Are the stories getting thinner or did I just get fatter during the COVID-19 lock-down?  Yesterday’s One Step Beyond seemed pretty slight, but today’s Alfred Hitchcock Presents is like me going back to my old elementary school to vote and seeing my 747 hangar-sized cafeteria has shrunk to the size of an airport Bojangles.

William Benson is enjoying a weekend at the Pinto Casino in Las Vegas.  Or maybe not enjoying at this particular moment, because his chips are being depleted faster than the Ozone.  Hey, whatever happened to that crazy Ozone?  It was going to kill us all, now it never even calls.  In a move that seems reckless to a non-gambler like me, he puts his remaining chips on Black 11 ^[1] at the roulette table.  The ball lands on Red 25.

Benson takes it like a man, and leaves while he still has a few bucks in his pocket; so not really like most men.  He walks back to his room.  In the parking lot, he nearly trips over a huge money clip holding $92,000.  He looks around to see if anyone dropped it if anyone saw him.  Smoothly, he kneels, picks up the loot, and stuffs it in his pocket.  He goes back to his room alone with the $92,000.  Whereas, I would not have been alone and only had $91,000.

He counts out the cash, then looks for a place to hide it.  After trying a few locations, he decides on the brand new concept of stuffing the money in his mattress.  But ultimately, he sits in a chair with it in his hands from 3:50 am until he goes to the bank the next morning.  He rents a Safe Deposit Box for $1.75.  He pockets the other $.25 change to get a steak dinner and some back pills later.

Like a good citizen, he reports the found cash to the police.  He is shown in to see Captain Bone, which was my nickname in college.  Bone already knows about the cash, but he says $102,000 was reported missing!  He is dubious that Benson did not take the other $10k for expensive scotch or hookers or worse — waste it.  There are tense accusations and denials before Bone calls the owner of the cash.

Another upright citizen comes to meet Benson — Mr. Newsome, owner of the Pinto Casino.  Newsome, and even Bone in a reversal, could not be nicer.  They say the missing $10k will show up somewhere.  The 3 men go to the bank to pick up the cash.  Newsome is so pleased to have it, that he tells Benson to fly his wife Joyce in for a week to stay at the Pinto, all expenses paid!

Everything is cool.  Newsome drops Bone at the Police Station, and takes Benson to the Pinto.  Benson is set up with free drinks, and told the house will stake him at any game he wishes to play.  A few cigarettes later, Newsome calls him into his office and hands him the phone.  Benson’s wife Joyce says, “There are 2 awful men here”, then Newsome snatches the phone.  He says menacingly, “You fooled the police, but you didn’t fool me.  I don’t believe in holding grudges.  Be straight with me now, or something will happen to her.  It won’t be pretty.  Now let’s have my $10k you stole!”  Dunh dunh dunh.

I felt cheated when I watched the episode — it felt more like an act break than a real ending.  In reviewing it, however, I see I was wrong.  This is a masterful surprise ending, and a subverting of the usual AHP tropes.  Innocent people often get the shaft on AHP, but they aren’t usually the protagonist.  Benson has been nothing but honest and honorable for the entire episode.  That’ll teach him.

Other Stuff:

• [1] I was going to make a possibly racist reference to a player wearing #11 in the NFL.  Since I can’t name a single active player of any color or number, I went to Google.  The first few pages of football players were all soccer players, so I guess I’m possibly a nationalist too.  Finally, a site offered the best NFL player by jersey number.  They selected Larry Fitzgerald for the honor.  His blurb also mentioned he was an 11-time Pro-Bowler, and I actually thought, “Wow, he bowls too!”  What a maroon!  I have no idea if he is black or white, but isn’t that how it should be?
• Sadly I never got to reference the vice scene in Casino.  Just watching it again on You Tube, I don’t think I even want to link it.

Executive James Barrett barks at his secretary to book him a flight to Toronto.  He is leaving the Muldoon merger in the hands of young Philip Weaver.  After handing off the file, Barrett calls his dimwit, baby-talking, still-in-bed trophy wife who thinks Canada is overseas.  What could such a mature, educated titan of industry see in this numbskull?  Oh, she’s 29 years younger than him.  Not quite the 37 year difference we saw in yesterday’s OSB, but he’s got time to put another trophy on his shelf.  It just might not be a participation trophy by that time.

Mrs. Barrett meets Phillip for lunch.  This being AHP, they discuss their plan to kill off Mr. Barrett during his Toronto trip.  Phillip says he will mail her the details of their murder plan.  Wait, what?  He’s putting it in writing and mailing it to the victim’s home?  God help Mr. Muldoon if Phillip is really this dense.

The next morning, the doorman comes up to their apartment to drop off the mail and pick up Mr. Barrett’s luggage.  After her husband leaves for the airport, Mrs. Barrett rifles through the mail until she finds Phillip’s letter.  She reads, “By this time, my sweet, your adoring husband is on his way to the airport.”  Phillip is pretty trusting that the USPS would get that letter there on the right day.  Even more-so that it would be only be delivered after Barrett left, although he did improve his odds by mailing it the same day as the Monkey Ward catalog.

The letter continues on, instructing her to “write James a good, smarmy letter, leaving nothing to the imagination.”  She is to mail it to Toronto so the police find it in his room.  “That’s all you have to do,” he assures her.  Then he suggests that she throw a cocktail party that very afternoon as an alibi, which seems more complicated than writing a dirty letter.  Finally, he does show a slight bit of brains as he reminds her to destroy the incriminating letter.  Although, inexplicably, he does add a PS that he just recruited a sap named Oswald to be a patsy in assassinating the president in 3 years, includes a sketch of the grassy knoll, a copy of a $10,000 check signed by LBJ, and a clean set of fingerprints.

Mrs. Barrett . . . she doesn’t seem to have a first name.  Let’s just call this treacherous, cheating ninny Helen.  No reason at all.  Just seems like a Helen.^[1]  So Helen immediately addresses an envelope to her husband’s hotel in Canada.  After getting stuck because she doesn’t know what “smarmy” means — no, seriously — she pulls a picture of Phillip out of the desk drawer for inspiration.  Wait a minute — she keeps a photo of the guy she is cheating with in her desk at home?  And this is not a wallet size photo, this is an 8 x 10 glamour shot.  It is even framed!  These are the dumbest criminals ever.

Helen begins the letter, “Dearest James, you might think I am a feather-brain for writing to you so quickly”  Yada yada.  “Your adoring wife, Poopsie.”  She stuffs the letter into the envelope and goes downstairs to mail it.  

Back in their apartment, Helen begins calling people to attend her cocktail party.  I have to give her credit, though, she remembers more phone numbers than I can.  Suddenly this brainiac remembers that she left Phillip’s framed picture on her desk where Gladys might find it.  She puts it back in the drawer.  Then she remembers she also left his murder-instruction letter on the desk.  Uh oh, she realizes she accidentally mailed the murder instructions to her husband.  She runs back to the mailbox hoping to catch the mail man picking up, but just misses him.  

Back in her apartment, she is mortified.  I really felt for her, sitting on the sofa, almost catatonic with anxiety. Although in my case, it would have been because I had to attend a cocktail party.  On the other hand, she does look pretty snappy in her little black cocktail dress.  Gladys suggests that she go to the Post Office and see if she can retrieve the letter.  She does, but again just misses the letter as it is sent out.

As the guests begin to arrive, she calls her husband.  His office says he never checked into his hotel, so Phillip must have already whacked him.  She is distraught that her husband is dead and their plan will be discovered.  Just then, the doorman arrives with a delivery from the liquor store and good news, but I repeat myself.  He tells her the postman returned her letter because she had forgotten to put a stamp on it.  The doorman then proudly tells her that he added the postage and sent the letter back out.

Of course, AHP’s sheer professionalism makes this better than most of the crap that airs then or now.  However, it did not completely seem to gel.  I felt like Helen’s pursuit of the letter at the mailbox and post office should have had a more farcical tone.  Maybe an hour episode could have pulled that off.  Also, while I did appreciate her stoic reaction to the pressure she was under, it should have been better used at the end to emphasize the twist.  If she had finally come alive with excitement upon hearing the the letter was returned, she would have lit up the screen.  Then the zinger that the doorman re-mailed it would have been devastating in contrast.  As played, it was just too flat to evoke any reaction in the viewer.

Other Stuff:

• [1] I only realized later that the housekeeper in this episode is coincidentally also named Helen.  Just doesn’t seem like a name of someone who keeps things tidy.  Let’s call her Gladys and keep Helen for the evil pea-brain slob.
• Sarah Marshall (Helen) was the mother in Twilight Zone’s classic Little Girl Lost.

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 . . .