User Reviews

I really liked this episode - Harry Guardino as the slippery Lothario is particularly good and the sleazy atmosphere of the bars Guardino visits (in flashback) reminded me of the kind of place Gloria Grahame and Lee Marvin would spend the evening at in The Big Heat. The scenes in the prison are bleak and although I am not in favour of Capital Punishment the film avoids the preachiness on the topic which is fine by me- although I am pretty sure that the condemned man would have had to get his head shaved. Budgetary issues rather than any vanity on Guardino's part I'd guess

The twist in the tale is not telegraphed but when it arrives it is very reminiscent of the finale of the British black comedy, Kind Hearts and Coronets from a few years before although the tone throughout is far less cheerful

Not a classic but pretty good - and probably the best episode Paul Henreid did for the show.

***SPOILERS*** With just hours to live before he's to be executed by the state for 1st degree murder smooth talking ladies man and con artist Gerry Daniels, Harry Guardino, wants to put things straight in how innocent he is of his crime of murdering his bookie Mr.Clark, Robin Morse. But what Daniels wants more then anything else is to prove, with evidence that only he knows about, that the D.A Bernard Butler, Hugh Marlowe, not only allowed the bookie's actual killer get away but screwed up two other murder cases where an innocent man was sentenced to death that Daniels in fact was responsible for!

Typing out all the facts behind the murders that he was involved in and then having it all published in the local newspapers after he's executed Daniels' plans to expose the hated D.A Buter as the total screw up and incompetent that he really is. And thus destroy his political career that D.A Butler hopes will lead him straight to the state Governor's Mansion! As it all soon turned out things boomeranged against Daniels in a way that he never expected them to.

***SPOILERS*** By jumping the gun or electric chair Daniels' incriminating letter was mailed too soon to the newspaper for it to be retrieved by him. He out of the blue got a last minute stay and eventual pardon for the murder he was convicted of when a witness, one of the many women he romanced, came forward with the alibi that he so desperately needed. As for the murders that he just confessed to in his tell all letter in Daniels thinking he won't be around to be tried for them: Well that's another story!

One of most frequently occurring characters in these 1950's dramas, is the irresistible wolf who hangs around bars, waiting for bored women to come in. In this case, the guy has created a cottage industry. Unfortunately for him, he now finds himself on death row, and while he has committed murder, he did not commit the one for which he was convicted. He decides as his last act to ask for a typewriter and some paper so he can write a final diatribe against the district attorney who put him in his current circumstances. In telling his tale, he admits to several murders that he did commit. The episode is a dramatic portrayal of the other murders; in each case, a woman trusting him and finding out too late what he truly is. It's not a bad episode and it has the "Hitchcock" ending. Harry Guardino is cast perfectly as the handsome cad with the knowing little smirk.

While on death row for a crime he didn't commit, Gerry Daniels (Harry Guardino) decides that as long as he's going to be executed, he might as well point out the way District Attorney Bernard Butler (Hugh Marlowe) bungled a previous case and how an innocent man was convicted of murder and died for it. And he does it while admitting to three murders that he actually was involved with! Boy, talk about a real loser. I guess since he wasn't really a hardened criminal until he killed a married couple and a snoopy saloon gal, he didn't have a handle on prison protocol that states all letters will be screened before they get mailed out. Gee, wouldn't you think his admission in writing would send up a red flag to authorities even before the DA showed up to say he was in the clear for bookie Clark's murder? As with so many of these Hitchcock dramas, the story isn't fleshed out well enough to make a credible impact as it goes for the suspenseful twist at the end.

Harry Guardino is a condemned man, sitting in his cell, but not brooding or afraid. He's angry. He insists he's being executed for a crime he didn't commit. As his last request, he gets a typewriter and begins banging out a letter to the editor of the local paper. There follows a lengthy flashback that illustrates the true story.

Harry is a good-looking spiffy dresser who picks up rich women in high-end bars, bleeds them of money, and then disappears. Mister Nice Guy. But he's into betting on horses too, so he loses a lot of his income.

One night, romancing a married woman, he's trapped when the husband bursts in and he winds up shooting them both. He carefully arranges the scene to look like a murder/homicide and departs.

But a waitress who is wise to Harry's tricks remembers his picking up the married lady and begins to blackmail him. In an alley, he bashes her head in. That's three murders so far.

Ironically, he's picked up and convicted of the murder of his bookie, a crime of which he's innocent. And, boys and girls, that's why Harry is writing this angry letter to the Times -- or the Courant or the Picayune or whatever the fictional newspaper is called.

He has one of the corrections officers mail the letter, but at that moment the District Attorney bursts into the cell and says someone else has confessed to the killing of the bookie. Harry is now free and will have nothing more to fear. Except that the letter is on its way to the Cincinnati Beobachter.

I forget which Greek philosopher introduced the idea of immanent justice, the belief that in the end you get what's coming to you. Maybe it wasn't a Greek philosopher. Maybe it was the Moral Overseers who wrote the code that governed movies and television during the period. The code decreed that nobody could get away with murder -- and there would be no so-called "wardrobe malfunctions" either.

Watching this story unreel, I began to wonder if the writers had recently viewed the Wildeian "Kind Hearts and Coronets" because the plots are so similar. I also couldn't help noticing that the episodes in "Alfred Hitchcock Presents" are really rather flat and sketchy, as they were in many TV dramas of the period. The sets are perfunctory. Nobody really has to act much. The plots are generic. We learn nothing of any detail. It's possible that half an hour just isn't a long enough time to do a more than pedestrian job on a story like this. "Law and Order", in contrast, was crammed with twists and minutiae and yet it zipped along for its allotted fifty minutes.