The Hitchcock Project-Richard Fielder, Part Two-To Catch a Butterfly [8.19]

by Jack Seabrook

Conflicts between fathers and sons are nothing new, going back at least as far as Oedipus, the mythical king of Ancient Thebes. In his second and last teleplay for The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, Richard Fielder updates the struggle to 1963 and, in a gripping episode, demonstrates how past and present acts of violence shake the foundations of an outwardly serene suburban neighborhood.

"To Catch a Butterfly" is an original teleplay, not based on any short story or novel, which aired on CBS on Friday, February 1, 1963. Fielder wrote a draft of the teleplay as early as February 1961, well before the Alfred Hitchcock TV show had expanded to hour length; this first version, titled "Can't Catch A Butterfly," may have been written for one of the other anthology shows to which Fielder contributed scripts around this time, such as Alcoa Premiere. By the time it aired, two years later, the title had been changed.

Bradford Dillman as Bill Nelson

As the show begins, Bill and Janet Nelson have just moved to a home in the suburbs. A young, childless couple, they are not prepared for Eddie Stander, the little boy who lives next door. Bill first meets Eddie when he finds the boy teasing Charlie, the Nelsons' dog ("'can't catch a butterfly,'" taunts Eddie). Eddie's father, a brash salesman named Jack, defends his son after Bill finds Eddie seemingly mistreating the dog inside his father's garage. Bill begins to suspect that Eddie may be more than just a mischievous child.

When Bill catches Eddie searching through the glove compartment in his car and chases him home, Eddie drops several sheets of paper. Picking them up, Bill sees that they are covered with disturbing drawings, but when Bill confronts the boy in the garage and threatens to tell his father, the child responds: "'You say one word to him, I'll kill your dog.'" When Bill speaks to Jack, the boy's father denies that Eddie did anything wrong and reveals that, when Eddie was four years old, "'that kid got his in a way he'll never forget'" and has never since lied to his father. The next day, when Bill's house is empty, Eddie breaks in and murders the dog.

Diana Hyland as Janet Nelson

Bill calls the police but, when Jack claims that Bill has been "slapping [Eddie] around,'" Bill drops the charges. The next day, Bill is called away from home to play golf with his boss. He fears for Janet's safety, but she insists she'll be fine and locks the doors after her husband leaves, unaware that Eddie is already in the house. From upstairs, she hears a sound in the basement and investigates, only to see that Bill's power drill is on and running, lying on the workbench. She walks down the stairs to the basement and trips and falls over a wire that Eddie has strung across the bottom step; while she lies on the floor, her hand stuck between two wooden balusters, Eddie picks up the power drill and advances toward her. The electric cord pulls out of the wall right before he reaches her and she screams, at which point Eddie drops the drill and looks at his own hand, grabbing his wrist with a horrified look on his face.

Edward Asner as Jack Stander

That night, Bill returns home and confronts Jack in the garage, only to learn what happened when Eddie was four: his father caught him in a lie and slapped him across his face as hard as he could. When the child fought back, Jack dragged Eddie across the kitchen and forced his son's hand into a pot of boiling water. Jack insists that Eddie has not told a lie since that day. Meanwhile, Eddie takes a gas can from a shelf and lights the garage on fire before trying to prevent the adults from escaping. They emerge and chase the boy upstairs to his room. In the hall, the final confrontation takes place, ending when Eddie's mother and a policeman appear in order to take the boy away. Bill consoles Eddie and urges Jack to help his son.

"To Catch a Butterfly" is harrowing and Fielder does a brilliant job of developing the main characters and contrasting personalities and parenting styles between Bill Nelson and Jack Stander. Bill reveals that, when he was twelve years old, his father disappeared and was never heard from again except for a single Christmas card. All Bill has left of his absent father is a shamrock pin that he wore on his honeymoon; it represents a happy memory and, at the end of the episode, Bill gives it to Eddie. Bill had told Janet that he hoped to give the pin to his own son someday and, in giving it to Eddie, Bill symbolically adopts the troubled boy.

Mickey Sholdar as Eddie

From the start of the show, Bill reacts to aggressive behavior with patience and kindness. He is friendly to a brusque moving man and gives him a tip, he is kind to Eddie after he finds the boy teasing his dog and, when Janet tells Bill that he let the movers "'walk all over'" him, he refuses to take the bait. Bill is a good man, but his encounters with Jack and Eddie make him doubt himself. Partway through the show, he confesses to Janet that he is having a crisis of confidence and is "'scared of my own shadow.'" In the final confrontation with Jack in the garage, Bill is more forceful and, in response, Jack nearly breaks down in tears. Yet in the end, when Eddie is about to be taken away by the police, Bill is gentle with the boy, giving hope that his kindness might succeed in helping the child heal from trauma.

In contrast to Bill Nelson is Jack Stander. On more than one occasion, Jack presents the image of a macho man, telling Bill that Janet is "'a real knockout'" and later inviting the Nelsons to come over and play a game of spin the bottle. Jack offhandedly admits to Bill early on that his family has moved three times in five years; we never learn whether this is because of Jack's job or because of trouble caused by Eddie. Either way, the child is growing up in an unstable environment. Each time Bill confronts Jack with Eddie's misdeeds, the man angrily denies any fault on the part of his son, either blaming another boy (for the disturbing drawings) or claiming that Bill is lying. When Eddie sets the garage on fire in Jack's presence, the father can no longer ignore the proof of his son's guilt.

June Dayton as Barbara Stander

Jack is not a one-note character, however, as is shown when he confesses what he did to his son when the boy was four years old. He has fooled himself into thinking that the act of violence cured the boy of lying, but as he continues to talk, nearly crying as he insists that if he can "'keep him in line'" and "'keep it hushed up'" then "'he'll grow out of it,'" it becomes apparent that Jack Stander is a man without the tools to deal with a difficult parenting situation that he was instrumental in creating. Perhaps he was bullied as a child by his own father and had no other role model to follow when dealing with Eddie; whatever the case, his approach to relationships with both his neighbors and his family members seems doomed to fail.

Most interesting is the character of Eddie. The actor playing him was thirteen years old, about the same age as Bill Nelson was when his father disappeared, and the parallel between Bill and Eddie is clear. Bill suffered trauma on the cusp of adolescence but grew up to be a gentle man; what will the traumatic events portrayed in this episode do to Eddie? Bill's kind speech to the boy at the end, when he gives him the treasured shamrock pin, provides hope for a similar trajectory into maturity, yet Eddie suffered unthinkable trauma when he was just four years old, and it is this event that is identified as the source of his present, horrific behavior.

Than Wyenn as Dr. Burns

From the first time Bill speaks to Jack, Stander refers to his son in terms that are less than human. "'He usually snaps to when he hears his master's voice,'" says Jack, "'I mean, that kid is really trained.'" "His master's voice" is a term that refers to the trademark of the RCA Victor company that showed a dog listening to a phonograph. When Janet sees Eddie outside the screen door looking in, she tells him, "'Don't you think you should knock instead of scratching like a dog?'" Eddie replies, "'I am a dog,'" which suggests that he has internalized the characterization of himself as less than human. The dog metaphor continues when Bill tells Janet, referring to his boss, that "'I won't snap at every little bone that guy tosses our way'"; in a sense, Bill and Eddie are different versions of the same little boy whose father mistreated them. When Eddie teases, mistreats, and finally kills Bill's dog, perhaps he is destroying a representation of himself. In the final scene, when Eddie is about to be taken away by the police, he runs to Bill and clings to him rather than to his father. Does Eddie sense a kindred soul or is he just gravitating toward the man less likely to do him harm?

And what of the women? Eddie's mother, Barbara, is not seen often, but she seems nervous when she comes to the door to speak to Bill, who is looking for Eddie. Has she seen this sequence of events play out before? Does she fear that Eddie's behavior will necessitate another move? At the end, it is Barbara who brings the police to "'take my baby,'" a step that Jack has resisted. She holds the boy and says that she loves him, but she has never been strong enough to protect her son from her husband.

Clegg Hoyt as the moving man

Much stronger is Janet Nelson, who supports and encourages her husband throughout the ordeal. Frustrated with the movers, she snaps at Bill, but his patient response allows her to realize her bad mood and apologize. Janet uses self-deprecating humor to deal with situations throughout the episode and, when Bill doubts himself, she tells him that "'You don't know who you are or what you can do until you try.'" In a happy moment she suggests, "'Let's have a baby'" and, when Bill is discouraged by his inability to get through to Eddie, she tells him, "'You're a wonderful husband and you are going to be a wonderful father.'" Janet and Bill are well-matched; each combines traits of sensitivity and strength that allow them to be what the other needs at any given time.

Authority outside the two families comes in two forms in "To Catch a Butterfly." There are the police, who respond when Bill reports that Eddie killed his dog and who finally come in the end to take Eddie away. They represent the harsh, black and white approach to justice favored by Jack Stander. Representing a different type of authority is the doctor who emerges from Janet's room when Bill comes home after she has fallen down the stairs. He tells Bill that Eddie needs psychiatric help and says that he will report the boy to the authorities. His approach is more like that of Bill, who begins to realize that Eddie needs therapy after he sees the disturbing drawings. In the end, a mixture of both types of authority is necessary to deal with the child: the police handle the immediate need to calm the situation and remove Eddie from his home, while the medical professionals will address the cause of his mental illness and deal with his long-term needs.

John Newton as the policeman

"To Catch a Butterfly" is a fascinating look at parenting styles in America in the 1950s and 1960s. Eddie was four years old in the 1950s, when his father took the adage "spare the rod and spoil the child" to horrifying extremes. By 1963, when the episode aired, new ideas were taking hold, and corporal punishment was no longer seen as the only way for a father to discipline a son. The portrait of the horror behind a calm suburban front in this episode prefigures similar commentary in films like Risky Business and American Beauty; Eddie's extreme behavior shows just how damaging parental violence can be.

The year 1963 was a particularly violent one in American life. In the months that followed the airing of this episode, racial tensions led to the murder of Medgar Evers and the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham; the year ended with the assassination of President Kennedy. In retrospect, it is not surprising that the seemingly idyllic Eisenhower years gave way to the upheaval of the decade that followed, and the events portrayed in "To Catch a Butterfly" can be read as a metaphor for what was going on in the country as a whole.

John Pickard and Andy Romano

In addition to a great teleplay, "To Catch a Butterfly" features outstanding direction by David Lowell Rich (1920-2001), who elicits strong performances from the lead actors and keeps the action moving relentlessly toward the climax. The scene in the basement, where Eddie menaces Janet with a power drill, is a classic scene of horror and it demonstrates that TV shows were not afraid to frighten their audiences in the early 1960s. Rich directed many TV shows from 1950 to 1987, as well as a number of films. He won an Emmy in 1978. This was one of two episodes of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour that he directed.

Bradford Dillman (1930-2018) gives a sensitive performance as Bill Nelson. Dillman began acting on stage, in film, and on TV in the 1950s. He was on The Alfred Hitchcock Hour twice ("Isabel" was the other episode) and Night Gallery once and continued acting until 1995. In 1997, he published an autobiography entitled Are You Anybody?: An Actor's Life. In 1963, he married model Suzy Parker, one of the most famous and beautiful models in America at that time.

The role of Janet Nelson is played by Diana Hyland (1936-1977). Born Diana Gentner, Hyland appeared mainly on TV from 1955 to 1977. She was in one other episode of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, "Beyond the Sea of Death," she was on The Twilight Zone, and she was a regular on Peyton Place from 1968 to 1969. Hyland was romantically involved with John Travolta after they met while filming a TV movie; she was 40 and he was 22. She died of breast cancer at age 41.

Edward Asner (1929-2021) plays Jack Stander as a man who is gruff on the surface but who reveals unexpected depth when challenged. This was Asner's only appearance on the Hitchcock TV show, but he had a long career on TV and in film from 1957 to his death in 2021, winning seven Emmy Awards along the way. Asner is best known for his portrayal of Lou Grant, first on The Mary Tyler Moore Show  (1970-1977) and then on Lou Grant (1977-1982); Jack Stander can be seen as an early version of Grant, albeit a more violent one.

The difficult role of Eddie is played by Mickey Sholdar (1949- ), whose career was mostly on television from 1960 to 1975. He was best known as a regular on The Famer's Daughter (1963-1966). He did not appear in any other episodes of the Hitchcock TV show.

In smaller roles:

• June Dayton (1923-1994) as Barbara Stander. She was born Mary Jane Wetzel in Dayton, Ohio, and took the city's name as her stage name. She appeared mainly on TV from 1950 to 1986 and this was her only role on the Hitchcock TV show.
• Than Wyenn (1919-2015) as Dr. Burns; his screen career lasted from 1949 to 1985 and included three episodes of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, including "Triumph," and appearances on The Twilight Zone, Thriller, and Night Gallery.
• Clegg Hoyt (1910-1967) as the moving man who accepts a tip from Bill; he was on screen from 1955-1967 and he was in six episodes of the Hitchcock series, including "The Day of the Bullet." He was also on The Twilight Zone, Thriller, and Star Trek.
• John Newton (1925-2012) as the policeman who comes to the door after Bill's dog has been killed; his screen career lasted from 1957 to 2000 and he also appeared on The Twilight Zone (twice) and The Outer Limits, though this was his only role on the Hitchcock TV show.
• Andy Romano (1936-2022) as the second fireman; he was on screen from 1961 to 2003, including an appearance on Batman and parts in eight episodes of the Hitchcock show, including "The Black Curtain."
• John Pickard (1913-1993) as the first fireman; he played many small parts in films and on TV in a career that lasted from 1941 to 1987. This was his only appearance on the Hitchcock TV show.

Watch "To Catch a Butterfly" online here.

Richard Fielder's two teleplays for The Alfred Hitchcock Hour are both strong episodes. "Night of the Owl" is a successful adaptation of a novel that makes significant changes to the climax, while "To Catch a Butterfly" is a thrilling original script. Both episodes examine relationships between fathers and children: in "Night of the Owl," a father goes to great lengths to try to protect his daughter from the  knowledge of the truth about her birth parents, while "To Catch a Butterfly" examines the damage that overly harsh punishment by a father can cause to a son. It's too bad Fielder didn't write more scripts for the series!

Sources:

"Archives West Finding Aid." Richard Fielder Papers - Archives West, archiveswest.orbiscascade.org/ark:80444/xv778738. Accessed 15 Jan. 2024.

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

IMDb, www.imdb.com.

"To Catch a Butterfly."  The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, season 1, episode 19, CBS, 1 February 1963.

Wikipedia, www.wikipedia.org.

Listen to Al Sjoerdsma discuss "The End of Indian Summer" here!

In two weeks: Our series on Irving Elman concludes with a look at "Murder Me Twice," starring Phyllis Thaxter!