Sat 7 Aug 2010
A TV Review by Mike Tooney: THE ALFRED HITCHCOCK HOUR “Last Seen Wearing Blue Jeans.”
Posted by Steve under Reviews , TV mysteries[6] Comments
“Last Seen Wearing Blue Jeans.” An episode of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour (Season 1, Episode 28). First air date: 19 April 1963. Michael Wilding, Anna Lee, Katherine Crawford, Randy Boone, James Anderson, Jesse Jacobs, Eve McVeagh, Russ Conway. Teleplay: Lou Rambeau, based on the novel Encounter with Evil, by Amber Dean (1961). Director: Alan Crosland, Jr.
David and Roberta Saunders (Michael Wilding, Anna Lee) are touring America by station wagon with their teenage daughter Loren (Katherine Crawford). They make a late-night stop at a small diner on the Arizona-Mexican border to eat; after the meal a very sleepy Loren returns to the wagon and continues slumbering in the back.
Some time later she wakes up, just in time to witness a murder. To her horror, she quickly realizes that she has crawled into the wrong car and been driven across the border without the killers being aware of her — but now they are. All she has to do is stay alive …..
There’s something appealing about having Sleeping Beauty exposing an international criminal conspiracy — even if it’s unintentionally — and seeing Prince Charming drive a jeep. But as for this beauty’s detectival skills, Nancy Drew she ain’t.
Michael Wilding’s criminous credits include Stage Fright (1950, with Hitchcock); Trent’s Last Case (1952, as one of the very few actors ever to play Philip Trent in films and TV); The Naked Edge (1961); and one appearance each on Burke’s Law (1963), The Girl from U.N.C.L.E. (1966), and Mannix (1968).
Anna Lee appeared in The Four Just Men (1939), Hangmen Also Die! (1943), Bedlam (1946), Prison Warden (1949), Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962), In Like Flint (1967), and the long-running soap opera General Hospital. According to IMDb, she was also the goddaughter of Arthur Conan Doyle.
Randy Boone was a regular on the TV westerns The Virginian (1963-66) and Cimarron Strip (1967-68), the latter featuring an episode, “Knife in the Darkness,” written by Harlan Ellison in which Jack the Ripper is loose in Cimarron.
“Last Seen Wearing Blue Jeans” is available on Hulu here.
Editorial Comment: Anna Lee also appeared in King Solomon’s Mines, the 1937 version, reviewed here by me not so very long ago.
[UPDATE] 08-09-10. I neglected to mention (which is a euphemism for saying I forgot) that a review I wrote of Snipe Hunt, another one of Amber Dean’s mystery novels, was posted on this blog way back here, along with a complete listing of her “Abbie Harris” series.
August 7th, 2010 at 10:09 pm
Amber Dean’s name was fairly ubiquitous as a suspense novelist but somehow I never read any of them. I’m not sure I ever owned any of them. I recall seeing them mentioned here and there, but somehow one never caught my eye on the news-stand or as a DBC or Mystery Guild selection. Ironic, because they were the kind of book I read a good deal of in this period.
Anna Lee’s criminous credits also include Robert Stevenson’s entertaining Hitchcockian thriller NON-STOP, NEW YORK with John Loder and Francis Sullivan set on a near science fictional luxury Pan American clipper on a flight between London and New York. It’s one of the best imitations of Hitchcock’s early style and led to Stevenson’s notable and long career in Hollywood that ran from JANE EYRE to MARY POPPINS and BEDKNOBS AND BROOMSTICKS. It’s long been available on DVD.
Michael Charles Gauntlet Wilding (sorry, but love that middle name) was most famous for marrying Elizabeth Taylor, but had quite a few criminous credits including playing Major Andre in John Sturges THE SCARLET COAT (to Robert Douglas Benedict Arnold)with a notable cast of Cornel Wilde, George Sanders, and Anne Francis, the charming William Powell role in THE LAW AND THE LADY a remake of THE LAST OF MRS. CHEYNEY with Greer Garson, the romantic lead in Hitchcock’s Australian period drama UNDER CAPRICORN with Joseph Cotton and Ingrid Bergman, and in BREAKOUT based on Michael Gilbert’s murder in an Italian POW camp mystery THE DANGER WITHIN with Richard Todd. He was also in the wartime spy drama SECRET MISSION with Hugh Williams and James Mason. He did quite a bit of television as well, often in crime dramas, including a two parter on CLIMAX!.
Wasn’t Randy Boone Richard Boone’s son? Or is my memory playing tricks?
Incidentally I was lucky enough to tape the ‘Knife in the Darkness’ episode of CIMARRON STRIP, in which Harlan Ellison brings Jack The Ripper to the Oklahoma territory, off the E-Western channel . Nicely done episode of a series that was one of the few to make use of the weekly 90 minute format.
If I recall correctly the Ripper was Patrick Horgan, who among other things was Dr. Watson in the Broadway musical BAKER STREET to Fritz Weaver’s Sherlock Holmes and Martin Gabel’s Moriarity. His number from the musical, ‘A Woman, A Woman, A Wife’ was a hit single for Richard Burton. Somewhere I still have the cast album with a delightful Ronald Searle cover.
August 9th, 2010 at 12:10 pm
I’ve been delayed in replying, but the first paragraph of your comment, David, about Amber Dean, reminded me that a review of one of her books was posted here on this blog some while back. I’ve added the link as an Update to the review.
She wrote 15 books for the Doubleday Crime Club series between 1944 and 1963, then two more for Putnam between 1970 and 1973.
While I don’t think she was ever a major player in the field of mystery fiction, the fact that she lasted as long as she did says something about her appeal to readers at the time.
According to Wikipedia, Randy Boone is a cousin of Pat Boone and a nephew of Richard Boone, with all of them descendants of the even more famous Daniel Boone.
CIMARRON STRIP is one of those westerns I don’t remember ever seeing. There were so many at the time that you couldn’t watch them all. Picking and choosing was all you could do — that plus the fact that I was in grad school at the time. That probably had even more to do with it.
The complete series is available on DVD, but only on the collector-to-collector market. It’s probably forgotten by all but the most diehard western TV fans.
— Steve
August 9th, 2010 at 12:33 pm
Steve
CIMARRON STRIP (not to be confused with the earlier series CIMARRON with George Montgomery and Dan Blocker) was one of the few 90 minute series (THE VIRGINIAN, NAME OF THE GAME, ARREST AND TRIAL …)and ran only a single season of 23 episodes with Stuart Whitman as Sheriff Jim Crown. Jill Townsend was the romantic interest, Randy Boone the deputy, and in an odd bit of casting Australian character actor Percy Herbert was a regular as the owner of the hotel in town.
It was a well done series, enough so that I recall several episodes including one with David Carradine as a bounty hunter and Leonard Nimoy an indian. The Ripper episode by Ellison was very well done, but if you like well done television westerns from the era the entire series is worth seeing. E-WEST reran the series (and still may be for all I know) not too long ago.
August 9th, 2010 at 4:43 pm
A little surprising here that no one mentioned Katherine Crawford, the daughter of Roy Huggins, whose work is pretty well known around these parts.
Seeing as how she had sort of the title role in the story …
August 9th, 2010 at 7:47 pm
Not a fact I knew, Mike, but now I do. Thanks!
It looks like her most significant role was as Dr. Abby Lawrence on GEMINI MAN (two TV movies and a short-loved series, none of which I remember seeing).
August 10th, 2010 at 12:45 pm
Mike Tooney should be on the lookout for a KRAFT SUSPENSE THEATER titled “The End Of THE World, Baby”, in which Katherine Crawford plays a spoiled heiress in Italy(aka the Universal backlot) who finds herself pursued by Gig Young.Who she winds up with … Well, I won’t spoil it. Just look it up.