The Hitchcock Project: Henry Slesar Part Seven-"The Kind Waitress" [4.25]

by Jack Seabrook

Henry Slesar's short story, "The Case of the Kind Waitress," was first published in Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine's October 1958 issue. It was adapted for television and aired late in the fourth season of Alfred Hitchcock Presents on March 29, 1959. The story is well told and has been anthologized repeatedly; the filmed version is less successful, though better than the prior Slesar effort, "The Right Price."

The story concerns Thelma Tompkins, a 44 year old waitress at the Hotel Gordon Restaurant who takes a special interest in Mrs. Mannerheim, an elderly regular customer whom she thinks must be over 90 years old. Thelma is another of Slesar's ordinary people: she has worked for "11 years as a waitress" and is no beauty; he mentions "the imperfect features of her drab face" and her "stringy brown hair." Mrs. Mannerheim seems barely alive; with a "tiny shrunken body," she is "white-faced and wraith-like." The third main character is Thelma's 34 year old brother Arthur, a lazy ne'er do well who works at a drug store. Since their father died, Thelma and Arthur are each other's only family.

One day, due to Thelma's kindness, Mrs. Mannerheim tells her that she has taken care of the younger woman in her will. Arthur is excited to learn of the coming windfall but his enthusiasm wanes as months pass and the old woman does not die. Eventually, tired of waiting, he suggests to Thelma that she "help her along," insisting that it would be a "mercy killing" that he could facilitate with powder from his drug store sprinkled on her food each night.

Thelma resists this idea for a month but finally gives in and begins slowly poisoning her elderly friend. Yet Mrs. Mannerheim lives on! Thelma decides to give her one large dose to end the waiting (Thelma waits on Mrs. Mannerheim in both senses of the word--as a server and as an expectant inheritor). One evening, when the old woman does not come down for dinner, Thelma takes a tray to her room and loses her temper, leading Mrs. Mannerheim to threaten to change her will. Thelma strangles her and is discovered by a chambermaid. She is arrested and jailed, only to be told by a policeman of a surprising discovery at autopsy: Mrs. Mannerheim had had a parasitic infection and the only thing keeping her alive was small, regular doses of arsenic!

Rick Jason

"The Case of the Kind Waitress" has a double twist ending: the title character snaps and becomes a murderess, and the instrument of her earlier attempts at murder is revealed to have been life-sustaining. Once again, Slesar writes of crime among the working class and portrays conflict among family members.

The title of the story was shortened to "The Kind Waitress" when it was adapted for television by William O'Farrell, who also changed the story in other ways that blunted its effectiveness. Arthur is no longer Thelma's younger brother; instead, he is her boyfriend, a handsome, clarinet-playing misogynist whose casual cruelty to his lover would not pass muster if this episode were filmed today. Thelma's desperate attempts to hold on to her man inform all of the wrong choices she makes. When Arthur hears of the promised inheritance, he thinks only of himself: "No more playin' for peanuts! I could start my own band!" As Arthur, Rick Jason is hard to watch; his performance verges on that of the beatniks and hipsters we will see in upcoming years on this series.

Olive Deering

Making Arthur a musician rather than a pharmacist creates an obvious problem that the script goes to absurd lengths to solve. No longer able to pilfer arsenic from the back room of the drug store where he works, this version of the murderous Arthur has to bring home a stack of books from the library to study up on poisons. His reading skills seem rudimentary as he reads the words aloud and stumbles over them. Instead of arsenic, he happens on Anotyne, made from Larascrofa leaves. I did a quick bit of research on these drugs. Arsenic has been used for many years to treat parasitic infections, as Slesar's story points out, but the Anotyne and Larascrofa leaves mentioned in the filed episode appear to be conjured up from whole cloth, perhaps because the producers of the television show did not want to give viewers any useful ideas.

Celia Lovsky

The situation gets even crazier when Arthur rigs up a home chemistry set in Thelma's apartment. Like a be-bopping Dr. Frankenstein, the nearly moronic clarinetist manages to cook and distill the imaginary drug using a hot plate. If one is to take the story literally, he manages to make enough of the drug to supply Thelma with bottles of it over a period of six months! As Arthur remarks, "Gotta hand it to these science cats!"

The conclusion of the show is also changed for no good reason. In the story, Thelma is caught red-handed, but onscreen she gets away with murder, only to blurt out a confession during a coroner's inquest. She then overhears Mrs. Mannerheim's doctor explain that he had been giving his patient Anotyne to treat her heart condition. He says that "Anotyne was the only thing keeping her alive" and, in case we did not get it right away, his words are repeated three more times as a voice over!

Cooking up some poison!

William O'Farrell (1904-1962) wrote this one teleplay for Alfred Hitchcock Presents. Bernard C. Schoenfeld also adapted O'Farrell's story, "Over There, Darkness," for which he won an Edgar Award in 1959. O'Farrell was a crime novelist who wrote a handful of teleplays from 1949 to 1960.

"The Kind Waitress" was one of 29 episodes of the Hitchcock series to be directed by Paul Henreid (1908-1992), the actor turned director who also directed "The Landlady" and "Annabel." His work on this episode is competent but not outstanding.

Rick Jason (1923-2000) gets top billing as Arthur, though his performance was not one he would recall in his later autobiography, Scrapbooks of My Mind (2000), which can be read online here. Jason was on TV and in the movies from 1953 to the late 1980s; he never appeared on the Hitchcock series again but he had a five-year run as Lt. Gill Hanley on Combat. He ended his own life the year his book came out.

Olive Deering (1918-1986) plays Thelma, her wide-set eyes giving her face a fish-like appearance. She was the sister of actor Alfred Ryder and she was a member of the Actors Studio, onstage beginning in 1933 and in movies and on TV from the late 1940s. She also appeared in one episode of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour and had a role in the classic Outer Limits episode, "The Zanti Misfits."

Robert Carson

Stealing the show as Mrs. Mannerheim is Celia Lovsky (1897-1979), who had been married to Peter Lorre from 1934 to 1945. She appeared on the Hitchcock show three times and was in such films as Fritz Lang's While the City Sleeps (1956), the Lon Chaney biography, Man of a Thousand Faces (1957), and Soylent Green (1973). She also had a memorable part as the Vulcan priestess at Spock's wedding in the Star Trek episode, "Amok Time."

Finally, in a small role as the coroner is Robert Carson (1909-1979), brother of Jack Carson. Robert appeared on the Hitchcock show eleven times, always in small roles, including one as the inquest board chairman in "Mother, May I Go Out to Swim?"

"The Kind Waitress" is available on DVD here and can be viewed online for free here. (If Larry Rapchak is reading this, perhaps he can identify the rather infectious melody that Arthur plays on his clarinet!)

Sources:

"Chemical of the Week -- Arsenic." Chemical of the Week -- Arsenic. N.p., n.d. Web. 08 July 2013.

Grams, Martin, and Patrik Wikstrom. The Alfred Hitchcock Presents Companion. Churchville, MD: OTR Pub., 2001. Print.

IMDb. IMDb.com, n.d. Web. 07 July 2013.

"The Kind Waitress." Alfred Hitchcock Presents. CBS. 29 Mar. 1959. Television.

"Main Page." The Alfred Hitchcock Wiki. N.p., n.d. Web. 07 July 2013.

"Scrapbooks of My Mind - A Hollywood Auto-Biography by Rick Jason." Scrapbooks of My Mind - A Hollywood Auto-Biography by Rick Jason. N.p., n.d. Web. 07 July 2013.

Slesar, Henry. "Case of the Kind Waitress." 1958. Clean Crimes and Neat Murders: Alfred Hitchcock's Hand Picked Selection of Stories by Henry Slesar. New York: Avon, 1960. 126-36. Print.

Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, n.d. Web. 07 July 2013.

Do You Dare Enter? Part Five: December 1969-January 1970

The DC Mystery Line 1968-1976

by Jack Seabrook,
John Scoleri,

& Peter Enfantino

Neal Adams

House of Mystery 183 (December 1969)

"The Haunting!"
Story by Jack Oleck
Art by Jerry Grandenetti

"The Dead Can Kill!"
Story by Marv Wolfman
Art by Bernie Wrightson

"Secret of the Whale's Vengeance"
Story by Robert Kanigher
Art by Jerry Grandenetti and Wally Wood

Peter: In "The Haunting," Frank and Peggy Abel find themselves wandering through the cemetery down the road from their house one night for no apparent reason. Frightened by their apparent temporary amnesia, the couple nonetheless find their way back to their estate. Once there, they discover a light showing through their attic window and enter the house timidly. Once inside, they are terrified to find a ghostly apparition walking the halls. Before long, a second spectre shows and spills the beans: it is, in fact, Frank and Peggy who are the haunts. They had died the year before and are witnessing the new tenants. Not a very original concept but Grandenetti's cartoony style perfectly fits in this instance and there's an almost Scooby Doo-ish atmosphere where we don't, for one second, expect this to end in violence. Writer Oleck seamlessly converted this to prose for the first volume of Warner's paperback collection, House of Mystery (1973).

John: I think it's pretty clear what's going on within a few panels, which makes for an uneventful slog through several pages awaiting the surprise revelation. 

"The Haunting"

Jack: We saw this same twist ending a few weeks ago with the ghost parents who were watching over their dead son. Grandenetti's art is certainly stylized and pretty far removed from what we're seeing him do ten years earlier in the war comics.

Peter: Marv Wolfman's "The Dead Can Kill" is little more than a filler, albeit one with Bernie Wrightson artwork. Unfortunately, Bernie's not given much to work with here so there are no trademarked ghoulish Wrightson nightmares. In fact, there's only one panel that screams "Bernie was here!" (reprinted below). The story's just a quickie about a pair of explorers who come across a creepy apparition and discover two corpses deep in the recesses of the cavern. Was the creature the ghost of the murderer or that of one of the victims? Who knows? And, once again, Marv won't clue us in. Frustrating these uncompleted scripts.

"The Dead Can Kill"

John: Turning the page and recognizing Aragones or Wrightson art is one of the things I enjoy most about these issues. And while Aragones almost always delivers, and we can usually count on Wrightson to make worthwhile any story he works on, this is another quickly forgotten tale.

Jack: I think my brain is starting to go. Half the time I can't follow these stories. I get to the end, having read every word, and don't really know what's just happened. Fortunately, they have pretty pictures. By the way, can someone explain that cover to me? Is the whale's tooth a light switch on the wall?

Peter: In "Secret of the Whale's Vengeance," Jeremy and Austin Bridges, two maniacally sadistic whalers, hunt the sea more for the thrill of the kill than for monetary gain. These two really really like to kill whales (we know because Kanigher reminds us every couple of panels). One day, Jeremy picks the wrong whale to harpoon and it drags him to the bottom of the ocean where a magical ring of whales convenes and transforms him into one of their own (albeit an albino version). All this is unbeknownst to Austin, who believes his bro has been dragged to Davy Jones' Locker. That makes him really really really want to kill whales. When he finally nails one of the monsters who stole his brother, Jeremy's corpse rises to the surface. Robert Kanigher wrote brilliant war tales but he hasn't seemed, as of 1969, to get the hang of mystery. This one has that "Native American Legend" vibe to it but it's not well-told and it's confusing (why is Jeremy transformed into an albino whale? Does he know he's a whale? Is this the first time this has happened?). To add insult to injury, we get Wally Wood on inks and there's not one trace of the master showing through Jerry Grandenetti. Perhaps not the best match? I'm puzzled as to why the story is split into two chapters. A bathroom break after 6 pages? The biggest disappointment of the month in both story and art.

Jack: P-U! as we used to say in grade school. This was a real stinker. This issue seems like it was slapped together with lots of filler and some weak stories. I had to laugh when Part Two was labeled "The Searing Conclusion"! Searing conclusion my eye. This tale, like "The Haunting" that opened this issue, goes over material we've seen before in better hands.

John: I agree with my cohorts. This is a whale of a disappointment. On the bright side, this unnecessary two-parter didn't tarnish two separate issues of the book.

Gray Morrow

House of Secrets 83 (January 1970)

"The Stuff That Dreams Are Made Of"
Story by Marv Wolfman
Art by Alex Toth

"Bigger Than a Breadbox"
Story uncredited
Art by Art Saaf

"The House of Endless Years"
Story by Gerard Conway
Art by Bill Draut

Jack: Is this cover the first we've seen of Gray Morrow? If so, he's a welcome addition to the stable of DC mystery artists. I always liked Morrow's work and did not realize he had been around since the 1950s.

Peter: I love Gray Morrow. We just talked about his fabulous pencil work on the premiere of Man-Thing in Savage Tales #1 over at Marvel University. His work, for me, is right up there with Wrightson and Jeff Jones when the discussion rolls around to favorite horror artists of the 1970s.

John: That's certainly an enticing cover. Let's see if anything inside lives up to its promise!

"The Stuff That Dreams Are Made Of"

Jack: In the frame, Abel makes a little in-joke when he remarks that the next story was told to him by "a wandering Wolfman." Guess who wrote the story? I kind of like Abel. He's always a little nervous and here he gets locked out of the House of Secrets. And who is this Goldie he's always talking to? In "The Stuff...", Jim Ivey lays dying in a hospital bed, yet in his dreams he is a hero in a psychedelic other world. He meets and falls for Princess Lyla. He dies as she kisses him, and we see that he has also died in our world. The story is a simple one but Alex Toth's art is quite beautiful. There was one panel that looked like a Roy Lichtenstein painting.

"Bigger Than A
Breadbox"

Peter: Toth's art, to me, is the only redeeming feature of this story. I feel like I've read this story a dozen times before. That might not be fair as the stories I read with the same plot may have come post-"The Stuff..." but I kinda doubt it. In 1970,  Marv is still taking elements from a lot of other horror stories he's read and molding them to his own concepts. This is not a hobbling offense. In fact, all writers do it when they're starting out. Wolfman will, very soon after this story was published, take Stoker's Dracula and make him, if not his own, very much a 1970s icon.

John: I found this one to be the stuff bad dreams are made of—both in story AND art. Granted, I'm reading these in black and white; perhaps in color it's got some redeeming qualities.

Jack: In "Bigger Than a Bread Box," lonely old Elmira finds a metal box in the attic after her inventor brother Abner dies. She puts it out as a mailbox and begins to exchange love letters with a mysterious admirer. She thinks it's the postman but she gets the fright of her life when a scaly alien shows up at her door with a bunch of flowers. Abel informs us that the box was an "interdimensional teleporter." I think Joe Orlando realized that the story didn't make much sense and so had to do a little explaining in the frame. The art is pretty poor and the GCD credits it to Art Saaf, who had been around since the Golden Age.

Peter: I would mildly disagree with you on this one, Jack. Yeah, the ending is weak but Elmira's mailman is so creepy I naturally assumed suspicion would turn towards him as some sort of monster but the climactic panel, though cliched, actually surprised me. This actually looks like it might be a "file" story (uncredited story and art by an old-timer) and would have fit nicely in one of those early to mid-sixties DC science fiction titles that I hated so much.

John: For me, this was another instance of a WTF? ending that more than made up for the journey. I mean it's ridiculous, and completely out of left field, but for whatever reason it left me with a smile on my face (which seems to be happening less and less frequently).

"The House of Endless Years"

Jack: "The House of Endless Years" is another disappointment from young Gerry Conway in which three kids explore a spooky house where an old hag lives and discover--TO THEIR HORROR--that the house infects everyone with the disease of old age. Even Tippy the dog is affected. This issue wasn't much good--it's sad when the frame story with Abel is the best part.

Peter: Another disagreement, Jack. I thought this was a genuinely eerie tale that had me guessing right up to its downbeat ending. It has an Edgar Allan Poe vibe just bleeding off the pages. Easily the best story in any DC mystery title this month. Bill Draut's art is effective but this screams out "Draw me, Neal Adams!"

John: I actually found myself enjoying this one as well. While it might have been a better fit across town in the pages of The Witching Hour, I was particularly impressed when the old hag basically turns to dust. Sure, at the end of the day this isn't a groundbreaking piece of fiction (like "Bigger than a Bread Box"), but a solid tale nonetheless. 

Nick Cardy

Unexpected 116 (January 1970)

"Express Train to Nowhere!"
Story by Dave Wood
Art by Art Saaf

"Steps to Disaster!"
Story uncredited
Art by Pat Boyette

"Mad to Order"
Story uncredited
Art by Murphy Anderson

"Ball of String!"
Story uncredited
Art by Bernie Wrightson

"Ashes to Ashes, Dustin to Dust?"
Story by Al Case (Murray Boltinoff)
Art by Sid Greene

"Express Train to Nowhere!"

Jack: Four passengers on the "Express Train to Nowhere!" find themselves getting off in a strange mist. They all were running away from failure in their lives but they each manage to use the skills they thought they had lost in order to get through the strange place and back onto the train to safety. As a result, they regain the confidence they need to move on with their lives. This is a very good story that does not take any ridiculous turns. Art Saaf's art is nothing special but it fits the tale. I enjoyed it! The old surgeon is a real jerk who instantly despises the thief despite the man's bravery and selflessness.

John: Wow. Such a promising cover, and yet they waste no time dashing your hopes with the splash page of this mess. If I want inspirational tales, I'll look outside DC's Mystery line for those...

Peter: I thought it was pretty silly and the art, in spots, is nothing more than sketches. We're never really told why these people in particular are taken on this journey of enlightenment. Does this train take a similar batch of losers every day? Who's operating the train? Saaf's art looks just as sketchy as in his previous work (way back in House of Secrets #83, above).

"Steps to Disaster!"

Jack: Lots of excitement is packed into four pages in "Steps to Disaster!" when Hans the Cobbler makes a pair of wooden shows out of a piece of mahogany driftwood. A killer on the run steals the shoes and then a sloop but is soon swept overboard during a storm somewhere in the Atlantic. He seems to be attacked by a spectre made of ice and he sees visions of people trapped in a cage. After he is dragged underwater to his death, the wooden shoes return to the wreck of the Titanic at the bottom of the ocean! I did NOT see that one coming. Peter has written before of Pat Boyette's impressive art and it's on display in this short but chilling story.

John: Unlike my colleagues, this one did nothing for me.

"Ball of String!"

Peter: Very nice art, indeed, by Boyette who just gets better and better. The story itself is way too short for my tastes but it's enjoyable enough. The same cannot be said for "Mad to Order," "Ball of String," and "Ashes to Ashes..." The first two are really silly and painfully obvious shorts; "Ball" is distinguished only because of Wrightson's art. These two exercises in tedium could just as easily been jettisoned in favor of three more story pages of "Steps to Disaster!" I hope we won't be encountering a lot of these mini-horrors along the way as they're usually not worth the paper. As for "Ashes...", it's a delightfully stupid revenge yarn revolving around ashes we never see. The art is strictly grade school doodlings. Not a very good issue.

John: I'm impressed you were able to find anything nice to say about the balance of the stories herein. My suggestion—ditch the Mod Witch for starters...

Nick Cardy

The Witching Hour 6 (January 1970)

"A Face in the Crowd!"
Story by Gerry Conway
Art by Mike Roy and Mike Peppe

"The Doll Man!"
Story by Marv Wolfman
Art by Jose Delbo

"Treasure Hunt"
Story by Steve Skeates
Art by John Celardo and Dick Giordano

Peter: This could be the worst all-around issue we've reviewed yet. Not one of the three stories is readable, in my eyes at least. The art crew of Mikes Roy and Peppe destroys what little suspense Gerry Conway drums up in this tired tale of a concentration camp survivor who sees Bulgart, his Nazi tormentor, on the street and decides to kill him. The set-up actually works, as we get to see inside this poor soul's head, but the midsection and denouement are so poorly written, the promise quickly fades. Our protagonist imagines slapping the Nazi up against an alley wall and ventilating him, only to find it's been an illusion. He then stumbles out of the alleyway and bumps into a man on the street who also looks like his Nazi prey. But is it? Is this all in his mind or is it some kind of ironic twist that Bulgart happens to be the first guy he passes on the street after having a meltdown? I'm really getting to hate this school of "Don't give them an answer and they'll think it's cooler!" scripting. But even if the writing was on an even keel, we'd have to put up with this gadawful art. When our man confronts Bulgart (or what he thinks is Bulgart), The Mikes suddenly draw him like he's been transformed into Mr. Hyde! Bloodshot eyes and all. I'm not one to raise eyebrows at bad taste but The Mod Witch's epilogue comments that Bulgart was "a nice guy, a man after my own heart" are inappropriate in a funny book only a quarter century removed from the holocaust.

John: Didn't Rod Serling write a story like this? I didn't think Conway did anything particularly interesting with this seemingly stale piece.

"A Face in the Crowd!"

Jack: Before we even get to the first story we have that great Nick Cardy cover and another funny frame with the three witches. Cynthia--my favorite--has committed the unforgivable sin of cleaning up her "air-chilled pad" and decorating it in "mod" style, complete with pop art by Ghastly Warhol! I think this stuff is very funny. As for the first story, I did not mind it at all. The GCD lists Mike Sekowsky as having drawn the frame pages and I got a Sekowsky feeling from the art in the first story, even though fans have credited it to Roy and Peppe. The theme reminds me of the sort of thing Will Eisner would explore in the not too distant future and I always liked it when he did it.

Peter: "The Doll Man" riffs on the old "mob mentality" hook EC Comics used to hang lots of stories on (especially in Shock Suspenstories). The difference is that EC excelled at their tales. Here we have the story of Caulfield, a man who shuts himself in his boarding house room 24/7 and works on his mysterious dolls. This riles his neighbors and they light the torches and head upstairs. After the mob (which seems to grow larger each panel until, by the finale, it might just be all of New York crowded into that room) accidentally kills Caulfield, they force open his locked bedroom door and come face to face with living, demonic dolls. Why are the dolls living or demonic? Well, like quite a few of his early stories, Marv Wolfman tends to ignore important details, skipping to the really "cool twist" endings. And, when I was 9 years old, these shock finales may have worked. They don't now. At least Jose Delbo's got the stock EC crowd look down.

JS: I'd kill for a second-rate EC caliber tale right about now.

"The Doll Man!"

Jack: A rather disgusting story. The mob "accidentally" kills Caulfield by beating him to death. You're right that this seems like a pale imitation of an EC setup.

Peter: The worst is saved for last. In "Treasure Hunt," a guide is hired to help an archaeologist hunt for a hidden treasure, rumored to be stashed under a waterfall somewhere in the jungles of the Amazon but the guide gets greedy and offs his customer in order to keep the booty for himself. The dead man's ghost comes back to play a game of musical waterfalls. These tales are simply too short to work up any characterizations, that's a given, but we still need a fresh plot and a genuinely surprising climax now and then.

Jack: This one wasn't even very interesting! At least it was short. In the close of the frame story, the two hags run away from Cynthia's pad, not wanting to be left alone with these "plastic horrors." Cute.

John: Okay Jack, time for you and Cynthia to get a room...

"Treasure Hunt"

Retro-Ads!

At last, by 1969, we could live a little and have fun with the Nazis!

Coming Next Week!

Star-Spangled DC War Stories Part 5: October 1959

By Corporals Enfantino and Seabrook

Ross Andru & Mike Esposito

All-American Men at War 74

"The Minute Commandoes!"
Story by Robert Kanigher
Art by Ross Andru & Mike Esposito

"No Boots for an Ace!"
Story by Bob Haney
Art by Mort Drucker

"Everyday is D-Day!"
Story by Hank Chapman
Art by Jack Abel

PE: Perhaps wanting to tap into the science fiction vibe infesting the DC hero titles, Robert Kanigher conjures up the maiden voyage of "The Minute Commandoes," soldiers bathed in a strange green light that transforms them into insect-sized warriors. It's not clear, from the outset, which side is actually using the ray - is it the allies utilizing it to sneak soldiers across enemy lines or is the axis zapping their enemies into more easily defeatable microbes? You get the answer finally midway through. A strange slice of fantasy that would have worked better, with a little shuffling, in a title like Challengers of the Unknown. Surprisingly enough, this was the only adventure of the world's smallest fighting men but not the last we'll see of a melding of military and fantasy. I would have thought this concept would provide gist for a multitude of stories (as opposed to an ostensibly one-note idea like The Haunted Tank) but, possibly, readers hungry for war-time action weren't ready for a heaping helping of science fiction with their bayonets.

"The Minute Commandoes!"

JS: Finally, a little DC science fiction in amongst the GIs! It has been well-documented by historians of the comics that DC was able to revive the superhero genre in the 1950s by focusing on sci-fi aspects in their stories. I, for one, am glad to see this spread to the war books! In one of the Combat Corner letters pages this month, a reader writes in to ask if the DC war comic stories are all true. I wonder what that reader thought of "The Minute Commandoes"?

"No Boots for an Ace!"

PE: Though I really didn't care for "The Minute Commandoes," the other two stories this issue are top-notch. "No Boots For an Ace" is a predecessor to the popular "Enemy Ace" strip (which will show up on our radar when we enter 1965). A World War I pilot dreams of going after the infamous German ace Von Tulz, whose calling card is a pair of boots, dropped on the American air fields, signifying another kill. Our young hero, known only as Brand, finds himself face to propeller with the legendary German and defeats him through a series of tricks and maneuvers. Exciting script, crisp dialogue and fabulous art by Mort Drucker make this a pick for Best of the Month. In the closer, "Every Day is D-Day," a soldier tries to convince himself that D-Day is just one day and that it'll get better at +1. By the end of the story, our once-naive GI is a grizzled veteran of war and comes to realize that there is no "easy day." Jack Abel's art here is a bit more sketchy than we've seen previously but, in this case, it seems to fit the story.

JS: Peter, thanks for saving me the trouble of looking up when Enemy Ace starts! The Drucker story features some cool drawings of WWI biplanes. The only thing missing was Snoopy!

Jerry Grandenetti & Jack Adler

G.I. Combat 77

"H-Hour for a Gunner!"
Story by Bob Haney
Art by Russ Heath

"Get the Carriers"
Story by Bob Haney
Art by Joe Kubert

"Last on a Match"
Story by Hank Chapman
Art by Ross Andru & Mike Esposito

PE: Individuals from the various armed forces are spotlighted in "H-Hour for a Gunner," a meandering story that goes from Point A to Point F without ever looking back and manages to work nonetheless. We see  men preparing for D-Day, performing integral duties as if a giant puzzle were being constructed (and that's just what was happening): frogmen, pilots, a battleship crew, and a lone machine gunner. The latter becomes the focal point (and the hook) of the story when he's forced to face an entire platoon of Japanese soldiers with one damaged machine gun. His superior's assertion that the boy might "look like a man, sound like a man" but would never be "a real man" still rings in his ears as he mows down the enemy. Later, after allies land on the beach, one of his comrades looks over at the sleeping gunner, slumped over his savior, and remarks "Whoever he is -- He's a man -- a real man!" This one's all over the place, like an edited version of a three-hour epic, but it's got some powerful images that can't fail to impress. Another wild cover by Jerry Grandenetti (check out all that pink!).

"H-Hour for a Gunner!"

JS: This was a confusing story but it was powerful nonetheless. I thought that the Japanese had made the island a giant booby trap, but when the soldiers head off into the jungle and did not get blown up I figured I misunderstood. It was pretty neat how the lone gunner wiped out an entire boatload of enemy soldiers and the waves washed away every trace of the carnage.

PE: "Get the Carriers" is a nicely told story of an American fighter pilot determined to sink an enemy battleship and his Japanese counterpart, a kamikaze pilot with the exact same goal and determination. The finale, with our hero parachuting from the descending burning wreckage of his jet, is a bit far-fetched but the whole is very exciting. The only weak story this issue is "Last on a Match," a pretty far-fetched yarn that served only one purpose for me: it explains the origin of the phrase "three on a match" and why it's bad luck. A fascinating tidbit within a story that's not worth writing home for (even though the main protagonist did so).

"Last on a Match!"

JS: It's rare that I'd describe a Joe Kubert story as forgettable, but "Get the Carriers" fits that bill. It's too short at six pages to build much momentum and the battle scenes are bland. Only those Kubert faces are worth a look. I thought "Last on a Match!" was clever and I, like you, did not know the origin of the expression. As in the Mlle. Marie story this month (see below), Dad tells son about an event from WWI and son uses it to his advantage in Korea.

Russ Heath

Our Army at War 87

"Calling Easy Co.!"
Story by Bob Kanigher
Art by Joe Kubert

"Tiger Twister!"
Story by Bob Haney
Art by Mort Drucker

"Worm's-Eye-War!"
Story by Bob Haney
Art by Russ Heath

PE: Sgt. Rock narrates the story of four men of Easy who have to head up No-Return Hill and stop an enemy tank in "Calling Easy Co.!" After the fireworks end, the rest of Easy climb the hill to see what became of their comrades. I'm a bit confused as to what they find. At various levels of the climb they find the soldiers, affected by shell shock but holding their ground. Why would the tank have left these men alive? They'd have blasted them to Kingdom Come. Was the only  way Kanigher could get fatalities past the Comics Code to disguise the dead as "shell-shocked"?

"Calling Easy Co.!"

JS: None of them are dead. They heroically defeated the Nazis and held their ground. What puzzles me is when we're going to start getting some continuity in this series. Other than Rock, the men of Easy Co. seem to come and go every month. We're supposed to think of this as a veteran fighting team where everyone has been around so long that they have grown tough together. So why don't I recognize any of them yet? With that said, the Sgt. Rock series is easily the best out of the five comics we're currently reading.

PE: The other two stories this issue also involve tanks. In "Tiger Twister," three GIs work in tandem to wear down a super German tank, one that Germans assert can only be destroyed by an American bazooka. As usual, the Nazis in this story are portrayed as smug, overconfident, and arrogant and the three GIs do indeed slow the pace of the monster and then destroy it with a well-placed bazooka shell. I'm really loving Mort Drucker's art in these war books but there's not much of a story to complement it. A "Worm's-Eye View" is what a paratrooper gets when he's stuck in the middle of a street in Nazi-occupied France and a tank is barreling down on him. He must make do with the weapons at hand and, in the end, survives thanks to some well-placed bazooka men.

JS: I don't know how the soldier in "Worm's-Eye-War!" didn't get shot about ten times. This was one of those stories where he seemed to be bulletproof. The last panel was a surprise, however:

Ooh-la-la!

Jerry Grandenetti

Our Fighting Forces 50

"My Pal, the Pooch!"
Story by Robert Kanigher
Art by Jerry Grandenetti

"It's Always Six O'Clock"
Story by Hank Chapman
Art by Russ Heath

"The Walking Bridge"
Story by Bob Haney
Art by Jack Abel

PE: There aren't too many DC war stories (at least so far) that I would label disposable but I guess it had to happen sooner or later. "My Pal, the Pooch" is sugar sweet and juvenile and doesn't give me much hope in a series that I thought was weak in the first place. The fact that an incredibly smart rover has been introduced to the equation, and effectively replaced the "Sarge" in "Gunner and Sarge," drops it even lower. My research (aka Wikipedia) tells me we'll have to slog through the cutesy adventures of "Gunner, Sarge, and Pooch" until OFF #94. I sure hope you like dogs, Jack.  I know the army employed intelligent canines in the service but this one tests believability at all turns. Screw the pooch.

JS: This was a pretty worthless story, even if the dog was cute. I guess they ran out of ways to have Gunner trail Sarge around blowing things up.

No! Bad dog!

PE: A tail gunner thinks the grass is always greener on the other side of the plane but then has those beliefs tested when he has to fill in for wounded gunners in other seats of the aircraft. "It's Always Six O'Clock" is a short but gripping story with fabulous Heath art. I know I never really paid much attention to the war comics before we began this blog but it seems as though the only artist whose name came up, in the few articles I read on the subject, was Joe Kubert. What a revelation Russ Heath has been. The dynamic way he choreographs air battles elevates even the weaker scripts.

JS: I'm with you. The script is strictly one note but we can just sit back and enjoy that art.

"It's Always Six O'Clock"

PE: I would categorize "The Walking Bridge" as an "educational" strip rather than a "story" script." Some of these are just too brief to involve the reader but they do provide us with a look into how the war was run (and won). Here we find out that the army sometimes had to build floating bridges across rivers to provide crossing for soldiers. The protagonist must fight off enemy forces while a replacement bridge is built.

Jerry Grandenetti

Star-Spangled War Stories 86

"A Medal for Marie!"
Story by Robert Kanigher
Art by Mort Drucker

"U-Boat to Nowhere!"
Story by Bob Haney
Art by Russ Heath

"Combat Kayo List!"
Story by Bob Haney
Art by Jack Abel

JS: I finally get my wish in "A Medal for Marie!" when we get to see a new war. Marie finds herself smack dab in the middle of a target when she has to radio an Allied bomber jet plane to drop its load right on top of her. She recalls being a little girl and hearing her father tell her about a similar instance in the Great War. Her grandfather also had the same experience in a prior war. I had to resort to Wikipedia to figure out which war grandpa was in because it looked the same as  WWI and WWII. I concluded that it had to be the Franco-Prussian War of 1870. In any case, Marie's memories give her strength and she does the right thing. She gets a medal of sorts for her heroism--a rose pinned on her blouse. Mort Drucker draws Mlle. Marie this time around and it's certainly different--he's better at men than women, especially faces!

Mlle. Marie needs to see zee plastic surgeon!

PE: I've been hard on the Mademoiselle Marie series as it hasn't really presented me yet with evidence that it can support interesting stories featuring a nattily-dressed French seductress with a machine gun. While the Mlle. is still a little too perky (whenever does this dame find the time to stop between bursts and do her lipstick and rouge?), at least the story held my interest this time. You're right though, Jack, Drucker doesn't draw the scrumptious Marie half as gorgeous as Grandenetti has the last two installments. But that's okay with me. Someone should have taught the Nazis to at least search for a pulse before declaring one of their most wanted enemies dead.

JS: "Combat Kayo List!" is funny. The Sarge has been told to make a list of all of the equipment and ammunition left in Charlie Company's 2d Platoon. He gets so wrapped up in making the list at first that he tells his men not to fire on the enemy because it will mess up his tally. Eventually, everything on the list gets used up and he has to make a new one--of all the enemy items the platoon destroyed!

PE: "U-Boat to Nowhere" is almost a fragment of a story, feeling as though we've wandered into the halfway point of a larger story, but it's exciting and has some nice Heath art. A frogman must face off against the U-Boat responsible for destroying his rendezvous ship. He manages to plant explosives on the sub thanks to a helpful shark.

"Combat Kayo List!"

Coming Next Week!

The Hitchcock Project: Henry Slesar Part Six-"The Right Price" [4.22]

by Jack Seabrook

"The Right Price" is based on Henry Slesar's short story, "Make Me An Offer," which was first published in the December 1958 issue of Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine under the pseudonym Jay Street. The story is slight but enjoyable; the show is less successful.

Slesar's story tells of Mort and Jocelyn Bonner, a not so happily married couple who have both grown fat with advancing age and who now sleep in separate rooms. One night, lying in bed unable to sleep, Mort hears a noise downstairs and gets up to investigate. He discovers a burglar, who invites him to take a seat on the living room sofa. Frightened, Mort encourages the thief to take what he wants and depart, but the man proposes an arrangement where Mort tells him where the valuables are and is later able to collect on his insurance.

Mort proposes another sort of deal. The two men discuss having the thief murder Jocelyn and agree on a price of $3500. The thief goes upstairs to carry out the deed and Mort waits below until it seems to be taking too long. He ventures upstairs, finds the thief in Jocelyn's room, and is suddenly overtaken and killed by suffocation with a pillow. Jocelyn thanks the thief and gets out her checkbook.

"Make Me An Offer" is well written, and Slesar makes good use of descriptive phrases and recurring motifs. "There was a moon, plump and full in the center of his bedroom window," describes the view from Mort's room at night. His pillow is uncomfortable and he punches it "savagely." He imagines Jocelyn raiding the refrigerator, "tip-toeing around like an over-weight ballerina" and thinks of her figure as "elephantine." The burglar wears "a blue-dyed Eisenhower jacket" as well as "dirty sneakers and workman's gloves"--he is said to resemble "a jockey out of silks." The thief, never given a name, converses with Mort amiably, his phrasing recalling the speech patterns of Damon Runyan's characters, best remembered in the stage musical and film Guys and Dolls.

The story takes place in a suburb of New York City and the thief remarks that he "worked the numbers in Jersey." Mort suggests he try robbing homes in Scarsdale. The imagery of moon, weight, and pillow returns at the story's end, when the narrator comments that "the moon . . . was still plump and imposing." The face of the moon is said to bear "a distinct resemblance to Jocelyn's own fat features," and right before Mort is killed, "Jocelyn's moon of a face exploded into a brilliant nova" and "another white moon was descending towards him"--the moon this time is the pillow that will smother him, bringing Jocelyn, plumpness, moon and pillow together at the climax.

The unhappy home office

The short story was adapted for television by Bernard C. Schoenfeld and retitled "The Right Price." Although the story had been published originally as by Jay Street, Slesar is given credit as its author onscreen. It was broadcast as part of the fourth season of Alfred Hitchcock Presents and premiered on Sunday, March 8, 1959. While the Hitchcock series excelled at certain kinds of humor, such as the host's introductory and conclusory remarks, this episode falls flat precisely because it tries too hard to be funny. Instead, it commits the cardinal sin of being boring.

The program opens with a slow dolly shot in on Mort and Jocelyn working unhappily together in an office. Jocelyn, played by Jane Dulo, suddenly gets up from her desk and whips off her dress, revealing a slip underneath and announcing that she is going to bed--the office is shown to be a room in the house they share. Unlike in the story, Mort and Jocelyn sleep in the same bedroom (in twin beds, of course). Mort comments that her first husband fell out of an open window to his death and Jocelyn tells him "you'll never get a cent of my money," suggesting a financial motivation for the subsequent murder plot.

Allyn Joslyn as Mort

When Mort encounters the burglar downstairs, the man, who is never given a name in the short story, tells Mort: "Just call me The Cat. I read that once in a story. 'Call me The Cat,' the handsome burglar said." This is probably a reference to Hitchcock's 1955 film, To Catch a Thief, which starred handsome Cary Grant as a cat burglar. In "The Right Price," The Cat is played strictly for laughs by Eddie Foy, Jr. The episode's incidental music plays along and sounds like a laugh track on a situation comedy, complete with "wah-wah" horns.

Foy picks up little items around the house and pockets them, though Allen Joslyn, as Mort, grabs his cigarette lighter back when Foy moves to pocket it. The chatter between the two men wakes Jocelyn briefly but Mort lies to her and tells her that he is listening to the radio and having a midnight snack. The chat between Mort and The Cat seems to go on and on; at one point, Foy reclines in front of the fireplace with a sandwich and a beer! A beat cop named Joe even stops by because he saw a light on in the house; Mort sends him on his way with a promise to stop by the station house to praise his neighborhood patrol skills.

Foy's oddly gleeful expression
moments after the murder

The final scene is surprisingly brutal. The burglar knocks Mort out with the butt of his gun then smothers him on the bedroom floor with a pillow. It is unusual to see a murder committed so graphically; what is even stranger is the follow up, as The Cat beams at Jocelyn and tells her to "Make it out to cash. Five thousand." Cheerful music is heard as the picture fades out on The Cat's goofy grin.

Eddie Foy, Jr. (1905-1983) plays The Cat and recalls Phil Silvers with his big, black glasses and silly smile. Born Edwin Fitzgerald, Jr., he was the son of a vaudevillian. He was on Broadway from 1929-1961, in movies from 1913 and on TV from 1957. Memorable movies in which he appeared included Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942), The Pajama Game (1957) and The Bells Are Ringing (1960) This was his only appearance on the Hitchcock series. As a child, he was part of the act called The Seven Little Foys; a 1955 movie was made about them but he was not in it.

Mort is played by Allen Joslyn (1901-1981), who was on Broadway from 1918-1952 and appeared onstage with Boris Karloff from 1941-1944 in Arsenic and Old Lace. He was in movies from 1937 and on TV from 1953, appearing just this once on the Hitchcock show. Memorable movies included Howard Hawks's Only Angels Have Wings (1939), Preston Sturges's The Great McGinty (1940), and The Horn Blows at Midnight (1945), a movie that starred Jack Benny and one which the great comedian never lived down.

Jane Dulo as Jocelyn

In the role of Jocelyn, Jane Dulo (1917-1994) creates another in a long line of acerbic women. Dulo appeared in countless TV episodes from 1951 to 1992 as well as the occasional movie; like her two co-stars, this was her only time on the Hitchcock series.

Bernard C. Schoenfeld (1907-1990), who wrote the teleplay, did much better work than this in the films Phantom Lady (1944) and The Dark Corner (1946). He wrote for TV from 1952-1975 and was responsible for 16 episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents, including "The Night the World Ended."

Finally, Arthur Hiller (1923- ), whose direction of this episode is so uninspired, helmed 16 other episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents, as well as three sub-par episodes of Thriller. He has been making movies since 1957 and directed the classic comedy The In-Laws (1979).

"The Right Price" may be purchased on DVD here or seen for free online here.

The murder

Sources:

Grams, Martin, and Patrik Wikstrom. The Alfred Hitchcock Presents Companion. Churchville, MD: OTR Pub., 2001. Print.

IMDb. IMDb.com, n.d. Web. 23 June 2013.

"The Right Price." Alfred Hitchcock Presents. CBS. 8 Mar. 1959. Television.

Slesar, Henry. "Make Me an Offer." 1958. Clean Crimes and Neat Murders: Alfred Hitchcock's Hand Picked Selection of Stories by Henry Slesar. Ed. Alfred Hitchcock. New York: Avon, 1960. 137-43. Print.

Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, n.d. Web. 23 June 2013.