The Mystery of Marie Rogêt

Think about it.

In The Mystery of Marie Roget, which Poe began serializing in 1842, the crime is based on a real historical killing.

But Dupin doesn't go tramping around Paris looking for footprints in the mud.

He doesn't interview witnesses.

Two-time Academy Award nominee for Best Supporting Actress for 1937's Dodsworth and 1940's Love Affair.

Her only other horror film was 1942's The Mystery of Marie Rogêt, which I've n- I've not read, uh, the original story.

This is a, an Edgar Allan Poe story, a sequel to The Murders in the Rue Morgue.

Does it have gorillas in it? I don't know.

Beside the body was found an empty bottle of laudanum.

Was Daniel Payne one of the three men who had followed the mysterious rowboat to the Hoboken shore? And, if so, what must he have felt as he rowed back across the water after he learned that his beloved Mary had gone willingly into the secluded make-out spot with six brawny sailors? The story of Mary Rogers has been largely forgotten.

but it had a profound effect on one man who was a regular customer at John Anderson's tobacco shop whenever he visited New York.

That man was a 32-year-old writer named Edgar Allan Poe.

In November of 1842, Poe published one of his best-known stories, which was based on a strange case of Mary Rogers, except that he changed the location to Paris and gave his female victim a more French-sounding name.

That story, of course, is the mystery of Marie Roget.

15 Minutes of Infamy

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The honor of founding the modern detective story belongs to an American writer.

Such tales as The Purloined Letter and The Murders in the Rue Morgue still stand unrivaled.

We in America know more than the world of letters at large, did not readily realize what Poe had done when he created Auguste Dupin, the prototype of Sherlock Holmes, et genus omnis, up to the present hour.

On Poe's work is built the whole school of French detective story writers.

Conflicting accounts of the young woman's disappearance send Dupin to the evidence and the testimony surrounding her last known movements.

From CBS on December 14th, 1953, this is Suspense, episode 530, The Mystery of Marie Roget, adapted by E. Jack Newman from Edgar Allan Poe's Dupin's Story.

Cornell Wilde stars as Dupin, with John Danner as the police prefect.

And now, the original broadcast.

Tonight, Autolite combines fact and fiction.

The fact, the murder of Mary Cecilia Rogers in New York City.

The fiction, Edgar Allan Poe's solution of that crime, which he called The Mystery of Marie Roget.

Our star, Mr. Cornel Wilde.