Alice and Mildred are walking out of a theater.  Mildred says it is amazing what they can do with the bible, and Alice mentions how long the movie was.  I figured it was The 10 Commandments, but we see part of a sign advertising The Wives of Solomon.  That does not seem to be a real movie.  The IMDb auto-complete returns The Real Wives of South Boston.  If 10 commandments take 3.5 hours, how long would Solomon’s 1,000 wives take?  Give the answer in square cubits.

The ladies go their separate ways.  About a block away, Alice gets mugged.  As she is crossing the street a mugger jumps out from behind a crate.  I mean, to the viewer, he is behind the crate.  Oddly, to Alice, he would have been in full view, crouching in front of the crate.  But that is just a split second; the robbery itself feels real.  The elderly woman does not give up the purse easily, so they wrestle a bit and she gets a nasty bruise.

The next morning, Alice gets dolled up to go to the police station.  We also meet her daughter and son-in-law who are living with her, having just moved back from California.  Leo seems to be a layabout who should be out looking for a job.  Mabel is . . . well, I don’t know what she is, but she insanely hot.  Way too good for Leo or the name Mabel.

She meets with Lt. Meade who is wearing a tie so thin it makes a bolo tie look like a lobster bib.  Alice says she got a good look at the man’s face.  Meade gives her a stack of mugshot books to look through.  Alice methodically reviews the hundreds of photos before she finds one that looks familiar.  One of the men looks just like Leo, but the name on the mugshot is William Draves.

Back at the house, Leo is nagging Mildred to give him $20.  When she refuses, he tells her she spends more than that on a permanent even though she appears to have never had a permanent unless it was a temporary.  She tells him she knows he will just take the $20 and waste it at the track.  Leo is lazy and a mooch, but is wearing a tie; and, unlike Lt. Meade, one with two dimensions.  He claims to have been a stockbroker in California, so tries to get Alice to give him $20 to “invest”.  Mabel tells him to beat it.

Alice asks what Leo did for a living in California.  Mabel says she has told her mother several times that Leo was a successful stockbroker.  That’s how she got her furs and jewelry.  In a way-too-long scene, Mabel assures her mother that Leo is a good man.  He just needs time to get established in the east.  Alice is still worried about that mugshot, though.

Blah blah blah.  There is a lot to like in the episode.  The actors, especially Alice and Meade, do great jobs.  The twist is excellent, and atypical of what we usually get with AHP.  Unfortunately, it just feels bloated in more than one scene.  Still, despite dragging a little, it is worth watching for the ending.  Rather than reading this, you should watch the episode; or do just about anything else, really.

SPOILER:

In a  nutshell, Alice returns to the police station to get more info on Draves.  Meade figures out that Draves is Leo.  Meade comes to Alice’s apartment that night to arrest Leo/Draves.  The twist is that Mabel is also one of America’s Most Wanted, and not just by me.  In being a good citizen, Alice randomly stumbled across a photo that busted Leo.  No big loss there, but she also has sent her daughter to the big house.

Far be it from me to suggest a legitimate weakness with the consistently excellent AHP, but a couple of things did seem problematic.  Meade makes the point that if Alice had been searching the mugshots for a woman, she would have seen her daughter’s photo.  This is emphasized as if it were the real stinger, but it is anti-climatic.  By that point, we have already seen Alice’s reaction to the news that her daughter is a criminal.

Inexplicably, the final shot zooms in on Mabel alone as she approaches a door frame and pounds it, looking completely beaten.  She’s a crook, no better than Leo.  She does not deserve the focus of the last shot.  We should have ended up on Alice’s face.  She is the center of this scene.  Not only has she learned her daughter — who she clearly loves — is a criminal, but she is responsible for sending her own daughter to prison.  Ya got tragedy, anguish, guilt, helplessness, and just plain old bad luck.  There’s your last shot.

I would have been totally OK with running shots of Mabel under the credits, though.

Other Stuff:

• Title Analysis:  Alice at first thought it was just the opposite — two men with one face.  However, the title actually refers to the face Leo shows to Alice versus the face he shows as a criminal.  Cool.
• Mabel’s real name is Bethel, which might actually be worse.
• AHP Deathwatch:  No survivors.  BTW, Spring Byington (Alice) was born just 21 years after The Civil War.

This episode was adapted by a woman from a story by a woman, directed by a woman, and was maybe enjoyed by a woman somewhere.  I can’t say it was bad or that I didn’t like it, but for my manly-man tastes is seemed very mannered, and very soft, with no sharp edges.

Long time bachelor Horace Meade returns to his mansion with his new bride Sybilla.  He asks his butler to “take Mrs. Meade’s things up to her room.”  Hunh?  Horace gives her a tour of the mansion.  He points out the many antiques, and Sybilla asks if his mother picked them out.  He says, “Certainly not.  My mother had atrocious taste.”

Next up is the lovely dining room which Horace decorated.  Sybilla says “it is perfect.  Just like I imagined it.”  Horace says there is something she must tell her, but rather than being as articulate as usual, he fumbles his words.  She bails him out by saying she understands that he has been self-sufficient for a long time, so she will abide by his rules.  Yeah, I’m not sure that’s what he was struggling to say.  Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

He tells her his breakfast routine which is the exactly same every morning.  She says, “You must always tell me exactly what you prefer, my darling.  I don’t want to make any mistakes.  Never.”  Now that appeals to my manly-man taste.

His whole day is similarly regimented.  Lunch at exactly 1 pm, and dinner at exactly 8 pm.  Then the tour continues in his office.  Sybilla surprises him with a new oak desk that she had delivered as a wedding gift.  Horace does a fine job of appearing to like the desk, but also conveying that he is horrified by the gift, as pedestrian a waste of wood as his wife is.

Sybilla says, “I know how much you value your privacy.  I will never come in here to interfere or bother.  I promise you.”  She declines his offer of wine saying, “It’s late.  I think I’ll go up to my bedroom now.”  Horace must tell her it is at the end of the hall on the right, because his tour oddly seemed to be putting that particular room off as long as possible.  He says, “I happen to believe in separate rooms.  I hope you understand.”  Sybilla says, “Of course I do.  You must always tell me how you prefer everything.  I only want to please you.”  Wait, are they sure this was written by a women, because it is sure starting to sound like a man’s fantasy.

Horace grows to be amazed at how “gentle and agreeable” Sybilla always is.  Somehow this is suffocating to him.  He offers to set her up with an apartment in the city, and give her a generous allowance.  She says she is perfectly content living in the country with Horace.  “You are my life now.”  Somehow, this distresses him.

Finally, Horace can take this torture no more.  He decides he must murder Sybilla, and high time, too.  This does not go as planned and sets up a tension that exists for years until she dies of natural causes.  After she has died, Horace can finally admit to himself that he loved her.

So, there are some good twists here, but we do end up with a sappy conclusion.  As I said, the whole episode just feels “soft”.  Maybe the setting — I’m guessing the 1910s — account for the gentleness and perfect, clipped elocution by Horace.  Barbara Bel Geddes does an excellent job selling Sybilla’s obsequious, fawning dialogue without coming across as weak or submissive.  I question whether she should maybe have shown a slight edge so we more seriously questioned her motives.  But what do I know?  Nobody is hiring me to write or direct a TV show, and I’m a dude!

Other Stuff:

• Hitchcock’s intros are always worth watching (unlike a certain keeper of crypts I could mention).  This one is a standout as we get a murder before the credits.

Angie tells Larry to cut it out and jumps up off the sofa.  She adds, “If you want to wrestle, go down to the gym!”  Which is a funny line, although I’ve never seen wrestling at my gym unless it was to get the treadmills that overlook the aerobics floor.   She is ready to settle down, but Larry just doesn’t have enough cash to suit her.

He has a plan, though.  He’s through taking bets for Patsie.  He is going to work for a guy with a man’s name — Stefan Bregornick — who owns an import-export business.  Angie ridicules him because this job will pay only half of what he made busting kneecaps, but Larry assures her there is money to be made there.  She angrily complains that she isn’t going to wait around 25 years for him to get a gold watch.  Larry inexplicably kisses her on the mouth rather than . . . well, I can’t advocate punching a woman in the mouth, but wow.

At the job interview, Bregornick asks if he speaks any other languages.  “No.”  Did he finish high school?  “No.”  Do you know anything about the exporting business?  “No.”  However, he gives the correct answer when Bregornick asks what he does if a guy pushes him around:  “I push back.”  Bregornick calls Larry’s father a fool, and mocks the neighborhood he lives in.  Who knows what misogynistic, awful, accurate name he would have called Angie if she were there.  But Larry gets the job.

The next night at Bregornick’s apartment, Mr. Miklos comes by to do some business.  Bregornick agrees to buy 900 cases of wine for $7,000.

Four months later, Angie is still bitching that Larry is not making the big money.  Larry finally reveals his plan.  He says Bregornick is the biggest importer on the east coast because he deals in cash and is lax on the paperwork.  Larry figures he has $200 grand in that apartment.  He says after the big score, maybe they’ll flee to Rio, but that could be tomorrow or 6 months from now.

Bregornick tells him to come to his apartment for another big deal with Miklos at 10 pm.  Larry senses this is his big opportunity.  He calls Bregornick and imitates Miklos, but pushes his luck by segueing into Jimmy Stewart there at the end.  As Miklos, he tells Bregornick he is too sick to come to him, and suggests that his handsome, well-built assistant Larry bring him the $30k for the deal.  Bregornick agrees.

That night, Larry goes to Bregornick’s apartment to pick up the cash.  Then Bregornick starts talking about his mother.  He tells Larry they had been engaged back in the old country, and that he could have been his father, but I don’t think that’s how that works.  After this non-sequitur, Larry goes to Angie’s.

She is loud and angry about everything as usual. Then Larry shows her the $30,000 which excites her, and she is happy for once.  But she can’t not be a shrew and says, “I didn’t think you could do it!  I didn’t think you had it in you!”  Then she more positively continues, “You beautiful thing!  Momma’s gonna take good care of you!”  But she is talking to the money.

Thinking big, she is excited about all the shoes she can buy.  She says they can buy all new clothes in Rio!  Although they don’t seem like the type who would have passports ready to go.  Maybe back then all you needed was a driver’s license and a carton of Luckys for the pilot.  He tells her he needs to take every bit of the cash out with him that night.  As he leaves, she yells after him, “You are coming back?”  Obviously he has some master plan, but I applaud him not answering, leaving her to worry.

He goes back to Bregornick’s apartment where Miklos has now arrived.  Larry confesses to making the call as Miklos, and stealing the cash.  Then he says he thought of his father.  He could not steal the money because his father would have been ashamed of him.  He hangs his head and walks to the door.  Bregornick is touched by his almost-son’s revelation.  He stops Larry and gives him a big ol’ bear hug.

Larry goes back to Angie’s.  He tells her he gave the money back to Bregornick and she looks disgusted.  “Why!” she screams.  He just laughs and says, “I got something better than his money.  I got his trust.”

I’ve complained recently about AHP’s that don’t have a murder.  This one doesn’t even have a crime.  It has a good first act for a movie, but even that is ruined by the production.  Larry and Angie are just loathsome human beings.  She is loud, greedy, angry and domineering.  He is Robert Loggia.

I never thought about of Loggia as being particularly vile.  He was pretty curmudgeonly but avuncular in Big.  But then I think about him as a psychopath on The Sopranos, and as low-life trash in An Officer and a Gentlemen.  Maybe he just had great range.  Here, he is just as loud, angry and abrasive as Angie.  Come to think of it, Bregornick shouts all of his dialogue too.  Maybe the director was hard of hearing.

So this gives us 3 viscerally unlikeable people.  The only decent person is Larry’s father, and he is dead.  Add to this an overbearing score, and this is a rare off-night for AHP.

Other Stuff:

• AHP Deathwatch:  No survivors.
• It took me 6 weeks to get through this episode.
• If the title sounds like a Seinfeld episode . . .

Cash Bentley stumbles through the Riverview Country Club just as I suspect he has many times before.  He says to his friend Jim, “The Hudson River is flowing backwards, From New York to Albany.  Time’s flowing right along with it.”  Save it for The New Yorker, pal!  Oh, Mr. Cheever, sorry sir! ^[1]

His wife Louise stops dancing long enough to come out on the veranda to nag and humiliate her husband.  Sadly, they do not come close enough to the railing to make this the shortest AHP in history.  As they argue, Jim and some other lushes come out and ask Cash, “Hey Champ!  What time’s the race, boy?”  This is a thoroughly unpleasant bunch of people.  Jim patronizingly mussed Cash’s hair earlier, but I was willing to let it go.  The guys try to goad him into having a few drinks.  When he refuses, Jim dips his fingers into his Gin and Tonic and again runs his fingers through Cash’s hair saying, “You know what I mean, pure hair tonic!”  [pause for laughter]

Cash grabs him and says. “So you make three times the money I do!  So you can pay your bills and I can’t!  You can’t stand the fact that I was once a champ, that I’m not getting soft like the rest of you!”  Jim says he just wanted a hurdle race.  Cash inexplicably says he will give them a hurdle race.

The crowd enthusiastically creates make-shift hurdles out of chairs, tables, music stands, broomsticks, velvet ropes, etc.  Clearly this is humiliating for Cash, but he does love the attention, and the opportunity to show he is still good at something he was once great at.  Cash tells someone to get his gun from the car, by which I hope he means a starter’s pistol.  Some boozehound fires the pistol; Cash does 2 impressive laps around the club and everyone cheers him.  Then he slugs Jim.  The guy who fired the pistol, hands it back to him, “Don’t forget your gun, Cash.”  Christ, good timing, bub!  Panting, sweaty, humiliated, drunk, angry, just decked a dude — this guy is a mass murder waiting to happen and you hand him a gun!

Back at the Bentley home, we see Cash has a projector set up in his living room  to view old films of his glory days as a champion hurdler — this must have been 20 years ago!  Well, maybe the projector is there because their babysitter’s boyfriend was just watching them that evening.  But why does the screen seem to be a permanent installation in their living room?  This ain’t no white-square-on-a-tripod (my nickname in college).  Cash reaches up and pulls down a huge theater-quality screen on rollers.

He starts the film, but runs from the room like me at an Amy Schumer movie.  In his case, he has set up hurdles out of furniture, much to the despair of Louise.  He clears the hurdles and runs out the patio door.  When he loops back into the living room, he crashes into the furniture and breaks his leg.

Just awful. Was he on the GI Bill after serving 20 years in the Army? Also, the insert of him is laughable: He is a geezer, there is no background, and it is oddly framed.  Very disappointing work from the pros at AHP.

His doctor tells him he’ll be able to run again, but no hurdles.  Back at home, his young neighbors are having a party.  Cash is jealous of their dancing and partying at this shindig.  Is this Cheever being clever with a dig at his injured shin?  [Comment timesaver:  No, you’re an idiot].  Amusingly, he looks out his window and the party seems be happening about 6 feet from his window.  Cash gets into the classic sprinter stance: crouched, one hand touching the ground, cocktail in the other.  He complains about the teenagers, but his wife says they’re entitled to some fun.

Their Saturday night takes a turn for the better when Jim calls and invites them back to the club.  Naturally, Cash gets liquored up.  He hits on a younger woman.  And I don’t just mean younger than him, I mean younger than his wife who is already 16 years younger than him.  Wait, why is Louise with with this dumbbell anyway?  I doubt she was that swept away by his track prowess as she would have been six when he graduated from college.  The guys try to goad Cash into another race, but he runs into Louise’s arms and they leave.

Back at casa de Bentley, Cash is still liquored up.  He fires up the old projector to replay the best 53 seconds of his life (2nd best accord to Louise).  He hands her the pistol and says, “I’m a hurdler, I’m going to hurdle.  Now you fire.”  He tells her he will say, “On your mark, get set, go” and she should fire.  When she protests, he slugs her.

Cash again assumes the position.  He says, “On your mark, get set” and she blows him away.  Was it on purpose?  That is for the jury to decide.  She does give him a kiss and looks guiltily at the projector, which baffles me.

Meh.  I liked it better than many people, but maybe that’s because we finally had a murder after several bloodless episodes.  Or maybe as I get older, I identify with living through past glories, except for the part about having past glories.  Gary Merrill (Cash) does make it hard to like the episode.  He is at least 10 years too old for the role; and, frankly, it is not great criticism, but I just don’t like his face.  There, I said it.

Other Stuff:

• [1]  The episode is indeed based on a short story by John Cheever.
• Jack at Bare*Bones notes that Patricia Breslin (Louise) was on AHP and an episode of The Twilight Zone in the same week.   Her parents must have been busting!

If pie-eating directing were an olympic sport.

It wasn’t a dream, Auntie Em, I was there!  It was a real AHP episode called The Little Man Who Was There.  This strange fellow dressed in black came into an old west bar and started doing tricks just like in TLMWWT.  Then he started turning folks against each other just like in TLMWWT.  But it wasn’t a dream!  Arch Johnson was there, and Roscoe Ates, and Clegg Hoytt, just like in TLMWWT.  Maybe this episode is even set in Kansas, who can tell these shitkicker frontier towns apart?

Tony Lorca strolls into the saloon whistling a jaunty tune.  All eyes are conspicuously on him.  He tries to break the ice by asking how they like the weather.  Unfortunately, it is as icy outside as it is inside and they don’t cotton to this stranger’s glib comments when they have crops and cattle freezing.  AHP fans know it does not pay to piss off someone with a corral full of frozen lamb-chops.

He says he just came in over the North Trail.  Bart McCormick is quick to point out that such a passage is impossible during winter.  Lorca asks if it really matters he got to “their miserable little shit-hole metropolis.”  This devolves to a gunfight.  But when McCormick reaches for his pistol, he discovers that Lorca has stolen it from him.  This feat so amuses McCormick, that he takes a liking to Lorca.

Lorca meets eyes with Shasta Cooney across the bar.  He regrets that he has no more cash to buy the widow a drink.  She buys him a small beer and one pretzel.  But then he pours the beer down her back. The widow Cooney storms upstairs.  Lorca remains in the bar; for a second, it looked like he was going to Mount Shasta — heyyyoooo!

Lorca puts up his pistol to get in a poker game with the gang.  In no time, he has lost everything.  One of the locals IDs him as Tony Lorca aka The Whistling Kid.  They read off a long list of crimes on his wanted poster.  The Widow Cooney comes downstairs just in time to hear his true identity and says he is also the man who killed her husband.

On this very clever series, they come up with one of their most original twists.  Lorca has been caught and once the snow clears, someone is going to turn him in for the cash.  The next turn of events is so great I’m not going to spoil it because, paradoxically, it just didn’t work for me.  I can’t figure out why.  It is a great, original idea, the execution was fine, the performers are mostly great, and there is a funny escalation of the idea.  Maybe I’m having a bad day; I don’t want to spoil anyone else’s fun.

The episode is not flawless.  The anachronistic score might be the worst I’ve heard outside of the 1980’s Twilight Zone.  Shasta just isn’t particularly attractive or interesting, not even achieving Fanta levels.  However, Arch Johnson is a hoot, and Ricardo Montalban is awesome as Lorca.  In the 2nd twist, the Sheriff even says of him, “He’s not a man of violence.  He’s more of a CONNNNNNNN man!”

I guess what I’m trying to say is you can search all over for happiness but there is really no need to look any further than your own front door.