User Reviews

Even though we can see things coming a mile away, Bette Davis steals this episode. She is a widow, living in a very nice apartment with her poodle. A hotel employee comes each day to walk the dog and she pays him five dollars. It is obvious that she is using him. She makes him ask for his money. He is in need of it because his girlfriend is ill and needs money to stay in a sanatorium and get treatment. He must not realize what a tight-fisted old goat she is because when he needs money, he goes to her. She tells him to find the money some other way, ignoring all he has done for her and the kindness he has shown. He has to be gone and so she is forced to walk the dog. She goes into an alley and is mugged, her expensive diamond ring taken. Even though she never actually sees the guy, she puts the blame on the young dog walker. He is thrown in prison. The rest of the episode is quite well done. Bette shows her acting chops as she continues her mean- spiritedness to the bitter end.

This was an episode that Alfred HItchcock could have offered an explanation on the aftermath as he often did, to advise the viewer what eventually happened to the culprit, in this case, the man who killed Mrs. Fox (Bette Davis). However he didn't, but the outcome should have been obvious to the viewer. With a motive to kill the woman because she fingered him for a year earlier mugging and theft, the unlucky Eddie (James Congdon) not only spent a year in jail, but his girlfriend needing financial help died in a sanitarium. It wouldn't have taken authorities very long to put two and two together; Sergeant Kirby (Frank Albertson) himself was pretty miffed that Mrs. Fox identified the wrong guy, and now, that wrong guy had a reason to come back for his revenge. This was actually a pretty awkward story the way it was written, notwithstanding the presence of the iconic Bette Davis in the lead role. Landing her must have been a coup for Hitchcock, it was certainly a surprise to see her show up here.

***SPOILERS*** Living on a fixed income with her beloved French Poodle Venessa middle aged and fussy Miss. Fox,Bette Davis, has her apartment buildings elevator operator Eddie, James Congdon, walk the mutt in the evening hours for $5.00 a week. Eddie who's girlfriend is in a mental institution that he's paying for is strapped for cash to keep her there and in desperation ask's the tight as a crab's a** Miss. Fox for a loan of $50.00 to keep up the monthly payments or his girlfriend would be thrown out on the street! With the penny pinching Miss. Fox refusing to lend Eddie the $50.00 and him in no mood to do any dog walking she takes Venessa out for an evening stroll, It's in an alley outside her apartment that Miss. Fox ends up getting grabbed from behind and mugged of $180.00 in cash and her precious engagement ring given to her by her fiancée a USAAF bomber pilot who 15 years ago was killed in action over the skies of Nazi occupied Europe!

With Miss. Fox sure that it was Eddie who mugged her she offers him a cool $500.00 as well as letting him keep the $180.00 in cash if he returns her engagement ring no questions asked! Feeling hurt and insulted that he's suspected of mugging her Eddie tells Miss.Fox, in so many words, to go take a hike up the Catskills Mountains wearing roller skates. Sure enough Eddie is soon arrested tried and convicted, all on Miss. Fox's testimony, and sent behind bars for two to five years for assault an robbery! While behind bars Eddie's girlfriend dies from exposure by being made homeless with Eddie not being around to take care of her!

***SPOILERS*** As things turned out Eddie was in fact found innocent when a local homeboy Jerry, Arthur Marshall, after he was arrested for mugging someone else admitted to mugging Miss. Fox as well as having her engagement ring on him. With Miss.Fox now trying to make up for what she did to Eddie, ruined his life, he in fact had other plans for her. Plans that would even the score for what she did to him which also included the $500.00 in blood money she gave Eddie as an apology!

This review is written for those who've seen this episode, sort of a one-man discussion on the show.

The crux of the episode: The very day Eddie pleaded for a $50 loan to pay for his fiancee's medical treatment, Miss Fox is robbed, from behind, in a dark alley. Not until after she goes to the police station to look at a suspect-whom she quickly says "couldn't possibly have done it," and after she, truly believing it was Eddie, offers him $500 to get her ring back, saying she'll say nothing more to the police, on Eddie's refusal to admit to anything does she tell the policeman it was Eddie who robbed her.

***ENDING SPOILER ALERT**** The next scene has the sergeant coming back to the apartment and we learn it has been a year since the trial. Eddie has been in prison but they have just recovered her ring-in the possession of the very suspect she said was NOT the robber a year ago. Eddie never had it.

Eddie is next seen after his release, with his old job, but he is very cold with Miss Fox and wants nothing to do with walking Vanessa. Miss Fox asks him to wait at the elevator, and momentarily she returns with an envelope with $500 as her way of apologizing for the trouble she caused him. She asks about his fiancee, and he informs her that she died.

Miss Fox is seen walking Vanessa into that same alley and being very much scared by a cat. Back in her apartment, she is attacked and killed. We do not see the killer's face at first, but we see him taking money out of an envelope and dropping the bills out to flutter to the floor, as the camera pans up and we see Eddie.

We viewers see how when Miss Fox is robbed the very day Eddie was pleading for money she concluded that he must have done it. She initially wanted to confront him, get back the ring she cared about and not worry about the money she lost otherwise. When she was asked to look at a suspect before she had a chance to talk to Eddie, she ignored the fact that this suspect looked much like Eddie, and bluntly said it wasn't him.

When Eddie didn't seem to be willing to return her ring on her $500 offer, and the police showed up, she decided to tell them what she believed all along, that Eddie was the one. She was, as shown, a good person who believed Eddie was the robber, and was sorry to learn she had made a mistake. Once learned, she did all she could for him, but couldn't take back the year in prison.

What doesn't work is how Eddie was convicted. Apprehended the day after the late-night robbery, he did not have a wad of money, any of Miss Fox's possessions including the ring, nor was there record of him sending a money order to the fiancee to pay her bills-which was the reason he wanted money.

More troubling is Fox's identification of Eddie only after the police came to her place a day later. She initially told them she didn't get a good look at the bandit. When shown a man who looked much like Eddie, quickly said it wasn't him. She didn't tell police that she was robbed and she knows the man who did it. Only after the fact did she make this claim. And we are to believe that on that evidence alone that a jury convicted him.

I picture the defense attorney at the trial: Now Miss Fox, when you first spoke with the police, what did you tell them about the man who robbed you? Did you say, "I was robbed and I know who did it?" Why did they have you look at another suspect when you had already told them it was Eddie? You said you were grabbed from behind, the man wrapped his arm around your neck and took your things and left and you never got a good look at him-isn't that so? Isn't it true that you only think it was Eddie because he had asked you for money earlier that day?

I picture the summation by the defense: "Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I submit that only because Eddie asked Miss Fox for a loan the very day she was robbed, does she think he is the robber. She never got any look at the robber's face, did not tell the police she knew who did it, not even when going to the station to look at a different suspect. Eddie was an honest employee so trusted by Miss Fox that she let him walk her precious little dog each evening. Other than her say so, nothing connects him with the robbery.

"He wasn't found with the ring or any money or anything. We know he wanted to send money to his fiancee but he did not send her a large sum that could have come from Miss Fox. Furthermore, when he was offered $500 from Miss Fox to just return the ring, told he could keep all the other money and nothing more would be said to the police, he did not accept. He could have had the money he needed for his girl, a lovely bonus, and not had any fear of being arrested. I submit the only way such a man as Eddie would not have taken that offer is because he could not, he did not have the ring because he had nothing to do with the robbery."

The night of the robbery, they caught this other man and, I would guess searched him well. But a whole year later he is then caught with that particular ring?

An extra thing that doesn't really make sense is that the street outside her apartment seemed to be deserted. The alley she let her dog lead her down appeared to be a dead end-she walked a short distance then turned around to go back before she was robbed from behind by someone waiting in that alley. Are we to believe this robber waits down a dark dead-end alley long after dark just hoping some foolish rich woman will wander down the alley so he can rob her? He didn't see her walking and follow her into the alley-which would make sense. He was there before she was.

It was an interesting episode-although it started slowly with Bette Davis chatting with her dog far too long, but the big plot hole keeps it from a score higher than 6