The Hitchcock Project-A Nice Touch by Mann Rubin [9.2]

by Jack Seabrook

From New York City, a woman named Janice telephones her lover, Larry Preston, in Los Angeles to report that her husband Al found her and began hitting her in a drunken rage. After telling her that he would not give her a divorce, he passed out and is lying on the floor. Larry tells Janice that her husband needs to be taken care of tonight. He instructs her to take a pillow from the bed and smother the unconscious man.

Janice complies and, once the deed is done, she returns to the phone. Larry tells her to cover the body with a blanket, drag it to her husband's car, drive to a dock, and dump it in the East River. Janice and Larry profess their love for each other and hang up the phone. Larry calls the Los Angeles police to report the murder and suggests that the New York police be alerted. He goes back to bed, rejoining Darlene, an actress with whom he's been seen around Hollywood. She remarks that he has "'a nice touch'" and he agrees.

"A Nice Touch" was
first published here

"A Nice Touch" was first published in the February 1958 issue of Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine and is a thin story with a predictable ending; the character of Janice is overly hysterical and  not very credible. The story's author, Mann Rubin (1927-2013), wrote stories for DC Comics from 1951 to 1953, had short stories published between 1954 and 1967, and wrote for the small and big screens from 1952 to 1991. He adapted "A Nice Touch" for The Alfred Hitchcock Hour. His papers are held at the University of Wyoming and, in addition to the script for "A Nice Touch," the collection includes a script for an unproduced episode titled "A Slice of Life." "A Nice Touch" was Rubin's only contribution to the Hitchcock TV show.

Not surprisingly, the short story required considerable expansion to fit the hour-long time slot. The TV version begins with a scene dramatizing the violent struggle between Janice and Ed (as her husband has been renamed). He passes out on the floor and she telephones Larry, who answers the phone dressed in an expensive robe; he is in an expensively furnished living room. The dialogue tracks that of the short story, for the most part, until Janice says that she and Larry met only two months ago and the screen dissolves to the first of a series of flashbacks.

Anne Baxter as Janice

In the flashback, Janice is a casting agent who meets Larry when he comes to audition for a part. He is a method actor who is completely wrong for the part of a suave British aristocrat, yet he aggressively pushes his way in and gives an embarrassingly bad reading. Later, outside the office building, Larry harasses Janice, who twists her ankle rushing for a cab. He picks her up, deposits her in the taxi, and joins her in the back seat. Janice may be charmed by Larry's behavior, but viewed today it appears sexist and abusive.

Returning to the present, the phone call continues and Larry brings up the idea of Janice killing her husband. A second flashback picks up after the taxi has dropped Janice and Larry at her apartment. He aggressively insists on staying and she lets him; while she changes her clothes, he looks around her beautiful, mid-century modern apartment and tells her about himself. After insulting Janice, Larry suddenly grabs her and kisses her; again, his behavior is abusive when viewed today. She responds to his embrace but he breaks it off, and she is clearly smitten.

George Segal as Larry

The flashback ends and the phone call continues as Larry psychologically manipulates Janice. Another flashback shows Janice on the phone with a producer, talking him into testing Larry for a role and replacing another one of her agency's clients. Larry is next to her as she speaks and we see that he has already succeeded in manipulating her into making bad business decisions that benefit him.

The phone call in the present ends as Larry tells Janice that he'll call her back in fifteen minutes while he figures out the details of the murder. We see that Ed is still passed out on the floor and Janice pleads with his motionless figure to wake up and go home. Another flashback follows, this time showing Janice and Ed discussing the impending end of their marriage. In the middle of their argument she takes a phone call from the producer about Larry and Ed walks out.

Charlene Holt as Darlene

Back in the present, Janice looks at Ed lying on the floor and calls Larry back; both are beginning to sweat from the tension of the situation as Larry encourages Janice to smother her husband. The next flashback shows Janice opening a gift from Ed, who is now in Hollywood; the gift is a pillow shaped like a star. She speaks to him on the phone and he tells her that he has been signed to a movie deal. Janice seems to miss him desperately; her life as a successful career woman is falling apart due to her love for the manipulative actor, whose smooth voice on the phone in the scenes set in the present contrasts with his less polished accent in the flashbacks.

Mimi Dillard as the secretary

Janice's secretary enters her office and hears the end of her phone call with Larry. Talking the producer into hiring her lover has cost Janice her job, but she keeps this a secret from Larry. In addition to her job, Janice has lost her reputation and her husband. Returning to the present, Janice takes the pillow that was seen in the flashback and smothers Ed, the pillow coming down over the camera lens to black it out. Ironically, she uses a gift from her lover to murder her spouse, all at her lover's urging. Back on the phone with Larry, he tells her how to dispose of the body. In an addition to the story, Janice insists on taking the first plane out to Los Angeles to join Larry; this gives him an additional motive for his subsequent call to the police.

Gil Stuart at
the audition

In the final scene, Larry goes to the bedroom and joins Darlene in bed. Unlike the story, where she is his latest lover, in the TV show they are married and on their honeymoon; the show ends like the story with them agreeing that he has a nice touch.

The TV version of Rubin's short story features strong acting by the two leads and the flashbacks help flesh out the narrative, but it's still hampered by the thin premise and Larry's sexist behavior is difficult to watch, as is Janice's pathetic dependence on her unworthy lover.

"A Nice Touch" is directed by Joseph Pevney (1911-2008), who started out as an actor in vaudeville in the 1920s and had a short career as a film actor from 1946 to 1950. He then became a director and was more successful, directing films from 1950 to 1966, including Man of a Thousand Faces (1957). His career as a TV director spanned the years from 1959 to 1985 and included 14 episodes of Star Trek and five episodes of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, one of which was "Starring the Defense."

Walter Woolf King
as Roberts

In her only appearance on the Hitchcock TV show, Anne Baxter (1923-1985) stars as Janice. She started out as an actress on Broadway in 1936 and by 1940 she was appearing in films. She won an Oscar for her role in All About Eve (1950) and she was seen in Hitchcock's I Confess and Lang's The Blue Gardenia (both 1953). Baxter continued appearing on screen until her death, including seven episodes of Batman. She has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Co-starring as Larry is George Segal (1934-2021), also in his only role on the Hitchcock TV show. Segal served in the Army in the Korean War and trained at the Actors Studio; he appeared on screen from 1957 until his death. Notable roles include Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966) and starring parts in two long-running TV sitcoms: Just Shoot Me (1997-2003) and The Goldbergs (2013-2021).

In smaller roles:

• Charlene Holt (1928-1996) as Darlene, Larry's new wife whom he joins in bed in the final scene; born Verna Charlene Stavely, she was Miss Maryland in 1956 and her screen career lasted from 1962 to 1980.
• Mimi Dillard (1934-2008) as Janice's secretary; she was on screen from 1958 to 1970 and she was one of the few Black actors who began to appear on The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, always in small, supporting roles.
• Gil Stuart (1919-1977) as another actor auditioning for the role that Larry reads for; he was born in London as Derek Grist and he was on screen from 1941 to 1977. He was on Thriller twice and the Hitchcock show three times, including "The Trap."
• Walter Woolf King (1899-1984) as Roberts, who runs the audition; he started out on Broadway in 1919, worked in radio, and was seen in many movies and TV shows from 1930 to 1977, including A Night at the Opera (1935), Swiss Miss (1938), and Go West (1940). He was in five episodes of the Hitchcock series, including "Our Cook's a Treasure," from season one, and "Isabel," from season nine.
• Harry Townes (1914-2001) plays Ed Brandt, Janice's doomed husband. He was on Broadway before serving in the Army Air Corps in WWII;  his screen career lasted from 1949 to 1988, mostly on TV, where he played countless parts. Townes was in four episodes of the Hitchcock show, including "The Creeper," and he also appeared on The Twilight Zone, Thriller, The Outer Limits, Star Trek, and Night Gallery. He co-starred in the 1958 film adaptation of Fredric Brown's The Screaming Mimi. Oddly enough, in addition to being an actor, he was ordained as an Episcopal priest in 1974.

Harry Townes as Ed

"A Nice Touch" was adapted one more time, as a fifteen-minute short film in 2012. The trailer can be viewed here. It looks like the film may have followed Rubin's original story, without adding any flashbacks.

Read "A Nice Touch" here. Watch the Hitchcock version here.

Sources:

The FICTIONMAGS Index, www.philsp.com/homeville/FMI/0start.htm.

Galactic Central, www.philsp.com/.

Grams, Martin, and Patrik Wikstrom. The Alfred Hitchcock Presents Companion. OTR Pub., 2001.

Grand Comics Database, www.comics.org.

IBDB, www.ibdb.com.

IMDb, www.imdb.com.

"A Nice Touch." The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, season 2, episode 2, CBS, 4 October 1963.

Rubin, Mann. "A Nice Touch." Alfred Hitchcock Presents: My Favorites in Suspense. NY: Random House, 1959, pp. 345-353.

Wikipedia, www.wikipedia.org.

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