 Family Theater presents Edmund O'Brien and Ralph Edwards. From Hollywood, the mutual network in cooperation with Family Theater presents Nightmare at Noon, starring Edmund O'Brien. Ralph Edwards will be your host. Family Theater's only purpose is to bring to everyone's attention a practice that must become an important part of our lives. If we're to win peace for ourselves, peace for our families and peace for the world. Family Theater urges you to pray. Pray together as a family. The central incident in the story you're about to hear actually took place. The time and the location are authentic, but this is not true of the people involved. Every one of them is a fictional character. And now, to our transcribed drama, Nightmare at Noon, starring Edmund O'Brien as Cliff. The things that made it that created the nightmare took shape slowly that morning and at widely separated points. At 1045, a reconditioned F-89 Scorpion jet interceptor carrying a two-man civilian crew took off from an airstrip near Palmdale, California to make a routine check of its radar equipment. 30 minutes earlier and 45 miles to the south, a four-engined DC-7B had left the field at the Santa Monica Airport on a similar test hot. Originally, it had not been felt necessary by the radio operator of the DC-7 to accompany the other three members of his crew on the flight. But sometime before takeoff, he changed his mind and climbed aboard. By 1115, both planes, each unaware of the other, were flying at approximately 25,000 feet over the northwest corner of the San Fernando Valley, a section of Los Angeles whose population has almost doubled in the past 10 years. One of the valley's newest schools is Pocoima Junior High, which shares an athletic field with the adjoining Terabella and the Haddon Street Elementary Schools. At 1120 that morning, the members of a B-7 Junior High gym class, then on the athletic field, looked up in the direction of a fast-approaching sound from the sky. We were told later that people heard the explosion from as far away as four miles. Well, they must have been outside because Alice and I were a lot closer than that and we didn't hear it in the supermarket. You want me to pick up some cold cuts for lunch? Huh? How about some soup? You always say that. And then I buy it and you don't eat it. I eat it eventually. Besides, we got one of those noodle things in the envelope at home. Oh, those noodle things in the envelope at home. Now, watch that. Come on. You know. Chicken. Oh, all right. Would you rather get something here at the stand? No, they got those weenies. You mean weenies? A weenie, yeah. And that was a strange case, huh? Margaret? Yeah. Cultured, well-educated woman. She never called them frankfutters or hot dogs. They were always weenies. And chill ass dogs. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, hey, she's someone we didn't send a Christmas card to. She's still with the agency in Chicago? Yeah, as far as I know. They need a shoehorn to get around. You want any pumpernickel? I think I'll leave that stuff alone for a while before starting to taste like chocolate. Well, what's about in? How many items can we make the express lane? One's as fast as the other this time of the day. Well, I want to get a paper. Go ahead, let me check out in the car. For the past week, it had been cold and wet where that morning the sun was out. I dropped a dime in the yellow circular newsstand in front of the supermarket, picked up a paper, and walked over to where our car was standing in the near-empty parking lot. Thursday's my day off. Another Thursday. All right. Yeah. The war is over. What? Look at this. A guy tore down half his house because he thought a cat was trapped in one of the walls, page one. Two full columns. Big doings in the Southland. Turned out it was a water meter. The cat was a water meter? There wasn't any cat. It was a water meter making a noise like a cat. Yeah, read it yourself. Oh, really? A meowing meter. I wonder what ever happened to Adolf Hitler. Who? See, you don't even remember him. Oh, you goof. What should I do? Turn left and head for Las Vegas or go home and clean the incinerator. Well, if I were a gambling woman, my money'd be on the incinerator. There's the life. Private ambulance. Look at that. Nothing to do but keep the siren wide open and break traffic regulations. My, but we're fidgety today. I guess, hey, whatever happened to Marine land? Well, we can't go during the week with Betsy in school. What's wrong with Sunday? You said you're not up to fighting the traffic. It's that moray eel. I want to go down there and look him right in the eye. You've actually got a fix on that eel. You had a fix on that ding dong up in San Francisco. Dew gong. Wow, anyway. Picture didn't look like much to me. That's the only one they ever had in captivity. Well, I'll take a moray eel any time with an eel. You know where you are. And where are you? In Pacoima on my day off. Ta-da. Well, you want to go bowling or see a movie? Oh, no, no. I'll clean the incinerator. It needs it. You know what I do whenever I feel like this itchy and wishing I was, oh, I don't know, doing something else a little more exciting? What? Well, I think of that night I told you about in France when I tried to sleep under the weapons carrying the rain. I remember. There's nothing but wet, wet, wet. I thought if I ever got out of this and I can take a hot bath when I want, eat when I want, sleep when I want, I'll never complain again as long as I live. You know something? What's that? It still works. All I have to do to get happy is think of that weapons carrying it. Oh, why? I forgot the cookie mix for Betsy's Girl Scouts. I thought they had that meeting last night. They did. These are for next week. You want to go back and get it? Oh, no, I'll wait till she comes home from school. Then she can pick out what she wants. Is this what we're penciled in to buy, 58 cartons of or something? No, those are the official cookies. And it's only two cartons. Well, what are these going to be? Well, the girls are making them for a veterans hospital. Cliff? Huh? Where did all the traffic come from? There was a lot of traffic, at least for the time and place. The intersection of Woodman and Terabella's is a four-way stop, but except during the rush hour, there's not much need for it. Yet now, almost from nowhere, a whole stream of cars have appeared, moving east. Huh, it's worth your life to make a right turn here. Where do you suppose everybody's going? Fire, probably. It doesn't take much to draw a crowd and put coin in. You remember that cartoon? What cartoon? The one in New Yorker years ago. I thought that's why you said it. Oh, no. What was the cartoon? Well, it showed this bunch of people gathered in the middle of the street, and they're watching a man being dragged down into an open manhole by a big octopus, and two other men who can't see what's going on are walking by. And one says to the other, it doesn't take much to draw a crowd in New York. No, I never saw that one. Years ago, it was the most embarrassing thing in the world. I was in the waiting room of a dentist and my mom was like, couldn't stop laughing. You should have handed the magazine around. I didn't know anybody. Well, now we got an opening. All right, all right, lady. You have it, you have it. Go on, go on. Take it easy, Cliff. Two screaming kids in the back of a station wagon. I bet she's listening to the radio. There goes a statistic, a pure statistic. Just take it easy. No kidding, will you? Forget you're a woman for a minute. And tell me, what's her rush, her big rush? She afraid something's going to be burned down before she gets there? I don't think it's a fire. I can't see any smoke. Percentage point in the traffic told us I'm coming weekend. That's what she is. She won't go alone either. That kind, she'll take a few strangers with her. Cliff, there's some kind of a roadblock up ahead. A what? Two police cars parked in the middle of the street. They're making people turn off. We still couldn't tell what the trouble was. An automobile accident wouldn't draw a mob like that. We didn't see any sign of fire. The line of cars inched forward slowly. People were filling up the sidewalks going east. But there wasn't much noise. You going to park? Yeah, let's see what's going on. Hey, do you know what happened? A jet crashed over near the school. Cliff, wait a minute. Let me put my flats on. Well, if we're going to walk that far, I can't do it in my heels. You know those jets are getting real iffy. I don't understand how they can fly at all. All set? Well, just a second. I think I'll leave my coat. Honey. Well, it'll be too warm if we're walking. Look, we're not going to climb an out. Well, I just want to fold it and put it on the floor. How about the catch? Shall we put them out? All right. They'll leave a note for the milkman. I'm ready. I'm ready. Whatever you are, speedy. We walked along Terrabella with the others, not quite hurrying and not talking much. It's like that in a crowd. You behave the way the others do, because a crowd always has its reasons. At the time, I thought it peculiar, even a little heartless that we were all so calm. A plane had crashed over near the school, the girl said. And most of us had children there. But if we yelled and hurried, it meant something terrible might have happened to them, to our own kids. And that wasn't possible. So there was nothing to get excited about. That's why we just walked along with everybody else, not hurrying, not saying much. Look, they've got the street roped off between here and Laurel. Yeah, I guess you always get a mile with these things. You think it fell in the street? I don't know. Maybe. Cliff, what's that up there on the ground? How do you like that? Is it a wheel? No, just the tire must have blown off and the plane crashed. My gosh. It's awful big to be on a jet. Where do you think it is? The plane. Where do you think it landed? I didn't know, and I couldn't tell from looking. Part of the roadway had been roped off just opposite the school's athletic field. And as we got closer, we could see that a stretch of the chain link fence had been torn away. It lay bent and twisted on the sidewalk, and there were fragments of glass and steel in the street. The smell of high-octane gasoline was everywhere. We circled around behind the crowd that was pressing against the rope. A jagged sheet of aluminum lay in the driveway of a house across the street. It looked like part of a wing or tail assembly. Then we saw the athletic field. It was covered with wreckage, small jagged pieces of metal scattered in every direction. Police officials and news photographers requested about a heap of smoking debris near the far corner of the field. And on the lawn in front of the gymnasium was a wide, dark stain of oil. I turned to an elderly man standing near me who was wearing overalls and a straw hat with a green sun visor. Where did it come from? Well, over there to the other side of the playground, back by the fence near the church there. He can't see much of it. It's mostly just the motors anyhow. Listen, did you see it happen? No, but I sure heard it. No, I'm right around the corner on Rimmick. Well, sure, bang, I thought it was one of them sonic blasts. Did it land outside the school? Yeah, but you can see all the stuff that's true right there in the yard, see it? Was it an Air Force jet? There was no kind of jet. That was the other plane. This here one's a big four-motor job. A jet crashed someplace else. I guess it was way up when it collided. Look, do you know if anybody saw it happen? Well, some of the kids muster, kids out in the schoolyard. There were children on the field when it happened? Yeah, out on the playground. You know if any of them were hurt? Very couple of them. Say, you got kids here? Our daughter goes to the junior high. Well, it was mostly boys on the field out here. Cliff? Now look, come on, there's nothing to worry about. We'll just walk around and pick her up. Thank you very much. Yes, I hope everything's OK. And I guess everyone and his brother is trying to get in the school by now. Look out for that glass thing. Yes. All right, I wonder where the other plane came down. I don't know. I didn't think it was a jet from the size of that tire. Cliff? Now look, honey, wait a minute, will you? I've been thinking. And she might have been on the field. Now we don't know a thing. Well, she has a gym class on Tuesday and Thursday morning. I know because she's always talking about how hungry she gets. All right, honey. If she gets hungry, that means she has a gym just before lunch or she'd still be full from breakfast. Honey, you're working yourself up for nothing. She's all right. Come on, come on, let's go find her. We started up Ramac Street. People were coming from the other direction now, away from the junior high school. Parents and children and groups of twos and threes. Some of the mothers readied from crying, hugging their youngsters to them, everyone talking at once. Alice studied each face, looking for one of Betsy's classmates. As we turned the corner and started across the empty lot to the side gate, she recognized someone. Eloise! It's Mrs. Herman. Eloise! Alice ran toward a woman who was coming through the gate from the school ground. There was a boy about Betsy's age with her. I started to follow, and then I saw the policeman a few yards away, staring through the fence of the athletic field. Officer, our daughter's a student here. Were any girls hurt? I really don't know, sir. Well, look, that's my wife over there. If anything's wrong, I want to be ready for it. I'm telling you the truth. I don't know. I've been stationed right here. I haven't been on the field yet. But there was some kids hurt? Yes, there were. Did any get killed? I think her two of them were dead, boys. You know how many were on the field? I don't know any numbers. There were a lot of them. What's a gym class? Cliff? Right with you, honey. Thanks. Thanks. What did the policeman say? He doesn't know any more than we do. He's been stationed out here. Cliff, some of them were killed. Yeah, I know. What about Mrs. Herman? She hasn't seen Betsy. Well, isn't her son in the same class? Only in social studies in the afternoon. Eloise says they're rounding up all the classes. The B7s are in the library. OK, you go ahead and get Betsy. Aren't you coming? Well, I want to stop by the gymnasium. Cliff? Look, there's nothing the matter. I just want to double check for my own peace of mind. What did the policeman say? Nothing I haven't told you. You're not telling me the truth. Honey, suppose you go up to the library and Betsy isn't there. Well, when you come back, I want to be able to tell you that she must be on her way home then, because I looked and she isn't here either. So she's all right. Cliff, you're scared. I'm not scared. I want to make sure that's all. Come on now, will you? Go and get Betsy. I'll meet you over there outside the gym. I watched Alice move off through the crowd towards the low-lying cluster of school buildings until she was out of sight. Then I turned and walked across the black top to the side door of the gymnasium. Inside, the basketball court was empty. Just to the left of the entrance was a half-open door to an office which faced the athletic field. I pushed it open a little wider and looked inside. A blonde, round-faced woman in a blue and yellow housecoat was seated on a bench next to the window. Her hair was up in curlers. She sat forward with her head bent over and her fingers locked together. Excuse me. Do you know where I'd find who's ever in charge here? No, no, outside the... They're all outside. Well, thanks, thanks very much. Mr. Yes? Were you here when it crashed? No, I wasn't. I can't find out what happened. How did it crash? I heard someone say it collided with another plane. What were they doing around here? I don't know, it was an accident. Is there anything I can do? No. A husband said he'd come back and get me as soon as the ambulance left. Do you know anything about Burns? No, I don't. He's burned on the legs and the back. Your son? Yes. I just thank God it didn't burn his face. He said they were watching you come in out on the playground. First they heard it and then they turned to look and they saw how close it was and they started to run. It was so close they could see the men in the plane waving them off. He said he didn't even see it exploding. His head is back turned. Have you been out there on the field? Yes, but I couldn't stop crying. I couldn't stand to watch him hurt like that so my husband had me waiting here. Oh dear Lord, how it must hurt. Do you know if they've identified all the kids that were injured? I don't know, no, not when I was there. Did you notice any girls? No, I tried not to look at anybody but Jerry. I don't know, I'm not sure, they were all screaming. When they're so young you can't tell by their voices. Well, I hope your son's going to be all right. He will. If praying counts for anything. The woman sitting in the office and went out through the door at the other side of the empty gymnasium. Outside an army helicopter shuttled overhead and sat down at the end of the field. A television truck stood nearby and a curly head announcer in a sports jacket moved through the crowd of disaster workers waving a microphone. I went up to a tall man in a sheriff's uniform who was guarding the gate that led onto the field. Hold it, I'm sorry, mister, nobody come through without a pass. Well, I'm trying to find out if my daughter's been hurt. Well, I'll see what I can do. Tell me your name. Well, then there were girls on the field. Well, I don't know, sir. If you'll give me your name, I'll try to find out. It's Betsy, Betsy Grant, she's in 7B. Betsy, it's G-R-A-N-T. That's right, Betsy, 7B. Yo, hey Joe. Yeah? I'm Martin, I want you over there. But keep an eye on the gate, will you? Sure, sure, you bet. I'll check on this for you, mister. Well, you, I'll wait here. Boy, some mess, huh? Yeah, trying to find out if my daughter was out there. On the field? Yeah, I've been during her gym period, I think. Well, there was a couple of girls, I know that much. On the field? Well, I don't know their names, but I saw them put them in the ambulance. Well, isn't there a list or something, or how do you find out? Let Sheriff's Girl find out for you. There's no use getting excited. Well, could you tell anything about how bad they were hurt? No, no, but they weren't the first ones moved, so that's a good sign they took the bad ones first. How does a thing like this happen? Oh, no, no, no, cool down. Haven't they got laws about where you can fly an aeroplane? Sure, sure they got laws now to settle down. It was an accident, that's all. Accidents can happen? Try that in the traffic court sometime. Well, you try that on a judge, accidents can happen, your honor. You see how far you're going. Yeah, yeah, here. Hey, listen, I think you're OK. Only two girls were hurt, neither of them bad, just shock. It wasn't Betsy? They got a complete list, nobody on it by the name of Grant. Oh, brother. Oh, thanks, thanks. It's OK, she's probably waiting for you at the school. Yeah, my wife's up there now looking, say, hey, will you take a bride? Look, I'm just glad it was good news. You and me. Claire, Claire. Alice. And there she was, a little red around the eyes, a little more rumpled than when I dropped her off at school this morning a million years ago, but still the same Betsy. I don't know what you say, I don't know how you feel. Later that afternoon or for sure by tomorrow night you'll be back to nagging her about too much television and not enough homework. And she'll get that pain, patient expression on her face that she reserves for such moments, but that'll be later after the crowd has gone and there aren't any more sirens and the wreckage has been cleared away. But right now, you had something very precious. And for a terrible few minutes, it looked as if the one who gave it to you has suddenly taken it away. But he really hadn't at all. So with all your heart, you thank him. You thank God. I have the good fortune to appear on a television program called This Is Your Life. Now, basically, it's a surprise package. We bring an unsuspecting person up before the TV cameras and much to their amazement, review their entire life, introducing them to friends they haven't seen for years and reminding them of places and incidents they may have completely forgotten. As you can imagine, it's very affecting and in a way pretty instructive to see how people react to the knowledge that the story being related to them is their life. And I've often thought how much good it might do us all if just for a short half hour, we could have the experience of seeing our life as it looks to others, especially as it looks to the one all-knowing observer who gave us that life. For it's really God we're hearing when the voice of our conscience says, this is your life. Are you leading it well? Unfortunately, we can answer God through prayer. We can get down on our knees and speak to him whenever we're worried or ashamed, just as when we're happy and grateful. And he'll always hear us. This is your life, God reminds us. I have given it to you and I'll help you guide it along the right path if you will but ask me for that help. Something else too, folks. The family that prays together stays together. More things are wrought by prayer than this world dreams of. From Hollywood, Family Theater has brought you transcribed, Nightmare at Noon starring Edmund O'Brien. Ralph Edwards was your host. Others in our cast were Charlotte Lawrence, Jack Krushen, Lillian Bayeth, Paul Savage and Jack Petruzzi. The script was written and directed for Family Theater by John T. Kelly with music composed and conducted by George Wright. This series of Family Theater broadcasts is made possible by the thousands of you who feel the need for this type of program, by the mutual network which has responded to this need and by the hundreds of stars of stage screen and radio who give so unselfishly their time and talent to appear on our Family Theater stage. To them and to you, our humble thanks. This is Tony LaFranco expressing the wish of Family Theater that the blessings of God may be upon you and your home and inviting you to join us next week when Family Theater will present. Last one in line starring Dean Miller. Lucille Ball will be your hostess. Join us, won't you? Family Theater has broadcast throughout the world and originates in the Hollywood studios of the world's largest network. This is Mutual, the radio network for all America.