The Big Shot

Originally Aired: September 9, 1948 Suspense #306, "The Big Shot," stars Burt Lancaster as Charlie Morton, a young mining engineer with curly blonde hair and a baby face who has learned to compensate for his innocent appearance with ruthless violence. Morton arrives in Mexico to work for Quinn on an illegal gold operation—setting up a secret stamping mill to process half a million dollars in gold ore and smuggle it out of the country before the government or local bandits discover it. Morton's cut is twenty-five thousand dollars, but his arrogance and barely concealed greed quickly put him at odds with Quinn, who warns him to keep a low profile and stay away from Lolita, the beautiful daughter of the local cantina owner. As tensions mount at the remote mining site, Morton's need to prove his toughness leads to a violent confrontation with one of the miners named Logan. When Logan refuses to follow orders, Morton's brutal response results in the man falling over a cliff to his death. With Quinn calling it murder and the operation now threatened by Morton's hair-trigger violence, the young engineer's ambitions and dangerous temperament threaten to destroy everything—unless his ruthlessness becomes the very thing that saves him.