Two old friends, one (Dailey) in a stale marriage to adulteress Jan Sterling; the other (Duff) unattached and something of a gadabout. Dailey has fallen for a younger woman -- Sterling is 38 and Bettye Ackerman is only 28. This is an eminently sensible move. Ackerman is in love with Dailey too, despite the fact that Dailey here looks kind of old and flabby. And Ackerman is affable and attractive, despite her spelling her first name with an "e" on the end.
Dailey, ridden with guilt, confesses his affair to his best friend and says he intends to divorce Sterling. But he's being called out of town for a while and introduces Duff to Ackerman, and asks Duff to look after her while Dailey's elsewhere. Duff looks after her with a vengeance. The two of them are drawn together, or at any rate Ackerman likes Duff, although Duff seems motivated by not much more than his glands.
Are you following this? I ask because the plot gets even more intricate and at times confusing. Dailey steals poison from Duff and tries to slip it to his wife at dinner but mistakenly gives it to the dog, Brutus, instead. Brutus gives up the ghost promptly and without distress. Nobody mourns Brutus, although he's been with Dailey and Sterling for fifteen years. By my count, that makes Brutus AT LEAST one hundred and five years old in dog years. I hope when I'm that old some kind friend will slip me the Altrapeine.
I can't claim that the plot clears up as the episode moves along, because it gets more nebulous. There's another attempt to poison Sterling, Ackerman rejects Dailey, there's a car crash, and it all winds up with Dailey dying in a hospital bed and having an "A-HA! Erlebnis," during which he twigs to the fact that his good old friend Duff was after Dailey's girl friend. Dailey frames Duff for attempted murder, I think, but it's all rather murky.
The plot is torturous but the dialog has some sparkle to it. How many dogs do you know that are named Brutus? And here's an exchange I thought reflected some understated but deft wit.
When Dailey is first telling Duff about finding a newer model for his wife, he explains something like:
"You don't know how it is. All those dull years, and then, suddenly --"
Duff cuts in with: " -- It's spring!"
I believe that may be more clever than it appears. A popular song during the 1940s was "Suddenly It's Spring," first heard in a Ginger Rogers movie, "Lady in the Dark," from 1941. In 1947, another movie with the title "Suddenly It's Spring" was released, and the plot of the comedy closely mirrors the plot of this episode. Google the song on YouTube and listen to what Stan Getz did with it in 1953. I won't bother with the details because the point isn't important. It's just that it all doesn't seem coincidental, though it may have been.
The direction isn't bad either, considering the limitations of the genre -- dramatic, low-budget TV drama. For instance, there's an interest shot of a car making a fast U-turn during a rain storm, and the camera captures it from inside a roadside telephone booth, through rain-spotted windows, the telephone that has just played an important part in the story dangling from the box. Interesting composition. Not masterful, not poetic, but someone had to put some thought into it. The lighting is well done, too, highly noirish. Duff is appealing, Dailey seems half asleep, and Phillip Reed, as Jan Sterling's lover, is a great black cinematic hole. Watching him is a painful experience.
16 out of 23 found this helpful.
Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink