Sat 13 Mar 2010
A TV Review by Mike Tooney: THE ALFRED HITCHCOCK HOUR “Hangover.”
Posted by Steve under Reviews , TV mysteries[4] Comments
“Hangover.” An episode of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour (Season 1, Episode 12). First air date: 6 December 1962. Tony Randall, Jayne Mansfield, Robert Lieb, Myron Healey, Tyler McVey, June Levant, William Phipps, Dody Heath. Teleplay: Lou Rambeau. Based on two short stories by John D. MacDonald and Charles Runyon. Director: Bernard Girard.
Hadley Purvis (Tony Randall) has a major drinking problem, one bad enough to prompt his wife to threaten divorce if he doesn’t quit. One morning he wakes up to find his wife gone; in her place, however, is another woman named Marion (Jayne Mansfield).
Now, we can all agree that worse things can happen to a man than to wake up to a woman like Marion, but Had’s problem is he doesn’t remember a thing from the day before. It’s only in little fragments that he gradually reconstructs what actually happened — and the final revelation will prove devastating …
Note the unusual pairing of credits for the stories this television play was based on. You have to wonder what the situation was there.
Tony Randall was excellent at light comedy (114 episodes of The Odd Couple, 44 installments each of The Tony Randall Show and Love, Sidney) and seldom ventured into crime drama. He did appear in Agatha Christie’s The Man in the Brown Suit (1989, TVM) but was totally miscast as “Hercule Poirot” in The Alphabet Murders (1965).
In “Hangover,” Jayne Mansfield reunites with her co-star Tony Randall from the screen comedy Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? (1957), but the character dynamic is totally different. She also appeared in the latter-day film noir The Burglar (also 1957).
Hulu: http://www.imdb.com/video/hulu/vi1574436889/
Editorial Comments: Mike may be too young to remember, but I’m not. Tony Randall had a solid career in old radio before becoming a long-time favorite of both movie and TV audiences. He was best known as Reggie, one of the three adventurers in Carleton E. Morse’s I Love a Mystery series in the late 1940s.
I also discussed the unusual story collaboration between John D. MacDonald and Charles Runyon with Walker Martin. Says Walker:
“JDM had the same reaction as Mike. See his introduction in the paperback collection, End of the Tiger, which reprints the story. Originally published as ‘Hangover’ in the July 1956 issue of Cosmopolitan. His reaction is also brought out in Martin Grams and Patrik Wikstrom’s book on the Hitchcock TV shows.
“JDM says, ‘…I realized some committee of idiots had decided to combine my story with another story by Charles Runyon. The result of course was cluttered nonsense.’
“Runyon’s story was also called ‘Hangover’ and was published in the December 1960 Manhunt. I recently read the JDM story and the Runyon story addition is the Jayne Mansfield character. By the way she looks the best I’ve ever seen her look. She should have kept the short hair.”
March 13th, 2010 at 7:25 pm
Thanks for including a photo of Jayne Mansfield where the facial resemblance to her daughter Mariska Hargitay (“Law And Order SVU”) is so obvious.
Since Mansfield usually had her hair in a heavy flowing mane in her pictures,overpowering her face, friends–the ones who know who Jayne Mansfield was–say they don’t see any resemblance: now I can quickly show them. 🙂
March 14th, 2010 at 7:44 am
That’s one of the few pictures I’ve ever seen of Mansfield that looks a bit like she did when she was the ticket taker at the Village Theater in Dallas. Of course she wasn’t blonde then, or yet Jayne Mansfield, just the nice lady who sold the tickets. My cousins tell me I used to sit in her lap, but alas I was too little to remember drat it!
As for her film noir bona fides, catch her in a laugh out loud unintentionally funny Italian crime film with Cameron Mitchell called DOG EAT DOG (1964). The scene with Jayne wallowing in a bed full of stolen cash is worth seeing the whole film for, and if you ever hear the word ‘Crackers’ again without thinking of her you’re a better man than I. She also did two decent Brit crime films (both 1960) TOO HOT TO HANDLE with Christopher Lee and IT TAKES A THIEF with Anthony Quayle. Her performances in both are fairly well modulated and fit the roles she plays.
Re Randall, he was also (like the rest of the cast of ILAM) a regular on Morse’s soap opera ONE MAN’S FAMILY. Ironic that the Oklahoma born Randall was rejected for the part of the Texan Doc on ILAM and played the Englishman Reggie York instead. Randall did a lot of early television including playing Black Bart on an episode of Gabby Hayes series (good casting if you know the story of Black Bart), and a regular on Wally Cox MR. PEEPERS. His big breakthrough on television was in the live drama TWELVE ANGRY MEN.
Re the JDM and Runyon stories, what often happens in those circumstances is that the studio finds it has acquired two stories that have a similar theme and rather than risk legal troubles they credit both stories. Then too there can be some element in one story that they feel they want in their adaptation. A similar thing happened with the film THE PUSHOVER based on novels by both Thomas Walsh and Bill Ballinger.
Rather than risk a lawsuit the studios often erred on the side of caution.
As for JDM he almost never liked any adaptation of his material and was so protective of his work he threatened to go to court to keep Ross Macdonald from continuing to publish as John Ross Macdonald. Which doesn’t mean his take on the story isn’t right, but keep in mind studios sometimes have concerns that the writers don’t have to deal with.
Rather than a “committee of idiots” it may well have been a committee if cautious idiots. While I tend to sympathize with writers complaining about Hollywood changing their work I’m realistic enough to know that it isn’t always arbitrary meddling by talentless people trying put their mark on a project. Sometimes its talentless people trying to avoid going to court, and you almost never hear the author complain when the interference actually improves their story.
March 14th, 2010 at 1:27 pm
The photo of Jayne Mansfield isn’t from a scene in Hangover, but it was taken on the set at the time. As a candid shot, not posed, she seems more vulnerable and likable (rather than deliberately “lustable,” to coin a word) than she usually does.
June 20th, 2023 at 7:32 pm
Really, really belatedly:
Tony Randall wasn’t in the live TV production of Twelve Angry Men.
If you’re thinking of Juror #12, the glib advertising guy, that was Lee Philips, who in later years had a short run as the TV Ellery Queen – and even later than that, directed sitcoms like Mayberry RFD.
My source is the DVD edition of Twelve Angry Men, also featuring Bob Cummings, Franchot Tone, Edward Arnold, Paul Hartman, Norman Fell (then Feld), and a bunch of others.
Apologies for the delay …