The Hitchcock Project-The Motive by Rose Simon Kohn [3.17]

by Jack Seabrook

"The Motive," which aired on CBS on Sunday, January 26, 1958, is the first of two episodes credited to writer Rose Simon Kohn (1901-1985). Unlike the second, "The Morning After," which is based on a short story by Henry Slesar, this teleplay is original.

Kohn began her writing career as a playwright and the earliest play I have found attributed to her dates to 1936. She wrote several more in the years that followed, including one that was produced on Broadway in 1943, and two films were based on her work. From 1954 to 1959, a handful of TV episodes were either based on her stories, written by her, or co-written by her; the two episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents represent her last credits. She also had a pair of short stories published in digests in the late 1950s.

"The Motive" is an outstanding half-hour show, well acted, well directed, and with an ending so unexpected that the viewer is compelled to go back over the story to confirm how a trap could have been so carefully laid. The show opens with two young businessman and a young woman, who may be a secretary, relaxing after work in the living room of one of the men, Tommy Greer. All are drunk and continue to drink as Richard, the other man, prods Tommy to explain his theory to Sandra, the woman.

Greer displays a large chart he has made that tracks the number of murders in 1957 and so far in January 1958, along with the number that have been solved and those where a motive is known. Richard remarks sarcastically that Tommy's chart will prove that "'a motiveless killing is a hundred to one shot.'" Sandra leaves and the men continue to discuss Tommy's theory, with Greer claiming that Richard got him started on his hobby. Tommy's research has led him to the conclusion that "'perfect murder is a cinch if you have no reason for committing it,'" but Richard continues to goad his friend, who reminds Richard that he was the one who told Tommy to get a hobby to get Marion, the ex-wife who left him, off of his mind.

Skip Homeier as Tommy

Richard accuses Tommy of going overboard again, pointing out that the young man still has a closet full of Marion's dresses, as well as her record album and a book of photographs. Richard also remarks offhandedly that, before Marion left Tommy, she had chosen Tommy over Richard. Asking his friend how he knows that the murders on the chart were motiveless, Richard points out that all that Tommy knows for sure is that the police were unable to uncover a motive for each crime. Richard drunkenly challenges Tommy to prove his own theory by committing a motiveless murder.

The pair take a crowded elevator down to the building's lobby, continuing their discussion in the lobby bar. In the lobby, Richard sees a bank of telephone books near a phone booth; he chooses the Chicago phone book, opens to a page at random, closes his eyes, and points to the name and address of Jerome Stanton, whom he calls a "'sacrificial lamb picked by the finger of fate to be your victim.'" Tommy tears out the page and Richard suggests killing Stanton with a blow to his cervical vertebra.

Although Richard and Tommy spend the first half of the episode drunk, when the second half opens, it is the next day and they are sober. Richard joins Tommy at a busy restaurant for lunch and, when Tommy brings up the idea of murdering Stanton, Richard says that he was "'stoned last night'" and recalls little of what was discussed. Richard remarks that he has to leave to go to a convention for a couple of days and Tommy writes the word "Chicago" on a menu in big letters.

William Redfield as Richard

There is a dissolve to Tommy in a Chicago hotel room; a bellboy brings him a city map and he quickly locates Ridgely Road, where Stanton resides. There is another dissolve to Tommy walking down that very road, past suburban homes. When he sees Stanton's house, #1661, he hurries off. Later, back in his hotel room, Tommy telephones Stanton's house and speaks to a maid who tells him that his target is not at home. Tommy pretends to be conducting a poll and asks about Stanton's favorite TV program.

That evening, Tommy visits Stanton's home, where the man is alone and welcomes him inside. Greer and Stanton go into Stanton's study, where Stanton confirms that they will have twenty uninterrupted minutes together since his wife is at the movies. Tommy, wearing glasses and looking studious, explains that he is engaged in a research project to determine if emotional traits can be assigned to a specific gender. He sets out buttons, a needle and thread, and a hammer, and Stanton obligingly begins to sew a button on a handkerchief while answering a series of questions.

When the questions end, Tommy asks Stanton to take a tape measure, get down on all fours on the floor, and open the tape measure near Tommy's foot. Tommy calmly picks up the hammer and hits Stanton in the back of the head, offscreen, killing him instantly. Quickly gathering everything up, Tommy rushes out and catches a bus; back at his apartment, he adds to the lines on his chart tracing the number of murders and those without a motive.

The next morning, a bellboy brings Tommy the morning newspaper and he pores over it as Richard enters from the apartment across the hall. Tommy reads an article out loud about Stanton's murder and discovers that the police have a suspect: it seems that Mrs. Marion Stanton told the police that her former husband, Tommy Greer, must have discovered that she left him for Stanton and killed the man. Tommy realizes what he has done and Richard coolly admits that he knew that Marion had married Stanton and that he planned the whole thing as revenge against both men for stealing his girl. Tommy gets angry and attacks Richard, who pulls away and opens the door to admit the police, who enter and take Tommy away. The show ends with Richard, alone in Tommy's apartment, gloating over his success and throwing Tommy's chart on the floor before the screen fades to black.

Carl Betz as Stanton

The ending of "The Motive" is such a surprise that it is worth re-watching the episode to see how Richard pulled it off and whether everything holds up when one knows the truth. Assuming Richard was pretending to be drunk in the first half of the show, one sees that it was he who brought up Marion in conversation, admitting that she chose Tommy over him. At the time it seems like an offhand remark, but in the end it turns out to be the reason for everything that follows.

In the lobby, it is Richard who chooses the Chicago phone book, seemingly at random. We don't see him open it to a particular page, but he closes his eyes and appears to point to a name by chance; he clearly had this all planned in advance. When Tommy gets to Chicago, he walks by Stanton's home and we see that it is in a suburban neighborhood. Having a maid answer Tommy's call seems to suggest a level of wealth inconsistent with the home's exterior, but a maid has to answer for the story to work: Stanton is at work in the middle of the day and, if his wife answered the phone, Tommy would recognize his ex-wife's voice and the plan would fail. 

One puzzling aspect of "The Motive" is where Tommy and Richard live. It looks like Tommy has an apartment on an upper floor of an apartment building in a city that might be New York, yet when he and Richard take the elevator, it is very crowded, as is the building's lobby, which has a bar. Both the elevator and the lobby seem like they are in a hotel and the fact that a bellboy brings Tommy the newspaper in the morning seems more like what would happen in a hotel than an apartment building. For the pieces of the story to fall into place, there needs to be a reason to have telephone books from other cities in the lobby.

Another question that springs to mind is how Tommy could not know where Marion is and to whom she is married if he is so obsessed with her that he keeps her dresses in his closet even after enough time has passed for them to be divorced and her to have remarried. Perhaps time has stood still for Tommy and he does not want to know how Marion has moved on, hoping instead that she will walk back into his life as if she never left.

Carmen Phillips as Sandra

The attitude toward women shared by the men in "The Motive" is troubling when seen today, but it may not have been so unusual in 1958. In the first scene, Sandra is little more than window dressing, seeming to be a secretary having drinks with two of her male colleagues after work; she looks at her watch and sees that it is almost seven p.m. right before she leaves. A woman near the phone booth asks to use the Chicago phone book and is portrayed as a nuisance, while Marion, around whom the entire episode rotates, is never seen, but is presumably so desirable that she is worth committing murder over. Finally, when Tommy and Stanton are chatting and Tommy is pretending to conduct a survey, they share a laugh about the idea that women could be "'logical.'" "The Motive" portrays a man's world, with its two lead characters seeming like they would fit well in the milieu of the TV series Mad Men. Is it any surprise that this episode was written by a woman, whose male characters seem to display so many unlikeable traits?

Of course, the murder is impossibly clean and simple, the type of uncomplicated, instant killing that was familiar to viewers of the time and that Hitchcock would later discredit in the famous murder scene in the kitchen in Torn Curtain. "The Motive" is an excellent episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents, moving swiftly from start to finish, entertaining, and with a truly surprising conclusion. This was one of the 49 episodes of the Hitchcock series that Robert Stevens (1920-1989) directed; he won an Emmy for "The Glass Eye."

Starring as Tommy is Skip Homeier (1930-2017), who was born George Vincent Homeier and who began his acting career as a child on radio and successfully navigated his way through growing up on camera into a long career as an adult. He appeared in films from 1944 to 1982 and on TV from 1950 to 1982; he was on The Outer Limits, two episodes of Star Trek, and one other episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents, "Momentum."

William Redfield (1927-1976) plays the devious Richard. On Broadway from 1936 and on screen from 1939, Redfield appeared in Fantastic Voyage (1966) and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975), and he was seen on Alfred Hitchcock Presents three times, including "The Greatest Monster of Them All." He also played Felix Unger's brother Floyd in a memorable episode of The Odd Couple.

The affable but doomed Jerome Stanton is played with good humor by Carl Betz (1921-1978), who would soon become famous as Donna Reed's husband on The Donna Reed Show (1958-1966). Betz was on screen from 1952 to 1977, mostly on TV, and also appeared on Night Gallery. He was in one other episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents, "On the Nose."

Finally, Carmen Phillips (1937-2022) plays Sandra, who appears in the first scene. On screen from 1958 to 1969, she had a bit part in Marnie (1964); her role in "The Motive" was her first credit. She was in four episodes of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, including "Consider Her Ways."

Watch "The Motive" online here or order the DVD here.

Sources:

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

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

IBDB, www.ibdb.com.

IMDb, www.imdb.com.

"The Motive." Alfred Hitchcock Presents, season 3, episode 17, CBS, 26 January 1958.

Wikipedia, www.wikipedia.org.

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