the beliefs and conflicts that placed it in peril. Through memories of Tor, Morna, and the war-minded Krogh, the story weighs hatred, war, and the fragile value of peace.

Quiet, Please presents the original broadcast with a newly produced contextual introduction, a short closing announcement, and gently cleaned/mastered audio for a more...

Quiet, Please presents “Sketch for a Screenplay,” episode 39 of Quiet, Please, originally broadcast on March 1, 1948. Written and directed by series creator Wyllis Cooper, the Mutual Broadcasting System drama features Ernest Chappell.

A Hollywood screenwriter imagines pitching a new story drawn from his childhood at a French château, where friendships with Paul and Madeline linger into memory. Moving between Hollywood, youthful recollection, and wartime France, this layered drama explores the distance between romantic invention and lived experience.

Quiet, Please presents the original broadcast with a newly produced contextual introduction, a short closing announcement, and gently cleaned/maste...

Quiet, Please presents “Little Visitor,” episode 31 of the series, originally broadcast January 5, 1948. This Mutual Broadcasting System drama was written and directed by Wyllis Cooper and stars Ernest Chappell as locksmith Ulysses Smith.

Working late in his shop, Ulysses—whose memories before a 1928 train wreck have vanished—encounters an unsettling young boy who seems unusually familiar with locks and with fragments of Ulysses’s forgotten past. A quiet, eerie story of identity, memory, and the things that refuse to stay buried.

Quiet, Please presents the original broadcast with a newly produced contextual introduction, a short closing announcement, and gently...

Quiet, Please presents “In Memory of Bernadine,” episode 25 of the Mutual Broadcasting System series, originally broadcast November 24, 1947. Written and directed by Wyllis Cooper, it stars Ernest Chappell as the narrator, with Nancy Sheridan as Bernadine.

A man returning home after the war reflects on Bernadine, the woman he loves, and the memories that sustained him. Told in the series’ intimate first-person style, this is a restrained, nostalgic romantic drama shaped by a homeward journey and wartime recollections.

Quiet, Please presents the original broadcast with a newly produced contextual introduction, a short closing announcement, and gently cleaned/master...

Quiet, Please presents “The Man Who Stole a Planet,” episode 58 of Quiet, Please, originally broadcast on July 26, 1948. This Wyllis Cooper original was written and directed by Cooper and stars Ernest Chappell as Norman, with Hilde Palmer as his wife, Liz.

After returning from a Mexican expedition, wealthy amateur archaeologist Norman brings home an astonishing artifact from a hidden Maya temple: a tiny, intricately detailed model of Earth. What begins as an extraordinary discovery soon takes on an ominous atmosphere in this darkly playful blend of archaeological adventure, supernatural menace, and speculative fantasy.

Quiet, Please presents the orig...

Quiet, Please presents “Is This Murder?,” episode 83 of the classic radio series, originally broadcast on January 16, 1949. This local archival recording comes from the ABC anthology written and directed by Wyllis Cooper.

An inventor of artificial limbs calls a lawyer to his darkened home with a disturbing question about the meaning of murder. As the inventor recounts the troubling ambitions of his assistant, the drama explores prosthetics, mechanical life, and the moral shadows of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Ernest Chappell stars, with Dan O’Herlihy and Joyce Gordon.

Quiet, Please presents the original broadcast with a newly produced...

Quiet, Please presents “How Are You, Pal?,” episode 14 of Quiet, Please, originally broadcast September 10, 1947. This Mutual Broadcasting System drama was written, produced, and directed by Wyllis Cooper and features Ernest Chappell as Dane.

Newly returned to New York, Dane speaks directly to an old friend over the radio, revisiting their shared youth, an old romance, and the uneasy memories between them. As his intimate account unfolds, hints about the years he has been away give the reunion an increasingly tense edge.

Quiet, Please presents the original broadcast with a newly produced contextual introduction, a short closing anno...

Quiet, Please presents “Green Light,” episode 34 of Quiet, Please, originally broadcast January 26, 1948.

While waiting for a train to California, former railroad telegrapher Phil Conners recalls a lonely night shift at a small lumber-town depot decades earlier. An unexpected train, uneasy signals, and the darkness beyond the tracks turn a familiar railroad routine into an unsettling mystery. Written and directed by Wyllis Cooper, the episode stars Ernest Chappell as Phil Conners, with Anne Seymour as Addy Dorsey.

Quiet, Please presents the original broadcast with a newly produced contextual introduction, a short closing announcement, and gently cleaned/mastered audi...

Quiet, Please presents “Never Send to Know,” episode 40 of Wyllis Cooper’s Quiet, Please, originally broadcast on the Mutual Broadcasting System on March 8, 1948.

Private detective Kramer receives an extraordinary client: a ghost with money to spend, but no memory of his own name or death. Drawn into a supernatural murder inquiry built from fragmentary clues, Kramer follows a shadowy trail in this noir-tinged mystery starring Ernest Chappell.

Quiet, Please presents the original broadcast with a newly produced contextual introduction, a short closing announcement, and gently cleaned/mastered audio for a more consistent listening experience.

Chapte...

Quiet, Please presents “Gem of Purest Ray,” episode 50 of the classic radio series Quiet, Please, originally broadcast on May 17, 1948. Written by Wyllis Cooper for the Mutual Broadcasting System, the episode stars Ernest Chappell as Dr. Moraitis.

Questioned by Sergeant Papus after a series of killings, Dr. Moraitis recounts an obsession with old charts pointing toward Atlantis—and a deep-sea expedition undertaken with his assistant, Betty Chase. What begins as a police confession becomes an eerie tale of unfathomed waters, lost civilizations, and dangerous knowledge.

Quiet, Please presents the original broadcast with a newly produced contextual introduction, a shor...

Quiet, Please presents “The Pathetic Fallacy,” episode 35 of Quiet, Please, originally broadcast on February 2, 1948. Written and directed by Wyllis Cooper for the Mutual Broadcasting System, the episode stars Ernest Chappell with Charita Bauer, Michael Fitzmaurice, and Vicki Vola.

During a press demonstration of a vast electronic calculator, technician Mr. Quinn insists that the room-filling machine is only a mechanical tool. But when its answers begin to raise troubling questions, reporters Alice King and Sandy Burns follow a light, speculative fantasy about technology, intelligence, and an increasingly personal public embarrassment.

Quiet, Please presents the original broadcast with a ne...

Quiet, Please presents “I Have Been Looking for You,” episode 2 of Quiet, Please, originally broadcast on June 15, 1947. This Mutual Broadcasting System drama was written, produced, and directed by Wyllis Cooper and stars Ernest Chappell and Claudia Morgan.

In this intimate, melancholy supernatural romance, a man and woman who do not know one another’s names recall a lifetime of distant voices, dreams, chance glimpses, and near-misses. Their memories stretch from childhood through wartime and into postwar New York City, where crowded streets seem to keep drawing them toward an elusive connection.

Quiet, Please presents the original broadc...

Quiet, Please presents “Rain on New Year’s Eve,” episode 30 of Quiet, Please, originally broadcast on December 29, 1947. Written and directed by series creator Wyllis Cooper, this Mutual Broadcasting System drama stars Ernest Chappell, with Muriel Kirkland and Pat O’Malley.

On a rain-soaked California New Year’s Eve, an exhausted screenwriter and his secretary struggle to keep up with a demanding director’s constant rewrites on a low-budget horror film. As the pressure of the studio grind builds, the picture’s eerie monster begins to haunt the edges of a darkly comic supernatural tale.

Quiet, Please presents the o...

Quiet, Please presents “A Ribbon of Lincoln Green,” episode 11 of Quiet, Please, originally broadcast August 30, 1947. This local archival recording features a story written and directed by Wyllis Cooper.

As Allied forces withdraw toward Dunkirk in May 1940, American Captain Robert “Bobbie” Hood of Britain’s King’s Royal Rifle Corps recounts desperate fighting amid the shattered ruins of Calais. Ernest Chappell stars in this wartime fantasy, where battlefield confusion and echoes of the Robin Hood legend converge.

Quiet, Please presents the original broadcast with a newly produced contextual introduction, a short closing announcement, and gently cleaned/mastered audio for a...

Quiet, Please presents “Let the Lilies Consider,” episode 55 of Quiet, Please, originally broadcast on June 28, 1948. Written and directed by Wyllis Cooper for the Mutual Broadcasting System, it stars Ernest Chappell as the troubled James Roderick.

Questioned about his wife’s disappearance, Roderick recounts his unusual devotion to flowers—and the enormous lily growing in his garden. As a police statement becomes increasingly uneasy, this eerie domestic mystery explores the possibility that plant life may have feelings of its own.

Quiet, Please presents the original broadcast with a newly produced contextual introduction, a short closing announcement, and gently c...

Quiet, Please presents “Light the Lamp for Me,” originally broadcast on September 26, 1948. This is episode 67 of the classic ABC radio series, written and directed by Wyllis Cooper and featuring Ernest Chappell.

Historical writer Manfred discovers an ancient bronze lamp at California’s San Fernando Mission—and its unsettling rules open a path to other times. A moody, reflective fantasy of history, memory, and possibility, the episode also features Pat O’Malley and Kathleen Niday.

Quiet, Please presents the original broadcast with a newly produced contextual introduction, a short closing announcement, and gently cleaned and mastered audio for a more...

Quiet, Please presents “The Evening and the Morning,” originally broadcast on November 14, 1948. This archival recording is episode 74 of Wyllis Cooper’s celebrated suspense series.

At a cemetery following a funeral, a condemned man and his escort begin a tense, haunting journey shaped by grief, memory, and an unsettling superstition about flowers taken from graves. Written and directed by Wyllis Cooper for ABC, the episode features Ernest Chappell and reworks elements from Cooper’s earlier Lights Out! drama, Reunion After Death.

Quiet, Please presents the original broadcast with a newly produced contextual introduction, a short closing announcement, and gent...

Quiet, Please presents “Kill Me Again,” episode 24 of Quiet, Please, originally broadcast on November 17, 1947. Written and directed by Wyllis Cooper for the Mutual Broadcasting System, this sustaining broadcast stars Ernest Chappell as hard-up writer Joe Davis, with James Monks as the businesslike Mr. Hellman.

When Joe is offered an extraordinary bargain, he finds himself dealing with contracts, temptation, and a highly experienced businessman whose interests extend well beyond the ordinary world. A darkly comic supernatural tale in the Faustian tradition, it also features Peggy Stanley and Pat O’Malley.

Quiet, Please presents the original broadcast with a newl...

Quiet, Please presents “Summer Goodbye,” episode 84 of the classic radio series Quiet, Please, originally broadcast on January 23, 1949.

In late-summer Southern California, Noel and Madeleine race through the dry canyon country toward an isolated hideout known as Shangri-La, carrying stolen money and mounting fear. Written and directed by Wyllis Cooper, this rain-haunted suspense story features Ernest Chappell and Cathleen Cordell.

Quiet, Please presents the original broadcast with a newly produced contextual introduction, a short closing announcement, and gently cleaned and mastered audio for a more consistent listening experience.

Chapters:
00:00 Victor Sterling Introduction
00:40 Original Broa...