The Alfred Hitchcock Hour (TV Series) Death and the Joyful Woman (1963) User Reviews

Uneven entry

[HEFILM · 6/10 · 11 June 2013]

Written/adapted by later writer director JAMES BRIDGES, this promises more than it delivers. Nothing much happens for most of the episode and then the suspense is sort of bungled in the final segment. Gilbert Roland is quite good as the ugly father. There is one nice crane shot towards the end otherwise it's rather flatly directed by John Brahm. It might not be easy to turn an early drinking contest into a suspense or dramatic scene but Brahm doesn't even try. But it's the story that doesn't allow for anything to really happen until far too late in the game.

There are a number of sets including an impressive wine cellar. The dialogue is natural but unmemorable as are the characters other than Roland and his wife. The suspense involves--and I won't ruin it-- so let me say it involves a sort of ticking clock type device and the problem is the clock keeps showing the same time of day even though many minutes are passing by in the story. This may have been a production design problem but regardless it's poorly staged.

There is also one pretty big coincidence that occurs, also to help set up suspense in the final 15 minutes. So for a suspense show where there isn't any suspense for most of it and then what there is isn't done very well can't be a total success--to say the least. Roland is the chief reason to watch this one.

***

[edwagreen · 8/10 · 3 May 2016]

Hell hath no fury as a woman spurned is so appropriate for this episode.

Gilbert Roland steals the show as a very nasty wine baron who wants his son to out drink him in order to give him $5,000 for the birth of his child. When the son is able to outlast his father and passes out, Roland condemns him and throws him out.

Of course, all that wine made Roland more lecherous as he tries to convince the girl he wanted his son to marry, to marry him now instead.

Laraine Day plays the faithful secretary who dutifully waited for Roland's wife to die for 20 years. When this actually occurred, Roland promised marriage to be announced that evening. Realizing that this will never take place, Day kills him and attempts to murder the servant who she tells what she has done.

I thought that there would be a trial and the girl who pushed Roland down the stairs after his desires were told to her, would be blamed. That would have been much more interesting.

Drink and be merry

[sol1218 · 6/10 · 22 July 2012]

***SPOILERS*** Late 1920's into the 1950's movie Latin lover and Hollywood heartthrob Gilbert Roland-aka Luis Antonio Damaso-in a role that he really can sink his teeth into as wine as well as woman connoisseur Louis Aguilar. Louis as we soon find out is a man who knows both his wine and women and can't get enough of each.

It's Louis tea totting son Al, Don Galloway, whom he has it in for by not marrying pretty Kitty Norris, Laura Devon, and has cut him out of his will. It's Kitty's family who own one of the biggest wineries in the valley that Louis wanted Al to marry her in order to get his grubby, after her pop dies, hands on it! With Al marrying plain and not rich hometown girl Maggie Pierce he's now facing deep financial troubles in that he's flat broke, all he's got is $2.40 to his name, and can't support his family with Maggie pregnant and a baby soon on the way.

Going to see papa Louis who invited him to one of his all night drinking parties Al is willing to go down on his hands and knees begging him for help against his better judgment! What Al doesn't realize is that pop is planning to humiliate him by getting his non alcoholic son into an all night drinking match in his infamous tasting room with him winning $5,000.00 if he can drink Louis under the table which of course, in Louis being the soppy drunk that he is, is an impossible task for him!

**SPOILERS*** The real story behind all this maneuvering actions by the barley sober Louis is in him getting up the courage by getting himself good and drunk to make an announcement to all present, some 100 inverted guests, that he's to become engaged to and marry Kitty Norris! The woman whom he wanted his son Al to marry and who's young enough to be his daughter! That's when the woman who spent the last 20 years taking all the garbage that she could put up with Louis' his loyal abused and low paid secretary Ruth, Laraine Day,took matters into her own hands. Being almost dead drunk and blurting out his true feelings about marrying Kitty sealed Louis' fate in him getting clobbered over the head with a bottle of his favorite drink the "Youthful Woman" wine by an outraged Ruth that ended all his future plans!

Lumpy Screenplay

[dougdoepke · 3 May 2016]

It's odd seeing the two movie vets and romantic leads (Day & Roland) playing villainous types. Of course Ruth (Day) has pretty good reason for her actions since Luis (Roland) spurns their 20-year relationship in favor of the young blonde lovely, Kitty (Devon). The tyranical Luis lords his authority over everyone in his wine-making empire, including his disowned son, Al (Galloway). So it's not too surprising that he comes to a bad end.

Reviewer HEFILM is right on—the episode fails to deliver the suspense implicit in the premise. Certainly, director Brahm doesn't seem engaged, filming in straightforward pedestrian style. Too bad, because when engaged, he can turn out moody thrillers, such as The Lodger (1944) and Hangover Square (1945). I guess this was just another TV assignment, which leaves the flawed screenplay unfortunately unadorned. Anyhow, in my little book, the screenplay could have dispensed with the son and his girl and concentrated instead on playing up Kitty's apparent guilt and factotum Dominic's ordeal in the wine tub. As it stands, however, the entry's more a matter of lumpy threads than coherent suspenser.

"I am no longer your father, Mr. uh..., Mr. X"

[classicsoncall · 7/10 · 29 September 2022]

The 'Joyful Woman' of the title proves to be a bottle of vintage wine made personally for Luis Aguilar (Gilbert Roland), the aggressive and domineering father of Alfred Aguilar (Don Galloway), cut out of his dad's will for marrying a commoner against his wishes. The elder Aguilar's faithful secretary of twenty years expects their marriage to be announced at a gala Harvest Ball hosted by the wine magnate, but the best laid plans go awry after a drinking contest is arranged by Luis, challenging his son to participate in a winner take all bet of get this - Luis's five thousand dollars against Alfred's meager two dollars and forty cents, all the cash he can muster out of his pocket!

Now I was a kid in the Sixties when this story took place, but even I would have questioned a series of remarks Luis made to his son, boasting of the money he spent within the past year. He stated that he bought a new car for eight thousand dollars (sounds about right), and ten thousand dollars on a trip to Europe (credible depending on how long they traveled) for him and his secretary Ruth Hamilton (Laraine Day). But then he claimed he spent fourteen thousand dollars on a fur coat for Ruth! How would that be even possible? I only bring it up because it caught my attention and sounded ridiculous.

In any event, the obnoxious Luis Aguilar finds himself on the wrong end of a wine bottle after falling down the stairs to his tasting room, compliments of his spurned secretary after Luis, in a moment of wine induced fervor, asks the much younger Kitty Norris (Laura Devon) to marry him, the woman Luis had actually chosen for his son to marry to consolidate their families two massive winery holdings. The fly on the wall throughout the entire story is Aguilar's household servant Dominic Felse (Tom Lowell), who's privy to every conversation between the warring parties until Ruth attempts to drown him in a vat of wine! With Ruth presumably up on a murder charge and Alfred already cut out of his father's will, I had to wonder what was going to happen to all of Aguilar's estate.

Gilbert Roland and Laura Devon

[kevinolzak · 5/10 · 15 March 2012]

"Death and the Joyful Woman" is a rather obvious storyline, featuring silent screen heartthrob Gilbert Roland as wealthy wine merchant Luis Aguilar, whose son Al (Don Galloway) followed after his teetotaler mother, spurning the father by refusing to enter into an arranged marriage that would have enhanced the family business. When Al requests 5000 dollars to start a family from his still bitter father, Luis decides to humiliate the boy by offering him a bet, to drink his more experienced father under the table (something Luis couldn't do to his father until he was 26). The victorious Luis then proceeds to force his unwanted attentions upon the beautiful Kitty Norris (Laura Devon), thereby spurning his fiancée Ruth (Laraine Day), who had faithfully worked as his secretary for 20 years before he finally promised to marry her. Also appearing is Frank Overton, best remembered for the STAR TREK episode "This Side of Paradise," broadcast less than two months before he died in 1967. Incidentally, the 'Joyful Woman' is a reference to the father's favorite wine.

Ruth and Luis deserved each other.

[planktonrules · 3/10 · 10 May 2021]

"Death and the Joyful Woman" is an episode of "The Alfred Hitchcock Hour" that simply has too much story and with so many story elements, it seemed rather convoluted.

Luis Aguilar (Gilbert Roland) is a truly awful person. He owns a winery and should be a happy man...but instead he's bitter and awful. Through the course of the episode, you learn that he has disowned his son because the young man refused to marry a woman his father demanded he marry. Why? Because she is from a family that owns another large winery...and the marriage would combine them into one huge winery. I could go on from here about the plot but frankly I don't want to. It's confusing and too many store elements are here...and the entire final portion comes from out of left field.

So is it any good? Well, the plot certainly isn't. Gilbert Roland is great playing a huge jerk...he did a good job. But otherwise this episode left me very flat and seemed unnecessarily complicated. It also had a few technical issues (such as a son who drank until he was unconscious...and yet only minutes later he seemed 100% sober). All in all, an episode I just didn't enjoy.

odd, unsatisfying episode with no main character

[dburton2 · 5/10 · 11 July 2020]

This one has a good pace, and good cast, but it plays like they made it up as they went along. The big problem is that rather than focus on a single protagonist, or an ensemble cast's response to a single event, the plot moves from event to event with no point of view, or any point at all.

It starts at a private party at a mansion -- we're first introduced to a waiter at the party, who's being friend-zoned by a rich blonde girl (he's also the sheriff's son, for no good reason). Then we meet the host's son (Don Galloway from "Ironside"), who's estranged from the host but who the host has invited, and the son hopes for a reconciliation. He's brought along his wife. An older lady who seems like the host's wife is actually his secretary and specifically tells the son that it wasn't her idea to invite him.

The father/host runs a winery, and during the party invites the son down to the "tasting room," where he proceeds to the Airing of Grievances, the main two being that the son didn't care for the family business, like his late mother, and that he married a poor girl -- dad wanted him to marry the rich girl from the party scene, explaining it would unite two large winery properties. (The rich girl and the son were childhood playmates.) Son wants to borrow money because wife is pregnant. Dad is unsympathetic, but explains that there's a family tradition of fathers challenging the sons to a drinking contest, and son can win money ($5K I think) if he's the last man standing as they drink the winery's signature wine "The Joyful Woman." Waiter/ cop's kid has to stand there and pour for them.

Eventually, the son passes out and waiter dude has to help him upstairs. Just then, rich blonde and the secretary come down the stairs. Dad tells secretary he's not going to give the announcement at midnight. Secretary stalks off, furious. (At some later point in the proceedings she tells son's wife -- the wife's only purpose in the script -- that the announcement would be the engagement of secretary and Dad. Secretary in that later scene bitterly says she waited 20 years for his first wife to die. I didn't get why wine guy called it off.)

Dad, drunk, says he's still interested in uniting the properties, and asks the young woman to marry him. Young woman, fending off amorous dad, accidentally pushes him down the stairs. He hits his head, and young woman runs upstairs, panicked. She finds her toady, Waiter Boy, and says she thinks she's killed wine man, and asks him to help. Of course he says he'll go down to the tasting room and check it out. But secretary gets there first. Groggy wine guy is sitting on the stairs, asking for the license number of the truck that hit him. Secretary beats him over the head many times with, what else, a wine bottle. He's dead but good this time. Waiter comes down, sees the broken wine bottle and instantly realizes who killed wine dad. Secretary then takes waiter at gunpoint to some other part of the basement and shoots him. Shoots at him, I mean, because the gun doesn't fire. He laughs at his good fortune, but his triumph is short-lived because she promptly bops him over the head with the pistol, and he falls into some kind of vat thingy. She starts water flowing into it; the strong implication is that the knocked-out waiter will drown if not rescued in time.

Whew. Lots more plot to go. Waiter kid's dad the sheriff shows up. Rich blonde tells him she thinks wine guy is dead, which he soon confirms. Doctor says the wine guy died from 6 or 7 blows to the head. Blonde girl not arrested or even questioned -- instead dad seems more interested in finding the waiter, who is deemed missing. (Which is why I think the script needed that father-son connection -- to explain why the Sheriff doesn't just ignore waiter's absence and solve the murder instead.). Sheriff goes to talk to the secretary to find out what happened to waiter guy, but she's ODed on sleeping pills and incoherent. Eventually, wine son, Sheriff, and rich girl look for waiter kid. Rich girl realizes water that's pouring out of a pipe shouldn't be and leads them to the flooding vat thingy quicker than you can say Lassie. Sheriff revives soggy but alive waiter. Waiter and blonde laughingly repeat some earlier platonic banter.

Whose story is it? The wine family? The father/ son relationship ends quickly, and son is clearly not the focus in the second half. The rich blonde girl? She seems at first to be framed by circumstance for wine guy's murder (an Alfred Hitchcock TV show staple), but no one seems to put 2 & 2 together, or care, including her, so there's never a sense that she's being blamed for wine guy's death. Is the focus is the waiter guy's heroics? But there aren't any -- he gets buffaloed by a middle-aged woman and is the off-screen damsel in distress in the last half. At the end I was like, what the heck did I just watch, Hitch.

Not Much of an Episode

[Hitchcoc · 5/10 · 13 May 2023]

Gilbert Roland, sporting a really ugly mustache, is Aguilar, a rich wine merchant. He has disowned his own son when he refused to go along with an arranged marriage (which neither of the participants wanted). The kid is a big dork to start with, but not deserving of this. Anyway, Aguilar has a long suffering secretary who thinks she is going to be his wife soon. But he treats her like dirt. Through a series of circumstances, including a drinking contest between him and his son, he ends up dead. The ending is quite ridiculous. The scene where a young man is in a wine vat about to drown is remindful of a silent serial. It's just kind of dumb.