The Hitchcock Project-Total Loss by J.E. Selby [4.17]

by Jack Seabrook

Jeanette's Dress Shop is in trouble, and the owner, pretty widow Jan Manning, doesn't know what to do. She and her assistant are marking down prices in hopes of increasing sales when handsome Mel Reeves walks in; he usually takes orders from Jan for dresses and he listens to the laments of her and her assistant, Evy, before following Jan into the store's back room. He is jocular and flattering, commenting on the gizmo she has rigged up to remind her to make tea: it's a tea kettle on an electric hot plate that is connected to an alarm clock set to go off at one o'clock.

Jan goes to the bank to ask for an increase on her loan, only to have the bank manager refuse. Mel is waiting for her in the lobby and he takes her to a bar, where they share a table and she has too much to drink. He points out how badly overstocked her store is and suggests that a good fire could solve all of her problems. Continuing to feed Jan drinks, Mel explains that he has a friend who could burn down her store so that she could collect the insurance money. This friend will break through the skylight and rob the store before dropping a lighted cigarette that starts a fire, seemingly by accident. Mel explains that, after the fire, he and Jan could go into partnership.

Nancy Olson as Jan

Jan is drunk and not thinking straight. Before they leave the bar, Mel tells her to be sure to remind her accountant to take the books home with him so that they can prove what the store had in inventory before the fire. Later that afternoon, Jan returns to the store, suffering from having had too much to drink. She takes out the account books and tells Evy to remind the accountant to take them home.

Late that night, Jan is awoken by a telephone call and told that the store is on fire. She rushes to the scene, where firemen are busy fighting the blaze. The fire chief tells Jan that the store is a total loss and adds that Evy, her assistant, received a telephone call after the fire had started to remind her to get the account books. She went into the burning store and successfully retrieved at least one book, but she sustained third-degree burns in the process.

Ralph Meeker as Mel

After the fire has been extinguished, Jan enters the ruined store and observes the broken skylight. Mel walks in and congratulates her, but she is upset and orders him to leave. As she walks through the debris, she meets Frank Voss, an insurance investigator, who comments on the size of the store's inventory and the large claim that will result. He does not seem to suspect arson until she confesses that the fire was not an accident, beginning to explain that he can trace the man who broke through the skylight. He corrects her, saying that the heat blew out the skylight and no one came through it. However, Voss says that the evidence of arson is clear: the clock was set for one a.m. and turned on the hot plate automatically, igniting cleaning fluid and wrapping materials nearby. Jan tries to explain that the gizmo was only used to make tea and the fire was an accident but, in light of her confession, Voss refuses to believe her story.

Jan Manning is a stereotypical helpless woman of the late 1950s. Since her husband's death, she has tried to run his dress shop, but she does not know how to make the business succeed. She goes to the bank to beg for more money, but the bank manager talks down to her and she fails to increase her loan. Jan then goes to a bar with Mel, who makes no secret of his lust for her; she is unable to stop drinking and unable to hold her liquor. When he suggests arson, she puts up weak resistance, but the idea sticks in her head and, when she returns to the store, she follows Mel's instructions regarding the account books. In the final scene, Jan's conscience gets the best of her and she tries to confess to the insurance investigator, but even this goes wrong and he is certain that her gadget to make tea is evidence of arson. In the entire episode, Jan is taken advantage of by the men she encounters and unable to stand up for herself.

Ruth Storey as Evy

The teleplay sets everything up nicely, planting clues early on that will become important later. In the first scene, Mel observes a card on the shop's front door that lists both Jan and Evy's names and telephone numbers as contacts to call in an emergency. When Jan later speaks to the fire chief, she learns that someone called Evy after the fire had started to remind her to get the account books. Who could it have been but Mel?

In a similar way, when Jan and Mel are in the back room of the store early in the show, he makes a point of commenting on her alarm clock/hot plate/tea kettle setup, so that at the end, when the insurance investigator identifies it as the cause of the fire, the viewer knows just what he is talking about.

Dave Willock as Voss

Helpless though she may be, Jan has ethics and appears to have no hesitation about confessing in the show's final scene. As a result, she is suspected of arson and will likely be punished, both with a criminal complaint and with the loss of her business and the insurance money that should have been paid. In contrast, Mel is an unlikeable character, whose smile and sunny disposition mask a lack of ethics. He openly lusts after Jan, recommends arson to solve her business problems, and presumably is the person who calls Evy to get the books, causing her to be badly injured. In the final scene, he visits Jan at the store and is utterly unconcerned with any of this, looking forward to being partners in a business. The difference between Mel's approach to life and business and Jan's approach is stark but, in 1958 (when the show was filmed), it was a man's world.

Barbara Lord as Susan

"Total Loss" is an original teleplay written by J.E. Selby, a pen name used by Robert Lees (1912-2004) during the blacklist. Lees began as a dancer and actor in the early 1930s before becoming a writer at M-G-M. He wrote shorts and feature films and he was co-writer on several Abbott and Costello movies, including Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948). He wrote films from 1935 to 1952, when he was blacklisted; he then wrote for TV, starting around 1957, under the name J.E. Selby. His last credit was in 1983 and his papers are at the Margaret Herrick Library at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Sadly, he was murdered in 2004 in a particularly gruesome incident.

Ray Teal

Director Don Taylor (1920-1998) was in the Air Force in World War Two and was also an actor, first in film and later on TV, from 1943 to 1969. He acted in one episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents, "Silent Witness." In 1956, Taylor started directing TV shows, and he continued directing, mostly for the small screen, until 1980. He directed seven episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents between 1957 and 1959, including "The Deadly," and he later directed two episodes of Night Gallery.

Nancy Olson (1928- ) stars as Jan; she was on screen from 1948 to 2014 and appeared in Sunset Boulevard (1950). This was her only appearance on the Hitchcock TV show.

Jack Bryan as the bank manager

Ralph Meeker (1920-1988) co-stars as Mel; he was born Ralph Rathgeber and served in the Navy in WWII. He started on Broadway after the war in 1946 and was on screen for thirty years, from 1950 to 1980, appearing both in film and on TV. Key roles include Kiss Me Deadly (1955) and Paths of Glory (1957), as well as the TV movie, The Night Stalker (1972). He appeared on The Outer Limits and in four episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents, including "Revenge."

In smaller roles:

• Ruth Storey (1913-1997) as Evy, Jan's assistant; she was on screen from 1953 to 1981 and appeared in Fritz Lang's The Blue Gardenia (1953). She was in one other episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents, "Profit-Sharing Plan."
• Dave Willock (1909-1990) as Frank Voss, the insurance investigator; he wrote for and acted on radio and he had a long screen career that lasted from 1939 to 1983 and that included voice work. He was seen on The Twilight Zone and he was also in one episode of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, "Wally the Beard."
• Barbara Lord (1937- ) as Jan's sister, Susan, who appears in a few scenes; she appeared mostly on TV from 1957 to 1989.
• Ray Teal (1902-1976) as the fire chief; he played many authority figures in a long screen career that stretched from 1937 to 1974 and he was busy as a character actor in the 1930s and 1940s. He appeared on Alfred Hitchcock Presents eight times, including a role in "Revenge"; he was also seen on The Twilight Zone and Thriller.
• Jack Bryan (1908-1964) as the bank manager; he had a brief TV career from 1959 to 1963.

"Total Loss" aired on CBS on Sunday, February 1, 1959. Watch it online here or buy the DVD here. Read the GenreSnaps review here.

Sources:

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

IBDB, www.ibdb.com.

IMDb, www.imdb.com.

RadioGold Index, radiogoldin.library.umkc.edu.

"Total Loss." Alfred Hitchcock Presents, season 4, episode 17, CBS, 1 February 1959.

Wikipedia, www.wikipedia.org.

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