The Hitchcock Project-Bernard C. Schoenfeld Part Nine: And the Desert Shall Blossom [4.11]

by Jack Seabrook

"The wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad for them; and the desert shall rejoice, and blossom as the rose."--Isaiah 35:1 (King James Version)

The prophet Isaiah wrote this passage in the eighth century B.C. when the nation of Judah was under siege by the Assyrian army; the verse refers to the time when the Lord will deliver his people from their enemies. On a smaller scale is Loren D. Good's short story, "And the Desert Shall Blossom" (Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, March 1958), in which two old men who live in a cabin they built on the edge of the desert find a way to resist the efforts of well-meaning townsfolk to bring them in from the wilderness in order to make their final years safer and more comfortable.

William Demarest as Tom

Ben Wilson and Tom Tye are proud of their cabin and do not intend to leave. Ben remarks that they must stay until their sagging rosebush blooms at least once. A dust cloud signals that a car is approaching but it breaks down a hundred yards from the men's front door. A stranger in a striped suit asks if they have a car, which they do not, and asks if they have food, which they are glad to share. He tells Ben and Tom that he needs to get to Reno and, when they tell him that he will have to walk, he pulls a gun and threatens them, hitting Tom across the cheek with the weapon. Ben bandages Tom, who quietly takes a gun from Ben's waistband; Ben flattens and Tom shoots the stranger.

Rosco Ates as Ben

Three weeks later, Sheriff Thompson visits and the two old men tell him that the stranger walked off toward Reno. It seems he was a criminal named Tom Carmody, who was wanted for murder. Ben and Tom refuse to go with the sheriff, who thinks they should move into town to have an easier life in their old age. After the sheriff leaves, the men admire their garden, where the "rosebush now stood straight and strong, healthily green and beautiful in the clear desert air." Though it is not stated explicitly, the implication is that the rosebush sits atop Carmody's grave, where his decomposing body provides live-giving nutrients.

Author Loren D. Good (1916-1993) was born and raised on the West Coast and worked as a cowpuncher and a railroad man before serving in the Army during WWII. After the war, he had a career in newspapers, public relations, and freelance writing. He wrote a children's novel set in Mexico called Panchito (1955) but I have been unable to find any published short stories that he wrote other than "And the Desert Shall Blossom."

Ben Johnson as Jeff, the sheriff

Bernard C. Schoenfeld adapted Good's short story for an episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents of the same title that aired on CBS on Sunday, December 21, 1958, and the short film is a delight! Schoenfeld takes a brief tale and improves it by paying close attention to story structure and motivation. The TV play unfolds in three scenes and the writer makes key changes that strengthen the dramatic effect of the tale.

In the first scene, the sheriff rides up to the men's shack and tells them that the town council wants them to move into an old folk's home in town. Ben and Tom have been homesteading in the desert since 1892, digging for gold in a nearby mine. The sheriff tells them that to qualify as homesteaders, they must grow something on the land that they occupy. They show him their rose bush, which looks barely alive, and Tom promises that they will pick a bouquet of roses in a month. After the sheriff leaves, they agree that "What we need is a miracle." This first scene adds the sheriff as antagonist and clearly sets a goal that the duo must reach by the end of the show.

Mike Kellin as the stranger

In scene two, the criminal arrives, wearing a fancy suit and speaking with a New York accent that sets him apart from the country way of speaking used by Ben and Tom. Events unfold as they do in the story and a confrontation that at first seems to suggest that the old prospectors are as vulnerable as the sheriff says ends up demonstrating that they are more resourceful than they might first appear.

The third and final scene finds the sheriff returning with his deputy, both looking for the criminal. Ben and Tom return from the mine with their mule and we learn that three weeks have passed. Ben reminds the sheriff of their deal and they show him the rose bush, which now bursts with blooming roses. The sheriff agrees that "It's a miracle" and leaves. The last shot makes clear what has happened as the camera pulls back to show that the rose bush is thriving right in the middle of a mound that resembles a grave.

Wesley Lau as the deputy

The changes to the story that Schoenfeld made for the teleplay are small but significant. By bookending the show with visits from the sheriff, he is able to set up a preposterous claim and then demonstrate by purely visual means just how the resourceful old men made it come true. Self-sufficient even in a harsh climate, Ben and Tom resist the encroachment of the modern world, which comes both in the form of law (the sheriff) and crime (the stranger), and bend outside forces to satisfy their needs. It's best not to try to analyze the ending too much and ask how a body could decompose quickly enough to serve as fertilizer or where the old men got the water to make their rose bush thrive; instead, one must sit back and enjoy the work of a talented cast and crew that takes a slight short story and elevates it to a highly entertaining half-hour of television.

"And the Desert Shall Blossom" is directed by Arthur Hiller (1923-2016), who also directed "The Jokester," the last Schoenfeld script to air before this one. Hiller worked as a director on TV from 1954 to 1974 and in film from 1957 to 2006 and was behind the camera for 17 episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents.

The cast of this episode is especially good and the superb performances of the two leads make it very enjoyable. Starring as Tom is William Demarest (1892-1983), who served in the U.S. Army in WWI and then acted in vaudeville and on Broadway. His film career lasted from 1927 to 1976 and included appearances in eight films directed by Preston Sturges; he was on TV from 1957 to 1978 and is best remembered for playing Uncle Charley on My Three Sons from 1965 to 1972. This was his only appearance on the Hitchcock show. A website devoted to him is here.

The final shot reveals all!

Rosco Ates (1895-1962) plays Ben, gentle and friendly in contrast to Demarest's gruff Tom. Ates was a vaudeville comedian who later worked as an Air Force trainer in WWII; he was on screen from 1929 to 1961 and appeared in six episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents, including "The Jokester."

Giving his usual solid performance as the sheriff is Ben Johnson (1918-1996), whose biography is titled The Nicest Fellow. A stuntman turned actor, he was on screen from 1939 to 1996, often in westerns. He won an Academy Award for his role in The Last Picture Show (1971) and only appeared in this one episode of the Hitchcock show.

The story was first
published here

Mike Kellin (1922-1983) plays the stranger from New York; he served in the Navy in WWII and then attended the Yale School of Drama. He was busy on Broadway and appeared on screen from 1950 to 1983. In addition to this episode, he was in one episode of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour.

Finally, in a small role as the sheriff's deputy is Wesley Lau (1921-1984), who served in the Army Air Corps in WWII and then went to the Actors Studio. He was on screen from 1951 to 1981 and appeared on Alfred Hitchcock Presents three times, including "Mrs. Herman and Mrs. Fenimore."

The short story has never been reprinted as far as I can tell, and thanks are due to Peter Enfantino for providing a copy. The TV show is available on DVD here or may be viewed for free online here. It is a real treat. Read more about it on the GenreSnaps website here.

Sources:

“And the Desert Shall Blossom.” Alfred Hitchcock Presents, season 4, episode 11, CBS, 21 Dec. 1958.

The FictionMags Index, www.philsp.com/homeville/FMI/0start.htm.

Galactic Central, philsp.com/.

Good, Loren D. “And the Desert Shall Blossom.” Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, Mar. 1958, pp. 81-87.

Grams, Martin, and Patrik Wikstrom. The Alfred Hitchcock Presents Companion. OTR Pub., 2001.

IMDb, IMDb.com, www.imdb.com/.

Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, www.wikipedia.org/.

In two weeks: "Out There--Darkness" starring Bette Davis!

The Hitchcock Project-Bernard C. Schoenfeld Part Eight: The Jokester [4.3]

by Jack Seabrook

"The Jokester" was the first appearance on Alfred Hitchcock Presents of a story by the prolific writer Robert Arthur (1909-1969), who had co-written the radio series, The Mysterious Traveler, from 1943 to 1952 and who had won Edgar Awards for writing radio drama in 1950 (Murder By Experts) and 1953 (The Mysterious Traveler.). Arthur edited a digest called The Mysterious Traveler that ran for five issues in 1951 and 1952, and the March 1952 issue featured his short story, "The Jokester," which ran under the pen name of Anthony Morton because Arthur also had another short story in that issue, "Sixty Grand Missing," which was a reprint.

"The Jokester" was first published here

Arthur's connection with Hitchcock had begun at least as early as 1951, when Hitchcock served as an "expert" on Murder By Experts. Arthur had been the "ghost editor" of Hitchcock's collection, Stories They Wouldn't Let Me Do On TV, which was published in 1957, and someone must have changed his or her mind soon after that because "The Jokester" aired as the third episode of the fourth season of Alfred Hitchcock Presents on Sunday, October 19, 1958.

Arthur's short story begins as reporters play cards one night at Police Headquarters. One of them, Dave Bradley, decides to play a joke on old Pop Henderson, the night attendant at the morgue. The reporters go downstairs to the morgue and ask Pop to show them one of the corpses, suggesting that it might be that of a missing New York banker. They distract the old man and, after he thinks they've left, Bradley scares him by pretending to be a corpse that is still alive. The other reporters feel bad about playing a joke on the old man and go home. Pop tells Bradley that the desk sergeant warned him that if he falls for any more jokes he will have to retire.

Albert Salmi as Bradley

Bradley heads for a bar, where he decides to play another joke and gives a man a hot foot. Unfortunately, the man is a boxer, who punches Bradley, causing the reporter to fall and crack his neck on the brass rail. Thinking him dead, the bartender and the boxer dump his body in an alley. Bradley awakens in the morgue, slowly recovering from paralysis, but when he tells Pop Henderson that he is still alive, the old man says that he is not falling for any more jokes and locks him in the same compartment where he had earlier lain.

Similar to Louis Pollock's 1947 story "Breakdown" in that both deal with a man paralyzed and thought to be dead who ends up in a morgue, Arthur's story ends on a much more downbeat note, as the bully seems to get his just desserts. A sentence early in the tale is important: the compartments in the morgue where the corpses are kept are described in this way: "They were refrigerated, with the temperature below freezing . . ." By locking the semi-conscious, partially paralyzed Dave Bradley in a compartment where the temperature is frigid, Pop Henderson ensures that the reporter will freeze to death long before his body is taken out for an autopsy the next day. Does the old man understand the consequences of his actions? It is hard to say. He does know that Henderson is alive, since they speak to each other, but he fears that he will lose his job if he is seen to be the subject of another prank. In the artificial world of a mystery short story, Bradley the bully seems to deserve what he gets, but in reality it requires some suspension of disbelief to think that the kindly old morgue attendant would commit what amounts to murder.

Rosco Ates as Pop Henderson

Bradley's extreme physical reaction to being punched and striking his neck is explained as he lies on the morgue slab, remembering a high-school football injury that left him in bed for a month, nearly immobile. The new injury is worse, he thinks, because he hit his neck harder and "heard it crack" when he fell. Bernard C. Schoenfeld, in adapting Arthur's short story for Alfred Hitchcock Presents, made sure that the viewer had some advance warning of Bradley's propensity to injury by adding an incident in an early scene where another reporter tries to horse around with Bradley and Bradley tells him that he has a very sensitive vertebra in his neck from a high-school football injury.

Jay Jostyn and James Coburn
as Morgan and Andrews

The teleplay for "The Jokester" is carefully structured, with parallel scenes at the beginning, middle, and end showing Pop Henderson in the morgue. While the story begins with the reporters' poker game, the show begins, in true Hitchcock fashion, with an establishing shot showing the exterior of the New York Police Department. There is then a dissolve to the morgue, where Pop Henderson is shown entering and checking a body on a slab. He hears a thud on the ceiling above and there is a cut to the poker game, where it is revealed that the thud was made by a typewriter falling to the floor. These reporters are more interested in the game than in the tool of their trade; in a few quick shots, Schoenfeld has established the location of the events, the main characters, and their professions.

During the game, Bradley draws the joker card twice, and Pop Henderson comes upstairs to speak to the reporters, one of whom has just written a story for the paper about the old man. Pop explains why he needs to keep his job (he has to pay his sick wife's doctor bills) but Bradley is callous and the kind reporter leaves before the three journalists who remain head downstairs to participate in Bradley's prank. Bradley tries to give Pop a hot foot but the old man awakens too soon. They all walk down to the corpse compartments and Schoenfeld gives the viewer a direct visual clue to the situation when Pop opens one of the doors and ice cold smoke pours out when he pulls out a drawer containing a body.

Art Batanides as the sergeant

Bradley is shown to be even more cruel than he is in the short story, directly insulting Pop and coming across like a physically imposing bully. He also drinks heavily, swigging from a flask as he telephones his newspaper. The first part of the show ends with a shot that is similar to one of the show's first shots, as Pop walks out of the morgue alone. Part two opens as Bradley enters the bar in a scene that Schoenfeld has expanded and changed from the source. The reporter is quite drunk, having been to three other bars already, and continues his misbehavior by presenting the bartender with a rubber dollar bill and by putting pepper-flavored liquid in the glass of a woman sitting next to him. The woman and her sailor boyfriend replace the boxer of Arthur's story and the sailor punches Bradley out of a sense of chivalry. Mike and Millie, the sailor and his girlfriend, put Bradley's supposedly dead body in the back seat of their car in an alley behind the bar and drive off with it.

Charles Watts
as the captain

The show's final scene is also expanded. The police captain enters the morgue and tells Bradley's fellow reporters that he is ordering Pop to resign, but they make him reconsider this decision by threatening to write an unflattering story about him. Orderlies wheel in Bradley's body and soon he is left alone in the morgue with Pop. After the old man locks the reporter away in his cabinet, he walks off through the morgue, the final shot similar to the ones near the start of the show and at the end of the first half.

"The Jokester" works very well due to perfect casting, a well-structured script, great lighting and camerawork, appropriate music (except one bad cue right near the end), and solid direction. The result is an excellent short film where the scenes in the morgue and in the bar feature high-contrast lighting that creates a strong noir atmosphere. Directing this episode was Arthur Hiller (1923-2016), whose long and successful career began on TV in 1954 and lasted until 2006. In addition to being behind the camera for three episodes of Thriller, he directed 17 episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents, including "Post Mortem."

Baynes Barron as the bartender

Top billing goes to Albert Salmi (1928-1990) as Bradley. Born in Brooklyn, Salmi trained at the Actors Studio and appeared on Broadway. He was a busy TV actor from 1954 to 1989 and also appeared in films, starting in 1958. Genre roles included appearances on The Twilight Zone and Night Gallery and he was on the Hitchcock show three times, including "The Dangerous People." A biography of Salmi called Spotlights and Shadows was published in 2009.

Rosco Ates (1895-1962) plays Pop Henderson; he started out as a comedian in vaudeville and his film career began early, in 1929. He was in 15 westerns from 1946 to 1948 as sidekick Soapy Jones, and his TV career began in 1951. He was in six episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents, including the Hiller-directed "Post Mortem."

Claire Carlton as Millie

Playing Andrews, one of the reporters who participates in the prank, is James Coburn (1928-2002), and even in this small role he seems destined for stardom. Born in Nebraska, his screen career stretched from 1957 to 2002 and he was in two episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents. He was also in an episode of The Twilight Zone. Among his many great film roles was one in The Magnificent Seven (1960), but it was the spy spoof Our Man Flint (1966) that made him a star.

The other two reporters are Morgan, played by Jay Jostyn, and Dave, played by Jim Kirkwood Jr. Jay Jostyn (1905-1977) starred as Mr. District Attorney on radio and his screen career lasted from 1951 to 1971. Jim Kirkwood Jr. (1924-1989) was born to parents who were both actors, and he started acting at age 14. He was a comedian on early TV (1948 to 1951) and acted in film and on TV from 1950 to 1965, but it was as a writer that he later gained fame; a novelist and a playwright, he won a Tony in 1976 for co-writing the book for A Chorus Line. A biography called Ponies and Rainbows was published in 2011.

Jim Kirkwood Jr. as Dave

Representing the men in blue are Art Batanides as the sergeant and Charles Watts as the captain. Art Batanides (1923-2000) is a familiar face from classic TV who appeared in countless episodes from 1951 to 1985, including roles on The Twilight Zone, The Outer Limits, and Star Trek. He was in one other episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents. Charles Watts (1912-1966) was on screen from 1950 to 1965 and was seen in five episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents, including "The West Warlock Time Capsule."

Finally, in the bar scene, Baynes Barron plays the bartender, Claire Carlton plays Millie, and Richard Benedict plays Mike. Baynes Barron (1917-1982) was onscreen from 1946 to 1979 and appeared in three episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents; he was also a bartender in "Listen, Listen . . . . .!" Claire Carlton (1913-1979) was on Broadway in the '30s and '40s and on screen from 1933 to 1969. She was on Thriller and she was seen in three episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents, including "And So Died Riabouchinska." Richard Benedict (1920-1984) had a career as a screen actor from 1944 to 1984, including roles in Ace in the Hole (1951) and Ocean's Eleven (1960). He was also a busy TV director from 1962 to 1982.

Richard Benedict as Mike

Robert Arthur continued to work with Hitchcock, penning a teleplay for the TV show and having two more of his stories adapted, including "The Cadaver," which also dealt with a practical joke gone wrong. He ghost-edited many short story anthologies for Hitchcock and wrote a number of books in the young adult series, The Three Investigators. For more information about him, visit this website.

Thanks to Peter Enfantino for providing a copy of Arthur's original story!

Sources:

The FictionMags Index, www.philsp.com/homeville/FMI/0start.htm.

Grams, Martin, and Patrik Wikstrom. The Alfred Hitchcock Presents Companion. OTR Pub., 2001.

IMDb, IMDb.com, www.imdb.com/.

“The Jokester.” Alfred Hitchcock Presents, season 4, episode 3, CBS, 19 Oct. 1958.

Morton, Anthony. “The Jokester.” The Mysterious Traveler, Mar. 1952, pp. 72–79.

Stephensen-Payne, Phil. Galactic Central, philsp.com/.

Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, www.wikipedia.org/.

In two weeks: And the Desert Shall Blossom, starring William Demarest!

The Hitchcock Project-Bernard C. Schoenfeld Part Seven: Listen, Listen . . . . . ! [3.32]

by Jack Seabrook

R.E. Kendall was born in Chicago and was 39 years old when her first published short story, "Listen, Listen!" won a prize in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine's second annual contest—another new author to win that year was Jack Finney, for his story "Widow's Walk." Kendall had been an editor at Good Housekeeping and, according to my research, she only published two more stories after this one: "The Phases of Arthur Beal," a long story published in two parts in the July and August 1949 issues of Good Housekeeping, and "Let's Pretend It's Spring," in the June 1952 issue of Redbook.

"Listen, Listen!" is a story that deserved to win an award. It begins as a small, meek man appears at the police station wanting to talk about the Jamieson stocking murder case and is sent to see Sergeant Oliver. The man says his name is Jasper F. Smith and that he is a bookkeeper; he suggests that the murder, the third in a series, could have been committed by someone copying the pattern of the first two in order to avoid detection. Oliver tells him that the case has been solved and sends him to see Lieutenant King at the East 51st Street station.

"Listen, Listen!" was first published here

The man calls himself Morgan when he sees Lieutenant King. They discuss the murders, which involve three young women, each one found naked and dead, strangled with a stocking and with a letter A drawn on her forehead in red lipstick. When the man suggests his theory, King tells him that he has been reading too many detective stories. The meek man walks to the Times Building on Broadway, where a clerk tells him that he can find reporters at a bar named Joe's on Eighth near Forty-Third. The man enters the bar and says that his name is Ralph Reid. He speaks to a reporter named Beekman, who mocks him.

The little fellow walks the city sidewalks in the rain until he comes to St. Patrick's, where he speaks to a priest. He admits that his real name is Herbert Johnson and tells the priest about the murders, adding that the third girl left home at seventeen and went on stage with a new name "'but hardly ever saw her family because they were always scolding.'" The priest tries to send Johnson back to Lieutenant King and finally tells him to go home to bed. Johnson leaves and thinks of returning home to his wife, who has lipstick and a stocking hidden in a drawer.

Edgar Stehli as Johnson

Kendall's story was first published in the June 1947 issue of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine and the editor provides biographical information before the story and comments afterward, noting that the tale is beautifully written and subtle, with clues carefully planted along the way to misdirect the reader into a growing belief that Johnson murdered his own daughter. Only in the last sentence is his wife revealed as the real killer. The situation is horrible because the man is so afraid of his spouse that he changes his name each time he speaks to someone, only revealing his true identity when he talks to the priest. Johnson will not tell anyone what his wife has done—instead, he couches his knowledge in the guise of a theory, hoping to spur the authorities on to investigate the murder of his own daughter.

Edith Evanson as Mrs. Johnson

Such a terrible tale with such a sharp and surprising ending was a perfect choice for adaptation as an episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents, and writer Bernard C. Schoenfeld wrote the teleplay for the show that was broadcast on CBS on Sunday, May 11, 1958. Directed by Don Taylor, the short film is a brilliant translation of Kendall's tale from the printed page to the small screen. Schoenfeld's script follows the source story closely with some minor changes to comply with censorship requirements and two significant additions that deepen the story's effect on the viewer. The little man's visits to Sergeant Oliver and Lieutenant King occur as they do in the story, but the dead girls are described as having been found in pajamas and a bathrobe, not naked. The location of the tale is changed from New York City to an unnamed city and the man visits the offices of a newspaper named the Chronicle rather than the Times. The first significant addition comes in the scene where the man visits the bar. In the story, the man sees his own face in the mirror behind the bar and imagines he sees the face of a dead girl. In the TV show, there is a beautiful woman sitting at the bar and she joins in the little man's conversation with the reporter. She says her name is "Slats," a nickname perhaps referring to her long legs, and when the little man feels dizzy from drinking sherry he sits down at a table and observes the woman. There is a close-up of her putting on lipstick and then the camera travels down her body as she runs a hand over her stockinged leg. The man becomes rattled and this series of shots suggests that Slats reminds him of the murdered girls.

Jackie Loughery as Slats

After the little man leaves the bar, he sees a cop on the beat and hurries away, an action suggesting guilt. The scene with the priest then follows, though it is set in the rectory of an unspecified church rather than the nave of St. Patrick's, and the line, "'I am not a Catholic'" in the story is scrubbed to become "I'm not of your faith" for the TV show. When the priest suggests that he see Lieutenant King, Johnson laughs in horror. This sets the stage for the final scene, which replaces the last paragraph of the story with something even more terrible. After Johnson leaves the rectory, there is a dissolve and he is shown entering his home. His wife, who does not appear in the story, scolds him for being late for dinner and he says that he "'tried to tell them,'" to which she responds that he should not talk about it. He says that he "'even went to the police'" and she again says not to talk about it. His wife is calm and rather cheerful, treating her husband somewhat like a recalcitrant child. There is then a close-up of her washing her hands in the kitchen sink. She reaches for a dish towel to dry them but finds none, so she walks to a dresser, opens a drawer, and takes out a fresh towel. When she lifts the towel, it reveals a stocking and a tube of lipstick that had been hidden beneath it. Johnson remarks that he will never have the courage to try again and the episode ends on a close-up of his wife's smiling face as Johnson's voice says, "'They wouldn't believe that a mother could do such a thing.'"

Dayton Lummis as Sergeant Oliver

The effect of this interpretation of the story's ending is chilling. Seeing the murderess on screen amplifies the horror of Johnson's situation, and the close-up of her washing her hands, which seemed incongruous at the time, takes on a new meaning; perhaps it is intended to remind the viewer of the murderous Lady Macbeth, trying but failing to wash invisible blood from her hands. Yet Mrs. Johnson, who murdered her own daughter in a manner coldly calculated to avoid detection, appears to have no feelings of guilt; instead, she smiles to herself and seems unconcerned by her husband's efforts to redirect the authorities in their investigation to point her way.

Schoenfeld found a clever way to dramatize the story's last paragraph, which details Johnson's thoughts, and in doing so he shows the viewer the face of a mother who killed her own daughter and who terrorizes her husband so thoroughly that he cannot reveal her guilt. Don Taylor's direction is effective, moving gradually from the early scenes in the police stations, where light streams though the windows despite the old man's raincoat being soaking wet from rain, to the bar scene, where the new character of Slats represents the type of scarlet woman that Mrs. Johnson would not find worthy of letting live. There is a beautifully lit shot when Johnson arrives at the church, with light streaming through a tall window and illuminating what appears to be a courtyard, and the final scene is chilling in what it gradually reveals, with the last close-up of Mrs. Johnson showing the horror of the situation.

Adams Williams as Lieutenant King

Don Taylor (1920-1988) was in the Air Force in World War Two and was an actor, first in film and later on TV, from 1943 to 1969. He acted in one episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents, "Silent Witness." In 1956, Taylor started directing TV shows, and he continued directing, mostly for the small screen, until 1980. He directed seven episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents between 1957 and 1959, including "The Deadly," and he later directed two episodes of Night Gallery.

"Listen, Listen . . . . . !" (the five periods are added for the TV show's title) would not work nearly as well were it not for the terrific performance by Edgar Stehli (1884-1973) as Herbert Johnson. He is meek and fearful and his terror grows as the show goes on and one person after another dismisses him without listening, until he finally has to return home to the wife who murdered his little girl. Born in France, Stehli was a fixture on Broadway from 1916 to 1966. He acted on radio in the thirties and forties and was seen on screen from 1947 to 1970. He was in the original Broadway cast of Arsenic and Old Lace with Boris Karloff and only appeared on Alfred Hitchcock Presents once; he was also in an episode of The Twilight Zone.

Rusty Lane as Father Rafferty

Everyone else in the show has a small role, as Johnson moves from person to person. The most powerful part is one of the shortest: Edith Evanson (1896-1980) as his wife. She appeared in films from 1940 to 1971 and on TV from 1953 to 1974. She was in Hitchcock's Rope (1948) and Marnie (1964) as well as Fritz Lang's The Big Heat (1953), and she was in one other episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents.

In a part quite different than that of Evanson is Jackie Loughery (1930- ) as Slats, the beautiful girl at the bar. Loughery won the title of Miss USA in 1952, the first year of that beauty pageant, and was awarded a movie contract. She was seen on TV from 1951 to 1969 and on film from 1953 to 1962. Married to Jack Webb from 1958 to 1964, this was her only role on Alfred Hitchcock Presents.

Among the other players:

• Dayton Lummis (1903-1988) as Sergeant Oliver; he was on screen from 1946 to 1975 and appeared in three episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents, including "Crack of Doom." He was also on Thriller twice.
• Adam Williams (1922-2006) as Lieutenant King; a Navy pilot in World War Two, he was on screen from 1951 to 1978. Like Edith Evanson, he was in The Big Heat; he also had a memorable role in Hitchcock's North By Northwest (1959). He was in two episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents as well as episodes of The Twilight Zone and Thriller.
• Rusty Lane (1899-1986) as Father Rafferty; he was on screen from 1945 to 1973 and appeared in nine episodes of the Hitchcock series, including "I Saw the Whole Thing."

Kendall's story was reprinted in The Queen's Awards (1947) and in a British collection called Murder Mixture (1963); consequently, it is hard to find today and certainly deserves reprinting. The TV version is available on DVD here or may be viewed for free online here. Read the GenreSnaps take on this episode here. Once again, thanks to Peter Enfantino for providing a copy of the story.

Sources:
The FictionMags Index, www.philsp.com/homeville/FMI/0start.htm.
"Galactic Central." Galactic Central, philsp.com/.
Grams, Martin, and Patrik Wikstrom. The Alfred Hitchcock Presents Companion. OTR Pub., 2001.
IMDb, IMDb.com, www.imdb.com/.
Kendall, R.E. "Listen, Listen!" Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, June 1947, pp. 117–127.
"Listen, Listen . . . . . !" Alfred Hitchcock Presents, season 3, episode 32, CBS, 11 May 1958.

Wikipedia, 28 Oct. 2018, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia.

In two weeks: The Jokester, starring Albert Salmi!

The Hitchcock Project-Bernard C. Schoenfeld Part Six: The Percentage [3.14]

by Jack Seabrook

Big Eddie Scarsi's beautiful blonde girlfriend, Fay, stares at his broken combination "color TV, FM radio and hi-fi phonograph." Though he is rich and has everything a man could want, Eddie is bothered by something. He rose to power in the Syndicate by "knowing how to figure the percentage." Organized crime is big business now and Eddie is in line for promotion to the position of "big boss." "The percentage meant everybody owed you something and you owed nothing to anybody." Eddie only owes one debt, to a little guy he can't find named Pete Wladek.

During the Battle of the Bulge, Sergeant Eddie Scarsi lost his nerve and froze; Pete Wladek had seen it happen, kept his head and kept everyone alive. Eddie got a medal and Pete never said a word, and to this day Eddie thinks he owes Pete a debt that must be repaid. The blonde is disappointed that Eddie called a different repair outfit to fix the broken TV set, because the last repairman was a handsome Swede.

Alex Nicol as Eddie

Eddie is shocked when the new TV repairman walks in and says, "'Hello, Sarge'"--it's Pete, who has followed Eddie's career with interest and who changed his last name to Walters, got married, learned a trade on the G.I. Bill, and bought a ranch house in Queens. Eddie is determined to pay his debt but Pete is only there to fix the TV. Pete tells Eddie to forget about the incident on patrol. Eddie tries to give Pete money but Pete says he has all he wants. Eddie suggests setting Pete up in a crooked TV repair business, but Pete says he does not want to be a boss. Eddie even offers to pay off the mortgage on Pete's house, but Pete says he is fine.

Seeing Eddie's desperation, Pete finally suggests that they go out for a nice dinner to impress Pete's wife, Louise. At dinner, Louise shows an unhealthy interest in Eddie but he resists, not wanting to be deeper in debt to Pete by taking the man's wife. Days later, Louise calls Eddie and asks him to meet her, but instead Eddie throws a party for the couple. Even then, Louise tries to edge Eddie into the bedroom.

Nita Talbot as Louise

Unable to pay his debt to Pete to his own satisfaction, Eddie begins to get sloppy with his business and people begin to notice. Paranoia sets in as he becomes haunted by the number nine. Finally, Louise calls Eddie, frantic, claiming to be afraid of a sex maniac who has been preying on women in her neighborhood. Pete is working the night shift and she begs Eddie to come over and keep her company. Eddie agrees, hoping to "even up the percentage," and goes to Pete's house, where Louise welcomes him in "a sleazy negligee" and hands him a drink. She asks him to put his hands on her, but she did not mean for him to "put them on her throat." Eddie kills Louise and feels better than he has in a long time; "the percentage was right again" since he had killed Pete's tramp of a wife. The only thing Eddie did not expect was "the intruder," who slipped in the back door while Eddie was busy killing Louise. The intruder shoots and kills Eddie who realizes, at the last moment, that the gun "looked just like the figure 9."

"The Percentage," by David Alexander, is 9/10 of a good story, but the ending is a letdown. The intruder comes out of nowhere and kills Eddie for no reason. It would have been better to end the story with Eddie killing Louise, thinking that he had done Pete a favor. Eddie is a successful mobster who has a preoccupation that no one knows, one that is all in his head. The man he thinks he owes a debt to wants nothing from him, and Eddie cannot understand that Pete is satisfied with the life of a working man, but he does realize that Louise is not worthy of her husband. His solution is one that only a gangster would think made sense.

Don Keefer as Pete

What did Bernard C. Schoenfeld do when confronted with this unnecessary twist ending? Why, he replaced it with something even more unexpected. Did it work? Let's examine the TV version of "The Percentage" to see. First of all, Schoenfeld removes much of the story's buildup that establishes Eddie's problem, instead suggesting it in a short bit of dialogue where Fay asks him what's wrong. She suggests that Eddie called a repair shop way out in Queens, even though he lives in Manhattan, because he is embarrassed at having broken the TV set when he tried to fix it. However, when Pete the repairman arrives, Eddie is not surprised at all to see his old Army buddy. In fact, Eddie called that particular shop in order to get Pete to come to his apartment! Eddie tells Pete that he has been looking for him with the help of detectives and finally tracked him down. Schoenfeld removes the unlikely coincidence of having Pete turn up at Eddie's door, yet having Eddie break his own TV set in order to get Pete to visit seems inconsistent with the personality of a successful mobster.

Carol Mathews as Fay

Fay is friendly with Pete, who tells her that he and Eddie were in Korea together. This seems like another pointless change, since the actors who play Eddie and Pete were both born in 1916 and would surely have been of age to have fought together near the end of World War Two. Unlike Pete in the story, this Pete does not own a home, which will become important at the show's climax. The TV show eliminates Eddie's growing phobia about the number nine, something that is no loss, but the biggest surprise comes at the end, when Louise calls Eddie at night and asks him to come over to her house. There is no mention of a sex maniac and, when Eddie strangles Louise, she screams, alerting her neighbors in the apartment building. Before Eddie can make his escape, neighbors knock at the door and Pete enters to find his wife dead. There is no intruder and Eddie is not killed. Eddie tells Pete that they are even now, but when a policeman appears, Pete says that Eddie killed Louise.

Walter Woolf King as Eddie's boss

This might be a suitable place to end the show, but it seems that no episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents can end without a twist. Here, the twist is completely new to the story and it is ineffective. After Pete tells the policeman that Eddie killed his wife, there is a dissolve to a scene where we see Fay sitting alone in her apartment, wearing pants and eyeglasses and reading a book. She seems utterly unlike the character we saw all through the episode, a glamorous woman dating a successful gangster. Pete enters and tells her that Eddie has just killed Louise and things will be alright from now on, and they kiss! This final scene is nearly incomprehensible, suggesting that Pete and Fay are completely different people than we've been led to believe.

Not only is the script for "The Percentage" problematic, the direction is lackluster and the acting, for the most part, is unimpressive. James Neilsen (1909-1979) directs the show; he worked mostly in television from 1953 to 1973 and also made movies in the late 1950s and 1960s, often for Disney. He directed twelve episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents, including "Help Wanted."

Fay in a more studious moment

Alex Nicol (1916-2001) stars as Eddie. He was trained in the Actors Studio and spent his career playing character roles on TV and film from 1950 to 1976. This was his only appearance on the Hitchcock show; he was also seen on The Twilight Zone and The Outer Limits. Schoenfeld renamed his character Eddie Slovak and one reviewer on IMDb pointed out that Private Eddie Slovik was the only U.S. soldier to be executed for desertion since the Civil War; he was put to death near the end of World War Two. Perhaps this is why Schoenfeld also changed the war that the men were in together to the Korean War.

Nita Talbot (1930- ) receives second billing for her role as Louise. She chews the scenery and makes the most of her part as a tramp, but her character is strictly one note. Born Anita Sokol in New York City, Talbot was a busy actor, appearing in movies and many TV episodes from 1949 to 1997. Her only other role on Alfred Hitchcock Presents came in "Maria."

Lillian O'Malley
as a neighbor

The episode's best performance comes from Don Keefer (1916-2014) as Pete. Keefer was a founding member of the Actors Studio who got his start on Broadway in the 1940s before moving to the small screen in 1947 and the big screen in 1951. His career on TV and in film lasted till 1997 and included three episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents, as well as episodes of The Twilight Zone, Star Trek, and Night Gallery. He was the man who was turned into a jack in the box in The Twilight Zone episode, "It's a Good Life."

Carole Mathews (1920-2014) portrays Fay. Born Jean Deifel, she was crowned "Miss Chicago" in 1938 and went on the be in movies from 1935 to 1962 and on TV from 1950 to 1978. This was one of her two appearances on Alfred Hitchcock Presents.

In smaller roles:

• Walter Woolf King (1899-1984) as Eddie's boss in the mob; he started out on Broadway in 1919, worked in radio, and was seen in many movies and TV shows from 1930 to 1977, including A Night at the Opera (1935), Swiss Miss (1938), and Go West (1940). He was in five episodes of the Hitchcock series, including "Our Cook's a Treasure," from season one, and "Isabel," from season nine.
• Lillian O'Malley (1892-1976) as one of the neighbors who comes to the door after Louise is killed; she had bit parts in no less than eight episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents and in Hitchcock's Psycho (1960), as well as five episodes of Thriller and one of The Twilight Zone. She seems to have made a career out of playing maids, nurses, housekeepers, and neighbors.

David Alexander (1907-1973), who wrote the short story, was a newspaperman turned freelance writer whose first novel was Murder in Black and White (1951). He wrote about 16 novels and one short story collection, Hangman's Dozen (1961). His series characters were Bart Hardin, Tommy Twotoes, and Marty Lane. He also wrote a racing column and the FictionMags Index lists a couple of dozen short stories under his byline. Bill Pronzini wrote that he was better at short stories than novels, but "The Percentage" does not seem to be a good example of that skill. Only two of his stories and one of his novels have been adapted for the screen.

The story appeared in the April 1957 issue of Manhunt and has not been reprinted as far as I can tell, but the TV show, which first aired on CBS on Sunday, January 5, 1958, is available on DVD here or may be viewed for free online here. Read the GenreSnaps review of this episode here to see that I was not the only one puzzled by the conclusion to this episode.

Thanks to Peter Enfantino for providing a copy of the short story! A fun postscript: this issue of Manhunt was the subject of an obscenity trial, and the court, writing in 1960, commented that: "The six stories . . . do not have even the slightest redeeming social significance or importance. Nor do they have any claim whatever to literary merit."

Sources:

Alexander, David. “The Percentage.” Manhunt, Apr. 1957.

“David Alexander.” Contemporary Authors, Gale, 2003.

The FictionMags Index, www.philsp.com/homeville/FMI/0start.htm.

“Flying Eagle Publications, Inc. v. United States of America.” 273 F.2d 799, 21 Jan. 1960, law.resource.org/pub/us/case/reporter/F2/273/273.F2d.799.5482.5483_1.html.

Galactic Central. Galactic Central, philsp.com/.

Grams, Martin, and Patrik Wikstrom. The Alfred Hitchcock Presents Companion. OTR Pub., 2001.

IMDb, IMDb.com, www.imdb.com/.

“The Percentage.” Alfred Hitchcock Presents, season 3, episode 14, CBS, 5 Jan. 1958.

Pronzini, Bill. A 1001 MIDNIGHTS Review: DAVID ALEXANDER – Hangman's Dozen., mysteryfile.com/blog/?p=11606.

Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 18 Oct. 2018, www.wikipedia.org/.

In two weeks: Listen, Listen . . . . . ! starring Edgar Stehli!

The Hitchcock Project-Bernard C. Schoenfeld Part Five: Vicious Circle [2.29]

by Jack Seabrook

Dick York as Manny

Manny Cole discovers that "Murder Comes Easy" in Evan Hunter’s story of the same name that was first published in the March 1953 issue of Real, a men’s adventure magazine. Manny picks the lock on the front door of a man named Gallagher and enters the man’s home, waking him up by turning on the radio in his living room. Holding a gun on Gallagher, Cole tells the man that Mr. Williams is unhappy with him and then shoots him in cold blood, once above the kidneys and twice in the face. A beautiful young woman emerges from the bedroom and tries to save herself by removing her bathrobe and standing naked before the gunman, but her effort fails and he shoots her in the face.

Cole returns home to his wife, Betty, but storms out when she demands that he stop killing people. Manny encounters an addict named Turk who directs him to Julie’s, where a card game is in progress; Julie and Cole get into a fight that ends with Manny knocking his opponent out.

"Murder Comes Easy"
was first published here

Manny is summoned to see Mr. Williams, who tells Cole that Betty came to see him and gave him a week to solve the problem of her husband before she would go to the police. Cole gets nowhere trying to talk to Betty, so he gets high with Turk and, six days later, shoots his own wife twice in the forehead. After that, Cole is a big man in the organization and notices Georgie Davis, an up and comer. Cole goes home alone, calls Turk and asks him to send a girl over, and waits for the day when he will fall victim to the next young punk on his way up.

"Murder Comes Easy" is a tough, violent, sexy story without a twist ending, which makes it an unusual choice to adapt for Alfred Hitchcock Presents. Cole brutally murders Gallagher and his unnamed lover; later in the story he brutally murders his own wife. Turk is a heroin addict and Cole uses drugs as well. When the producers of the Hitchcock show assigned this story to Bernard C. Schoenfeld to write the teleplay, he must have been shaking his head in wonder. He solved the problem in an interesting way and wrote a script that removes the rougher aspects of Hunter’s story, adds the requisite surprise ending, and introduces a subtle theme that appears clearer when viewed from a vantage point six decades later than it probably looked when the show first aired on CBS on Sunday, April 14, 1957.

Kathleen Maguire as Betty

Retitled "Vicious Circle," a title change that had been made when the short story was reprinted in the September 1953 issue of Verdict, the TV show opens on a moment that occurs before the beginning of the story, as we see Gallagher alone in his home and very nervous. He drinks, smokes, sweats, and jumps when the phone rings. He is waiting for a girl to arrive (the girl in the bedroom in the story is nowhere in evidence) and Manny slips in when Gallagher goes into his bedroom for a moment. Manny wears a black leather jacket and gloves and points a gun at Gallagher; before long he pumps three bullets into the unfortunate man without changing his own expression.

This is followed by a quick scene where we see Betty buy a newspaper with the headline, "South Side Mobster Slain"; the scene between her and Manny comes next, though they are not husband and wife, as they are in Hunter’s short story. Making them lovers instead of a married couple presumably lessens the horror when Manny is asked to kill her. Manny insists that his life of crime is the only way they can live a good life, suggesting that Schoenfeld wanted to try to give the young killer some sort of justification for his crimes.

George Macready as Mr. Williams

When Manny leaves the apartment he encounters Turk, whose harmonica music is heard through the window at the end of the prior scene, a siren song drawing Manny out into the street. Of course, we don’t witness Turk actually doing drugs, but he does seem stoned and complains that Manny replaced him in the hierarchy.

Instead of going to Julie’s card game, Manny next goes to visit Mr. Williams, whose role in the TV show is larger and different than it is in the story. Williams is a man in late middle age who wears sunglasses inside and treats his eyes with medicine that is first poured into a small cup and then applied directly to his eyes. He tells Manny to take care of Betty but when Manny talks to Betty she doesn’t listen to him. Manny returns to see Mr. Williams, who tells Manny that Betty has gone to the police; in the story, she only made that threat. Williams instructs Manny to kill his girlfriend and, in the next scene, he almost does but stops himself. Instead, after encountering Manny in a dark alley and escaping with her life, Betty rushes off screen and is run over by a car and killed. Schoenfeld thus avoids having Manny kill his girlfriend, though the question of whether she died in an accident or whether she intentionally walked in front of a speeding car is left unanswered: a bystander says: "Holy smokes! She walked right into that car!" Manny again shows no emotion, observing the corpse of his lover lying on the ground before he walks away from the crowd.

Kathleen Hughes as Ann

Once again, we see Manny with Williams, after Betty’s funeral. Williams assumes that Manny caused Betty’s death and praises the young man’s cleverness; in a telling change in their relationship, Manny now calls Williams by his first name, Vincent. They toast the future and the next scene shows what that future looks like. Manny is now a big shot, with a pretty woman named Ann ready to accompany him home from a party. Manny notices Georgie, who is dressed in a black leather jacket, just as Manny had been at the start of the show. Williams tells Manny that he is not happy that his latest crime did not go well and Manny goes home alone, where he behaves in a way similar to Gallagher in the first scene; he drinks, smokes, and sweats as he calls the party and asks Ann to come over.

In the final scene, Ann visits Manny but fails to seduce him; she notices that he still has a photograph of Betty hidden on the inside of his closet door and he sends her home. There is a knock at the door and Manny opens it, thinking it is Ann; instead, it is Georgie, holding a gun and telling Manny: "Mr. Williams sent me." The show ends on the implication that Manny has followed the pattern established by Gallagher: a young gunsel who succeeds for a time before he fails and is replaced by the next young punk with a rod.

Russell Johnson as Turk

Schoenfeld took Hunter’s short story and did a significant rewrite, changing the structure but retaining the main plot points. Sex and violence are greatly decreased and drug use is barely suggested. Manny and Betty are not married and Mr. Williams is a much more important character. Manny never kills a woman: the murder of Gallagher’s lover is eliminated and Manny finds himself unable to shoot Betty. The oddest thing about this episode is the subtle gay theme involving Mr. Williams and the series of young men who cycle in and out of his favor. I don’t think we can assume that the black leather jackets worn by Manny at the start and Georgie at the end are meant to evoke the gay community; rather, in 1957, they signaled juvenile delinquency. Perhaps Williams’s eye problems are meant to suggest some sort of flaw in his character. Certainly, the older criminal boss seems to spend all of his time with a series of younger men, tossing them aside when they no longer please him and replacing them with similar models. This theme is nowhere in Hunter’s short story but it seems rather obvious in the TV show, especially when Williams carefully puts a flower in Manny’s lapel. It seems clear that Williams has no interest in the many nubile women at the party he and Manny attend.

Paul Lambert as Gallagher

Whatever Schoenfeld’s intent, "Vicious Circle" is more interesting to discuss than it is to watch, and the young punks all seem a bit too old for their roles. Dick York (1928-1992) is effective as Manny, even though he was 28 years old when the show was filmed. York had started out in radio as a teen and acted on Broadway before taking roles on film starting in 1945 and on TV starting in 1953. He was on the Hitchcock show seven times in all, including "You Can’t Be a Little Girl All Your Life," and also made memorable appearances on The Twilight Zone and Thriller. His best known role was as Darrin Stephens on Bewitched, from 1964 to 1969.

George Brenlin as Georgie

As Betty, Kathleen Maguire (1925-1989) is even older, at 31, and seems a bit long in the tooth for the role of Manny’s young girlfriend. Like Dick York, she moved from Broadway roles into TV parts starting in 1949 and, despite appearing in a handful of films, she mostly worked on television for the next three decades or so. She was seen on Alfred Hitchcock Presents three times, including "Guilty Witness."

Familiar as a heavy, George Macready (1899-1973) had been on stage since 1926 and began working in film in 1942, adding TV roles in 1951. He had a noticeable part in Gilda (1946) and was on the Hitchcock show four times; he also made appearances on Thriller, The Twilight Zone, The Outer Limits, and Night Gallery.

Kathleen Hughes (1928- ) plays Ann, following her role in Schoenfeld's "The Better Bargain" several months earlier. Born Elizabeth von Gerkan, she had a key role in It Came from Outer Space (1953) and has continued to appear on screen to this year.

In smaller roles are three actors who only appeared this one time on the Hitchcock show:

• Russell Johnson (1924-2014) as Turk; he was an Air Force flyer in WWII who was shot down and later awarded a Purple Heart; he had a long career on screen from 1950 to 2011 and made memorable appearances on Thriller, The Twilight Zone, and The Outer Limits but is always thought of as the professor on Gilligan’s Island (1964-1967).

• Paul Lambert (1922-1997) as Gallagher; his screen career lasted from 1956 to 1995 but this was his only time on the Hitchcock show. He was also seen in episodes of The Twilight Zone and The Outer Limits.

• George Brenlin (1927-1986) as Georgie; he had an undistinguished screen career from 1954 to 1985.

"Murder Comes Easy" was
reprinted here as "Vicious Circle"

Evan Hunter (1926-2005), who wrote the short story upon which "Vicious Circle" is based, was born Salvatore Lombino but changed his name to Evan Hunter in 1952. He also began using the pen name Ed McBain in 1956. Hunter was working as an editor at the Scott Meredith agency in 1951 when he sold his first short story. His 1954 novel, The Blackboard Jungle, was made into a hit film in 1955, and he began writing the long series of novels about the 87th Precinct under the McBain name the following year. He wrote the screenplay for Hitchcock’s film, The Birds (1963), and was named a Grand Master by the MWA in 1986. "Vicious Circle" was one of three episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents in which he was involved; learn more at this website. Hunter also briefly mentions "Vicious Circle" in his 1997 memoir, Me and Hitch.

This episode is directed by Paul Henreid (1908-1992), the great actor-turned-director who helmed 29 episodes of the Hitchcock TV series; "Vicious Circle" appears to be the first TV show that he directed to be broadcast; he would do much better in the years that followed.

"Vicious Circle" is available on DVD here or may be viewed for free online here. Read the GenreSnaps review of this episode here. Hunter’s short story was included in his collection, Jungle Kids (1956); the title is clearly a tie-in capitalizing on the success of The Blackboard Jungle film, since the characters in this short story are hardly kids.

Sources:

The FictionMags Index, www.philsp.com/homeville/FMI/0start.htm.

Galactic Central, philsp.com/.

Grams, Martin, and Patrik Wikstrom. The Alfred Hitchcock Presents Companion. OTR Pub., 2001.

Hunter, Evan. “Vicious Circle.” Verdict, Sept. 1953, pp. 134–144.

IMDb, IMDb.com, www.imdb.com/.

“Vicious Circle.” Alfred Hitchcock Presents, season 2, episode 29, CBS, 14 Apr. 1957.

Wikipedia, 26 June 2018, www.wikipedia.org/.

In two weeks: The Percentage, starring Alex Nicol and Nita Talbot!