The Hitchcock Project-Dick Carr, Part Two-Salvage [1.6]

by Jack Seabrook

Dick Carr's second teleplay for Alfred Hitchcock Presents was "Salvage," which aired on CBS on Sunday, November 6, 1955. Although the title card says that the teleplay was by Carr and Fred Freiberger and that it was based on a story by Freiberger, the source was actually a radio play that Freiberger wrote called "The Long Wait," which aired on Suspense on November 24, 1949.

While the radio and TV versions have the same general plot and the same surprise ending, they differ in many details. "The Long Wait" is narrated in rapid, staccato fashion by Dan Varrell, played by Burt Lancaster. As the story opens, he disembarks from a train at Grand Central Station in New York City only to be met by Police Lieutenant Len Bush, who warns Dan not to kill Lois Williams out of revenge for her role in the death of Dan's brother Richie, who died two years before while Dan was in jail. Dan goes to a room at the Coronet Hotel and finds a gun hidden in the bathroom, left there for him by Shorty Thompson.

Gene Barry as Dan

Lois appears at the door of Dan's hotel room, beautiful and scared, and she surprises Dan by admitting that she has nothing to live for and by asking him to go ahead and kill her. She admits that her actions caused Dan's brother to kill himself. Unexpectedly, Dan finds himself unable to kill her; he puts the gun in his pocket and prevents her from jumping out of the window. She says that she has nothing, and he mutters that "'It's no fun this way.'" Instead of killing her, Dan offers to help Lois by becoming her partner if she returns to her former career as a dress designer. When Dan mentions that her old lover Tim Grady will come back to her, Lois agrees to his plan.

A month later, her dress shop is ready to open, and Dan visits The Emerald Club, where he asks Lou Henry for a $5000 loan to help Lois. Shorty Thompson is also at the club, and he calls Dan a rat for partnering with Lois; a fight ensues between Dan, Shorty, and two other crooks. After Dan gives Lois the money, he visits several crooks and threatens them to force their wives and girlfriends to patronize the dress shop. June, the widow of Dan's brother, throws money at Dan's feet, angry that he is helping Lois, whom everyone blames for Richie's death.

Nancy Gates as Lois

Dan uses intimidation to invite various crooks and their wives to a party for Lois that weekend; the day before, Dan learns that June has convinced Shorty to kill Lois. Dan finds Lois and Shorty at an art museum and prevents the killing; he tells Lt. Bush to arrest Shorty and June. The next evening, the party is a success. The only thing missing from Lois's life is Tim Grady, so Dan visits Tim in his room and tells him to marry her, offering to withdraw from partnership in her successful business and to let Tim take his place. Tim telephones Lois to propose marriage.

The next morning, Dan visits Lois at her shop and confirms that she is the happiest woman in the world. He telephones Lt. Bush and tells him to arrive at the shop in about five minutes. Dan tells Lois, "'Now you're worth killing!" and shoots her, finally getting his revenge.

There's a fatal inevitability to "The Long Wait," in which Dan's plan is worked out slowly and carefully until he reaches his goal, and his vengeance comes at Lois's peak moment of happiness. In The Alfred Hitchcock Presents Companion, Fred Freiberger is quoted as saying that he sold the script "about three times," but I have been unable to find any other radio or TV productions of it. He says that Hitchcock bought it and Dick Carr put his name on it, but the title card credits the teleplay to both Carr and Freiberger and a careful comparison of the TV and radio versions shows that the story was rewritten for TV; I suspect Freiberger had nothing to do with the TV show.

Peter Adams as Tim Grady

While "The Long Wait" is narrated by Dan Varrell, "Salvage" focuses more on Lois Williams, and the exposition is done differently through dialogue. In the first scene, she walks into a bar, where she is hit on by a drunk. She appeals to Lou Henry, but he refuses to help her. In scene two, Lois visits Tom Grady, who is waiting for a woman to join him for a romantic dinner. Like Henry, Grady will not help the desperate Lois. In these two scenes, which are not in the radio version, background is provided about Richie's death and Lois's role in it: she reveals that she talked Dan's brother into committing a robbery so she could get money to buy clothes that would impress Tim. When the police questioned her, she told them that Richie was responsible and where he could be found.

Gone from the TV show is Dan's narration, and we do not see him arrive in New York City and be warned by Lt. Bush, a character who has been eliminated from the story. Instead, Lois returns to her apartment and Dan soon arrives. This scene parallels the scene in the radio play where Lois comes to Dan's hotel room. In the following scenes, we see Lois at her dress shop, a changed woman, and we see Dan go to Lou Henry's bar to ask for $5000. Shorty appears here, but instead of a melee where Dan fights Shorty and two other crooks, Dan just throws his drink in Shorty's face.

Elisha Cook, Jr., as Shorty

All of the business of Dan threatening people to support Lois's dress shop is deleted and there is no appearance by June, who does not hire Shorty to kill Lois. Also gone is the scene at the museum where Dan disarms Shorty and prevents him from killing Lois. Instead, we see the party and Dan's visit to Tim Grady's room, which is quite similar to the scene in the radio play. The final scene omits the party at Lois's room. Instead, it's the morning after Dan visits Tim and Lois is so happy that she gives her staff the day off. Dan enters, Lois tells him how happy she is, and the show ends with him pulling out his gun and shooting her.

"Salvage" is a streamlined version of "The Long Wait" that uses dialogue and visual storytelling methods to convey the same general plot that is found in the radio version. In his revision, Dick Carr removes extraneous characters and scenes in order to focus on the main point: Dan wants to kill Lois but decides that he needs to make sure she has something to live for before taking it away from her. The radio version is more exciting than the TV version, but strong performances by the leads in the TV show ensure that it's an enjoyable half hour. One slight change in the TV version improves the surprise at the end: when Dan first agrees to help Lois, he says that his motive is to run an honest business, so he'll look better while on parole. This motive is absent from the radio play, in which it is always fairly clear that Dan is setting Lois up for a fall.

Paul Bryan as Lou Henry

"Salvage" is directed by Justus Addis (1917-1979), who worked in television beginning in 1953 and directed ten episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents; this was his first. In his private life, he was the lifetime companion of Hayden Rorke, who played Dr. Bellows on I Dream of Jeannie. Addis worked almost exclusively in television, from 1953 to 1968. He also directed three episodes of The Twilight Zone. His only feature film was The Cry Baby Killer (1958) for producer Roger Corman; this film was notable for being Jack Nicholson's first role onscreen.

Gene Barry (1919-2009) gets top billing as Dan; he had a long career on screen as a leading man. Born Eugene Klass, he started out on stage in 1940 before appearing on TV and in the movies from 1950 to 2005. His most memorable film, The War of the Worlds (1955), came early in his career; he then had a recurring role on the TV series Our Miss Brooks (1955-1956) before starring in four series over the course of fifteen years: Bat Masterson (1958-1961), Burke's Law (1963-1966 and 1994-1995), The Name of the Game (1968-1971) and The Adventurer (1972-1973). Barry appeared on the Hitchcock series three times, including "Dear Uncle George," and there is an informative website devoted to his career here.

Co-starring as Lois is Nancy Gates (1926-2019), who appeared on radio, in film, and on TV from 1941 to 1969. She was in one other episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents: "Portrait of Jocelyn."

In smaller roles:

• Peter Adams (1917-1987) as Tim Grady; he was on screen from 1940 to 1969.
• Elisha Cook, Jr. (1903-1995) as Shorty; he began acting in films in 1930, served in the Army in WWII, and continued to make appearances on screen until 1988. Among his many memorable roles were parts in The Maltese Falcon (1941), Phantom Lady (1944), and The Big Sleep (1946); on TV, he was seen on Thriller, Star Trek, The Night Stalker TV movie (1972) and The Odd Couple.
• Paul Bryan (1910-1985) as Lou Henry; he played many small parts on screen between 1951 and 1983, including a role in Vertigo (1958), and he was seen on The Twilight Zone and Batman.

Fred Freiberger (1915-2003), who wrote "The Long Wait" for Suspense, started out in advertising in New York City in the late 1930s and served in the Air Force in WWII. After the war, he wrote for film, radio, and TV from 1946 to 1989 and produced TV shows from 1963 to 1982, including the third season of Star Trek. 

Listen to "The Long Wait" here. Watch "Salvage" here or buy the DVD here.

Dick Carr wrote the teleplays for three of the first fifteen episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents to air: "Triggers in Leash," adapted from a 1925 western short story; "Salvage," adapted from a 1949 radio play; and "The Big Switch," adapted from a 1936 story by Cornell Woolrich. All three episodes are enjoyable and demonstrate skill in the way that the sources are revised for TV. At this late date, it's unlikely we'll ever know why Carr did not continue writing for the Hitchcock show, but he also wrote eight teleplays for the 1955-1956 season of Four Star Playhouse, so perhaps he decided to focus on that series at the time.

Sources:

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

IMDb, www.imdb.com.

"The Long Wait." Suspense, CBS, 24 Nov. 1949. 

"RadioGold Index." RadioGold Index, radiogoldin.library.umkc.edu/. Accessed 23 Sept. 2023. 

"Salvage." Alfred Hitchcock Presents, season 1, episode 6, CBS, 6 November 1955.

"Suspense-The Long Wait." Escape and Suspense!, 21 Feb. 2010, www.escape-suspense.com/2010/02/suspense-the-long-wait.html.

Wikipedia, www.wikipedia.org.

Listen to Al Sjoerdsma discuss "Salvage" here!

In two weeks: Our series on Lukas Heller begins with a look at "The Tender Poisoner," starring Dan Dailey and Howard Duff!

The Hitchcock Project-Dick Carr, Part One-Triggers in Leash [1.3]

by Jack Seabrook

Richard "Dick" Carr (1929-1988) wrote for radio, film, and television from 1947 to 1981. He wrote three teleplays for Alfred Hitchcock Presents, all in the first season, including "The Big Switch."

Carr's first teleplay for Alfred Hitchcock Presents was "Triggers in Leash," based on the story of the same name by Allan Vaughan Elston that was first published in the July 1925 issue of The Frontier. In a small restaurant on the prairie, Del Harte and Red Delaney come face to face after months of waiting to encounter each other. Old Maggie Flynn owns and runs the small establishment and finds herself standing between the gunmen. Rain pours down outside and a cuckoo clock announces noon. The men have sworn to kill each other but Maggie refuses to move out of the way because she knows they won't shoot her. She tells them that she'll be a witness to say who shot first and they holster their guns, since neither wants to be guilty of murder.

"Triggers in Leash" was
first published here

At Maggie's urging, Red and Del sit across from each other at a table and she cooks ham and eggs and feeds the men as they eye each other warily. The tension mounts as the gunslingers taunt each other across the table, each man waiting for an opportunity to shoot. The ticking of the clock on the shelf is loud in the small room; the men finish eating and stand, agreeing that they will wait to fire until the cuckoo emerges at one o'clock. As the hour approaches, Maggie takes a heavy marble crucifix from the other end of the shelf in order to prevent it from being hit by a stray bullet. Before one, the clock suddenly stops and she claims that it was due to the hand of God intervening to prevent slaughter.

The men drop their gun belts to the floor, honoring their agreement, and sit down to a friendlier meal, not hearing Maggie mutter that they don't know that the clock won't run when the shelf on which it sits is not level. She replaces the crucifix on the shelf but the clock no longer runs.

"Triggers in Leash" is a thrilling story set in the Old West, though the events it depicts could take place just as effectively in a contemporary bar between any two men with guns. Maggie is portrayed as a simple, hardworking woman, so it is a surprise at the end to see her trick the gunslingers into ending their standoff. The story was reprinted in the 1947 collection, Alfred Hitchcock's Fireside Book of Suspense, which is probably where Joan Harrison read it and chose it to be adapted as the third episode of the TV series to be broadcast, premiering on CBS on Sunday, October 16, 1955.

Gene Barry as Del

The very first shot shows us the objects that will figure in the show's conclusion. The camera starts by focusing on a small window in Maggie's restaurant before panning across the shelf that holds the crucifix and the clock, then down to Maggie, who pulls the chain to wind the clock. Ben, a new character, is added for one reason: he will reveal the surprise at the end of the show rather than having Maggie mutter it under her breath, as she does in the story. Ben wants more food but Maggie sends him out to fetch wood for the stove, clearing the way for the arrival of Del, who enters alone; in the story, he and Red enter simultaneously from two doors at opposite ends of the single room building. The first interesting shot occurs here, making me think, in error, that the show is directed by Robert Stevens, for whom unusual shots are a hallmark; the camera is set at the level of the stove and looks up at Del and Maggie.

Ben walks back in, carrying wood, and Del pulls his gun, thinking it's Red and causing Ben to drop the wood in fright. The viewer sees that Del is jumpy and refuses to remove his gun belt, but why? The TV version of the story increases the suspense in these early scenes by making the viewer wonder why Del is so nervous. There is another unusual shot with Del looming large in the foreground while Ben and Maggie converse, their figures smaller in the background. Ben leaves and Red suddenly bursts through the door; Del leaps to his feet and the men face each other, ready to draw their guns. There is a third interesting camera angle here, looking from behind Del at the level of his wrist, showing Red and Maggie positioned in the space between his gun and his hand.

Darren McGavin as Red

The dialogue that follows between Del and Red establishes their reasons for wanting to kill each other, something that is absent from the short story: they had a disagreement the night before during a card game and Red thinks that Del ran away out of cowardice, while Del explains that he left in order to avoid having to kill a hotheaded Red. Maggie controls the situation first with her remark that she will be a witness and then by cooking the men breakfast. As the men sit at the table, the cuckoo clock sits in the distance but in the center of the shot, establishing it again in the viewer's mind before it is revealed as a central object in the story. The pendulum swings back and forth as suspense mounts; this visual motif was not available to Elston in the short story, where the clock's ticking is represented by repeated use of the onomatopoeic words, "pink, pank; pink, pank."

Maggie's history is expanded in the TV show, where we learn that she is a widow whose husband Charlie was a gunfighter who died; this gives her all the more reason to abhor gunplay. Suspense mounts as the men stand, agreeing to draw when the cuckoo emerges, and we learn that the crucifix on the shelf also has sentimental value to Maggie, since she tells Del and Red that her late husband gave it to her on their wedding day. This is another detail not present in the original story. At the climax, Maggie cowers in a corner, clutching the crucifix, and the clock stops just before noon. The tension breaks and the men approach the clock, staring in awe. In the short story, they sit down to eat together, but in the TV show they leave together. Instead of Maggie muttering the truth about the clock to herself as she relights the stove, Ben rushes back in, sees the shelf, and provides the explanation for why the clock ceased ticking. He replaces the crucifix and, unlike the short story, where the clock does not resume running, in the TV version it not only starts up again but the cuckoo emerges to sound noon, and this is the show's final image.

Ellen Corby as Maggie

"Triggers in Leash" is a superb adaptation that expands its source story at the beginning to spend more time setting the scene. It adds the new character of Ben in order to increase the impact of the final revelation, and it ratchets up the suspense. For a one-room drama, it never seems crowded; the small space where the events take place only serves to increase the tension. Don Medford's direction is excellent and the pace never flags. The acting is outstanding as well. Gene Barry, as Del, and Darren McGavin, as Red, give powerful performances and are utterly convincing as two men whose determination not to back down nearly leads to tragedy. Both actors show off: Barry twirls his gun while holstering it and McGavin similarly twirls his hat while hanging it. Casey MacGregor makes the most of his small role, playing the character of Ben like Gabby Hayes.

The short story's author, Allan Vaughan Elston (1887-1976), had a degree in civil engineering and worked on railroads and as a cattle rancher in the early decades of the twentieth century before turning his hand to fiction. In his long career as a writer, he had scores of stories published from the 1920s to the 1940s; he then began writing novels, mostly westerns, and these appeared from the early 1940s to the mid-1970s. His stories served as the basis for a few films and a number of TV episodes, two of which were for Alfred Hitchcock Presents; the other was "The Belfry." Elston's papers are held at UCLA.

The camera looks up from the stove.

"Triggers in Leash" is directed by Don Medford (1917-2012), the stage name of Donald Muller, who was a busy director of episodic TV from 1951 to 1989. In addition to two episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents, he directed five episodes of The Twilight Zone and also the final, two-part conclusion of The Fugitive. He was a quick worker--in an interview for the Archives of American Television, Pat Hitchcock mentions that his other episode, "Into Thin Air," the first of the series to be filmed, took only two days. She adds that, after that, they realized that the time was too short and subsequent episodes were given three days.

Gene Barry (1919-2009) gets top billing as Del; he had a long career on screen as a leading man. Born Eugene Klass, he started out on stage in 1940 before appearing on TV and in the movies from 1950 to 2005. His most memorable film, The War of the Worlds (1955), came early in his career; he then had a recurring role on the TV series Our Miss Brooks (1955-1956) before starring in four series over the course of fifteen years: Bat Masterson (1958-1961), Burke's Law (1963-1966 and 1994-1995), The Name of the Game (1968-1971) and The Adventurer (1972-1973). Barry appeared on the Hitchcock series three times, including "Dear Uncle George," and there is an informative website devoted to his career here.

Del is large in the foreground, while
Ben and Maggie are smaller in the background.

Giving an equally thrilling performance as Red is Darren McGavin (1922-2006), who appeared on three episodes of the Hitchcock TV series. Born William Lyle Richardson, he appeared on stage, film, and TV from 1945 to 2008. He starred in five TV series: Crime Photographer (1951-1952), Mike Hammer (1958-1959), Riverboat (1959-1961), The Outsider (1968-1969) and, of course, The Night Stalker (1974-1975), which followed two very popular TV movies featuring the same character, Carl Kolchak, who kept encountering supernatural menaces while working as a newspaper reporter in Chicago. McGavin also had a memorable role as the father in A Christmas Story (1983) and there is a website about him here.

Ellen Corby (1911-1999) portrays Maggie; born Ellen Hansen, she started out as a script girl in Hollywood and played many uncredited roles on film from 1928 until she got her first screen credit in 1948. Her career continued until 1997 and included appearances on Thriller, Batman, The Odd Couple, and Night Gallery. She was in Hitchcock's Vertigo (1958) and she was featured in five episodes of the Hitchcock TV show, including "Party Line." She is best remembered for her role as Grandma Walton on The Waltons (1972-1980), for which she won three Emmy Awards.

Casey MacGregor as Ben

Finally, Casey MacGregor (1904-1988) plays Ben; he was on screen from 1942 to 1971 and this was his only appearance on the Hitchcock TV show.

There were not very many Westerns in the ten-year run of Alfred Hitchcock Presents/The Alfred Hitchcock Hour. In the fall of 1955, when the series premiered and "Triggers in Leash" was broadcast, there were a number of Western series running on prime-time TV, including Cheyenne, The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp, The Lone Ranger, and Gunsmoke, but the television landscape was not yet overrun with Western shows as it would be later in the decade. The film, High Noon, had been released a few years before, in 1952, and won four Oscars in 1953; perhaps it was the memory of this classic that led Dick Carr to alter the timing of the clock in "Triggers in Leash" so that the hands creep toward noon as the show progresses.

Watch "Triggers in Leash" online here or buy the DVD here. 

Sources:

Elston, Allan Vaughan. "Triggers in Leash." Alfred Hitchcock's Fireside Book of Suspense. Ed. Alfred Hitchcock. NY: Simon & Schuster, 1947. 215-224.

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

Galactic Central, www.philsp.com/index.html.

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

IBDB, www.ibdb.com.

IMDb, www.imdb.com.

"Triggers in Leash." Alfred Hitchcock Presents, season 1, episode 3, CBS, 16 October 1955.

Wikipedia, www.wikipedia.org.

Listen to Al Sjoerdsma discuss "Triggers in Leash" here!

In two weeks: Our series on Dick Carr concludes with a look at "Salvage," starring Gene Barry and Nancy Gates!