The Hitchcock Project-Irving Elman, Part Two-The Door Without a Key [7.15]

by Jack Seabrook

Claude Rains as Eldridge

The last teleplay that Irving Elman wrote for Alfred Hitchcock Presents was "The Door Without a Key," which aired on NBC on Tuesday, January 16, 1962. The show was adapted from a short story of the same name by Norman Daniels that appeared in the March 1961 issue of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine.

The story begins in the police station of Farmingham, an Eastern manufacturing town, where Captain Shaw mans the front desk on a Saturday night. A well-dressed man of about 65 years enters and announces that he cannot recall his own identity. He is given a seat, from which he observes the ebb and flow of events at the busy police station until an eight-year-old boy, who gives his name as Mickey Holland, walks in and sits beside the old man.

"The Door Without a Key"
was first published here

Mickey tells Captain Shaw that he has been living with his widowed father, who travels by car from town to town and who mistakenly drove off and left the boy behind. The old man begins to recall memories of his own childhood on a farm, conversing with Mickey while Shaw listens in and keeps up with the busy station. One of the men who enters lies about a parking violation, which leads Mickey to admit that he was lying about his own situation. The boy explains that his father took up with a new woman and dropped Mickey off at a "'home for kids.'" Mickey walked around for a while and ended up at the police station.

As Captain Shaw's shift nears its end, he considers his options regarding the little boy and the old man, who wistfully recalls a few details about his late wife. A few minutes before the end of his shift, Shaw decides to act; he tells the old man that he'll have to be locked up and he tells Mickey that he'll be sent to the home for kids. Suddenly, the old man takes charge, announcing that he is powerful Leonard Eldridge, friend to people in high places. He recalls that he grew tired of his busy, stressful life and had to get away. Shaw suggests that Eldridge take Mickey with him, check into a hotel, and have his staff come for them in the morning--the details can be ironed out later.

John Larch as Sergeant Shaw

When Lt. Brady relieves Capt. Shaw just after midnight, Shaw heads home, happy to have helped solve the problems of two people and sad to lose their company.

"The Door Without a Key" is a charming story about two lost people who find comfort and companionship together in an unlikely environment, aided by a gruff police captain whose years of experience and big heart help him solve problems in ways that aren't always by the book. The title has two meanings: the first is explained when Captain Shaw tells a story about the dedication of the new police station years before, when Shaw was a patrolman and Chief Rawlson was in charge. After the station house was built, the mayor presented the chief with a key to the front door, but the chief tossed the key in the middle of the road, saying that "'one thing a police station can do without was a key to the front door. It would never be locked.'" The second meaning is more subtle: the "door without a key" represents the old man's mind, which sudden amnesia has closed and which he can't find a way to open.

Billy Mumy as Mickey

The TV version of "The Door Without a Key" follows the plot of the short story in most important ways, but Irving Elman makes minor changes, deletions, and additions that make it work well on the small screen and take budgetary limitations into account. The first shot establishes the location by focusing on the outside of the station house at night, but unlike the short story, there is no narration to provide details of Captain Shaw's thoughts, so the story's explanation of his family and home life are omitted. Shaw has been demoted a couple of ranks to sergeant in the TV show; the first scene includes a second policeman, a lieutenant who is never given a name, getting ready to go home, and the inference is that he manned the desk during the shift before Shaw arrived.

Connie Gilchrist as Maggie

The lieutenant interacts with Eldridge when the old man first enters, immediately diagnosing amnesia and prescribing a trip to the city hospital. Shaw calls the hospital but the line is busy and so Eldridge must wait; none of this occurs in the story. The lieutenant's departure is interrupted by Mickey's arrival and, again, this other policeman, not Shaw, has the initial conversation with the little boy. The lieutenant tells Shaw to send Mickey to Juvenile Hall, so Shaw calls the facility and asks them to send someone to pick up the boy and drop the old man off at the hospital. Shaw lets them sit at a table next to his desk.

Budgetary restrictions come into play in the TV show since, up to this point, there are no other people coming in or going out of the police station. A new character is added to replace the crowds in the short story; she is Maggie, a drunken, middle-aged woman who joins Mickey and the old man at the table. The captain demonstrates his kindness when he agrees with her request to call her sister to come and pick her up rather than having a police car drop her off at home.

David Fresco

Another bit of business is added to the TV show when we see the policeman who brought Maggie in drop a few coins in an upside-down, old-fashioned policeman's helmet that sits on the front desk. Maggie gets weepy and Mickey backs away from her; she spends the rest of the show with her head down, asleep on the table. The next part of the show follows the story closely, even lifting lines of dialogue almost word for word from the story as the old man tells Mickey an anecdote from his own boyhood.

A delivery man arrives with food and drink for the visitors and the upside-down helmet is explained after Shaw tells the man to "'take the money out of Callahan.'" Shaw reveals that the helmet belonged to a policeman named Callahan, who is now dead; he would "'always pass it around for some worthy cause'" and they still use it to "'carry on the good work.'" This anecdote takes the place of the one in the story about the former chief throwing the key to the front door in the street; it's a good story but it robs the viewer of the explanation of the episode's title.

Sam Gilman

The next scene is as close as the episode gets to showing a busy police station on a Saturday night. Three motorcycles pull up in the alley behind the station, followed by a police car, and the three motorcyclists--two young men and one young woman--enter, followed by a policeman. They had been at a motorcycle rally in nearby Mayfield and are perhaps the least threatening trio of motorcycle riders ever presented on TV. They chat with Mickey and the old man and drink coffee, passing time until Shaw confirms by telephone that they are not wanted for any mischief and they leave.

The lack of a window into Shaw's thoughts makes his transition from kindly to tough near the end more unexpected than it is in the story, but Eldridge's memory returns right away and Shaw smiles, demonstrating that his seemingly harsh threats to send the old man and the little boy to the hospital and the Juvenile Home were really done in a last-ditch effort to get the old man's memory to return. The show ends with Mickey and Eldridge leaving together, followed by a scene that replaces the one in the story and wraps things up with a smile. In the story, Shaw is replaced by another policeman and heads for home, while in the show, a man named Harris from Juvenile Hall walks in the back door of the police station and Shaw tells him that he's too late, remarking, "'Better luck next time--those two got away" and smiling as the screen goes dark.

Andy Romano

"The Door Without a Key" is an enjoyable TV show that successfully adapts a charming short story to the small screen. It benefits from excellent acting across the board, with the three leads giving strong performances that are supported by a cast of mostly familiar faces. The viewer today smiles at the ending; allowing an old man who just recovered from amnesia to march off with a young boy whose father just dropped him off and drove away is not something that would be allowed today, and it may be looking at the past with rose-colored glasses to think that it was anything but fantasy in 1962.

The short story was written by Norman Daniels, which was the most familiar pen name of a writer named Norman Danberg (1905-1995), who wrote hundreds of stories for the pulps and the digests from the early 1930s to the late 1960s. He also wrote many novels, as well as scripts for the radio and a few teleplays. Two of his stories were adapted for Alfred Hitchcock Presents; the other was "Conversation Over a Corpse."  His papers are archived at the Browne Popular Culture Library at Bowling Green State University. In 1981, Daniels was quoted as saying that "I also have a number of TV shows to my credit—Hitchcock, G.E. Theatre, etc. This was, and is, the worst form of writing in history."

Jimmy Hawkins, Susan Hart, Jeff Parker

Directing "The Door Without a Key" is Herschel Daugherty (1910-1993), a prolific TV director from 1952 to 1975 who also directed a couple of movies. He directed 27 episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents in all, including "The Blessington Method," and he directed 16 episodes of Thriller.

Claude Rains (1889-1967) was 72 years old when this show aired and he gives a wonderful performance as Eldridge, though his British accent is never explained. He seems distinguished, polished, civilized, and utterly believable as the character. Born in London, Rains was the son of a stage actor. He emigrated to America in 1913 but went back to Europe to fight for England in WWI. After the war ended, he acted on the London stage before returning to the United States, where he began working on Broadway in 1926. A film career followed, from 1933 to 1965, and his many great films included The Invisible Man (1933), The Wolf Man (1941), Casablanca (1942), and Hitchcock's Notorious (1946). He was in five episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents, including "The Horse Player." He won a Tony in 1951 for Darkness at Noon and has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Robert Carson

Sergeant Shaw is played by John Larch (1914-2005) in his only appearance on the Hitchcock TV show. He served in the Army in WWII and starred in a radio show called Captain Starr of Space (1953-1954). His screen career lasted from 1954 to 1990 and included a role in Dirty Harry (1971) and a stint as a regular on the TV show, Arrest and Trial (1963-1964). Larch is probably best known for his three appearances on The Twilight Zone, including "It's a Good Life," where he played the father of co-star Billy Mumy.

Billy Mumy (1954- ), who was only seven years old when this episode aired, is outstanding as Mickey. He also appeared in "Bang! You're Dead" earlier in the last season of Alfred Hitchcock Presents. On and off screen since 1957, Mumy appeared in three episodes of the Hitchcock show, including "House Guest," as well as three episodes of The Twilight Zone. He is still acting as of this writing and a website devoted to him is here.

In smaller roles:

• Connie Gilchrist (1895-1985) as Maggie; a busy character actress on screen from 1940 to 1969, she was in three episodes of the Hitchcock show, including "A Home Away from Home."
• David Fresco (1909-1997) as Dave, who delivers food to the station; he was on screen from 1946 to 1997 and he was blacklisted in 1956. Despite that, he appeared in twelve episodes of the Hitchcock show, including "The Day of the Bullet," as well as episodes of The Twilight Zone and Night Gallery.
• Sam Gilman (1915-1985) as the cop who brings in the motorcyclists; his career is interesting. He started out as a comic book artist for Marvel and Centaur from 1939 to 1942, drawing a text illustration for Marvel Comics #1. He then served in World War Two. On returning to civilian life, he became an actor and befriended Marlon Brando. He moved to Hollywood and got his first role in Brando’s film, The Men (1950). He went on to a career on screen that lasted until 1983 and he may be seen in five episodes of the Hitchcock show, including "Insomnia." He was also on Thriller.
• Andy Romano (1936-2022) as Perry, the patrolman who brings in Maggie; he was on screen from 1961 to 2003, including an appearance on Batman and parts in eight episodes of the Hitchcock show, including "The Black Curtain."
• Jimmy Hawkins (1941- ) as the lead motorcyclist; although this was his only appearance on the Hitchcock show, he was on screen from 1944 to 1974 and a regular on two TV series: The Ruggles (1949-1952) and Ichabod and Me (1961-1962). His final credit was in an episode of Kolchak: The Night Stalker in 1974. His most famous part was as Tommy, one of George Bailey's sons in It's a Wonderful Life (1946).
• Jeff Parker (1934-1984) as the other male motorcyclist; he was mostly on TV from 1961 to 1969 and also appeared with Billy Mumy in "Bang! You're Dead."
• Susan Hart (1941- ) as Marti, the female motorcyclist; born Dorothy Neidhart, she was on screen from 1962 to 1971 and she was married to AIP executive James Nicholson from 1964 to 1972. This was her only role on the Hitchcock show.
• Robert Carson (1909-1979) as the lieutenant; he was the brother of actor Jack Carson and he appeared on the Hitchcock show eleven times, including "Mother, May I Go Out to Swim?" His career as a character actor lasted from 1939 to 1974.

Watch "The Door Without a Key" online here. Thanks to Peter Enfantino for providing a copy of the short story, which does not seem to have been reprinted.

*   *   *

Irving Elman wrote the teleplays for three episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents: "On the Nose," "Murder Me Twice," and "The Door Without a Key." Of the three, "Murder Me Twice" varies the most from its source, taking the story in a new direction and changing the ending. Elman's episodes are not among the most well remembered of the series, but they demonstrate competence and a good ability to translate the stories from the page to the small screen.

Sources:

Daniels, Norman. "The Door Without a Key." Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, March 1961, pp. 151-162.

"The Door Without a Key." Alfred Hitchcock Presents, season 7, episode 15, NBC, 16 January 1962.

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

Galactic Central, www.philsp.com/.

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

IMDb, www.imdb.com.

"PCL MS 001 Norman Daniels Collection." Omeka RSS, lib.bgsu.edu/finding_aids/items/show/1668. Accessed 11 Feb. 2024.

Wikipedia, www.wikipedia.org.

Listen to Al Sjoerdsma discuss "One for the Road" here!

Listen to Annie and Kathryn discuss "The Door Without a Key" here!

In two weeks: Our series on Calvin Clements begins with a look at "Beta Delta Gamma," starring Burt Brinckerhoff!

The Hitchcock Project-Irving Elman, Part One-Murder Me Twice [4.9]

by Jack Seabrook

Irving Elman wrote the teleplays for three episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents: "On the Nose," "Murder Me Twice," and "The Door Without a Key." Born in 1915, he wrote and produced plays, including three on Broadway, beginning in the early 1940s, and he began writing screenplays after WWII ended. He wrote for television starting in 1951 and he was also a TV producer from 1962 to 1971. Toward the end of his writing career, he served as head writer for two daytime soap operas, Search for Tomorrow (1976-1977) and General Hospital (1977). He also wrote eight books. Elman died in 2011.

* * * * *

"Murder Me Twice" aired on CBS on Sunday, December 7, 1958, and it was based on a short story of the same name by Lawrence Treat that had been published in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine in May 1957. Before discussing the story, some background on the case of Bridey Murphy is useful. In 1952, a woman named Virginia Tighe was hypnotized and claimed to recall her past life as a nineteenth century Irish woman named Bridey Murphy. A 1956 book called The Search for Bridey Murphy was a best-seller and it set off a national craze; a film of the same title was released that year. Treat’s short story was probably written in 1956, during the craze.

"Murder Me Twice" was
first published here

 As the story begins, Assistant District Attorney Burke struggles with the Lucy Prior case, where he has a murder recorded on tape and he has three eyewitnesses, but he can’t prove felonious intent. At a gathering at the home of wealthy Will and Lucy Prior a few months ago, talk turned to Bridey Murphy, and Dr. Farham admitted that he used post-hypnotic suggestion on his dental patients to avoid pain. To demonstrate, he hypnotized Lucy Prior at the party, and she recalled a former life as Dora Evans, who lived in Philadelphia in the 1850s.

The party guests continued to meet weekly and, each time, Lucy was hypnotized and assumed Dora’s personality, though her memories ended with an event that took place one morning in June 1853. When pressed, Lucy/Dora explained what happened that morning: the gardener was drunk and Dora's husband Charles was upset. Lucy/Dora refused to say what happened next, so Dr. Farham asked her to demonstrate, at which point she took a gun out of a table drawer and fatally shot her husband.

Phyllis Thaxter as Lucy Prior

Subsequent investigation revealed that there really was a Dora Evans who shot and killed her husband in Philadelphia in June 1853; she was tried for murder and convicted and she died in prison a year later. Burke suspects that Dr. Farham and Lucy Prior were lovers who conspired to kill her husband, but Lucy denies the charge. Burke knows that he’ll have to prove motive and intent, but when he interviews Dr. Farham, the man denies everything. Burke finds an old book about famous crimes and tells Lieutenant Drobney that Lucy must have read about the details of the Evans murder. After she shot her husband, Lucy said, "'I fear me, he is dead,'" approximately the same words spoken by Dora in 1853, though she had claimed that she heard shots, rushed inside to find her husband dead, and picked up the gun.

Dora had blamed the shooting on the gardener, who said that he had been asleep and too drunk even to stand up straight. Lt. Drobney interviews Lucy again, but she says that if she used similar words to those quoted in the book then she really was Dora in a past life. Burke and Drobney next summon Dr. Farham and show him an 1859 newspaper with a report that Dora was innocent and that the gardener eventually confessed to the murder. Farham is baffled, but when Lucy is brought into the room she blurts out, "'Miles! You fool! I told you we'd never--.'" Having cracked the case, Burke later tells Drobney that he had a fake newspaper made up and used it to trick Dr. Farham and Lucy into confessing. Burke wonders if Dora Evans really did kill her husband a century ago.

Tom Helmore as Dr. Farnham

When Irving Elman adapted "Murder Me Twice" for the small screen, he kept the central premise and the main characters but made significant changes to the story and completely altered the ending. The TV show does not use the flashback technique found in the short story; instead, it begins with the party at the Priors' house. Dr. Farnham is a parapsychology teacher, not a dentist, and events are streamlined: Lucy is hypnotized, takes on Dora’s personality, and murders her husband. In the story, the parties and hypnotic trances go on for weeks before the killing, but in the TV show it all happens in one evening. Lucy makes an interesting comment that provides a clue to the denouement; when asked if she’d like to be hypnotized, she replies, "'I’ve managed to keep this husband of mine fooled so far, so why take the risk of giving myself away?'"

Alan Marshal as Will Prior

The sequence where Dr. Farnham (his name is slightly different than in the story) hypnotizes Lucy uses lighting and music to create an eerie atmosphere. When Lucy becomes Dora, she speaks in an archaic way, using phrases such as "'And it please thee, sir'" and "'In the year of our blessed Lord, eighteen hundred and fifty-three,'" and Phyllis Thaxter is convincing as Dora, showing off her garden in the living room to the party guests. Instead of a gun, Lucy grabs a pair of scissors that are lying on a desk and stabs her husband in the back, killing him instantly. Burke later reveals that Dora Evans killed her husband with a pair of pruning shears, not a gun, This is a rare instance of Alfred Hitchcock Presents changing a gun to a sharp object; usually, it’s the other way around.

Ward Costello as Burke

The TV show really begins to deviate from the story when Farnham visits Lucy at home after both have been interviewed by Burke. It's immediately evident that they are not in cahoots, since Farnham suggests to Lucy that she planned the murder and says that he will blackmail her, telling her that he wants money in exchange for supporting her at the coroner's inquest. Lucy angrily throws him out of her house. At the inquest, Farnham testifies that he's "'an accredited metaphysician'" but he is cross-examined by Burke, who brings up a 1938 case where Farnham was indicted for fraud and malpractice. When Burke asserts that Lucy was not really hypnotized when she killed her husband, Farnham angrily defends himself and offers to hypnotize Lucy right in the courtroom. None of this is in the short story.

Herbert Anderson
as George

Lucy agrees and Farnham again puts her under in another eerie sequence. Lucy becomes Dora Evans once again, speaking in archaic phrases. The scissors that she used to kill her husband are lying on the coroner's desk, marked as evidence, and she suddenly grabs them and stabs Farnham in the back, killing him instantly and eliminating the man who had threatened to expose her. His body is later taken out of the courtroom on a stretcher and everyone leaves while Lucy sits on a bench in the hallway outside the hearing room. The only other person present is Burke and, just as Lucy is about to walk away, he asks her a question in order to satisfy his curiosity: "'Did you plan the whole thing?'"

Lucy turns to Burke and smiles and, in the voice of Dora Evans, replies, "'Wouldst not thee like to know?'" The show ends there, with Lucy having successfully murdered two men, gotten away with it, and admitted her guilt in such a way that she cannot be prosecuted. The TV version of "Murder Me Twice" takes a different approach to solving the problem that is set up in the short story. This time, instead of the assistant district attorney tricking Lucy and Dr. Farnham into revealing their crime, Lucy kills the doctor and gets away with murder.

Liz Carr as Adele

The TV show has echoes of two Hitchcock films of the 1950s: Dial M For Murder, in which a woman kills a man by stabbing him in the back with a pair of scissors, and Vertigo, which was released in May 1958, seven months before "Murder Me Twice" aired. In Vertigo, Tom Helmore, who plays Dr. Farnham in "Murder Me Twice," plays a similar character, the manipulative husband of a woman who seems to be possessed by the spirit of a nineteenth-century woman.

"Murder Me Twice" was remade as an episode of the 1980s Alfred Hitchcock Presents TV show, and Buck Henry, who adapted Elman's earlier teleplay for the 1980s, makes even more changes. In this version, which aired on October 20, 1985, as "Wake Me When I'm Dead," Barbara Hershey plays the Lucy character, but after she kills the hypnotist in the courtroom, she ends up in Switzerland in bed with the prosecutor, played by Buck Henry!

King Calder as Sherman

Lawrence Treat (1903-1998), born Lawrence Goldstone, worked as a lawyer before he became a writer. He wrote hundreds of short stories and many novels and he was known for his police procedurals. A founding member of the Mystery Writers of America, he won two Edgar Awards. Five TV episodes were adapted from his short stories, including two for Alfred Hitchcock Presents; the other was "On the Nose."

"Murder Me Twice" was the only episode of the Hitchcock TV series directed by David Swift (1919-2001), who was both a writer and a director of films and TV shows from 1948 to 1998. He served in the Air Force in WWII and created the TV series, Mr. Peepers (1952-1955), for which he wrote 62 teleplays. He also wrote and directed Good Neighbor Sam (1964), which was adapted from the Jack Finney novel.

Robert Carson as the coroner

Phyllis Thaxter (1919-2012) plays Lucy Prior (and Dora Evans). Born in Maine, she acted on Broadway before making her debut on film in 1944. She began acting on TV in 1953, appearing in six episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents, including "Never Again." She also appeared on The Twilight Zone, Thriller, and three episodes of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, including "The Long Silence." Later in her career, she played Ma Kent in Superman (1978), and she continued to appear on TV until 1992.

Dr. Farnham is played by Tom Helmore (1904-1995), who was born in London and whose career on screen lasted from 1927 to 1972. He also appeared on Broadway from the 1940s to the 1960s. Helmore was in three Hitchcock films: The Ring (1927), Secret Agent (1936), and Vertigo (1958). Helmore was in one other episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents ("Little White Frock") and he also appeared on Thriller and on Night Gallery, which was his last credit.

Charles Seel
as the clerk

Alan Marshal (1909-1961) appears briefly as Will Prior, Lucy's unfortunate husband. Born in Australia as Alan Willey, he appeared on Broadway in the 1920s and 1930s and his screen career lasted from 1936 to his death. This was his only role on the Hitchcock TV show.

Ward Costello (1919-2009) plays Burke, the assistant district attorney. He served in both the British Air Force and the U.S. Army in WWII and was mostly seen on TV between 1951 and 1989. This was his only appearance on the Hitchcock TV show.

In smaller roles:

• Herbert Anderson (1917-1994) as George, a party guest; he was on screen from 1940 to 1975, appearing in two episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents (the other was "The $2,000,000 Defense") and two episodes of Batman, but he is best remembered for his role as Henry Mitchell, father of Dennis the Menace on the series that ran from 1959 to 1963.
• Liz Carr as Adele, the party guest who does not want to be hypnotized; she has only four TV credits, from 1958 to 1960, and two are on Alfred Hitchcock Presents ("The Baby-Blue Expression" is the other).
• King Calder (1897-1964) as Sherman, who is with Burke when he interrogates Lucy and Dr. Farham; he was on screen from 1949 to 1964 and appeared in seven episodes of the Hitchcock series, including "The Gloating Place."
• Robert Carson (1909-1979) as the coroner; he was the brother of actor Jack Carson and he appeared on the Hitchcock show eleven times, including "Mother, May I Go Out to Swim?" His career as a character actor lasted from 1939 to 1974.
• Charles Seel (1897-1980) as the clerk who opens the inquest; he had a long career in vaudeville, on Broadway, and on the radio, and he was on screen from 1938 to 1980. In addition to roles on The Twilight Zone, Star Trek, and Night Gallery, he made four appearances on the Hitchcock show, including "Return of Verge Likens."
• Alma Lawton (1896-1982) as Alma, Lucy's maid, who announces that Farnham is there to visit after the murder; she was on screen from 1951 to 1973 and this was her only appearance on the Hitchcock show.

Alma Lawton

Watch "Murder Me Twice" online here or buy the DVD here. Read Lawrence Treat's story online here. Watch "Wake Me When I'm Dead" online here. Read the GenreSnaps review here.

Sources:

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

Galactic Central, www.philsp.com/.

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

IMDb, www.imdb.com.

"Irving Elman Dies at 96." Variety, 27 Nov. 2011, variety.com/2011/film/news/irving-elman-dies-at-96-1118046604/.

"Murder Me Twice."  Alfred Hitchcock Presents, season 4, episode 9, CBS, 7 December 1958.

Treat, Lawrence. "Murder Me Twice." Alfred Hitchcock's A Choice of Evils. London: Severn House, 1987. pp. 310-19.

Wikipedia, www.wikipedia.org.

Listen to Al Sjoerdsma discuss "The End of Indian Summer" here!

In two weeks: Our series on Irving Elman concludes with a look at "The Door Without a Key," starring Claude Rains!