We learn 3 things from this first frame:  1) The episode is about the scarily named Triumphant Insurance Company.  2) Its symbol is a sack of money — more likely theirs than the beneficiaries.  3) That phone is juuuust about to fall off the desk.  None of this matters as the insurance company does not turn out to be the bad guy, and the phone does not fall.

Misdirection or mis-direction?

Joe Rogers is in a little hot water for selling a $50,000 life insurance policy to Ms. Gillespie who has already buried 2 husbands with similar policies in the past  years.  His boss orders him to check up on Ms. Gillespie and see if she seems like a killer or just really unlucky.

Rogers, with his wife as camouflage, goes to a realtor’s office and asks about the ol’ Gillespie house.  He says it is not on the market, but that she loves showing it off to complete strangers.  Sure enough, she does give him the grand tour.

She talks about her two dead husbands until she surprises Rogers by introducing a visitor as her new fiancee.  Back at the hotel, Rogers gets a telegram telling him that Ms. Gillespie has taken out another $50,000 policy on her new fella.

Concerned that the old man is walking into a buzz-saw, he rushes to the ol’ Gillespie place to warn him.  Gillespie and her fiancee have already left to be married and go on their honeymoon.  Another man who Rogers has seen around town arrives at the house.

Finally, the two men talk.  Turns out the fiancee has buried three wives, and the other man is an investigator for another insurance company.  So it is just a waiting game to see which one kills the other first.

Not much going on here, no interesting visuals, no salacious subtitles.  Just an OK placeholder episode.  Actually the first frame was the most interesting of the episode.  That phone bugged me the whole episode.

Post-Post:

• AHP Deathwatch: Only Mickey Kuhn (the Bellhop) is still hanging in there.  He is one of the few survivors from Gone with the Wind.  He increased his odds by wisely being only 7 when it was filmed.

Wipe that smirk off your face, punk!

Coppers are chasing a ne’er-do-well through an alley.  The young man, with a big smile on his face, seems to be taking this as a real hoot, daddio.  Ultimately cornered on a fire escape by the police, he gives up.  The punk with the smirk is Rip Torn, although so young here that he is unrecognizable.

He is pretty proud of himself over his crime-spree of a single robbery.  Of an old man.  In a candy store.  With a toy gun. Lest you underestimate him, he did slug the geezer with the toy gun.

He has a big smile the whole time he walks down the cell-block to his new home.  These are just temporary holding cells, but these are some of the best dressed criminals I’ve ever seen — suit jackets, ties, a nice fedora.  This is the anti-Oz.

He gets to his cell and meets his new roomie, an old man named Skinner, who has clearly been here before.  When Torn finds out he will be photographed for the mug shots, he gets excited.  Will reporters be there?  Will he get his picture in the paper?  Having his priorities straight, he is hoping to impress the “big shots” back at the pool hall.  However, he does worry that the papers will spill the beans that his gun was only a toy swiped from a 5 & 10 (The Dollar Store before inflation).  Wow, guess that really was a spree!

Forced perspective trick now used by Tom Cruise.

Torn and Skinner are taken to a line-up where they are questioned from the back of the room by a man with a microphone.  Skinner and Torn are kept for additional questioning.  During the bonus round, Skinner claims not to remember anything in answer to all their questions.  Doesn’t remember last time he worked, or anything about the crime.

Torn continues to take it all as a joke until the detective tells him the old man he slugged in the candy store sustained a cracked skull and died.  That’s murder, baby!  Although, that must have been some toy gun to fracture his skull.

This is a pretty slim story.  The big final twist here is the standard plot point we would expect at the end of the first act in a contemporary crime show.  Maybe it was shocking 60 years ago, but I expect better from Evan Hunter.  Credited with the story, he also wrote the screenplay for The Birds and the 200 87^th Precinct novels.

I rate it 8 out of 22.

Post-Post:

• AHP Deathwatch:  Rip Torn and Martin Wilkins are still with us.  Although with a 1905 birth year, I suspect Wilkin’s bio might need updating.
• AHP Proximity Alert:  Ray Teal was just in an episode 4 weeks earlier.
• Would it have killed them to delay this one week and make it the 22nd episode of the season?
• Alfred Hitchcock directed movies titled Number 13 and Number 17.  I like to think that if he had directed this episode, he would have renamed it Number 23 just to keep the prime number theme going.  And would have delayed it two weeks.
• Hmmm, just noticed that there is already a movie named The Number 23.
• And then there is this strange piece of business.  The man below does not seem to be drunk or stoned.  He does, however, have a snappy haircut and a stylish blazer-over-t-shirt that Miami Vice would not popularize for another 25 years.  The only thing I can think of is that they are hinting at some gay-related crime, but that would be pretty bold to put on TV in the 50’s.

Carl and Annette Borden are at a going-away party for career girl Lorna.  She is moving to San Francisco and leaving her enormous dog Cassandra with the Bordens.

The Bordens have their friend Perry over for dinner.  Carl has stomach pains which Annette oddly attributes to strawberry shortcake.  In the kitchen, Carl doubles over and calls an ambulance.  His doctor agrees that it could have been the strawberries in combination with some other rich foods.  Not since The Caine Mutiny have strawberries been involved in such nefarious events.

The next day, Annette finds Carl passed out on the floor of her studio.  The doctor later determines that he ingested arsenic.  Although, it could have been that big-ass bong Annette is making.  Both times he has taken ill, Annette prepared the meals.

He throws the doctor out at his implication of Annette.  He looks through the studio and notices some of the paint is made with arsenic.  When Annette offers him some juice, he reluctantly drinks it.

My God! Look at the size of that bong!

They decide to take a vacation.  While Carl is packing the car,  Annette drinks from the wrong coffee mug, and Carl finds her dead on the floor.  Having established himself as the victim, it is easy for everyone to believe that Annette accidentally poisoned herself.

Quick cut to Carl in a car with Lauren and Cassandra explaining how he pulled it off.

The episode doesn’t play completely fair, but it gets the job done.

Post-Post:

• AHP Deathwatch: No survivors.
• Phyllis Thaxter played Ma Kent in Superman.  The good one.
• Not sure what’s going on with that title.  It kinda seems like Latin for “evil in the home,” an approximation of Hitchcock’s description of his series.  But it also sounds like a breed of dog.  Or cat.
• John Meredyth Lucas wrote the Star Trek episode where they went to the Nazi planet.  That episode starred Skip Homeier from Momentum.

My God, the talking!  This is a talkie one.  This  one has more chit-chat than a season 4 Twilight Zone.

Grace Connor has come by to pick up her clothes.  She had been married to Judge Connors for 10 years.  He says he met Grace when he was 54.   If we use the actors’ birth dates, she is 41 years younger than him.  Hmmmm.

While she is packing, The Judge invites her new fella Wallace into the house.  He opens a bottle of sherry, and proposes a toast to Grace.   The Judge drones on about his old schoolmates Socrates and Aristotle.  No wonder Grace is bailing on him.

After a few drinks, The Judge convinces Wallace that he has been poisoned and locks him in a room.  He makes a point of saying the sherry is an Amontillado.  I suppose getting him drunk and confining him in the room is a nod to the Poe short story.  But this time, Fortunato is pissed!

Yikes!!!

As Wallace panics, The Judge uses his pleas to show Grace that she is leaving him for a coward — a 40 years younger, muscular, better dressed, handsomer, more interesting coward with a full head of hair.

Panicky Wallace then shoots his way out, hitting The Judge.  He tells Grace The Judge poisoned him, but she points a couple of circumstantial reasons why that is unlikely.  He accepts this flimsy evidence a little too easily when a stomach pumping would have been prudent.  He realizes that Grace now sees him as a coward.

Post-Post:

• AHP Deathwatch:  Congrats to Robert Horton, still hanging in there at 90 years old.
• AHP Proximity Alert:  This is Robert Horton’s 3rd appearance this season.
• Sterling Silliphant wrote 11 AHPs as well as the screenplay for The Poseidon Adventure.

Richard Hertz, er I mean Paine begins the episode with a semi-voiceover. That is, he is narrating, but appears as a translucent ghost over scenes of the big city rat-race that he is bemoaning.

Having just been passed over for yet another sales job, he goes home to wife Beth.  She insists that he go to see his former boss who owes him $450 in back-wages.  He decides a better course of action is to hit a bartender up for a loan.  Sadly, this rock-solid source of capital lost it on the ponies.  So he goes to see his ex-boss.

When he gets there, he sees that Mr. Burroughs has company and doesn’t wish to embarrass him by asking for his wages.  He’s not above peeking in his window, however, where he sees Burroughs pull out a wad of cash and hand it to his unseen guest.

After the guest leaves, and the lights are turned out, Paine lifts up a window and crawls inside to get his $450.  As he is counting out the exact amount, because he has told us he will only take that amount, Burroughs enters with a gun.  There is a struggle as Burroughs is calling the police and he is shot.

Paine heads back to Beth.  Because this couple has the communication skills of Oceanic 815 passengers, there is more death. As always in AHP-world, justice is eventually served.

This was the final episode of season one and it is suitably nasty as far as the censors would allow at the time.  Justice is served, but after 2 even more senseless than usual deaths. Good stuff.

Post-Post:

• AHP Deathwatch:  We’ve got a couple of live ones!  Skip Homeier and Joanne Woodward are still with us.  Possibly a couple of others, or their obscurity just means their deaths were overlooked by IMDb.
• AHP Proximity Alert: Harry Taylor was in 6 episodes this season, including one just 2 weeks earlier.  Give somebody else a chance!
• The apartment hunter was just in Decoy 2 weeks ago.
• Joanne Woodward = Mrs. Paul Newman for 50 years.
• Skip Homeier is famous for 2 iconic roles – both of them in Star Trek:  Melakon the Nazi and Dr. Sevrin the space hippie with the designer ears.