A TV Review by MIKE TOONEY:


“Bed of Roses.” An episode of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour (Season 2, Episode 29). First air date: 22 May 1964. Patrick O’Neal, Kathie Browne, Torin Thatcher, George Lindsey, Alice Backes, Alice Frost, Bill Walker, Paulene Myers, Robert Reiner, Ethel Griffies.

    “One thousand dollars a month will be enough, to start.”

   George Maxwell (Patrick O’Neal) has it all: a comfortable, undemanding, high-paying position in his father-in-law’s business (Torin Thatcher), a nice home, and a beautiful airhead trophy wife, Mavis (Kathie Browne).

   But that still isn’t enough for George. He also has a mistress — or rather, HAD a mistress. George wakes up one hungover evening to find her dead — and he’s not sure if he’s responsible.

   Let’s face it: George is ill-equipped to handle this situation. Not only does he accidentally open himself to blackmail from a snoopy cab driver and a personal secretary, but he also shows how inattentive he is as a husband.

   George, you see, is about to have an epiphany regarding his wife, one that will leave him slack-jawed with surprise and swollen with admiration. Among other revelations, he will learn that when his wife offers somebody one of her delicious sugar-molasses cookies, they would be well-advised to turn it down….

   Patrick O’Neal (1927-1994) specialized in shifty, unlikable, yet somehow elegant characters, such as the killer in the Columbo episode “Blueprint for Murder” (1972).

   Beautiful Kathie Browne (1930-2003) had “range” as an actor. She could be good with doe-eyed innocence; she could also be bad with those same doe-eyes. Watch her in the Star Trek episode “Wink of an Eye” to see what I mean.

   Torin Thatcher (1905-1981) often played screen villains; he rarely had a chance to be a good guy like his character in the Star Trek episode “The Return of the Archons.”

   George Lindsey (born 1935) is most often remembered as Goober on The Andy Griffith Show. Before he got that gig, though, he had a chance to play more complex and sinister characters in two other Hitchcock shows: “The Jar” and “The Return of Verge Likens.”

    Watch “Bed of Roses” online at Hulu.com here.