The Hitchcock Project-Clark Howard Part Two: Night Fever [10.28] and Wrapup

by Jack Seabrook

Colleen Dewhurst as Nurse Hatch

Hospitalized after being shot in a holdup gone wrong, Gerry Walsh awakens to find himself being questioned by the police, who want him to tell them the location of George Cappo, his partner in crime. Captain Tevell wants to have Walsh transferred to the prison hospital for killing a cop but the doctor says the patient is too sick to move, so Tevell has him handcuffed to the bed, with round the clock guards and steel grilles on the windows. Nurse Alma Hatch, "an extremely plain girl" of about 27, is assigned to care for the prisoner round the clock.

In the days that follow, Walsh flatters Nurse Hatch, telling her that she has "'natural beauty'" and cultivating a relationship with her. He denies having killed the policeman and confesses to having fallen in love with her. After Tevell tells Walsh that he's headed for the electric chair unless he tells the police where to find his partner, Alma offers to help the prisoner and fakes his records so he can stay in the hospital for a few more days. She then agrees to escape with him and helps him prepare.

"One Way Out" was
first published here

When Walsh is well enough to move, Alma gives his guards drugged coffee to put them to sleep before helping him out of the hospital and driving him to a run-down neighborhood. They climb to an upstairs apartment, where Cappo admits them and a voluptuous blond welcomes Walsh, who quickly dismisses Alma. Recalling the many times she has been fooled by men, Alma descends the stairs and tells the waiting policemen where to find the killers.

In "One Way Out," which was first published in the February 1965 issue of Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, Clark Howard makes the reader believe that Nurse Hatch is desperate and that she falls in love with the manipulative criminal Walsh, so the conclusion, where the nurse is revealed to have been in control of the situation, comes as a surprise. The producers of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour must have liked the story, because it was bought and filmed right away and it aired as the next to last episode of the TV series on May 3, 1965.

Tom Simcox as Gerry Walsh

Retitled "Night Fever," with a teleplay by Gilbert Ralston, the show follows the story closely and is enhanced by a good selection of music cues from other episodes of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour; the music sounds like it was written by Bernard Herrmann. The character of Tevell has been split in two, with Detective Sergeant Martinez as the older policeman and Detective Gabe Greeley as the younger. Having two detectives allows for dialogue between them; Greeley flirts with pretty young nurse Wilson, setting the scene for the attraction between the male characters and the female nurses that will be more fully manifest in the relationship between Walsh and Nurse Hatch.

Joe DeSantis as Sgt. Martinez

As Nurse Hatch, Colleen Dewhurst is older and more attractive than the character as described in the story, though she still speaks much of the same dialogue about knowing that she is not pretty. Unlike Howard's short story, where Walsh's thoughts are explained in narrative passages and the reader knows that he is manipulating the nurse, the viewer cannot be as certain of what Walsh is doing, since his thoughts are hidden. About halfway through the show, the detectives briefly discuss taking Nurse Hatch off the case. Martinez comments that "'She's got a wife complex. She wants to be a wife like all the other women.'" When Walsh proposes that Nurse Hatch help him escape, she is more resistant than her counterpart in the story, but when she does agree she kisses her patient, making it clear that there is no turning back.

Don Stewart as Gabe Greely

Most of the episode occurs in Walsh's hospital room and the corridor just outside it. When Nurse Hatch helps him make his escape, the action finally moves outside, though the atmosphere remains oppressively noirish because it is nighttime and it is raining. Nurse Hatch takes Walsh out of the hospital in a wheelchair, with a blanket covering his body and a bandage over half his face. There is a moment of Hitchcockian suspense when the nurse's car pulls up alongside a police car, but the duo make it to the apartment of Walsh's partner and the conclusion plays out as it does in the story. Lacking the narrative description of her thoughts that is found in the short story, Dewhurst must convey to the viewer her character's seeming disappointment with Walsh's choice of women by the dejected way she walks and by her facial expressions. Her lack of surprise on encountering the policemen at the foot of the stairs tells us that she has been cooperating with them; no viewer watching her romance with the prisoner blossom would have expected that it was all a ruse to catch his partner.

Richard Bull as the doctor

"Night Fever" is an effective translation of "One Way Out" from the page to the small screen. The teleplay is by Gilbert Ralston (1912-1999), who was born in Ireland and who worked as a TV producer in the 1950s before trying his hand as a writer, with TV writing credits from 1961 to 1972. The FictionMags Index credits him with seven short stories between 1959 and 1961, five of which were published in Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine. He was also the co-creator of the series, The Wild Wild West. He wrote the screenplays for two camp horror films of the early 1970s, Willard (1971) and Ben (1972), and he also wrote a series of western novels in the early 1970s. "Night Fever" was his only contribution to the Hitchcock TV show.

Don Marshall as the guard

Directing the show is Herbert Coleman (1907-2001), who had a sixty-year career in Hollywood and who is best known as an assistant or second unit director on several Hitchcock films of the 1950s, including Rear Window (1954) and Vertigo (1958). Coleman produced sixteen episodes of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour in 1964 and 1965 but this is the only episode he directed; perhaps he was given the opportunity because the series was coming to an end. He does a competent job, especially in a shadowy shot when Nurse Hatch returns to Walsh's room early in the show, and later, in the noirish sequence that concludes the episode. A memoir was published in 2007, years after his death, called The Man Who Knew Hitchcock; in it, Coleman recalls this episode as "Night Nurse."

Colleen Dewhurst (1924-1991) gives a strong performance as Nurse Hatch. Born in Canada, she was a well-known stage actress who won two Tony Awards. Her television career lasted from 1957 to 1990 and in that time she won four Emmy Awards. She also appeared in films during that period. This was her only episode of the Hitchcock series. At age 40, she is considerably older than the 27-year-old nurse in Clark Howard's story.

Peggy Lipton as
Nurse Winters

Gerry Walsh, the mostly bedridden killer, is played effectively by Tom Simcox (1937- ), whose screen career spanned the years from 1962 to 1991. He appeared in one other Hitchcock hour.

Playing Sergeant Martinez, the older of the two detectives, is Joe DeSantis (1909-1989), whose career on screen ran from 1949 to 1987 and included numerous TV episodes. He was seen on Thriller, The Outer Limits, and one episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents: "A Night With the Boys."

Don Stewart (1935-2006) plays Gabe Greely, the younger detective. He was on film and TV from 1942 to 2001 but his longest-running role was on the soap opera, The Guiding Light, from 1968 to 1984. This was his only appearance on the Hitchcock show.

In smaller roles:

• Don Marshall (1936-2016) as the policeman who guards Walsh; he was on screen from 1962 to 1992, had a leading role on Land of the Giants (1968-1970), and appeared in three episodes of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, including "The Cadaver" and "Isabel."

Rayford Barnes as George

• Richard Bull (1924-2014) as the doctor; his long screen career ran from 1956 to 2011 and he was on The Alfred Hitchcock Hour three times, including "Death and the Joyful Woman." He also had a recurring role as a doctor on Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea (1964-1968) and he was a regular on Little House on the Prairie (1974-1983).

• Rayford Barnes (1920-2000) as George, Walsh's partner in crime; he was on screen from 1952-1997, he was seen on The Twilight Zone, and he had parts in three episodes of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, including "Water's Edge."

Laurie Mitchell
as Pinky

• Laurie Mitchell (1928- ) as Pinky, Walsh's blonde girlfriend; her brief screen career lasted from 1954-1971 and this was her only role on the Hitchcock show.

• Peggy Lipton (1946- ) as pretty nurse Wilson; this was her third credit in a career that began in 1965 and continues today; she is best known for a lead role on Mod Squad (1968-1973) and for her part in Twin Peaks (1990-1991 and 2017).

"Night Fever"was remade for the 1985 NBC color version of Alfred Hitchcock Presents and broadcast on October 6, 1985, as a half-hour episode. In this version, Walsh is seen robbing a liquor store and shooting a policeman before being shot by the policeman's partner. Here, there is no partner in crime for the police to seek. Walsh charms the nurse and she helps him escape, but this time she takes him to her own home, where he discovers that the policeman he killed was her husband. The show ends with Nurse Hatch shooting Walsh. The episode is not bad, as an example of 1980s' TV, but the conclusion does not hold up to scrutiny. The police would never let the wife of a dead cop nurse his killer, let alone leave her with him so that she could help him escape and then kill him! Jeff Kanew, who co-wrote this version with Stephen Kronish, admitted that they did not read Clark Howard's story but rather wrote their teleplay after watching the original TV version and reading a synopsis.

The original version of "Night Fever" is not available on DVD but may be viewed online here. The remake may be viewed online here. Thanks to Peter Enfantino for helping me locate the correct short story and for sending me a scan!

Sources:

Coleman, Herbert. The Man Who Knew Hitchcock: a Hollywood Memoir. Scarecrow Press, 2007.

The FictionMags Index. 21 July 2018, www.philsp.com/homeville/FMI/0start.htm.

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

Howard, Clark. “One Way Out.” Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, Feb. 1965, pp. 3–15.

IMDb, IMDb.com, 21 July 2018, www.imdb.com/.

“Night Fever.” Alfred Hitchcock Presents, season 1, episode 2, NBC, 6 Oct. 1985.

“Night Fever.” The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, season 10, episode 28, CBS, 3 May 1965.

Stephensen-Payne, Phil. Galactic Central, 23 July 2018, philsp.com/.

Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 21 July 2018, www.wikipedia.org/.

Clark Howard on Alfred Hitchcock Presents and The Alfred Hitchcock Hour: An Overview and Episode Guide

Two stories by Clark Howard were adapted for the Hitchcock TV series: "Enough Rope for Two," which aired in the third season, and "One Way Out," which was retitled "Night Fever" and which aired as the next to last episode of the tenth and final season. Both shows followed Howard's tales closely, though the first expanded the lead female role to showcase star Jean Hagen and suffered as a result. Each of the episodes stands as a solid example of the crime fiction of its day, and it is unfortunate that the producers of the Hitchcock series did not see fit to adapt more examples of this author's work, especially since his stories became a mainstay of Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine in the decades that followed.

EPISODE GUIDE-CLARK HOWARD ON ALFRED HITCHCOCK PRESENTS/THE ALFRED HITCHCOCK HOUR

Episode title-"Enough Rope for Two" [3.7]
Broadcast date-17 November 1957
Teleplay by-Joel Murcott
Based on-"Enough Rope for Two" by Clark Howard
First print appearance-Manhunt February 1957
Notes
Watch episode-here
Available on DVD?-here

Episode title-"Night Fever" [10.28]
Broadcast date-3 May 1965
Teleplay by-Gilbert Ralston
Based on-"One Way Out" by Clark Howard
First print appearance-Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine February 1965
Notes
Watch episode-here
Available on DVD?-no

In two weeks: Our series on Bernard C. Schoenfeld begins with "Decoy," starring Robert Horton and Cara Williams!

The Hitchcock Project-Clark Howard Part One: Enough Rope for Two [3.7]

by Jack Seabrook

Clark Howard (1932-2016) wrote two stories that were adapted for the Hitchcock TV show: "Enough Rope for Two," which aired in late 1957, and "Night Work," which aired in 1965 as "Night Fever." Howard grew up on the streets of Chicago, as he recounts in his autobiographical novel, Hard City (1990), enlisted in the Marines, and served in Korea. He wrote hundreds of short stories, many of which were published in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine or Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, between 1957 and 2013. He also wrote novels and non-fiction crime books from 1967 to 1994 and he wrote a column for the boxing magazine, The Ring. Howard's short story, "The Horn Man," won the Edgar Award for Best Short Story in 1981, and the Short Fiction Mystery Society gave him a Lifetime Achievement Award in 2009. He also won five Reader's Awards for his work in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine.

Though Howard never wrote for film or television, he did see a handful of his stories adapted for the big and small screens: one film, two TV movies, and four Hitchcock episodes. Oddly enough, the two stories adapted for the original Hitchcock TV series were both remade for the Hitchcock series revival in the 1980s.

"Enough Rope for Two"
was first published here

Howard wrote that David Goodis "had an enormous impact on my life as a writer" and Goodis would have recognized the desperate characters in "Enough Rope for Two," which was first published in Manhunt's February 1957 issue. The author later commented that this story was the eighteenth he ever wrote, the fifth he sold, and the first that was sold to television.

Released from a ten-year stretch in prison, Joe Kedzie visits the Main Line Hotel in a seedy part of Los Angeles and finds Madge Griffin living in Room 212. They are soon joined by Maxie, who had conspired with Madge to ensure that Joe took the fall for a payroll theft that netted $100,000. Joe agrees to take Maxie with him to New Mexico to recover the hidden loot. They drive through the desert, stopping for the night in Tucson before visiting a General Store in Lordsburg, New Mexico, where Joe buys sixty feet of strong rope and a flashlight. He also buys a gun when he thinks Maxie is not watching, though Maxie witnesses the purchase.

They drive to a remote spot where Joe had thrown the money down an abandoned well. Joe shoots Maxie, who falls down the well. Joe then secures the rope and begins to climb down into the darkness. Halfway down, the rope breaks and he falls, breaking his leg; it seems Maxie had cut the rope almost all the way through after seeing Joe buy the gun. Unable to climb out, Joe faces the prospect of dying at the bottom of the well with his money and the corpse of Maxie, who seems to be smiling.

Jean Hagen as Madge

"Enough Rope for Two" is a tough, fast-moving crime story with a gruesome twist ending. It is essentially a three-character play, though Madge disappears about halfway through. When it was sold to Alfred Hitchcock Presents, the role of Madge was expanded to feature the actress Jean Hagen, who received top billing. As a result, the TV show plays out somewhat differently than the story. The changes begin immediately, with a new opening scene in which Max visits Madge to tell her that Joe just got out of jail. They discuss having double-crossed him and how he hid the money that they have waited ten years for. In the story, we learn of their deceit a few pages in, through Joe's private thoughts in narration. In the show, the information is conveyed upfront, through dialogue, and this scene replaces the story's opening, where Joe arrives in Los Angeles by bus and finds his way to Madge's hotel.

After Max leaves, we see Madge preparing herself before a mirror for Joe's impending arrival and we hear her thoughts about him in voiceover narration; when he arrives, she embraces and kisses him, something she repeats once they are seated together on her couch. The Madge of the TV version is more affectionate toward Joe than she is in the short story, at least at first, and Jean Hagen's performance suggests that Madge's behavior stems from a mix of fear and love. Max arrives and Joe confesses that he hid the money in the Mojave Desert, not in Barstow, where they had planned for him to stash it. Changing the location of the hidden money allows for other changes in the story as well; Barstow and Mojave are within a couple of hours' drive from Los Angeles and thus there is no reason to stay overnight, a stop that is required in the story due to the long drive through Tucson to Lordsburg, New Mexico.

Steve Hill as Joe

Another big change in the TV version happens when Madge joins Max and Joe on the drive out to the desert! Seated between the two men in the front seat of a rented jeep, she wonders in voiceover if she and Joe will ever be able to take a trip together like this without being afraid. When they stop at the hardware store, Joe tells Max that he hid the money in an abandoned mine shaft (not a well) and when Max sees Joe buying the gun he goes back to the jeep and tells Madge that Joe knows that they double-crossed them; he hands her a knife that will figure in the show's climax.

After a quick drive into the desert, the trio reach the abandoned mine shaft and, with the addition of Madge to the scene, the story's concluding events play out rather differently. When Joe prepares to shoot Max, Max calls out to Madge, who rushes at Joe with the knife, apparently forgetting her tender feelings toward him. Max throws a shovel at Joe but misses and the shovel knocks down Madge. Maxie runs to the nearby jeep and Joe shoots him twice, also puncturing a canteen of water that sits in the back of the jeep. Joe pulls Madge to her feet before knocking her down again with a slap.

In the story, Max falls down the well and Joe is left alone to venture down after him. In the show, Max lies dead by the jeep and Madge is still with Joe. Adding her to the situation makes it overly complicated and leads Joe to act in a way that is out of character. He lowers himself into the mine shaft and gives Madge a ball of twine that she can lower down to him so he can tie it around the money and let her pull it up. This is a somewhat incomprehensible turn of events, especially in light of the fact that Madge just ran at Joe with a knife and he knocked her to the ground with a smack across the face. In the story, the rope breaks as Joe lowers himself down. In the show, he makes it to the bottom safely and sends the money up to Madge. She caresses the package of cash and thinks, in voiceover, that she can have it all to herself. As Joe is climbing back up, she cuts the rope, and he falls to the bottom, breaking his leg.

Steve Brodie as Max

The show's final twist is new and effective. Madge leaves Joe at the bottom of the shaft and climbs in the jeep to drive away, only to find that the key is missing, presumably in Joe's pocket. She offers to lower the twine again so he can send the key up, arguing that if she backs the jeep closer to the hole then the rope will be long enough for him to climb out. Joe sees that the rope was cut and tells her that he will die more easily in the cool, dark pit, while she will die in the hot sun, calling out for water. She walks off into the desert alone and the show ends.

The changes that were made to the TV adaptation of "Enough Rope for Two" do not improve the story and, in fact, having Madge present for the climax requires Joe to behave in a manner that is inconsistent with his character. The show is a gritty, 25-minute short noir crime film but the plot, which is so solid in Howard's short story, does not hold together as well with the changes. For the record, Clark Howard had no complaints about the TV adaptation of his story and wrote that it was "a thoroughly pleasant experience."

The teleplay is by Joel Murcott (1915-1978), who began writing for Old Time Radio in the late 1940s and who also worked as the radio editor for The Hollywood Reporter before starting a two-decade career as a writer for episodic TV, from 1955 to 1975. He wrote 12 episodes of the Hitchcock show, including the classic hour, "Behind the Locked Door."

A process shot

Directing this episode is Paul Henreid (1908-1992), who began his career as a film actor. He also worked as a director, starting in the early 1950s, and directed 29 episodes of the Hitchcock show, including "A Little Sleep" and "Annabel." In "Enough Rope for Two," he includes a few interesting shots. When Max looks through the window of the hardware store, he is able to see Joe loading bullets into the gun by means of a mirror that allows him to view an action that would otherwise be hidden. The drive out to the Mojave Desert is accomplished with what appears to be a mix of location shots (of the jeep) and process shots (of the actors). Best of all are the shots when Madge looks down into the mine shaft at Joe far below; the camera is at the bottom, looking up, and Madge's face is framed by the square opening at the top of the shaft.

As Madge, Jean Hagen (1923-1977) plays against type. Like Joel Murcott, her career began in radio in the 1940s before she moved to film in 1949 and then television in 1954. She is best remembered today for playing Lina Lamont in Singin' in the Rain (1952), but in 1957 she was best known as Danny Thomas's wife on the popular TV show, Make Room for Daddy, where she had co-starred from 1953 to 1956. This was her only appearance on the Hitchcock show but she kept making movies until the late 1970s.

Steven Hill (1922-2016, and billed here as Steve Hill) plays Joe. He was born Solomon Krakovsky or Solomon Berg and started out on Broadway in 1946; he was also a member of the Actors Studio. His screen career began in 1949 and he was the star of the TV series, Mission:Impossible, during its first season (1966-1967) before he left the show for what are still unclear reasons. He continued acting on screen and later had his biggest success starring on another TV series, Law and Order, from 1990 to 2000.

Don Hix as the
hardware store clerk

Max is played by Steve Brodie (1919-1992). He was born John Stevenson and took his screen name from the man who famously claimed to have jumped off of the Brooklyn Bridge in 1886 and lived. Brodie was a busy character actor on screen from 1944 to 1988, appearing in films such as Out of the Past (1947). He was also on Thriller. This was one of four episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents in which he appeared.

Finally, the small part of the hardware store clerk was played by Don Hix (1891-1964), a bit player with a short TV career from 1954 to 1962 who was not on any other episodes of the Hitchcock show.

"Enough Rope for Two" aired on CBS on Sunday, November 17, 1957. It was remade in color for the Alfred Hitchcock Presents revival and aired on March 9, 1986, written and directed by David Chase. Chase reimagines the story and, while it is jarring to see the tale told in color and with '80s hair and music, by the end it works better than the 1957 version. This time, the Joe character is named Scott, and he is an innocent who is tricked by his girlfriend Zoe into taking her "cousin" Ray on a camping trip. On the way, Ray shoots and kills the man at the hardware store.

In the final scene, Scott runs at Ray with a small axe and Ray shoots and kills him before climbing down into the pit. The money is in a large suitcase that is too big for Ray to hold while climbing back up the rope, so he asks Zoe to lower a smaller rope to bring up the loot. This makes more sense than the 1957 version, where Joe should know better than to trust Madge with $100,000. In the remake, she gets the money and then cuts the climbing rope. The twist ending with the key is the same, though this time it seems that Ray took the key from Scott before going down into the pit. The key scene suggests that David Chase based his teleplay on the 1957 TV show rather than the short story, though only the story is noted in the opening credits.

Watch the original version of "Enough Rope for Two" here or buy the DVD here; read the GenreSnaps review here. Watch the remake here.

Sources:

Amazon, Amazon, www.amazon.com/.

“Clark Howard.” Contemporary Authors Online, Gale, 2006.

Ellett, Ryan. Radio Drama and Comedy Writers, 1928-1962. McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers, 2017.

“Enough Rope for Two.” Alfred Hitchcock Presents, season 3, episode 7, CBS, 17 Nov. 1957.

FictionDB - Your Guide to Fiction Books, www.fictiondb.com/.

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

Gorman, Ed. “Ed Gorman's Blog.” Hard City by Clark Howard, 1 Jan. 1970, newimprovedgorman.blogspot.com/2011/05/hard-city-by-clark-howard.html.

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

Howard, Clark. “Enough Rope for Two.” Alfred Hitchcock's A Choice of Evils, The Dial Press, 1983, pp. 48–60.

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

Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 5 July 2018, www.wikipedia.org/.

WorldCat, www.worldcat.org/.

In two weeks: Our short series on Clark Howard concludes with "Night Fever," starring Colleen Dewhurst!