"Death on Christmas Eve" was first published here |
In this series, three of his episodes have already been discussed: the first two ("Help Wanted" and "The Orderly World of Mr. Appleby") and the last ("The Faith of Aaron Menefee"). I will discuss the five episodes in between over the next ten weeks. Stanley Ellin's third published story, "Death on Christmas Eve" (Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, January 1950), was adapted by James P. Cavanagh for season three of Alfred Hitchcock Presents and broadcast on CBS on Sunday, May 4, 1958.
The story takes place on Christmas Eve, as the Boerum family lawyer, who is not given a name, visits Charlie and Celia Boerum at their Victorian home. Charlie's wife Jessie is dead and his sister Celia was cleared of murder at an inquest. The lawyer finds that Celia has set Jessie's possessions out to be discarded. Charlie is convinced that Celia killed Jessie by pushing her down the stairs and he wants to see her convicted and executed. The lawyer explains that, without a witness or a motive, the case can't be proved.
Charlie has always felt bullied by his older sister and has not left the house since the inquest, so the lawyer encourages him to visit his favorite bar and grill. Celia appears, having overheard the conversation, and tells Charlie that he can't go out to a bar during the mourning period. Charlie is furious that Celia has disturbed Jessie's possessions. While speaking to the lawyer, Celia nearly confesses to murder, but the lawyer advises her to be quiet. He leaves the home and walks to Al Sharp's Bar and Grill, where Al the bartender has been expecting him. The lawyer always visits on Christmas Eve, ever since Jessie died twenty years ago.
Carmen Mathews as Celia |
The surprise ending must have made "Death on Christmas Eve" seem like a good story to adapt for Alfred Hitchcock Presents, and the script was assigned to James P. Cavanagh (1922-1971), a writer who mostly worked in episodic television from 1952 to 1967. I have been unable to find any published work by Cavanagh, but he wrote fifteen episodes of the half-hour Hitchcock show and won an Emmy in 1957 for one of them, "Fog Closing In." He also wrote an early draft for Hitchcock's Psycho (1960). "Death on Christmas Eve" was retitled "The Festive Season" for television, a title that is more ironic than that of the short story and describes a time of year that is hardly joyous for the Boerum siblings.
The TV version opens with a brief establishing scene, as we see the lawyer, now christened John Benson, driving at night and pulling his car up in front of the Boerum house. He is invited inside by Celia and they have a long conversation in the library. The scene covers the same ground that is gone over in the story but it is longer and features more dialogue. Benson points out that Celia kept living in the family house even after her late father left it to her brother; she replies that Charlie is "all I have . . . all I ever had." Cavanagh's script amplifies a theme that had been more subtle in Ellin's story, the idea that Charlie had been smothered by his mother and that Celia took her place after she died.
Edmon Ryan as John |
In the story, Charlie believes that Celia threw Jessie down the stairs: he heard his wife fall, ran out of their room, and heard Celia's door slam. In the TV show, Celia was away in Boston, shopping, and Charlie claims that she tied a cord across the stairs before she left, knowing that Jessie would come out of her room after an afternoon nap and fall down the dark stairs. Charlie shows John a ball of cord that he found in Celia's room and claims it's the cord that was used to kill Jessie.
As in the story, Celia appears in the door to announce that Charlie's dinner is ready. He finds that Jessie's possessions have been removed from her room and confronts his sister, threatening to kill her if she ever touches Jessie's things again. John visits Celia in her room and says that he has decided to spend the night in town, warning her to stay in her room tonight. She says she is not afraid, commenting that "Charlie has never done anything in his whole life--except talk." Celia leaves the room and heads down the stairs, tripping on a cord that has been stretched across them and tumbling down the flight of stairs. She is not hurt, though, and tells her brother that his effort to kill her failed. He says he is sorry that she survived. Cavanagh added this scene near the end of the show in an attempt to bring some excitement to a story that is essentially a series of conversations between the three main characters. The change in the method of Jessie's death was necessary to set up this scene late in the episode; it would be less dramatically satisfying to have Charlie try to push Celia down the stairs to reenact what he thinks she did to Jessie.
After her fall, Celia denies having killed Charlie's wife and he responds that she has been killing him "little by little" by smothering him in the same way that their mother did. He threatens that there will be "other times" and tells John to leave. The scene then dissolves to the final scene in the bar, and Cavanagh's script follows the original story very closely, ending with the same surprise. The twist ending is still a shock but the episode as a whole is too talky and drawn out to be satisfying. The addition of the attempt to kill Celia adds a modicum of excitement but does not overcome the tedium of the overly long conversations that precede it.
Richard Waring as Charlie |
Starring as Celia is Carmen Mathews (1911-1995), who is familiar to regular viewers of Alfred Hitchcock Presents from her roles in six episodes, including "Conversation Over a Corpse." She was born in Philadelphia and started her acting career on stage in England before returning to America, where she was seen mostly on TV and occasionally on film from 1950 to 1992. She was also frequently on Broadway, from the late 1930s until the early 1980s. Her performance as Celia Boerum is solid, as usual.
Benny Baker as Al |
The smothered son, Charlie, is portrayed by Richard Waring (1910-1993), who was born in England. He appeared mostly on TV from 1948 to 1965 and was also seen in a couple of films. He had various roles on Broadway from 1930 to 1968. In this, his only appearance on the Hitchcock show, he is intense but does not seem as believable in his role as Mathews and Ryan.
Benny Baker (1907-1994) plays Al, the bartender, who is in the show's final scene. Born Benjamin Michael Zifkin in Missouri, Baker had a long screen career, from 1934 to 1991, and frequently played small roles on film and TV. This was his only time on the Hitchcock show.
Read Stanley Ellin's "Death on Christmas Eve" for free online here. The TV show is available on DVD here or may be watched for free online here.
Sources:
Ellin, Stanley. “Death on Christmas Eve.” The Big Book of Christmas Mysteries, Vintage, 2013, pp. 396–400.
“The Festive Season.” Alfred Hitchcock Presents, season 3, episode 31, CBS, 4 May 1958.
The FictionMags Index, www.philsp.com/homeville/FMI/0start.htm.
Grams, Martin, and Patrik Wikstrom. The Alfred Hitchcock Presents Companion. OTR Pub., 2001.
IMDb, IMDb.com, www.imdb.com/.
"Stanley (Bernard) Ellin." Contemporary Authors Online, Gale, 2003. Contemporary Authors Online, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/H1000028936/CA?u=lawr69060&sid=
CA&xid=384fa888. Accessed 31 Mar. 2018.
Stephensen-Payne, Phil. Galactic Central, philsp.com/.
Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 2 Apr. 2018, www.wikipedia.org/.
In two weeks: "The Blessington Method," starring Henry Jones and Dick York!
4 comments:
Nice work, Jack. The only thing from Ellin that I've read is "The Specialty of the House" but he has been on my to-read list for a long time. This episode isn't terrible but the excessive talking makes for a long 25 minutes. I look forward to an interesting series!
Thanks, Brian. "The Festive Season" is very talky but the next one up is a classic!
Thanks for the review, Jack. I like The Festive Season better than you do. It's has the fascination of a train wreck for me. I cannot turn away, don't want to miss one line of dialogue whenever I've watched it (no more than four times would be my best guess).
The actors really sell this one. The story is both an extreme downer and also poorly developed, yet I find that this (weirdly, I admit) keeps me watching, as I tend to forget about the closing scene, which keeps it fresh. Yeah, I know: go figure.
One of the things that makes this one so watchable is the actor who plays the victimized brother. Richard Waring? I'd never heard of him before I saw this one, and I've tended to forget his name when I watch it again.
This guy radiates off the charts gaydar. As I ponder this my thoughts turn to what the episode is really about. Hitchcock's wasn't a gay or heavily gay vibing show, unlike, say Peter Gunn. This topic has come up when we've discussed other, episodes, and I think it's worth revisiting with this one.
My guess is that Charles is a coded gay man, that the death of his beloved may well have been exactly what he desired so many years earlier; and who knows: he may be the murderer himself. Or he may have wished it and got his wish granted. Maybe this is the source of his loathing of his sister.
Far fetched? For normal mainstream Fifties television, yes. Yet this is a Hitchcock episode, and Hitch the director was no stranger to such things. One only has to ponder Shadow Of A Doubt, Rope and Strangers On A Train. No, he didn't direct this episode, but it was made in a style similar to Hitchcock's feature films.
No, I'm not projecting any desires on my part, just paying closer attention than usual for what some people call subtexts, a word popular among many film and TV reviewers and fans of old movies. Waring's performance got me thinking. It's not in the script, so far as I can tell, yet he seemed more troubled than a man who lost his young wife twenty years earlier should be. Neither sibling in that relationship appeared to be living a "normal" life. Maybe it's no more than couple of co-dependent recluses with issues.
Thanks for your thoughtful comment, John. I doubt there was an intentional gay subtext at the time, but it's certainly a valid reading in 2019. There are other episodes that gave me the same feeling, and sometimes I wonder if the gay actors were selected for that purpose. For what it's worth, Richard Waring does not appear to have been gay.
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