Sat 15 May 2010
A TV Review by Mike Tooney: THE ALFRED HITCHCOCK HOUR “A Out for Oscar.”
Posted by Steve under Reviews , TV mysteries[5] Comments
“An Out for Oscar.” An episode of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour (Season 1, Episode 26). First air date: 5 April 1963. Larry Storch, Linda Christian, Henry Silva, John Marley, Myron Healey, Alan Napier, David White, George Petrie, Rayford Barnes. Teleplay: David Goodis, based on the novel My Darlin’ Evangeline by Henry Kane (Dell, pbo, 1961). Director: Bernard Girard.
Only a blind man could fail to see that beautiful Eva Ashley (Linda Christian) is trouble from the get go. Since love is blind, it might explain why Oscar Blenny (Larry Storch) has fallen for her — hard.
While working at a Vegas casino, Eva has two-timed not just one but two possible meal tickets: Pete Rogan (Myron Healey) and Bill Grant (Henry Silva). Oddly enough, it isn’t Grant who kills Rogan, but Eva herself. The official verdict is self-defense, and Eva has no tears to shed for Pete.
Hoping to use Grant as a way out of a very uncomfortable situation, Eva tries to get him to take her to Mexico, where Grant has been exiled by their boss, Mike Chambers (John Marley). Chambers sees Eva as a liability, but more than that — “a chiseler” is how he puts it, and, brother, is he so right! But Grant is fed up with her, too, and abandons Eva on a lonely street corner.
Enter mild-mannered Oscar, a guest at the casino hotel. Eva’s got his number: He’s her next meal ticket. What makes him even more attractive is that he’s a bank teller in a Los Angeles bank — and if there’s one thing Eva can’t get enough of, it’s money. Oscar is totally taken in, and it’s wedding bells for them.
A couple of weeks have passed when Bill Grant, just back from his exile in Mexico, shows up at the Blennys’ apartment. In addition to a little nooky with Eva, Grant has a surefire “perfect crime” plan for stealing $250,000, needing only Oscar’s cooperation. Moreover, unknown to Eva, Grant has plans for that quarter million that don’t include her ….
… all of which will culminate in a perfect murder — done in broad daylight — with dozens of witnesses — AND the approval of the police.
Mystery*File readers who may be aficionados of “the perfect murder” should enjoy this one. By the end of the third act, the viewer is hooked: Just how is this tangled situation going to unravel? The ending is awash in irony. Good show.
Since 1950, Henry Silva has been ably playing villains in films and TV, e.g., The Untouchables, The Manchurian Candidate (1962), Johnny Cool (1963), Buck Rogers in the 25th Century (1979), Sharky’s Machine (1980), Dick Tracy (1990), and many others.
Larry Storch also appeared in “The Jack Is High,” reviewed here, a segment of the Kraft Suspense Theatre.
Hulu: http://www.imdb.com/video/hulu/vi1524105241/
Editorial Comment: As Rittster points out in Comment #1, a TV play written by David Goodis is a rarity. It was posted quite a while ago on this blog, but back in September 2007, Tise Vahimagi sent me an article in which he did a complete rundown of all of Goodis’s television credits, as well as W. R. Burnett’s. Check it out here.
May 15th, 2010 at 7:31 pm
Great review, but no comment about the rarity of a Goodis-penned teleplay?
May 15th, 2010 at 8:42 pm
Rittster
You’re quite correct. Consider me chastised, especially since Tise Vahimagi did such a bang-up job for me about Goodis’s TV credits some time back.
I’ve made up for my lapse, I hope, by adding a link to his post at the tail end of Mike’s review.
— Steve
May 16th, 2010 at 9:47 pm
Christian was Vesper in the CLIMAX! adaptation of Ian Fleming’s CASINO ROYALE with Barry Nelson as ‘Jimmy’ Bond and Peter Lorre as Le Chiffre. And of course Mrs. Tyrone Power.
This was also based a good Henry Kane novel, a writer who doesn’t always get the credit he deserves for his best Peter Chambers or MacGregor books much less his stand-alones.
Nice to see Larry Storch in a straight role for once.
Writer/Director Bernard Girard did a good deal of television as well as the film DEAD HEAT ON A MERRY GO ROUND, and at least two good books, COOL JADE and THE GREAT DEFENSE, the latter a thriller about a French General escaping from the Nazis at the beginning of the war.
May 17th, 2010 at 3:06 am
Henry Kane’s early Peter Chamber’s PI novels are excellent, and in fact he (or both of them) started out in hardcover together.
I still have to catch up with any of his books with Inspector MacGregor in them. There were only three of those, but I’ve heard good things about them.
It’s too bad that he ended up Chambers’ career with those XXX novels he did for Lancer, although he (Kane) sort of redeemed himself with some fairly good standalone adventure thriller novels after that.
May 17th, 2010 at 4:12 am
I guess in Kane’s case he did what he had to in order to survive, but as you say he managed to make a comeback both with MacGregor and the stand alone books (both of which got good reviews and sold well).
I always thought it was natural that Kane adapted Peter Gunn in paperback since Peter Chambers was the closest thing in print to the cool buttoned down Gunn.
And in the Chamber’s books Kane managed a unique voice that set him apart from most of the other eyes of the time.
I’ve never read any of the X-rated Chambers novels so I don’t know how bad they were — either in terms of sex or writing.
But I always wondered if part of the problem was Chambers never really found a paperback home. He was at Avon, Signet, and Lancer — probably some others, but never got the respect or the sales of Shayne or Liddell at Dell or any of the Gold Medal lot. It’s hard to say why, certainly the best of the Chambers books were as good or better than most of what was being written in the genre until the fall.