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 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: About Emily Neff--A Few Words About a Forgotten Mystery Writer

Emily Neff

In my review of "One for the Road," I wrote that I had been unable to find any information about Emily Neff, the author of "Partner in Crime," the short story upon which that episode was based. However, I have recently made contact with Susan Bernard Voelker, the daughter of Emily Neff. Ms. Voelker was kind enough to provide details about her mother.

Emily Neff

by Susan Bernard Voelker

My mother, Emily Neff Bernard, was born in Denton, Texas, on September 22, 1922, to Sherman Brown Neff and Jessie Utz Neff. She had a younger brother, Phillip Duncan Neff. She was born Emily Neff, no middle name.

She came from a literary family. Her father had a bachelor’s and master’s degree from Yale, and a master’s and doctor’s degree from Harvard. Most of his life was devoted to college administrative work and teaching. For twenty-five years, Dr. Neff was the head of the Department of English at the University of Utah. After he retired, he went to Wayland College in Plainview, Texas, as chairman of the Division of Humanities and professor of English. He was much loved and revered by his students. He was the author of two books, The Province of Art: An Approach Through Literature, and Lazarus and Other Poems. He was listed in Who’s Who In America.

Emily’s mother was the youngest of ten children and grew up on a farm in Missouri. At age eighteen she got her teaching certificate and taught for a year in a one-room, one-teacher school. She wrote her memoirs about her life on the farm, but I have no information on college and career. She and my grandfather were avid readers, and passed on their love of books to my mother.

Her first story, "Hoolio," was published here

My mother grew up in Salt Lake City, Utah. I believe she started writing at an early age. I have a little blue enamel vase she was awarded in 1936 (age fourteen) by the William M. Stewart School for "first prize, short story." After high school she went east, to Smith College, where she earned a B.A.­ with a major in English. She spent her junior year at the University of Utah, where she joined Kappa Kappa Gamma.

Initially she was interested in newspaper writing. For one year she was a reporter for the New Britain Daily Herald, but she wanted very much to move to New Orleans and work for the Times-Picayune. Her plan was to start out in New Orleans and then move on to San Antonio and San Francisco. I have a series of humorous letters between her and the managing editor of the T-P, where she is trying to convince him to hire her in spite of her inexperience, out-of-state status, and the fact that she was a "girl reporter." These letters are all signed with her nickname, Red Neff. A quote from one of her last letters: "I seem to be beating my head against a stone wall in trying to land a mail-order job on your paper. However, being too young to be discouraged, too mulish to give up, and too dumb to know when I’m licked, I shall continue to cling to the thread of hope you have extended." Eventually, she went to New Orleans, had an interview, and was hired. She never made it to San Antonio or San Francisco, because she met my father, Pierre Victor Bernard, who was a city editor on the paper, got married and had three daughters. All her life, she loved New Orleans.

"The Baby Sitter" was
published in this issue

Emily was a reporter for the Times-Picayune for two years. Over the next two decades, her fiction writing was sporadic, not prolific. Perhaps the reason it is difficult to find out anything about her is that she didn’t seek recognition and wrote more as a hobby than anything else. Her genre was the short story, but she wrote some clever little poems, and even once collaborated with a friend on a musical, which they didn’t finish. She wrote the lyrics and her friend the music. A favorite of mine was a children’s story called "Garfield, The Absent-Minded Goat," which was never published, and I’m not sure she even submitted it. A list of her writings, the ones I know of, is attached.

I’m pretty sure the stories that Alfred Hitchcock bought were all originally published in magazines, and I believe he bought them through her agent in New York, McIntosh and Otis. I don’t think my mother ever had any personal contact with Hitchcock. Of course, she was delighted he used her stories on his show, and it was always a source of pride in our family. Still is.

My mother stopped writing some time in the 70’s, I think, when she became increasingly interested in New Orleans politics. She started her own public relations firm, with mostly political accounts. My older sister worked with her, and, when Emily retired, my sister took over the business.

"The Chrysalis" was published here

When we were growing up, my mother was popular with our friends, who saw her as talented, glamorous, and hip. She was active in our schooling. She directed several plays when I was a Brownie and produced and directed talent shows at our high school. She taught sewing to the neighborhood children, and one summer she helped me and a friend write a neighborhood newspaper (The Nosy News).

My older sister and I both majored in English. Neither of us followed in our mother’s footsteps. Although we didn’t write creatively, except for a few poems here and there, our background in English helped us in writing various articles/reports for our jobs, my sister in public relations and advertising, and me in social work. My younger sister was an art major, creative in another way.

Emily liked to travel… the UK, Europe, Russia, India, Mexico, Jamaica. Italy was her favorite, and she took classes to learn the language.

It was Emily’s wish to make it to the year 2000, but she fell a few months short. She died of a stroke on August 22, 1999, in Mandeville, Louisiana, across Lake Pontchartrain from New Orleans. She was seventy-six. At her memorial service, I read from the last chapter of Eudora Welty’s One Writer’s Beginnings, which I had been reading to her when she was sick. We scattered her ashes in her beloved Bryce Canyon, Utah.

I asked my friends who knew her to tell me the first word or words that came to mind when thinking about my mother. These are the words: red, red lipstick and hair, intellectual, intimidating, haughty, elegant, reserved, critical, stubborn, intelligent.


Ms. Voelker's husband, Tom Voelker, also was kind enough to share his memories of Emily Neff:

"Mr. Blanchard's Secret"
was published here

What about Emily?

I could never pin her down.

Creative. Insightful. Intelligent. Emily.

She could be charming. She could be dismissive. She could be engaging or remote, at once inviting and unapproachable.

Her smiles played across subtle wit, thoughtful observation, and cutting sarcasm.

In Emily, strength of character shaded over into hard willfulness.

But it wasn’t just that she was self-centered. Her center was her self.

Like all of us, there was much more to Emily than what met the eye.

To me, she was a mystery. Something essential remained hidden: the center.

She eluded me.

I never saw more than a few facets of her infinite variety.

I wonder whether anyone did.


Short stories by Emily Neff

"Hoolio," Seventeen, May 1948
"The Other Man," The Times-Picayune Magazine, April 10, 1949
"The Chrysalis," Cosmopolitan, October 1952
"Pupa and Butterfly," Familie Journal, Feb. 12, 1953
"The Baby Sitter," Cosmopolitan, May 1953
"Standard of Loving," Toronto Star Weekly Magazine, December 8, 1956
"Partner in Crime," Wicked Women, 1960
"The Love Sportsman," Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, May 1961
"No Bed of Roses," Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, March 1977
"Mr. Blanchard’s Secret," Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, June 1978


TV Shows Adapted from stories by Emily Neff:

"The Baby Sitter," Alfred Hitchcock Presents, May 6, 1956
"Mr. Blanchard's Secret," Alfred Hitchcock Presents, December 23, 1956
"One for the Road," Alfred Hitchcock Presents, March 3, 1957 ("Partner in Crime")
"Bed of Roses," The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, May 22, 1954 ("No Bed of Roses")
"Murder in Mind," Alfred Hitchcock Presents, January 28, 1989 ("Mr. Blanchard's Secret")


Sources:

FictionMags Index
Galactic Central
IMDb

The Hitchcock Project-Stanley Ellin Part Five: You Can't Be a Little Girl All Your Life [7.7] and Wrapup

by Jack Seabrook

Being a woman in America in the late '50s/early '60s was no picnic, as we have seen repeatedly on various episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents, but the ordeal of Julie Barton, as presented in "You Can't Be a Little Girl All Your Life," may be the worst example yet. In Stanley Ellin's story, which was first published in the May 1958 issue of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, Julie awakens from sleep and thinks her husband Tom has come home late from work, but instead a gloved hand covers her mouth and, when she bites it, she is punched until she passes out. She wakes up to find herself being attended to by a doctor as her husband urges her to describe her attacker to the police. Lieutenant Christensen and Mr. Dahl from the District Attorney's office attempt to interrogate her, but all she remembers is that the man wore leather gloves.

"You Can't Be a Little
Girl All Your Life"
was first published here

Implying that she was raped, the police pressure her to help identify her attacker for the safety of the community. She receives round the clock attention from her husband and two nurses. Her parents visit and her mother reports that Tom is determined to kill Julie's attacker once he has been identified. She warns Dr. Vaughn, who promises to tell the police so that they will keep an eye on Tom. A suspect, Charles Brunner, is arrested and Julie is brought to the police station to identify him; under great pressure, she agrees that he was her attacker. Tom pulls a gun and lunges toward the man, but the police tackle him and his leg is broken in the melee.

After Tom spends time in the hospital, he comes home with his leg in a cast. As the trial approaches, Julie avoids mentioning the subject. One evening, after Tom is asleep, Dr. Karlweiss visits and wants to know if she is sure that Brunner was the man who attacked her. Karlweiss had been treating Brunner and says that a crime of this sort is out of character for him. As the trial gets ever closer, Julie is filled with a sense of impending dread. One evening, Tom asks her to gather his clothes to take to the tailor so that he will ready to attend the trial. She picks up the jacket that he had not worn since the night of the attack and finds a pair of gloves in the pocket; one is "crusted with dark-brown stains." Tom, hobbled by his cast, admits that he came home drunk from work after a business deal fell through. He could not find his key, so he crawled through the window. "'That's when it happened,'" he says. He can't explain why he did it, but he insists that she must go through with seeing that Brunner is convicted so she will never have to think of it again. Tom insists that no one will believe her if she tells the truth. Julie runs into the street, discarding the dark glasses behind which she had been hiding, and "fled toward lights and people."

Dick York as Tom

In this story, Stanley Ellin provides clues to the horrible fact of the attacker's identity while painting an uncomfortable portrait of a woman whose own identity is defined by the men around her. Julie is "desperately anxious to give him the answer he wanted" when Lt. Christensen presses her for details of her attacker's appearance, and her interrogators demonstrate no compassion for her, showing her her own face in a mirror to try to force a reaction. Her own mother insists that Julie protect Tom from his violent instincts and tells her that she "'owes'" her husband sex, leaving Julie "chilled by a sudden insight into her parents' life together." Julie is treated like a child: Dr. Vaughn tells her that she looks "'mighty cute in those dark glasses '" and Julie, understandably, admits that "'I just feel better wearing them,'" happy to shield herself from the reality of the situation before her.

Carolyn Kearney as Julie

Julies complicity in her situation is not ignored, however. When Tom calls her "'the only demure married woman in the world,'" she glows with happiness. At the story's climax, when Tom attempts to justify his actions, Julie's eyes are opened and she realizes that her weakness lies in "the need to have them always approve." At the end, she removes the dark glasses and throws them to the ground, no longer hiding herself from the reality of her world where men are in charge and she has been powerless.

Three years after Ellin's story was published, Helen Nielsen adapted it for television and it was broadcast on Alfred Hitchcock Presents on NBC on Tuesday, November 21, 1961. The teleplay removes the story's opening scene, where Julie is attacked, and the episode opens on a close up of Julie in profile. The right side of her face is kept hidden by how she is positioned and where the camera is placed, creating anticipation for the moment when her bruises are first shown. We learn of the assault through dialogue and Julie's interrogators subtly suggest that she may have played some part in her own victimization, asking how she spent her long, lonely evenings. Nielsen ends the first segment with a shocking moment, as Dahl spins Julie's chair around and we see her full face reflected in a wall mirror for the first time, followed by a cut to a close up of her eyes, one of which is badly bruised.

Julie is forced to look in the mirror

Nielsen increases Julie's isolation by removing all of the other female characters from the story and by increasing the focus on how the men in Julie's life have always sheltered her. When Julie's father visits, he explains that her mother died when Julie was young and her father raised her, protectively. He insists on tucking her into bed like a child and reminds Tom that her husband was also her first boyfriend; she went straight from the role of daughter to that of wife. Dr. Vaughn also asks Julie how she spent her evenings, suggesting that she was going out or doing something to encourage her attacker. Nielsen's script downplays Tom's violent tendencies; he has no gun at the police station and no one tells Julie she needs to protect him.

Ted de Corsia as Lt. Christensen

The final scene benefits from good shot choices by director Norman Lloyd. We see Tom sitting before a mirror in a shot that shows Julie's point of view; he puts on his tie and a pair of crutches are thrust into the frame in front of him. Julie goes to get his coat and puts on her dark glasses, suggesting that, once more, she is trying to shield herself from the truth. She takes his coat out of the closet and drops it, then sees the glove poking out of a pocket; she sees the torn finger and puts the glove on her own hand to confirm her suspicions.

Julie then confronts Tom in a scene that is more suspenseful than the one in Ellin's story. Once again, the camera shows her point of view, and we are in Julie's place as she approaches her husband. Her hand, holding the glove, enters the frame as she asks him about the garment and then accuses him. "'You hit me!'" she says, leaving any mention of rape out of the discussion. Unlike the story, where Tom is unable to stand up, here he gets up and, using his crutches, approaches her menacingly as he makes his excuses, falling once but getting back up and continuing towards her as she yells at him and finally takes off her glasses. He makes one last lunge and falls to the floor; she throws the glasses down and exits, repeating: "'They will believe me!'"

Howard Caine as Dahl

"You Can't Be a Little Girl All Your Life" is a good adaptation of a powerful short story, a short, low-budget crime film that makes good use of minimal sets and scene changes. The entire episode takes place in three rooms: Julie's bedroom, her living room, and a room at the police station. Carolyn Kearney gives a strong performance as Julie and Helen Nielsen's teleplay streamlines the story, increasing the suspense and adding moments of high tension such as the incident at the end of first segment where Julie is forced to look at herself in the mirror. Norman Lloyd's direction is sharp, with the point of view shots near the end of the episode recalling similar shots used by Robert Stevens in episodes like "Our Cooks a Treasure," and the camera angles and positioning of Kearney in the first scene creating viewer anticipation for the revelation of her bruised face.

Frank Milan as Dr. Vaughn

Helen Nielsen (1918-2002) contributed to the designs of aircraft in World War Two and the FictionMags Index lists over fifty short stories written by her, mostly between 1954 and 1973. She also wrote crime novels for 25 years, from The Kind Man in 1951 to The Brink of Murder in 1976. There were a handful of TV and film adaptations of her work, and she wrote teleplays for the Hitchcock show, both adapting her own stories for the small screen and adapting the work of others, such as Stanley Ellin.

Needing no introduction is Norman Lloyd (1914- ), who directed twenty-two episodes of the Hitchcock show. The last one examined here was Ellin's "The Day of the Bullet."

Bill Quinn as Julie's father

As Tom, the brutal, deceiving husband, Dick York turns on a dime from concern to menace. His screen career lasted from 1945 to 1984 and he was seen on the Hitchcock show seven times, including Ellin's "The Blessington Method."

Carolyn Kearney (1930-2005), so effective as the battered wife, was born in Detroit. Her screen career was rather brief, lasting from 1956 to 1970, and this was the only time she appeared on the Hitchcock show. She was also seen on The Twilight Zone and she played Dick York's wife once again (having not learned her lesson) on the classic Thriller episode, "The Incredible Dr. Markesan."

In smaller roles:

• Ted de Corsia (1905-1973) plays Lt. Christensen; he was on Old Time Radio and then on screen from 1947 to 1972, playing countless small roles on TV, including appearances on The Twilight Zone, Thriller, and The Outer Limits. He was seen on the Hitchcock show three times, including "The Magic Shop." His first film credit was for Orson Welles's The Lady from Shanghai.
• Frank Milan (1905-1977) plays Dr. Vaughn; he had an unremarkable career on screen, appearing on film from 1937 to 1942 and on TV from 1951 to 1962. This was his only role on the Hitchcock show.
• Howard Caine (1926-1993) plays Dahl, the District Attorney's man; born Howard Cohen in Nashville, he served in the U.S. Navy in the Pacific Theater during World War Two and was on Broadway. His screen career lasted from 1953 to 1988 and he was seen on The Twilight Zone and The Outer Limits. He was a semi-regular on Hogan's Heroes and an accomplished banjo player. Caine appeared on three episodes of the Hitchcock show, including "Mrs. Bixby and the Colonel's Coat."
• Bill Quinn (1912-1994) plays Julie's father; he was on film as a child in 1923-1924 and then returned to the screen in 1956 and stayed till 1989. He was seen in countless TV shows and played Dr. Melnitz in four episodes of The Odd Couple. He also had a part in Hitchcock's The Birds (1963). He was in two episodes of the Hitchcock TV show.

Like most of the seventh season of Alfred Hitchcock Presents, "You Can't Be a Little Girl All Your Life" is not yet available on DVD in the U.S., nor is it available for viewing online.

Sources:

Ellin, Stanley. “You Can't Be a Little Girl All Your Life.” The Specialty of the House, Mysterious Press, 1979.

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

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

"Helen Berniece Nielsen." Contemporary Authors Online, Gale, 2003. Contemporary Authors Online, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/H1000073099/CA?u=lawr69060&sid=CA&xid=ecc117b1. Accessed 28 May 2018.

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

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

Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 28 May 2018, www.wikipedia.org/.
“You Can't Be a Little Girl All Your Life.” Alfred Hitchcock Presents, season 7, episode 7, NBC, 21 Nov. 1961.

Stanley Ellin on Alfred Hitchcock Presents: An Overview and Episode Guide

The eight episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents based on stories by Stanley Ellin represent a very strong group indeed. All of the stories originally appeared in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, from the first ("The Specialty of the House") in May 1948 to the last ("The Day of the Bullet") in October 1959. Two episodes aired toward the end of season one: "Help Wanted" and "The Orderly World of Mr. Appleby"; both were fine adaptations that featured meek men who turn to murder. The weakest of the batch is the sole episode from season three, "The Festive Season"; the story on which it is based depends on a twist ending and the TV show is overly talky.

Three episodes from the fifth season deserve the label of "classics": "The Blessington Method," a rare show with science fiction elements that posits a solution to the problem of the elderly; "Specialty of the House," an unforgettable look at cannibalism and greed based on the story that launched Ellin's career; and "The Day of the Bullet," a wistful lament about childhood and how two boys' paths diverge after a seminal event.

Finally, season seven brought two more Ellin stories to the small screen: "You Can't Be a Little Girl All Your Life," a fine, low budget crime film that paints a troubling picture of a woman's life in 1961, and "The Faith of Aaron Menefee," with a script by Ray Bradbury that tells of a possibly crooked faith healer in rural America.

Stanley Ellin's stories are a delight to read and they served as great sources for a series of wonderful half hours of classic television.

EPISODE GUIDE-STANLEY ELLIN ON ALFRED HITCHCOCK PRESENTS

Episode title-“Help Wanted” [1.27]

Broadcast date-1 April 1956

Teleplay by-Robert C. Dennis

Based on-"Help Wanted" by Stanley Ellin

First print appearance-Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine June 1949

Notes

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"Help Wanted"

Episode title-"The Orderly World of Mr. Appleby" [1.29]

Broadcast date-15 April 1956

Teleplay by-Victor Wolfson and Robert C. Dennis

Based on-"The Orderly World of Mr. Appleby" by Stanley Ellin

First print appearance-Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine May 1950

Notes

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"The Orderly World of Mr. Appleby"

Episode title-"The Festive Season" [3.31]

Broadcast date-4 May 1958

Teleplay by-James P. Cavanagh

Based on-"Death on Christmas Eve" by Stanley Ellin

First print appearance-Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine January 1950

Notes

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"The Festive Season"

Episode title-"The Blessington Method" [5.8]

Broadcast date-15 November 1959

Teleplay by-Halsted Welles

Based on-"The Blessington Method" by Stanley Ellin

First print appearance-Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine June 1956

Notes

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"The Blessington Method"

Episode title-"Specialty of the House" [5.12]

Broadcast date-13 December 1959

Teleplay by-Victor Wolfson and Bernard C. Schoenfeld

Based on-"The Specialty of the House" by Stanley Ellin

First print appearance-Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine May 1948

Notes

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"Specialty of the House"

Episode title-"The Day of the Bullet" [5.20]

Broadcast date-14 February 1960

Teleplay by-Bill S. Ballinger

Based on-"The Day of the Bullet" by Stanley Ellin

First print appearance-Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine October 1959

Notes

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"The Day of the Bullet"

Episode title-"You Can't Be a Little Girl All Your Life" [7.7]

Broadcast date-21 November 1961

Teleplay by-Helen Nielsen

Based on-"You Can't Be a Little Girl All Your Life" by Stanley Ellin

First print appearance-Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine May 1958

Notes

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"You Can't Be a Little Girl All Your Life"

Episode title-"The Faith of Aaron Menefee" [7.17]

Broadcast date-30 January 1962

Teleplay by-Ray Bradbury

Based on-"The Faith of Aaron Menefee" by Stanley Ellin

First print appearance-Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine September 1957

Notes

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"The Faith of Aaron Menefee"

In two weeks: Our short series on John Cheever begins with "The Five-Forty-Eight," starring Phyllis Thaxter and Zachary Scott!