Panic!

I wish I had the episode listings of this old show. You were always on the edge of your seat watching the predicaments the characters got into. Here are three I remember:

1) My favorite episode was the one where Mercedes McCambridge played a young deaf woman who still lived at home with her struggling parents. She was going to a school for the deaf and seeing ear doctors (pun?)periodically. One day her ear doctor solves her hearing problem. She comes home to excitedly tell her parents that she can hear, only to overhear them plotting her death (for the insurance money I presume). I nearly had a heart attack!

2) A businessman gets a new job in a high-rise office building (25th floor or so). He gets hired on a Friday and decides to bring his family down to the office on Saturday to see it. He uses his key to get in and take the elevator up to the 25th floor. While they are looking at his office a fire breaks out (in the elevator?). The phones weren't working on the weekend, and the stairs were the only way down. For the life of me I can't remember what happened at the end!

3) This one is real fuzzy, but it has to do with a couple of young boys left together while their mother runs to the store. They decide to make some peanut butter sandwiches, but they are tainted with botulism (I don't remember why or how). I think they were ready to take their first bites when the mother returned home.

It seems that little by little, over the years, we are piecing together the episodes of "Panic" that short-lived series from the late 1950s. A key piece of the puzzle appears to be someone at IMDb getting a list of "guest stars" and when you click "more" on that list, you get titles of all the episodes. There were apparently over 30 of them, many more than I thought. (Shows how your memory plays tricks on you.) Anyway, the episode listed as #1.11 "Peter and the Tiger" was obviously the one that I was referring to in my post of Nov 3, 2000 (darn! four years ago!)and that crabturtle also mentioned. Episode #1.1 "The Priest" obviously corresponds to the one I mentioned in my post of Nov. 20 2003. (I wonder why I only post in November ???). Also, the episodes #2.2 "Hear No Evil" and #1.16 "Botulism" are obviously two of the three referred to by stattad.

Anyway, I believe the episode #1.6 "The Airline Hostess" is about a flight attendant who realizes there is a bomb aboard her plane, which is, of course, in flight. I think there may have been a note left on the plane, or something like that. The show deals with how the flight attendant and other crew members narrow down the list of suspects on the plane. At the end, it's down to two men, both of which seem to be holding their hands on an object and not moving. One has (I think) his hat and coat in his lap, seemingly covering something, and the other has a hand on a briefcase and never moves the hand. Finally the crew decides that since the bomb is about to go off (don't remember how they know this) they have to take a chance and pick one of the two suspects and disable him. Of course if they pick the wrong one, they're all dead. The decision, is left to "The Airline Hostess". She first chooses the man with the briefcase, goes over to him and offers him a cigarette. He says something like "you'll have to help me light it" He takes his one hand and uses it to lift his other hand off the briefcase - he has a paralyzed hand. Obviously, the bomber is the one with the hat and coat - and the crew is able to disarm him and (I seem to remember) throw the bomb out the window (!) before it goes off.

I think this was one of the many shows forbidden me when I was ten, but obviously mainstream 50s TV (a "Panic!" marathon would be a great Thanksgiving Day). The only one I remember has of course the heavy voice-over at the beginning. A man is on a subway with three men sitting opposite him. All are wearing generic 50s suits. "Your friend seems to have had one too many," he says. The heavy voice-over then comes in ending ominously "... the man in the middle was dead." At the next stop, the 'hero' reaches down for his newspaper and bolts out the door. The pre-commercial shot is a close-up of the face of one of the three men (with gun) pressed against the closed subway door ... (The memory trail now grows cold.) Think of all the great things I could have done in life if my brain were not cluttered with things like this.

One of the best things about the show was the voice-over at the beginning of each episode done by Westbrook Van Voorhis (you just don't see names like that anymore.) He had a great deep voice that added much intensity to the show intros. I only remember fragments of episodes, one had a scene with two boys hiding under a porch and overhearing some sinister conversation, and the other episode had something to do with a lighthouse. I believe that when I was watching this show in Washington DC, it was on at the same time as "Twilight Zone" and it was always a tough decision which one to watch. I hope these shows are not totally lost or destroyed, so we can see them again.

Probably will never be seen in reruns. I don't think there were more than 10 or so episodes ever made. I recall my favorite episode that featured a little boy who was notorious for lying. He is wandering through a desolate area not far from the town where he lives and comes upon a truck that has fallen into a pit or hole. It's a circus truck. At the bottom of the hole is a man (the driver) with a broken leg who is trying to fend off a tiger. How does the boy (remember, a notorious liar) convince the townspeople what has happened and that the man needs help quickly?

"Panic" was also in syndication for one year, I believe, in the very late 1950's or early 1960's under the title "No Warning"