The Hitchcock Project-Lonely Place by Francis Irby Gwaltney [10.6]

by Jack Seabrook

"Lonely Place" was based on the short story of the same name by C.B. Gilford that was published in the February 1960 issue of Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine. It was credited to Douglas Farr, one of Gilford's pen names, because Gilford had another story in the same issue under his real name.

Standing at the front door one hot July day, Stella Cousins sees a man walking along the back road that passes by her house, "ten miles from nowhere." The man sees her and stops. He walks down the "dusty dirt drive" toward the house, observing the peach trees in the orchard to the left and then staring at Stella, causing her to feel fear. She speaks to Emery, her husband, who ignores her request not to hire the man and who is more interested in getting help picking the peaches that are ripening on the trees.

"Lonely Place" was
first published here

While Stella and Emery argue, the stranger walks in through the kitchen door and asks Emery if he needs help. Emery chides the man for walking in uninvited, but Stella realizes that he may be afraid of the stranger. The stranger apologizes and Emery agrees to hire him. Stella feeds the man, whose name is Jesse, and he and Emery start to pick. Alone, Stella looks in the dresser mirror and thinks of how Emery married her to get "a cheap hired hand." She wonders why Jesse chose their home and, at dinner that evening, Jesse takes out a switchblade and carves up three peaches to eat.

After Jesse goes to bed, Stella asks Emery to take her to the hotel in town, but he resists and she relents. Emery arises early the next morning to take the peaches to the cannery, leaving Stella alone with Jesse. He asks why she is so afraid of him and reveals that he stopped at her home because he could see that she was scared of him. He admits that women don't want him around and says that he made one of them "'real sorry.'" Emery returns, boasting about having sold his peaches, and Stella finds herself unable to tell her husband about her troubling conversation with Jesse.

Clouds begin to gather and the radio announcer warns of a cool front moving in. Emery and Jesse spend the day picking peaches and, that evening, Emery settles into the easy chair to listen for news of the weather. Stella slips into the bedroom, packs a suitcase, and climbs out the window. Before she can escape, Jesse corners her in the darkness. She can hear the radio from inside the house and she screams loudly before Jesse's hand covers her mouth. Jesse tells Stella that her husband is a "'slave-driver'" and that Jesse wants Emery to come outside, pulling out his switchblade and threatening to carve the man into "'little chunks the size of his peaches.'"

Emery does not emerge and Stella decides not to scream again; she hears a warning of hail on the radio and assumes that her husband is asleep and did not hear her cry. When Jesse hears the dire forecast, he begins to giggle like someone in an asylum; he climbs in Emery's truck and drives away. Stella goes back inside and wakes her husband, telling him that Jesse has stolen the truck. She offers to call the police, but Emery yells, "'there's going to be hail and the peaches are going to be ruined.'" Lightning flashes outside as Stella realizes that Emery heard her scream and did not come to her aid. She understands that "all her years of sacrifice had been wasted years."

Later, Stella calls the sheriff to report that Jesse stole the truck and stabbed her husband "'with that kitchen knife a dozen times at least...'" She hears hail on the roof and smiles.

"Lonely Place" paints a tragic picture of a woman whose love for her husband is tested one time too many, leading her to murder him and pin the blame on a lunatic stranger.

C(harles) B(ernard) Gilford (1920-2010), the author, was born in Kansas City, MO, and had early success as a writer when his novelette "The Liquid Man" was published as the cover story in the September 1941 issue of Fantastic Adventures (read the story here). After this auspicious beginning, Gilford's name disappears from the lists of story credits until 1953; he graduated from college in 1942 and served in the Air Force from 1942 to 1945. He began work as a college teacher in 1947 and would continue teaching speech, English, drama, theatre, and creative writing for the rest of his career. He married and had four children.

After earning an M.A. in 1947 and a Ph.D. in 1952, he became a prolific writer of short stories, with one source claiming that he wrote over 200 of them; publication dates for the short stories seem to have been concentrated in the years between 1953 and 1961. In addition to his own name, C.B. Gilford used pseudonyms such as Donald Campbell, Elizabeth Gregory, and Douglas Farr. He also wrote at least 11 short plays between 1957 and 1969, and at least four novels between 1961 and 1969. A handful of his works were adapted for television, including four episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents and "Lonely Place" for The Alfred Hitchcock Hour. His short stories often have been anthologized. He told Contemporary Authors that play writing was his first love and that, while he enjoyed writing short stories and novels, "they seem to be harder work, more words have to be gotten on paper. I have no great messages to communicate; just believe in a well-plotted story."

Francis Irby Gwaltney

The producers of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour chose novelist Francis Irby Gwaltney (1921-1981) to adapt Gilford's story for TV. He grew up in Arkansas and served in the Army in WWII, befriending Norman Mailer. Gwaltney wrote eight novels that were published between 1954 and 1974; the most well-known was The Day the Century Ended (1955), which was adapted for film as Between Heaven and Hell (1956); Rod Serling wrote a screenplay that was rejected as too long. "Lonely Place" was one of two teleplays that Gwaltney wrote that were filmed; the other was an episode of The Fugitive in 1965. Gwaltney's papers at the University of Arkansas also contain a teleplay for "The Letter of the Law," an episode of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour that appears not to have been filmed.

"Lonely Place" aired on Monday, November 16, 1964, on NBC. For the TV version Gwaltney made some significant alterations to Gilford's story while maintaining much of the plot. A new opening scene is added, where Emery sits at the kitchen table eating heartily while Stella serves him. A squirrel suddenly climbs up the outside of the kitchen screen door and Stella goes outside and treats it like a pet, holding it, feeding it, and talking to it; her face lights up and it seems like the pet is a substitute for the child she never had. This scene establishes Stella as a kind, gentle woman. While she is outside feeding the squirrel, she first sees Jesse and, unlike the story where she wants nothing to do with him from first sight, she suggests to her husband that he could use some help. "'Not at six dollars a day,'" he replies, adding a discussion of wages that is also absent from the story. Stella replies, "'Maybe you could get him cheaper'" and suggests five dollars a day. This exchange suggests that, at least in the beginning, Stella and Emery are used to working as a team.

Teresa Wright as Stella

Emery goes out and meets Jesse halfway before the two men enter the kitchen together. Emery introduces Jesse to Stella and, as soon as she sees him close up, she is afraid. Emery offers the rock-bottom wage of three dollars a day and Jesse accepts it; even a viewer unfamiliar with wages paid to itinerant peach pickers in the early 1960s understands that Emery is a cheapskate who is taking advantage of his power over a desperate man. In the story, Jesse pays little attention to Stella while he eats, but in the TV show, he stares at her chest and hips and almost leers before he pulls out a large knife (not a switchblade) to slice tomatoes.

This scene is extended in the TV show. Jesse eats while Stella does the dishes. She tries to question him but he reveals little about himself. He asks if the knife makes her nervous and she says yes. Outside, in the orchard, Stella asks Emery to get rid of Jesse; this conversation has been moved to a later point than where it occurs in the story in order to develop more justification for her fear. In the story, Stella is 32 years old; the actress playing her on TV, Teresa Wright, was 45 when the show was filmed, making her a more mature character. Stella comes back into the kitchen from the orchard to find Jesse still eating. He asks her if she told Emery about the knife and she says no. This is the first sign that the husband-and-wife relationship is starting to fray.

Pat Butttram as Emery

Jesse sees Stella's pet squirrel and suggests, "'Maybe I oughta kill him and you could make Emery and me a stew for supper.'" The drifter stands at the screen door and smiles broadly when he sees Stella feeding the squirrel, but right before Emery returns, Jesse rushes back to the table and sits down. The men begin to bond when Emery remarks that Stella feeds the squirrel better than she does him; Jesse's laugh in response seems insane. Outside, Jesse is cruel to the squirrel, kicking dirt on it, an action that is both a reflection of how he treats Stella and an indication of a mental disturbance that is likely to extend to violence toward people.

Alone in her bedroom, Stella hears the squirrel making noise and Jesse laughing. She rushes outside and finds the squirrel dead, at which point she screams and begins to sob. Emery rushes to her side and asks Jesse why he killed the squirrel; Jesse lies and claims that the animal attacked him. At this point he shows Emery his knife and the implication is that Emery now sees Jesse as a danger. Emery accepts what has happened and tells Jesse to get back to work; husband and wife are no longer a team and it is clear that picking peaches is more important to Emery than standing up for Stella. The addition of the squirrel to the TV show allows Gwaltney to show the viewer more about each of the human characters; it also makes Emery more pathetic and sets him up for his later death at Stella's hands.

After dinner, Jesse brandishes his knife and stands uncomfortably close to Stella. As he does in the story, Emery defends Jesse to Stella when she says she wants to go to a hotel. The subsequent scene in the kitchen between Jesse and Stella follows the corresponding scene in the story closely at first, but in the TV show, Jesse begins to give her orders, telling her to get molasses from the icebox for his flapjacks before grabbing her hands and telling her that he once hurt another woman. He insists that she call him Jesse, standing right behind her and giggling like a madman.

In the orchard, Jesse and Emery pick peaches while Stella stands below, packing the fruit in crates. She hears them talking about her as the men bond; Jesse admits that he killed the squirrel because he doesn't like animals and Emery thanks him and says that he married Stella so she would feed him. Gradually, scene by scene, Stella's trust in Emery erodes; this is different than the story, where Emery is not as unlikeable.

At dinner, Emery complains about the food and Stella goes to their bedroom and lies on the bed, distraught; the camera shot makes it look like she is in prison, her face trapped behind the bars of the bed frame. A scene is added where Emery questions her about Jesse but, when she confronts her husband about his remark in the orchard about having married her because she would feed him, she adds, "'Is that why we never had any children?'" This is not in the story and goes along with the scenes where she plays with the squirrel like it's a stand in for a child. Emery tells her that it was "'just man talk'" and that she will have to get used to Jesse.

As in the story, Emery settles down in the chair and Stella escapes out the window, where Jesse grabs her. As he holds her, he makes her tell him that he scared her and he caresses her hair, laughing like a maniac. The threat of rape is always below the surface in the TV show in the scenes where Jesse and Stella are alone together, and never more so than at this point. Jesse reveals that he knows that other peach farmers pay six dollars a day, while Emery pays three; he laughs manically and the scene is extended from the one in the story, as Jesse tortures Stella, holding her and encouraging her to scream. As lightning flashes, Jesse guesses, correctly, that Emery heard Stella scream but is a coward. Jesse puts his knife to Stella's throat but she refuses to scream, protecting her unworthy husband. This long scene is frightening and it is a credit to the actors that Jesse is so unpredictable and Stella so strong. Adding the death of the squirrel earlier in the show, followed by Stella's scream and Emery's rush to her side, shows the contrast in this later scene, when she screams and he does not respond.

Finally, Jesse seems to go off the deep end and Stella breaks away, running from him. He chases her, holding his knife and sticking it in his belt when he catches her, but she grabs the knife and now has the upper hand, menacing him. None of this happens in the story, where Jesse climbs in the truck and drives away after he hears the dire weather forecast on the radio. In the show, once Stella has the knife and is menacing Jesse, he turns and runs, stealing the truck and driving off. In the story, Stella does not have Jesse's knife, but in the TV show she does. She goes back into the house and puts the knife down on the kitchen table.

Once the realization dawns on her that Emery was awake and heard her scream but did nothing, he admits it all, explaining that he thought Jesse wouldn't kill her but would kill him and that she could take it until he settled down. Besides that, Emery would still have a cheap worker. At this point, Stella walks to the kitchen and picks up Jesse's knife. There is a dissolve to the final scene, where she telephones the sheriff. In the TV show, she says that she pulled the knife out of Emery's body after Jesse left, in an effort to help her husband, but when she hangs up the phone, she goes to her dead husband and removes the knife from his back, clearly doing it to explain why her fingerprints are on the handle. Having Stella kill Emery with Jesse's knife makes more sense than in the story, where she uses a kitchen knife; this way, it supports her story that Jesse was the killer. The final shot in the show is of Stella at the kitchen sink, washing her hands as the storm rages. Unlike the story, she does not smile.

"Lonely Place" is a superb episode in which Francis Irby Gwaltney improves on C.B. Gilford's short story by adding the pet squirrel, making Emery a more unlikeable character, and expanding the final confrontation between Stella and Jesse, having her take his knife and later use it to kill her husband. The acting is outstanding.

Harvey Hart (1928-1989), the show's director, was born in Canada and worked for the Canadian Broadcasting Company from 1952 to 1963 before moving to the U.S. and working in Hollywood. He directed, mostly for TV, from 1949 to 1989 and this was one of five episodes of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour where he was behind the camera. Another was the classic episode, "Death Scene."

Starring as Stella is Teresa Wright (1918-2005), who began on stage in Life with Father (1939) and whose long career on film and television spanned the years from 1941 to 1997. She won an Academy Award for her role in Mrs. Miniver (1942) and starred in Hitchcock's Shadow of a Doubt (1943). "Lonely Place" was one of two episodes of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour in which she appeared; the other was "Three Wives Too Many." Donald Spoto published a biography of Wright in 2016 called A Girl's Got to Breathe. He calls "Lonely Place" "one of the most violent and harrowing dramas broadcast standards permitted in the 1960s" and adds that Wright gave "one of the memorable performances in television history."

Pat Buttram (1915-1994) plays her husband Emery; he started on radio in 1933 and was on screen from 1944 to 1994, acting as Gene Autry's sidekick in films and on TV and as Mr. Haney on Green Acres from 1965 to 1971. Buttram has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and also starred in the classic episode of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, "The Jar."

Bruce Dern as Jesse

Finally, Bruce Dern (1936- ) gives a chilling performance as Jesse. Dern trained with the Actors Studio and appeared on Broadway in 1958 and 1959 before starting his long screen career in 1960. His many roles include appearances on Thriller and The Outer Limits, another episode of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, an episode of The Fugitive (the one co-written by Francis Irby Gwaltney), and roles in Hitchcock's Marnie (1964) and Family Plot (1976), in which he starred. Marnie was filmed in late 1963 and early 1964 and that may have led to Dern's role in "Lonely Place," which was probably filmed in summer or early fall 1964. In his memoir, Dern recalled that "Lonely Place" was "probably the one single show that I ever did that turned the tide, film wise."

Watch "Lonely Place" online here. It has not been released in the U.S. on DVD.

Thanks to Peter Enfantino for providing a copy of the short story!

Sources:

"Between Heaven and Hell." Encyclopedia of Arkansas, 26 Feb. 2024, encyclopediaofarkansas.net/entries/between-heaven-and-hell-5392/. 

Dern, Bruce. Bruce Dern: A Memoir. The University Press of Kentucky, 2014. p. 52.

Farr, Douglas. [C.B. Gilford.] "Lonely Place." Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, Feb. 1960, pp. 50–64. 

"Francis Irby Gwaltney (1921–1981)." Encyclopedia of Arkansas, 16 June 2023, encyclopediaofarkansas.net/entries/francis-irby-gwaltney-3034/. 

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

IBDB, www.ibdb.com.

IMDb, www.imdb.com.

"Lonely Place." The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, season 3, episode 6, NBC, 16 November 1964.

Spoto, Donald. A Girl’s Got to Breathe: The Life of Teresa Wright. University Press of Mississippi, 2016. pp. 155-6.

Wikipedia, www.wikipedia.org.

Listen to Al Sjoerdsma discuss "I Killed the Count, part three" here!

In two weeks: "The Trap," starring Anne Francis!