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!

The Hitchcock Project-Bernard C. Schoenfeld Part Four: The Better Bargain [2.11]

by Jack Seabrook

A beautiful blonde meets her lover at the zoo and they drive to a nearby motel to spend the afternoon together in private, unaware that they are under surveillance. The woman refuses to tell the man her name, cautioning him that if he learned who she was, their affair would be over. She returns to the home of her husband, "King Louis" Indelicato, a gangster who listens to his investigator's report on her activities and soon welcomes Harry Silver, "free-lance killer," into his office.

King Louis hires the red-haired assassin to murder his wife Marion and her lover, giving him an envelope with a picture of his bride. Louis agrees to pay Silver's price of $20,000 and Silver leaves after studying the photo. Moments later, the killer returns and tells King Louis that he has "figured out a better bargain," since Marion will be a rich widow after Silver kills her husband. He recognized Marion's picture as that of his own lover, and King Louis's investigator had "neglected to mention that his wife's lover had red hair."

"The Better Bargain" was
first published here

Richard Deming's story "The Better Bargain" was published in the April 1956 issue of Manhunt and quickly sold to Alfred Hitchcock Presents, where it was adapted for the small screen by Bernard C. Schoenfeld and aired on CBS on Sunday, December 9, 1956. The story depends on the withholding of key information until the end, allowing for the surprise revelation that the hired killer is the gang boss's rival for Marion's affections. When the tale was reprinted in the collection, Hitchcock in Prime Time, editor Francis M. Nevins commented in a note that he wondered how the writer of the TV show managed to avoid giving away the twist.

This is accomplished by removing the first scene of the story, so that the TV show takes place entirely in the office of King Louis and the waiting room attached to it. Schoenfeld's script is a model of structure, using only five characters in alternating scenes to present an entertaining story that improves on its source. The show opens on Baldy, Louis's assistant, a middle-aged man in a suit who is building a model ship at his office desk. A smiling private detective named Cutter enters and is ushered into Louis's office; Baldy is more interested in his model ship than his office duties.

King Louis is a physically imposing man but, as events will show, he is a paper tiger. He insults Baldy yet Baldy is unperturbed; he insults Cutter but the man continues to smile, well aware that Louis's rude words carry no menace. King stops Cutter in the middle of his description of Marion's lover, thus missing out on information that could later save his life. Louis appears nervous despite his bluster, and for good reason, since no one seems to respect or fear him. From what Cutter tells him, it is clear that Marion is cheating on him, but the King tries to rationalize her behavior.

Robert Middleton as King Louis

Unlike the short story, Marion enters the office at this point in the show. Young and beautiful, she mentions her past life in show business and wears a hat that makes her appear birdlike; in the prior scene, Louis had mentioned that she liked birds. She lies to him about planning to visit a friend in Cleveland for the weekend and, when he kisses her passionately, she pulls away. He puts his hand on her throat in a threatening manner but she ignores it--once again, his power is ineffectual. After she leaves, Louis has another scene with Baldy, again insulting his assistant and again being ignored. Even Baldy, whose main interest is in his model ship, understands what is going on with Louis's wife and displays a modicum of sympathy and understanding.

King tells Baldy to contact Silver and there is a dissolve to the next scene, where Silver is already in Louis's inner office. Silver is quite relaxed and makes it clear that he does not need the work; once again, the seemingly powerful mobster is placed in a subordinate position in regard to someone who should be below him in the pecking order. Silver tells King that "I never bargain," though he will later demonstrate that this is not true, and when he compliments Louis on his weight the King tells him that "I go to the gym a lot," suggesting that he is concerned with his appearance. With a wife half his age, he should be! The term bargain is used again when Silver quotes his fee: $20,000 is "a real bargain."

Henry Silva as
Harry Silver

Another dissolve finds Cutter returning with bad news: Marion did not go to Cleveland. No one is terribly concerned with King Louis's crumbling marriage, however, as Baldy continues to pay attention to his model ship and Cutter grins his way through his devastating report. He describes Marion's lover as poetic and surmises that he teaches English literature at the state college; at this point, Cutter relates the scene that takes place at the start of Deming's short story, where the lovers meet at the zoo. He tells Louis that Marion's lover quotes the first lines of Shelley's poem, "Love's Philosophy": "the fountains mingle with the river . . .," and we see that Marion's beau is a more romantic and cerebral man than her husband. Cutter also mentions that Marion refers to her husband as her father: he is old enough to be her parent and in their scenes together she does treat him more like a father than a husband. After Cutter gives his report, Louis discharges him and calls Silver, intending to have both wife and lover killed.

Silver returns to the office, as Baldy continues to tinker with his model ship, and this time when the killer enters he finds King Louis looking at birds in a birdcage, a present for his wife. The bird also represents Marion, who is in a marriage that seems more like a cage. Marion enters and, for the first time in the TV version, shares the screen with Silver, her secret lover. She is momentarily surprised to see him in the company of her husband but she instantly recovers her composure and Louis is none the wiser. Louis lies about the birdcage and says it is a present for "Baldy's kid," suggesting to the viewer and to Silver that his feelings for his wife have changed. She asks for a new car and interacts with Louis like a daughter with a father rather than a wife with a husband.

Kathleen Hughes as Marion

She leaves, and for the first time the camera is positioned below, looking up at both King and Harry in solo shots. The lighting is suddenly more noirish and this moment represents a moral decision point for Louis, one not present in Deming's short story. Shaken by Marion's youth and beauty, King changes his mind and instructs Silver not to kill her, just her lover. They agree on a reduced price of $10,000 and one wonders if this is a bridge too far for Silver, who said before that he never bargains.

Silver leaves, and in one of the few wide shots in the episode we see Louis walk around and settle in behind his desk. He calls a car dealer and orders the sports car that Marion wants, seemingly resolved to be happy with his lot in life, when Silver re-enters the room. Though Silver is clear about not wanting to kill himself, Louis is slow to understand what is happening. Silver waxes poetic about women, quoting Byron's poem from 1813, "She walks in beauty like the night," and telling the King that "The only two things that a man should die for or live for are a poem or a woman like Marion." The truth dawns on Louis, who tries to summon Baldy, but Silver tells him that Baldy is dead--"no charge." Silver then mentions the poet (and killer) Francois Villon, quoting from his 1533 poem that includes the famous line, "Where are the snows of yesteryear?"

At this point, the shift in the balance of power is complete, as the camera looks up at Silver and down at Louis, who is now in a subordinate position. Louis thought he was a king and sat in his "throne room," allowing four people to visit him on and off. Yet they are more colorful and alive than he: Baldy, with his model ship; Marion, beautiful lover of birds; Silver, quoting poetry; even Cutter, the smiling private eye. They all ignore and tolerate his abuse until he is no longer useful, at which point he is eliminated. In the final shots, Silver advances toward Louis with a knife and the King shrinks back in his chair, trying to make himself smaller as the screen fades to black.

Don Hamner as Cutter

"The Better Bargain" is a fine example of an episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents where a run of the mill short story serves as the basis for something much deeper and more effective, much as Cornell Woolrich's slam-bang story, "It Had to Be Murder," was reimagined as the brilliant film, Rear Window. The acting is uniformly strong, the direction well-conceived, and the script by Bernard C. Schoenfeld is carefully structured and efficient, solving the problem posed by Nevins and creating a more evocative tale.

Richard Deming (1915-1983), who wrote the story, wrote numerous crime short stories from 1948 to 1984, mostly for the digests. He wrote quite a few novels between 1952 and 1971, including ghost-writing a series of Ellery Queen books from 1962 to 1970. Deming also used the pseudonym Max Franklin in the 1950s, when his short story output was prolific, and he wrote the story that served as the basis for a haunting episode of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour called "The Second Wife," as well as the story that was adapted into the Alfred Hitchcock Presents episode, "Bad Actor."

Jack Lambert as Baldy

"The Better Bargain" was directed by Herschel Daugherty (1910-1993), who began his career as a dialogue director and actor in bit parts before switching gears in 1952 and embarking on a 23-year career as a director of episodic TV and a handful of films. He directed no less than 27 episodes of the Hitchcock TV show, including "The Blessington Method," as well as 16 episodes of Thriller. There is a charming biographical note about him here.

Starring as King Louis is Robert Middleton (1911-1977), a formidable presence on TV and in film from 1951 to 1977. Born Samuel Messer, he was on Alfred Hitchcock Presents three times, including "Crack of Doom," and he was on Thriller twice.

Henry Silva (1928- ) plays the poetry-loving hit man, Harry Silver. Born in Brooklyn and trained at the Actor's Studio, he had a long career on TV and film from 1950 to 2001 but only appeared on the Hitchcock show twice. He was also seen on Thriller, The Outer Limits, and Night Gallery, and he had a role in The Manchurian Candidate (1962).

Louis tries to menace Marion

The three smaller roles:

• Don Hamner (1919-2003) as Cutter, the smiling private eye; he was in four episodes of the Hitchcock series, including "The Faith of Aaron Menefee," and his career on screen lasted from 1944 to 1991.
• Kathleen Hughes (1928- ) as Marion; born Elizabeth Margaret von Gerkan, she was active on screen from 1949 to 1984 and has made a few appearances since then; her most famous role was in It Came from Outer Space (1953) and she was on one other episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents.
• Jack Lambert (1920-2002) as Baldy; he played many tough guys in a screen career that lasted from 1942 to 1970 and he was on Alfred Hitchcock Presents three times.

"The Better Bargain" is available on DVD here or may be viewed free online here.

Baldy with his model ship

Sources:

"The Better Bargain." Alfred Hitchcock Presents, season 2, episode 11, CBS, 9 Dec. 1956.

Deming, Richard. "The Better Bargain." Hitchcock in Prime Time, edited by Francis M. Nevins and Martin Harry Greenberg. NY: Avon, 1985. 77-87.

"Deming, Richard." Gadetection / Ronald Knox's Ten Commandments for Detective Fiction, gadetection.pbworks.com/w/page/7930438/Deming%2C%20Richard.

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.

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

Turner Classic Movies, www.tcm.com/.

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

In two weeks: "Vicious Circle," starring Dick York!

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!