Lucia Clay (Barbara Bel Geddes) is tossing and turning in bed, drenched in sweat, dreaming.  A foghorn blows and she turns in bed, saying, “Why did I do that?” leading the audience to believe she just farted. Well, any viewer in the Kevin Smith dick & fart joke generation.

She reflects back to the first time she met Allen Bliss (Michael Rennie). She was dancing with her fiancee John at a high society party.  John was angling for an entry into Allen’s business.  After meeting Lucia, Allen was angling to get into hers.  During a dance, both Allen and Lucia learn their preconceptions were wrong — she was not a money hungry shrew, and he was interested in things more varied and finer than the almighty dollar (remember, this was 1958).

Out on a foggy balcony they discuss the excitement of not knowing the path ahead.  He suggests that she should board a ship on her honeymoon and sail and sail until they hit the Fortunate Isles.  He wishes he had the strength to tell off all the bankers and do the same. They are having quite the moment until the butler announces a call for him from Mrs. Bliss in Boston.  D’oh!

Their paths cross again on another foggy night.  It is very thick and people are squinting trying to see — oh no, wait, they’re in Chinatown.

Apparently it is the the Chinese New Year given all the fireworks and paper mache dragon heads.  Allen suggests they get their bearings somewhere warm like one of the 200 Chinese Restaurants on the block.  Allen is happy to hear that Lucia has called off her engagement to John.

They pursue things their common interests that she could never share with John, browsing a bookstore, a favorite poem, sailing, eating Chinese food, constantly getting lost in fog.

Eight weeks later, Lucia says she must stop seeing Allen.  She doesn’t care what people say, but everyone from her parents to the housekeeper is talking about her running around in the fog with a married man.  She wants to end it before she really falls in love with him — so apparently she does care.  Seeing just the opportunity he has been waiting for — i.e. his last chance — he tells her he is getting a divorce regardless of her answer to his proposal.

Still tossing in bed, she screams out Allen’s name, fearing something awful has happened.  Her screams have brought — what? — a nun into her room.  She tells Lucia she is not at home, and that there has been an accident.  Lucia still screams for Allen, but the nun says she will get a doctor.

Lucia remembers being back in the Chinese restaurant, waiting for Allen. Finally she leaves and finds Allen outside, once again in the fog.  His wife won’t give him a divorce.  Screw that, he tells Lucia the next day as they are sailing that he has bought two tickets to Canton — the man loves his Chinese food.  He’ll leave his wife enough money so that she won’t miss him.

Unfortunately, the fog starts rolling in on them.  There is a calm and Allen loses his bearings, not having a compass or sextant or radio or brain.  They could row, but have no idea which direction.  They are not sure which foghorn they are hearing, but it turns out to be coming from a ship which plows over Allen’s boat like Al Czervik’s over Judge Smails’.

Terrible old age make-up and looking not nearly as good as Barbara Bel Geddes did on Dallas almost 50 years later.

Sadly, Allen was killed.  She looks at the Chinese Wishing Ring Allen had just given her the day before and sees her hands are not young and beautiful.  They’re pruny, and it ain’t from the water.  She looks into a mirror and realizes she has been in a sanitarium for 50 years. And drops dead.

Everyone is entirely adequate. And I must admit I was completely suckered in by her face never being seen except in the flashbacks.  It was almost an Eye of the Beholder moment.

But it just didn’t do much for me.  I don’t like flashbacks in general, and the rest was a little too melodramatic for my tastes.  I can imagine it being the bee’s knees back in 1958, though (two years before the classic TZ episode).

Post-Post:

• AHP Deathwatch:  No survivors.
• The doctor mentioned she had had no visitors for 50 years.  What a family of assholes.
• The passage Allen has her read in the bookstore is from Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Sonnets from the Portuguese.
• Not related to Ray Bradbury’s short story of the same name — one of his more famous short stories, even made into a movie, yet not included in his 100 Most Celebrated Tales Collection that I foolishly bought.

Well, right kind is a very subjective term.

Mr. Waterbury sees a sign for Ivy Corners, population 6,000 and seems to like the cut of the town’s jib.  Although, if I know AHP, the population will soon be 5,999.

He goes to the real estate office of Aaron Hacker to inquire about a house that he has his eye on.  Even though Hacker has the listing on the house, he tries to steer Waterbury to another home. Waterbury offers $9,500, but the owner Sadie Grimes is asking $50,000, possibly explaining why it has been on the market for 5 years.

Waterbury goes to see Sadie and shocks her and Hacker by agreeing to buy to house for the outrageous $50,000.  As if that isn’t enough, she pulls the geezer trick of giving him a lemonade and making him listen to an interminable story about people he doesn’t know  Sadie tells him about her dead youngest son who had gone to the big city and become very successful.  He used to send her money every month, but something went awry.

Michael never told his mother about his problems, but he showed up in the middle of one night after 9 years. He just claimed to be sick of his job, so he quit and came home to mommy for a few weeks.  In reality, he admits he was fired and is very protective of a little black bag he was carrying.

He hung out for a long time, never going out.  And this was in the days before ESPN, blogging and internet porn, so what did I — er, he — he do all day?  His mother treated him like Little Lord Clavin, but the black bag was never seen again, and she never searched for it, having little interest in porn.

One night, it ended as he got late night visitors who were either the rest of his gang or the most persuasive Jehovah’s Witnesses ever.  When Michael would not donate the loot, whatever their identities, they killed him (although to be fair, that doesn’t sound like a Jehovah’s Witness).  The sheriff tells his mother that Michael had been a naughty boy in New York.  He and three other men had held up a bank and stolen $200,000.  Michael ended up with all the loot, see?

An insurance investigator with the sheriff is more interested in finding the $200,000.  Ms. Grimes denies seeing the money or even the black bag. That was 5 years ago, and she immediately put the house up for sale for $50,000.  She asks Waterbury if he thinks the bank would accept $50,000 as full restitution for the theft.  He seems to think so after this long.

Waterbury has caught her in a lie about the little black bag, and she readily admits it. She was waiting for the only person in the world who would pay $50,000 for this modest house — a person who thought there was $200,000 hidden inside.  And that would be the man who killed her boy — her 40 year old boy.  He would have been on his own gwown-up health care plan for 14 years.

Waterbury smugly tells her that she shouldn’t have told him this story until after she called the police.  She calmly replies that she didn’t tell him the story until after he drank the lemonade. LOL.  OK, that deserves my second ever 🙂 .

Post-Post:

• AHP Deathwatch: James Drury is still with us.
• So I guess the population will indeed go down to 5,998 as Waterbury croaks and Ms. Grimes is sent to the big house.

The scene:  Wartime France.  Hitchcock’s opening and closing remarks are very subdued this week due to the gravity of the story.  This isn’t ordinary Americans being killed after all, it’s . . . well, more on that later.

Gendarme, stop that man — he has no baguette!

Cafe owner Leon is forcing his daughter into a marriage with the butcher.  Therese has her eye on the salami of a soldier named Sgt. Andre, though, and is heartbroken by his discharge; I mean, that he as been discharged.

Andre’s friend Marcel is telling a barfly how he saved Andre’s life.  He tells her Andre is rich and engaged to a baroness.

Andre is much more humble and honest, telling Therese that a few kisses in the dark meant nothing, that a soldier needs a girl, it was never going to last past Marseilles.  She tells him she wants to be with him anyway, to look after him.  He brutally says he  wants to get back to his family.

Meanwhile Marcel is still talking up Andre to the barfly — how he has a yacht, has a winning racehorse. One of the disbelievers at the bar calls Andre’s mother to verify Marcel’s stories.  Andre takes the phone and tells his mother — now seen in an evening gown at a glamorous party — that he will be home in 2 days.

BTW, the Countess is played by Iphigenie Castiglioni; I wonder if that is the same Iphigenie Castiglioni that was in Hitchcock’s Rear Window?

He says he invited a friend to come home with him.  He assures them all that he is fine, but his friend has lost a leg in the war.  His family, the snooty society folk are aghast! The friend has not had time to get a prosthetic leg, so he will have to walk on crutches or — avert your eyes, ladies — a wheelchair!

His fiancee says, “That’s terrible!  To bring a cripple in here.  He won’t fit in.”  Well, we really can’t judge her until we measure the doors.

Andre’s mother sympathetically is only thinking of his poor friend.  She says he is welcome, but “don’t you think it will be a little awkward?  He won’t be able to ride, or swim, or dance — he will be so out of it!”

When Andre says the man saved his life, his mother promises the best life for him . . . just so it’s not too close to the family.  They will be happy to send him to Switzerland to recuperate, but “don’t bring him home!  Not Now!  It would be so depressing having such an unfortunate boy around.”

After the call, he tells Marcel that he can’t take him home with him now, because he is not going home.  He tells Therese to marry the butcher and lead a long and happy life. He then hobbles out on crutches, revealing that it is actually him who has lost a leg, and he was testing his family’s reaction.  Therese runs after him, and will probably catch him . . . what with having two legs.

Alfred says at the end that he will dispense with his usual gallows humor as this show has no desire to make light of men who have suffered as a result of war.  Hopefully next week he can have us rolling in the aisles again with tales of murdered Americans.

This episode was OK, but another missed opportunity.  Marcel was seen walking around, so we know he is doing OK.  There are tell-tale crutches prominently displayed leaning against the bar in several scenes. And the accents made it an effort to listen to the dialogue.

Post-Post:

• AHP Deathwatch:  Susan Kohner is still with us.
• Sir Alfred is correct, there is nothing funny about wounded soldiers.  But it did remind me of the classic sketch by Dudley Moore and Peter Cook.
• This idea has apparently become an urban legend even showing up in Snopes, but its roots go back even further.

1950s housewife Eve is preparing a breakfast that looks like the buffet at the Hilton — actual brewed coffee, toast, eggs, fresh-squeezed orange juice.  All this is very strange in that Eve and husband Jordan are constantly but eruditely sniping at each other and are on the verge of a divorce.  Why would she go to such trouble for him if the last ingredient wasn’t rat poison?

I must say though, the bickering is pretty entertaining, and well-played in that non-plussed British style where each insult is met calmly with an equally pointed retort. Asses will have no caps busted up them in this fine home.

It is strange, though not problematic, that the style changes dramatically at this point. The first scene is played strictly for deadpan laughs.  Once the intruder arrives, it becomes a farce without the laughs — yet remains comical throughout.  Whether it is a failure or brilliant balancing of styles, you can only answer for yourself (hint: brilliant).

They are interrupted by the doorbell.  A man in a rumpled suit immediately elbows his way inside and pulls out a pistol.  When Jordan comes out of the kitchen and sees his wife with a disheveled stranger, his calm response is, “Well now, this is a highly interesting development.”  He assumes Eve is having an affair, but even when he sees the gun, he very calm.

Chester the intruder demands something to eat.  He says, “The cops are after me.  I killed two people yesterday.  Only the first one counts.  You can figure that one out, can’t ya?”

Jordan says, “Yes, I think I grasp the general meaning.”  Well he’s one up on me.  What could that mean?  That it only takes one to make a man a murderer? That the second was a cop in pursuit?

Chester plans to take the car, and Jordan says that is fine as he takes the train to work and dismissively says he really must be going before he is missed at an important meeting.  His refusal to buy into this lethal situation really is a unique take.  When he describes how someone at the office will come looking for him, Chester agrees to let him go and keep Eve as a hostage — which is OK by Jordan.

Eve protests to poor Chester — yeah, I’m starting to feel sorry for him — that Jordan won’t come back, or that he will call the police just so Eve will be killed.  “He’s been trying to get rid of me for a year.  Ask him about Sylvia Lester.”

“Who’s that?” asks Chester.

Jordan says Eve is crazy, Sylvia is just an author he works with.  Eve and Jordan start bickering about divorce as if Chester isn’t even there.  Chester gets fed up and tells Jordan to just call in sick.

After Jordan hangs up, Chester admits that the two people he killed were his wife and the guy she was fooling around with.  So I guess he killed the guy second and he was the one who “didn’t count.”

Chester thinks maybe having someone in the car would get him through the roadblocks.  Eve says since Jordan was so anxious to leave, to take him.

Chester says he could do that but would have to shoot Eve to keep her from calling the cops.

So then Eve offers to go with him, surely a couple would not be stopped at a roadblock. Jordan points out that the exhausted Chester will need help driving and Eve doesn’t have a license.  Eve assures him that they would never shoot at a woman. Jordan assures him that he will take turns on the driving.  Both of them are playing to Chester and repeatedly throwing the other under the bus.

Finally, Chester decides to take Eve.  As he is leaving with Eve and preparing to shoot her husband, Jordan reminds Chester that he will need money.  Jordan can get the money for him at the bank — and it’s not a joint account.  He offers to write a check for $500, but only at the bank.

Eve rats him out that he keeps that much in a box in the bedroom upstairs.  As they go up the stairs, Jordan tricks Chester into chasing Eve downstairs as he locks himself in the bedroom.  There are more twists and turns as Eve and Jordan continually try to get the other killed.

The ending is sweet even if the last line is cringe-worthy.  This really was a great episode in both premise and performance.

Post-Post:

• AHP Deathwatch:  Two outta three ain’t bad; unfortunately all three are dead.
• Note all the 1950’s tropes — dutiful wife still cooks a full breakfast for a man she hates, she has no job, she has no license, she is not on the checking account. Maybe Hillary was right, this was slavery.
• Jordan often looks very much like Phil Hartman.
• The comical screenplay is by Robert C. Dennis who wrote for such other laugh-riots as Dragnet and Perry Mason.  He also wrote four episodes of Batman, oddly all of them featured King Tut as the villain. Maybe he was working pro-buo…..I can’t even write it.
• For a more thorough review and background on the players and production, head over to bare-bones ezine.

Fran and Ed are having a nice breakfast before he goes off to work. He notices that she is not wearing her watch and she says that it is being fixed.  Ed mentions that the race track has just re-opened and questions whether she might be going there today.

He asks her if that is why her watch is missing.  This would be one pro-active chick — not even waiting for the bookies to threaten her, she is hocking her watch before the track opens just to get some scratch.  Ed tells her that if she is betting again, there will be no excuses, and no tears — they are through!  You know, unless she hits the trifecta.

After Ed leaves, she goes to the pawn shop and gets her watch back.  When she gets back home, her partner-in-gambling Lana Shank is waiting at her door.  Lana is ecstatic as she hit the Daily Double yesterday, presumably not on Jeopardy, for $268.  She wants Fran to come back to the track with her today, but Fran tells her Ed threatened to divorce her if she started betting again.

Picking up the newspaper, she notices a horse named Pink Angel, then hears a song on the radio by that name.  Armed with this ironclad information, she calls her bookie to place a bet.  Luckily, she is able to control hersellf and hangs up.

Coincidentally the bookie calls her seconds later.  There is the small — literally small — matter of $26.40 she owes to him.  She hasn’t even been to the track since it re-opened, so I’d say this is the most patient bookie on earth.

He comes over, but Fran is only able to come up with $1.55.  Wow maybe $26 wasn’t so small back then.  In the closet, she goes through her husband’s pants but finds nothing. Maybe if she had gone through the bookie’s pants, her problem might have gone away.

Then she gets a bright idea.  A pretty snappy dame when she smiles, she goes downtown and tells a series of strangers that she forgot her purse and needs $.15 for the bus.  She does OK with the suckers (i.e. men), but a woman getting off the bus tells her to ask the police for money. Seeing that she will never make it to $26 that way she shoplifts a $50 compact.

Outside, a man busts her and puts her in a car.  As they are driving, he offers to give her a break.  She doesn’t know how to thank him, but he says, “I’m sure you can think of something if you put your mind to it.”  He peels off a $20 and drops it in her lap as he admits he is not a cop, but can still help her out of a jam.

He says to “pretend I’m your husband for a few minutes”, so she nags him he’s going too fast.  She hits him in the face with her purse, causing them to swerve into a light pole.

She flees the scene, but leaves behind her purse which allows the police to track her to her apartment. They found the $20 and put it in her purse.  After a day more antic than the 4th Indiana Jones movie, the bookie shows up and Fran pays him off.  He offers to place another bet for her, but she tells him she is through forever.

She gets a call from her husband that he suddenly has to fly to Washington.  She remembers a horse named Washington Flyer, so calls her bookie immediately.

A nice, enjoyable episode.  I really thought it was going to end on a happy note with her not gambling again.  Guess I’m just one of those suckers (i.e. men).

Post-Post:

• AHP Deathwatch:  Tharon Crigler still hanging on just as she was in The Motive which just aired 2 weeks earlier.
• AHP Proximity Alert:  Carl Betz was also just in that recent episode.
• Fran’s last name is Holland and she is “in Dutch” with the bookie.
• They live in Apt 3-D but I got nothing for that.
• The $.15 for the bus would be worth $1.24 today.
• The $26 for the bookie:  $215.
• The $50 compact Fran stole  $413.
• The $20 to be her “husband for a few minutes” — priceless.