The Hitchcock Project-Diagnosis: Danger by Roland Kibbee [8.22]

by Jack Seabrook

"Diagnosis: Danger" aired on CBS on Friday, March 1, 1963, and is a good example of how The Alfred Hitchcock Hour had difficulty figuring out its identity during the first season. The show is written and produced by Roland Kibbee and it was the only episode he wrote for the series.

Roland Kibbee (1914-1984) started out writing for radio in the early 1930s, when he was still a teenager. He wrote for Fred Allen and Groucho Marx and served in the Air Force during WWII. He briefly acted on Broadway in the mid-1930s, but writing and producing were where he would make his mark. After the war, he began writing films, including A Night in Casablanca (1946) for the Marx Brothers, and in 1957 he also began writing for TV. He added the role of TV producer in 1960 and continued until the early 1980s, sharing Emmy Awards with other writers for the TV shows Columbo and Barney Miller.

Michael Parks as Dr. Dana

Perhaps Kibbee should have stuck to comedy, because "Diagnosis: Danger" is one of the weaker episodes of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour. It begins with a scene where a woman is driving a car with a pickup truck bed along a California highway. In the back, a man writhes in pain; he is very sick and clutches a bongo drum. A sign on the car door reads "The Harry Slater Sextet" and, as we will later learn, the sick man is Harry Slater. The woman driving also begins to show signs of illness and suddenly swerves to avoid hitting another car. As a result, the man is thrown from the back and rolls down a hill into a ditch, along with the bongo drum.

Charles McGraw as Dr. Oliver

The scene then shifts to the County Health office, where Dr. Dan Dana is summoned to see the chief, Dr. Simon Oliver. After giving an injection to a little girl who has been bitten by a rabid dog, Dana and a deputy sheriff named Judd head to the morgue, where the coroner is examining the body of Harry Slater. A look through a microscope confirms that the man died of anthrax and Dana quickly instructs everyone that they need to be given penicillin and to burn their clothes because the disease is deadly and fast-acting. Meanwhile, in the ditch beside the highway, a man cleaning up trash picks up the bongo drum and takes it with him.

Dr. Dana calls a news reporter named Huntziger and asks him to spread the word about the danger posed by anthrax, but Dr. Oliver grabs the phone and tells the reporter that Dana was mistaken. Oliver then delivers a heavy-handed lecture about the need to avoid creating a panic. Elsewhere in the city, the trash collector sits on a bench by the side of the street with the bongo drum next to him. Three young men pull up in a convertible and spy the drum, so one of them uses a fishing pole to hook the item and pull it into the car. More heavy-handed irony is displayed when the trash collector stands up and the bench is revealed to feature an advertisement for a funeral home.

Berkeley Harris as Deputy Sheriff Judd

A police sergeant named Boyle finds the vehicle that Slater fell out of, abandoned on the side of the road, and sees evidence that the musician had been returning from a trip. Huntziger, the reporter, shows up and realizes that Dana's report of anthrax was correct. Outside a bar, the trio of young men wait for a drunk to emerge so that they can rob him. One of the men is named Gordie and he passes the time by playing the bongo drum. The episode's best sequence follows, as Gordie and one of his cohorts, Doug, attack the drunk in an alley and the viewer only sees the attack in intermittent shadows on an alley wall due to a light that blinks on and off. The scene is silent but features an appropriately jazzy score by Lyn Murray. The third young man, Alf, chose not to participate in the attack and is left behind by Gordie and Doug.

Douglas Henderson as Huntziger

At the health office, Oliver, who represents the establishment, explains to Dana, the angry young man, why he kept the anthrax story out of the news. Both men rush to the county hospital, where the trash collector has died of pulmonary anthrax. Dana tries to interrogate his widow, who is in shock, and Judd, the deputy sheriff, realizes that the dead man must have picked up something contaminated at the site where Slater's body was found. Meanwhile, Gordie and Doug are relaxing by the ocean, starting to feel sick and worrying that Alf might turn them in to the police.

Sergeant Boyle tracks down Helen Fletcher, a married woman who was driving the vehicle that Slater fell out of. She had also been sick but was cured by antibiotics given by an old doctor who did not realize that she had anthrax. Dana visits her at her home and, while she is initially resistant to admitting anything out of fear that her husband will learn of her affair, she eventually confesses to Dana that she spent the weekend with Slater in Mexico, where he bought a bongo drum from a street corner peddler. The drum was made from the hide of a dead burro, the source of the outbreak.

Hellena Westcott as Helen Fletcher

As Oliver finally tells a newscaster to spread the word to the public, Dana finds another victim at the hospital--the drunk who was attacked by Gordie and Doug. Dana is called to the morgue, where Doug's body is found to have anthrax, and he realizes that he needs to find Gordie. The police break down the door of Alf's house and Dana interrogates the very sick young man in order to find out Gordie's location. Dana and Judd then go to Devil's Cove, where Gordie tries to hold them at bay with shots from a rifle. He retreats into a cave and then onto the beach, while Dana uses his foot to push the bongo drum into a campfire, eliminating the source of the outbreak. After Dana and Judd catch up with Gordie, the final scene finds Dana in a police car with Judd and Oliver, who tells Dana that he'll be back at work the next morning.

Marc Cavell as Alf

Unlike most episodes of the Hitchcock TV show, "Diagnosis: Danger" features no twist ending and has very little suspense. The story is dull, the direction is uninspired, and the acting is second rate. The musical score by Lyn Murray mostly distracts from the events onscreen, except for the brief scene in the alley where it fits the action.

In The Alfred Hitchcock Presents Companion, director Sydney Pollack comments that this episode was meant to be a pilot for another series, one that never materialized. It's puzzling that the crew of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour would be enlisted to make a pilot, especially when this episode seems so unlike most other episodes. What would the new series have been about? Presumably, it would have featured the adventures of Dr. Dana and the rest of the men and women of the county health department, though it's hard to imagine that they could have faced a serious crisis week after week.

"Diagnosis: Danger" was directed by Sydney Pollack (1934-2008), who had a long and successful career as a director and sometimes an actor. He began as a TV director from 1961 to 1965, then switched to movies from 1965 to 2005, winning an Oscar for Out of Africa (1985). He directed two episodes of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, neither of which is very good. His other episode is the Cornell Woolrich adaptation, "The Black Curtain."

Gus Trikonis as Gordie

Starring as Dr. Dan Dana is Michael Parks (1940-2017), whose career onscreen began in 1960 and continued until his death. He starred in the TV series Then Came Bronson (1969-1970) and also had a singing career. He played Jean Renault on Twin Peaks (1990-1991) and was in both parts of Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill (2003-2004). "Diagnosis: Danger" was one of his early roles and displays unfortunate tendencies toward method acting.

In his only appearance on the Hitchcock TV series, Charles McGraw (1914-1980) plays Dr. Simon Oliver as a know-it-all establishment figure. Born Charles Butters, McGraw had a long career on film and TV from 1942 to 1977, appearing in such films as The Narrow Margin (1952) and Hitchcock's The Birds (1963), as well as on Thriller and in The Night Stalker TV movie. McGraw also starred in a couple of TV series in the mid-1950s: Adventures of the Falcon (1954-1956) and Casablanca (1955-1956). He has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Marc Rambeau as Doug

Berkeley Harris (1933-1984) plays Deputy Sheriff Judd; he was on screen from 1956 to 1981, mainly on TV, and this was one of his two appearances on The Alfred Hitchcock Hour; the other was "Wally the Beard."

Huntziger, the reporter, is played by Douglas Henderson (1919-1978), who served in the Marine Corps in WWII and who was on screen from 1944 to 1976. He was seen in three episodes of The Outer Limits and had a recurring role on The Wild Wild West as Colonel James Richmond, appearing in ten episodes between 1966 and 1969.

Clarke Gordon as Dr. Miller

Hellena Westcott (1928-1998), born Myrthas Helen Hickman, plays Helen Fletcher, the cheating wife. Westcott started out in vaudeville at age two and had a long career on screen from 1934 to 1977. She also appeared in an episode of The Twilight Zone.

Alf, the young man who decides not to participate in the attack on the drunk, is played by Marc Cavell (1939-2004), who was on screen from 1949 to 1978. He appeared in Cool Hand Luke (1967) and on many TV shows, including The Twilight Zone, Thriller, two episodes of Batman, and one other episode of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, "I Saw the Whole Thing."

Gordie, who engages in the standoff with Dana and Judd at the end of the show, is played by Gus Trikonis (1937- ), who acted on screen from 1961 to 1968 before switching careers and becoming a director from 1969 to 1983.

Stefan Gierasch as Sgt. Boyle

The third member of the trio, Doug, is played by Marc Rambeau (1942-1985), who had a brief TV career from 1962 to 1966 that included three appearances on The Alfred Hitchcock Hour; one of the others was "Death of a Cop."

Clarke Gordon (1918-2004) plays Dr. Miller, the coroner. He was on radio, appeared on Broadway, and was on screen in a career that lasted from 1946 to 1993.

Finally, Sergeant Boyle is played by Stefan Gierasch (1926-2014), who trained at the Actors Studio and played countless roles on screen between 1951 and 2009, including a role in the 1980s remake of "Breakdown" on Alfred Hitchcock Presents.

Watch "Diagnosis: Danger" online here. It is not available on U.S. DVD.

Sources:

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

"Diagnosis: Danger." The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, season 1, episode 22, CBS, 1 March 1963.

IBDB, www.ibdb.com.

IMDb, www.imdb.com.

Old Time Radio Downloads, www.oldtimeradiodownloads.com/.

Wikipedia, www.wikipedia.org.

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