Dead Man's Tale

Lonny Chapman and Jean Engstrom play a married couple named Philip and Jan Werris, who check into a Canadian hotel now broke and desperate for money. Philip is an out-of-work writer, but discovers a book on gold prospecting by two missing men that seems to inspire him, as that night he finds himself "sleep writing", and in the morning his wife decides to send in the story he typed, and amazingly it is published! Trouble starts when the wife of one of the men comes by wanting answers, and so Philip investigates the matter himself by going to the mine, with surprising results... Interesting episode goes in unexpected directions, with an eerie, effective ending.

In a western seacoast town, newspaper writer Lonny Chapman (as Phillip "Phil" Werris) checks into a cheap hotel with his wife Jean Engstrom (as Jan). Unsuccessful in farming, they are down to their last few dollars. She finds "The Gold Miner's Handbook" which transfixes Mr. Chapman. That evening, he gets up and types a story about the book's author or owner, club-footed Lawrence Barton - but Chapman doesn't recall writing anything. Fascinated by the story, and calling it "perfect Sunday supplement stuff," Ms. Engstrom submits the story for publication. The story is successful, but is it real?

***** Dead Man's Tale (1/17/61) John Newland ~ Lonny Chapman, Jean Engstrom, Lucy Prentis, Charles Seel

Like the rest of the shows in the series, the narrator (John Newland) claims this one is true. Yeah...and if you believe that I have some oceanfront property in Kansas I'd like to sell you.... Regardless, "Dead Man's Tale" is a reasonably entertaining entry in the series.

The show begins with a couple down to their last dollars in Alaska and they are desperate. They check into a cheap hotel but can only afford to stay for a day or two. That night, they find a log belonging to a recent guest of the hotel--and it has to do with the guest going off to look for gold in the Yukon. That night, the man gets out of bed and types a story all about the guy in the log...though in the morning he has no memory of this! The story is VERY specific and interesting but it cannot be true. But, since they are nearly destitute, the man's wife sells the story to a newspaper. Oddly, they soon discover that the story is true...and perhaps they can save the prospector or his brother.

Wildly unbelievable but worth seeing. This is about average for the series or slightly below average.

This is western Alaska - where you've either struck it rich, or you're counting out the nickels to make sure you've got a dollar twenty-five for a motel room. Well, that's the plight of Philip (Lonny Chapman), a failed writer, and his loyal wife Jan (Jean Engstrom), neither of them looking quite bedraggled enough to carry conviction, but delivering a good professional performance anyway.

The previous occupant seems to have left behind a copy of a cheap manual, The Gold Miner's Handbook, presumably not worth taking with him, yet it has a strange effect on Philip, who gets up in the night to type a short story about two brothers prospecting for gold - of which he has no memory, when Jan asks him about it in the morning. But it is Jan who finds the story so realistic, she submits it to a newspaper, and it duly puts a little money in their pocket.

Then, to their astonishment, they find the story is more than just realistic; it's the factual truth, as the wife of one of the missing brothers recognises many details that ring true. Philip promises to search for her husband, and travels to the spot, where he makes discoveries that we can't reveal here. (If it occurred to you to wonder why the Government Claims Officer had never heard of any local prospecting activity, it may also occur to you that not every miner wants to reveal the location of his searches).

To do justice to this review, I had to run the film through twice, to be sure of the dialogue, as the audio quality had suffered a bit over sixty years. But as always, our host John Newland charms us into accepting his almost comically dubious theories, in this case a 'psychic seizure' that has mystically revealed the truth to the sufferer while he sleeps.