O Youth and Beauty! is a well made, rather downbeat episode of Hitchcock's half-hour, and it concerns an aging and yet certainly not over the hill (except in his own nightmares) man who seeks to prove that he still" has it" by hurdling at the local country club. He does it well enough at first, and this still doesn't please him.
The man's first name, Cash, says it all, as money is what he is short of most. He makes about a third of what he thinks he's worth, and he feels like low man on the totem poll at his club. So far as the viewer can tell Cash is a reasonably well off white collar professional. He has a hard time paying his bills, but then many if not most middle class people do.
One can't but sense that Cash is living beyond his means, that maybe he belongs to the wrong club. He doesn't seem too out of place there, but he feels it, and this motivates him to relive the vigor of youth by (literally) acting out the glory days as a runner indoors, by leaping over furniture and the like; and the second time around he pays a high price.
Well made as it is this adaptation of a John Cheever story is as shallow as it's nicely put together. Gary Merrill's performance in the lead got my sympathy from the start, and held it to the final scene. I've always found Merrill a likable, intelligent actor. He has a way of delivering his lines naturally; and his talent was such that he could make such an obnoxious character as Cash both compelling and tragic
The man's first name, Cash, says it all, as money is what he is short of most. He makes about a third of what he thinks he's worth, and he feels like low man on the totem poll at his club. So far as the viewer can tell Cash is a reasonably well off white collar professional. He has a hard time paying his bills, but then many if not most middle class people do.
One can't but sense that Cash is living beyond his means, that maybe he belongs to the wrong club. He doesn't seem too out of place there, but he feels it, and this motivates him to relive the vigor of youth by (literally) acting out the glory days as a runner indoors, by leaping over furniture and the like; and the second time around he pays a high price.
Well made as it is this adaptation of a John Cheever story is as shallow as it's nicely put together. Gary Merrill's performance in the lead got my sympathy from the start, and held it to the final scene. I've always found Merrill a likable, intelligent actor. He has a way of delivering his lines naturally; and his talent was such that he could make such an obnoxious character as Cash both compelling and tragic