“On the afternoon of April12th, Dr. George Stoneham received an emergency call to a large downtown nightclub [The Kitten Club]. Chet Arnold, manager of the club and a personal friend of Dr. Stoneham, summoned the physician when Nina LaSalle, a dancer, collapsed screaming in the middle of a rehearsal. Although Dr. Stoneham didn’t know it yet, this was to be one of his most unusual cases.”
Oh yeah, the case when he left the suffering tubercular patients in his office in the middle of the day to make the country’s last recorded house-call at a nudie bar? Yeah, that one might stick in the memory.
With no evidence at all, Stoneham says his diagnosis is “severe pressure on the optic nerve.” Once the pressure is relieved, the hallucinations should go away. Nina says that was no hallucination, she really saw an atomic explosion. [1] When Mrs. Dr. Stoneham learns her husband abandoned his practice to ogle young women, he might feel a pressure on his optic nerve.
That night, Stoneham has dinner with his friend, scientist Dr. Albert Neville. During desert with Neville’s mother, he mentions that Nina had a hallucination of a nuclear explosion. While Ma Neville is doing the dishes, her son reveals that at exactly the same time Nina had her hallucination, a nuclear bomb was exploded by accident in the Pacific. Since there was a democrat in office, the press did not deem it worth reporting. [2]
Neville suggests Nina might be clairvoyant. He helpfully defines it as “the faculty of perceiving a pictorial representation of a current and distant scene.” Neville’s hobby is the paranormal, so he wants to further examine the case; which means — well, well, well — a trip to see the girls at the club.
Nina says she had a vision once before when her boyfriend Larry died. He was in uniform, clutching his gut. An army pal of his confirmed his exact time of death as the same time she had her vision, plus there was a time-stamped receipt from the Taco Bell near the base in his pocket. Then SFT surprised me by earning the only laugh in its entire run:
- Neville: Have you ever heard of clairvoyance?
- Nina: Who?
Nina agrees to help the boys with an experiment about clairvoyance. Just as they are leaving, though, she collapses. They take her to the dressing room and connect her to an EEG. Neville tells her “radiant energy” is the reason for her clairvoyance. The electrical wave-lengths of her brain are too close together. Nina has another clairvoyant episode in the lab.
Blah, blah, blah. The episode gets bogged down trying to conjure a scientific basis for Nina’s clairvoyance. That’s really too bad because they had a genuine talent in Joyce Jameson as Nina. No nudie bar employee since Jack Ruby has so quickly emerged from the pack to blow away others on screen.
As often happens on SFT, the discoverer or possessor of the skillz does not seem to reap the benefit of their talent. For taking time off to cultivate her clairvoyance, the bar manager allows her to change her stage name from Nina (pronounced Nine-uh) LaSalle to . . . Claire Voyance!
No, that would be too much to expect from SFT. He allows her to change her name to the god-awful Saturday Knight. Seriously.
The two doctors received $500 and $750 for the episode. Joyce Jameson was paid only $300. Even sadder, she would be dead by 59. She was a ray of sunshine here, though. Enough to recommend the episode? Oh, hell no!
Other Stuff:
- [1] Note the complex, clockwork, Nolandesque exposition: First, an evidence-free diagnosis, then a treatment, followed by the symptom.
- [2] Oh, alright, Eisenhower was President when this aired.
- And it wasn’t a nudie bar. But this COVID thing is going on for so long . . .
