"The Impossible Dream" is a great example of how to adapt a mediocre short story into an outstanding episode of television. The TV show aired on CBS on Sunday, April 19, 1959, and it was based on a story called "Blackmail" by John Lindsey that was published in a 1936 British anthology of short stories called Thrills.
As the story opens, a man named Carew watches through the window of his home as his servant, Hall, leaves on vacation. His hands trembling slightly, Carew mixes himself a drink and thinks that, in an hour or two, he'll be free of Jagger, who has been coming to his house every month for six years to collect blackmail payments regarding a series of letters Carew wrote. Carew has a plan and thinks it's flawless.
As night falls, he draws the curtains. From his desk drawer he takes a small bottle of poison and pours a single drop into a glass; he plans to murder Jagger and leave his body on a common far away in the country, where it will look like an accidental death with no connection to Carew. He unpacks a trunk in his bedroom that Hall had packed for him. Jagger arrives and examines an envelope on the hall table, wondering if it's from a woman and remarking that he "'might know things she would like to know.'" The men go into the study, where Carew sits behind his desk and sips from a glass of whisky. After giving Jagger a pile of pound notes, Carew offers to pour a drink for his unwanted guest.
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| "Blackmail" was published here |
Jagger drinks the poisoned whisky and, once his body is still, Carew washes out the glass and dresses Jagger in a suit he had prepared. He burns the man's clothes in the kitchen fire and, after a drink to fortify himself, he takes Jagger's body and puts it in the empty trunk. Two hours later, Carew returns, having placed Jagger's body on the common without being seen. He sits in his study and pours himself a drink to celebrate his freedom.
Just then, the study door opens and Hall enters and coughs, causing Carew to drop his glass. Hall explains that he forgot his ticket and missed his train, so he returned to Carew's home and stepped over the sill of the open study window. Hall opens the desk drawer, takes out the bottle of poison, and slips it into his pocket before asking Carew if they can speak tomorrow, saying there are "'one or two things I wish to purchase.'" Hall leaves the room and Carew realizes that he has to deal with a new blackmailer who knows that he is a murderer!
"Blackmail" includes suggestions of Hall's presence that, in retrospect, show that he was witness to the murder. In the first paragraph, Carew "stood behind the curtain," watching Hall leave; this plants the idea of someone watching events from behind the curtain without being detected. Later, when Carew is about to pour whisky into the poisoned glass, "he saw the curtain move slightly. He felt a sudden terror. What if someone saw?" Moments later, just before Jagger takes the fatal drink, "The wind stirred the curtains again. For a moment Carew's heart stood still."
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| Franchot Tone as Oliver Matthews |
The reader is also not allowed to forget about Hall, the butler. When Carew burns Jagger's clothes, he wonders, "'What if Hall smells something when he returns?'" After he has dumped Jagger's body on the common, Carew carries the empty trunk back into the house and plans to "pack it again as Hall had packed it." When Hall suddenly appears in the study, it is a shock, yet it follows the clues that have been planted along the way. The story's conclusion is particularly subtle: "With a terrible calm Hall left the room. Carew lay writhing in his chair. So it was to go on? Jagger was dead, but Hall had stepped into the dead man's shoes. And this time the secret was far grimmer and the torturer for ever at his elbow!"
John Lindsey was a pseudonym used by John St. Clair Muriel (1909-1975), who also wrote as Simon Dewes. Though this is the only time one of his stories was adapted for TV or film, he wrote short stories, poetry, novels, and non-fiction, including a four-volume autobiography. His works were published between 1930 and 1962.
The story was adapted for television by Meade Roberts (1930-1992) in his only teleplay for the Hitchcock series. He wrote plays, including for the Actors Studio, and his TV and film work spanned the years from 1952 to 1968, after which he taught dramatic writing. Roberts also acted in a few films from 1976 to 1982.
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| Carmen Mathews as Miss Hall |
The TV version is retitled "The Impossible Dream" and the events appear to take place in 1959, so the time has been updated from the short story, which was published in 1936. The first scene is a trick: a man is dancing with a woman and tells her that he refuses to give her up. She pulls a gun, shoots him point blank, and he falls to the floor. The camera then pulls back to reveal that this is a scene in a movie being filmed on a studio set, probably the set where Alfred Hitchcock Presents was filmed. Among those watching the actors is a woman who looks concerned; she is soon identified as Miss Hall and her character corresponds to the butler named Hall in the short story.
The male actor is Oliver Matthews and Miss Hall is his assistant. She enters his dressing room and takes over packing his suitcase for vacation, dismissing a wardrobe man and caressing one of Matthews's shirts as he enters the room. She compliments his acting in the scene that was just filmed but he rudely dismisses her as he pulls out a bottle and takes a drink. He laments how far his career has fallen and she suggests that he take his sedative instead of having more to drink; she measures a dose into a paper cup using a dropper from a medicine bottle and this is the first time we see what will later be used as the murder weapon. Matthews cruelly tells Miss Hall that she needs to find a man and reveals that he knows that she writes the fan letters he receives or else she pays people to write them. Matthews tells Miss Hall that he knows this secret and has known it for a long time, just as at the end she will use similar words to tell him that she has always known about his blackmailer. Telling her to face the truth that he was once a king and is now a beggar, Oliver accuses Miss Hall of dreaming impossible dreams of being his companion and tells her that she should not waste her intelligence and sensitivity.
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| Mary Astor as Grace Dolan |
The first two scenes introduce the show's three main characters, each of whom corresponds to a character in the short story. Oliver Matthews is an aging movie star who drinks and complains about his life and career; he is the show's version of Carew, from the story, who is well-off and also drinks; as the story opens, he watches Hall, the butler, leave on vacation. Miss Hall is Oliver's assistant; she is in love with him and devoted to him, despite his cruelty to her. She replaces the male butler, Hall, from the story and her character is expanded. Finally, Grace Dolan is the TV version of the male blackmailer, Jagger, in the story; in the show she works at the studio and Matthews pretends not to know her.
That artifice is shattered in the long scene that follows, which begins with Oliver going home to his Hollywood mansion. He is drunk and the camera is tilted to suggest his mental state. Signed photos of pretty women line the walls and he takes out his bottle of sedative, perhaps entertaining thoughts of suicide. He puts down the bottle and a glass of whisky and puts on an old phonograph record, underlining his desire to live in a happier past. He sits behind his desk and is about to pour the sedative into the glass when a woman's voice calls out: "'Mr. Matthews!'" He quickly hides the bottle in the desk drawer.
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| Josie Lloyd and William D. Kruse |
Grace Dolan enters the room and tells Matthews, "'Thanks for leaving the door open! You're learning!'" It appears they do know each other after all, and her arrival parallels that of Jagger in the short story. In the story, it is clear that Carew puts poison in a glass as part of a plan to kill Jagger. In the TV show, it looks like Matthews is suicidal, but Grace's arrival makes his actions in retrospect possibly look like he was planning her murder. Grace tells Oliver that she appeared at his dressing room door to remind him of their date that evening and she criticizes him for focusing on the past before expressing displeasure that he has not displayed a photo of her late daughter Janice among those of his many girlfriends.
After Grace opens Oliver's desk drawer and takes out the sedative bottle, she asks him if his sleep problems are due to a guilty conscience. She blames him for Janice's death and comes to his house each week for a check. At first, Oliver claims that he's broke, but when Grace tells him that she has letters in her bag that he wrote to her daughter, letters that every scandal magazine would love to see, he writes her a check. It's Friday and she promises not to cash it till Monday, telling him to make sure it won't bounce. At this point, there is a close up of Oliver's face and his expression suggests that he's considering violence. Instead, Oliver takes the bottle of sedative from his drawer and pockets it as Grace begins to walk away.
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| Irene Windust as Myra Robbins |
He suddenly becomes solicitous and his skill as an actor is on display as he charms Grace and overcomes her reservations. Oliver suggests that they toast their new friendship and pours a glass of the creme de menthe she requests. While she browses through his record collection, Oliver pours the entire bottle of sedative into her glass and stirs it with his finger before the screen fades to black. This long scene replaces the scene in the story where Jagger visits Carew, receives his check, and drinks the poisoned whisky. In the TV version, there is more detail about the contents of the letters that are at the heart of the blackmail scheme. Oliver is more morose than Carew and Grace is more vulgar than Jagger yet making her the mother of a dead young woman adds a layer of sympathy that is missing from the story.
The shot fades back in and it's later that evening as Oliver carries Grace's body outside and puts her in the passenger seat of his car. At first, she appears to be dead, but when she stirs in the car it's clear that she is alive but groggy. In the short story, Jagger drinks the poisoned whisky in one scene and is dead in the next; having Grace remain alive makes her fate even worse. Oliver drives to a lake where he has just taken a length of chain out of a bag when he is suddenly bathed in light from the headlights of a car parked nearby; two teens have been necking and quickly drive off when the girl insists on going home.
Having escaped detection, Oliver takes Grace's body out of the car, wraps one end of the chain around a rock and the other end around her neck, and pushes her into the lake. This scene is particularly gruesome as he wraps the chain around the neck of the woman who is groggy but still alive. There is a sound of bubbles as she sinks and Oliver watches his blackmailer disappear. In the short story, more time is spent as Carew cleans up the murder scene, redresses Jagger in a suit, burns his clothes, and works up the nerve to put his body in the trunk. The disposal of the body on a common is not described, so the scene at the lake in the TV show is new.
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| Dick Jeffries as the director |
In the short story, one can find suggestions of Hall's presence in retrospect, such as the moving curtain, and Carew worries that his butler will smell the odor of burnt clothes when he returns. In the TV show, there is no hint that Miss Hall was present when Oliver drugged Grace. However, when he returns home, Miss Hall immediately rushes into the room to confront her employer, while in the story, Carew brings the trunk inside, sits behind his desk, and fixes a drink, all before the butler enters. Miss Hall confronts Oliver, saying that she suspected he might change his mind about flying to Mexico. She reveals that she has always known about Grace and her daughter and she also knows what happened earlier this evening. She followed him to Mulholland Drive when he left the house and she shows him the empty sedative bottle that she picked up. Oliver asks her what she wants and she replies that she wants him to make an impossible dream come true.
The short story ends with Hall asking Carew if they can speak tomorrow and Carew realizing that he'll be blackmailed again. The show has one final scene that demonstrates what happens next in a particularly satisfying way. The screen dissolves to the interior of a movie theater, where the movie that Oliver was filming in the first scene is playing. He and Miss Hall sit together, watching it; she takes his hand and he flinches, closing his eyes in disgust as the screen fades to black. Oliver has made Miss Hall's impossible dream come true and now will spend the rest of his life with a woman he does not love.
"The Impossible Dream" is a brilliant adaptation of "Blackmail" where Meade Roberts reimagines the story and makes changes and additions that make it far more interesting, with added emotional depth. The performances of the three lead actors are outstanding, as is the direction.
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| Pat O'Malley as the wardrobe man |
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."
In smaller roles:
- Josie Lloyd (1940-2020) as the young woman in the car by the lake; Norman Lloyd's daughter, she was on TV from 1959 to 1967 and appeared in six episodes of the Hitchcock show, including "Graduating Class." She was also on The Twilight Zone. In "The Impossible Dream" she is billed as Suzy Lloyd.
- Irene Windust (1921-1999) as Myra Robbins, who shoots Oliver in the opening scene; she had a brief screen career from 1958 to 1963 but managed to appear in four episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents, including "The Blessington Method."
- Dick Jeffries (1938-2012) as the director of the movie being shot in the first scene; he had a brief screen career from 1958 to 1968.
- William D. Kruse (1933-2016) as the young man in the car by the lake; his screen career lasted from 1958 to 1962 and he was in one other episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents, "A Night with the Boys."
- Pat O'Malley (1890-1966) as the wardrobe man who is packing Oliver's suitcase; he was in countless films from 1908 to 1962 and on TV from 1950 to 1962. This was his only role on Alfred Hitchcock Presents, but he appeared on Thriller, in three episodes of The Twilight Zone, and in Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956).
Thanks to Morgan Wallace for research help, to Mike Ashley for a copy of the short story, and to Tom Seabrook for helping rule out other stories as the source of this episode.
Sources:
The FICTIONMAGS Index, www.philsp.com/homeville/FMI/0start.htm.
Grams, Martin, and Patrik Wikstrom. The Alfred Hitchcock Presents Companion. OTR Pub, 2001.
IMDb, www.imdb.com.
"The Impossible Dream." Alfred Hitchcock Presents, season 4, episode 28, CBS, 19 April 1959.
Lindsey, John. "Blackmail." Thrills, Associated Newspapers Ltd., Dublin and Cork, Ireland, 1936, pp. 123–132.
"Meade Roberts; Actor, Screenwriter and Playwright." Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles Times, 15 Feb. 1992, www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1992-02-15-mn-1567-story.html.
Meade Roberts, Writer, 61, Dies; Tennessee Williams Collaborator - The New York Times, www.nytimes.com/1992/02/15/theater/meade-roberts-writer-61-dies-tennessee-williams-collaborator.html.
Wikipedia, www.wikipedia.org.
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