Alfred Hitchcock Presents: Season #3

Season #3

💋💋Episode #1: The Glass Eye💋💋 – While cleaning out the apartment of his dead sister Julia, Jim Whitely (Shatner) comes across a strange glass eye and tells to his wife the story of how his sister acquired it. Julia had fallen in love with a famous ventriloquist named Max Collodi. She had been to all his performances and had sent letters requesting to meet him. One day, Max agrees to meet her. She arrives to his hotel room to find him sitting in darkness with his dummy George. As they talk, Julia gives in to an impulse to touch Max. Captivated by the actor’s physical beauty an aging spinster pulls up stakes to follow a ventriloquist and his dummy from performance to performance; finally, the man consents to a much-wanted meeting. When a man called Jim and his wife Dorothy are going through his dead sister Julia’s apartment, he tells her the story of Julia’s one and only love, about forty years before and how it ends with a strange glass eye she kept on the dresser. When Julia was about thirty, she went to see the performance of a ventriloquist by the name of Max Collodi and his dummy George. She fell in love with him at first sight. Julia then started following him across the country, watching all of his shows, until she finally wrote a him a letter, asking to meet him. Julia kept asking and Max finally agreed, saying that she would be only to stay five minutes, but the visits could be longer if she continued to wish to see him. She came to his hotel room and found him sitting in the dark with George. They had a pleasant conversation, but it came to an abrupt end when Julia tried to touch Max. He fell over to the ground and his head popped off, letting one of his eyes roll on the ground. To make things more horrific, George then stood up and shouted angrily for her to leave. She ran out screaming, having realized, to her horror that Max was actually George’s dummy. In her haste, she picked up one of Max’s glass eyes and has kept it ever since. After the whole love affair, Max Collodi disappeared and no one knows what happened to him, but Jim states that he believes George is now part of a traveling circus. While cleaning out the apartment of his dead sister, Julia, Jim Whitely comes across a strange glass eye and tells his wife the story of how his sister acquired it. Julia had fallen in love with a famous ventriloquist named Max Collodi. She has been to all of his performances and has sent letters requesting to meet him. One day, Max agreed to meet her. She comes to his hotel and finds him sitting in darkness with his small dummy George. As they talk, Julia tries to touch Max. She screams as his body falls to the floor and one of his glass eyes falls rolling on the carpet. George stands and angrily asks her to leave. It was Max who was the dummy and George was the ventriloquist.

💋💋Episode #2: The Mail Order Prophet💋💋 – When an ordinary clerk starts receiving letters which accurately predict the outcome of future events, he takes a dangerous gamble with his life. Ronald Grimes receives a letter from a Mr. Christianai who says he can predict the future. The letter correctly predicts the outcome of an election. More letters follow and through gambling, Grimes acquires a large amount of money. A final letter rom Christianai asks for a contribution. Grimes gives it quite willingly. Later Grimes finds out that Christiani was a fraud. He was really a con man who sent out thousands of letters, half of them predicting one outcome and the other half another. Grimes was lucky: He got the right predictions time after time. A man risks his future following the predictions of a fortuneteller whom he has never met. Ronald Grimes, a Wall Street broker unhappy with his robotic job, receives a letter from a mysterious Mr. Christianai, who says he can predict the future. The letter correctly predicts the outcome of an upcoming election, in which the underdog wins. More letters follow and through gambling, Grimes acquires a large amount of money. A final letter from Christianai asks for a contribution. Warned by his coworker, George, that no one can predict the future and that all of this has been sheer luck, Mr. Grimes ignores his better judgment and sends the money to a post office. Later, George investigates the mysterious Mr. Cnristianai and finds out that he was a fraud. He was really a con man who sent out thousands of letters, half of them predicting one kind of outcome and the other half predicting another. Using the law of percentages, Christianai was still able to give enough people correct odds that he could scam them for their money, which ranged from $200 to $600. Grimes just happened to be the one person who was given every single prediction right – and his substantial gamble on the last stock market tip landed him over a hundred grand. George is pressed by the police to get in touch with Grimes about his being scammed– but Grimes is unreachable – living the life he always wanted in the tropics. Clerk Ronald Grimes starts receiving letters from a mysterious Mr. Christiani that seemingly predicts the future.

Alfred Hitchcock appears in the prologue as an executive looking out his window in his high-rise office as if someone had fallen out. His windows are wide open and the ledge is low so someone could easily jump out. He says, “Hello, speculators, I just made a ‘killing’ in the stock market.” He makes a joke of how he did it by telling his partner that they had been wiped out and because he was a very excitable fellow. It provides a background for tonight’s story of stocks and bonds. The story opens in a busy New York high-rise office with many desks lined up neatly in assembly line fashion. The prim secretary routinely walks up to hand out another piece of work even though the workers are still working on previous work. We see that two workers, one named Ronald J. Grimes and the other, George Benedict are already disgusted even though their workday has just begun. Grimes complains that after seventeen years, they should be trusted to open their own mail and grumbles that the trouble with the office is the workers have no power of decision. Immediately, we are placed in the role of office grunt in a life of tedious drudgery. Benedict retorts, “There is only one power. They throw the switch and start the assembly line,” as he goes back to his work. They probably had this type of conversation before as Benedict explains they are very small cogs in a very large machine. He states they get the raw materials here and somewhere down the line the money pours out except they never see any of it. Grimes boldly declares that someday he’s going to walk out of there and stop the ‘blasted’ machinery and slams his desk drawer shut. The other workers are surprised by Grimes’ outburst and try to get back to their jobs. Benedict goes over to Grimes and tells him that he’s being delusional and that he can be replaced easily by slipping another cog in an hour and nobody would know he was gone. Grimes rebels by stating that they’ll be shook up for an hour anyway, but Benedict says that they’ll take up a collection for his partner’s headstone that reads he starved to death. “I’d get another job,” retorts Grimes, but Benedict ends by saying the only way to beat the system is to inherit a million dollars as their supervisor walks up. He hands Grimes a letter and complains about receiving personal mail at the office, but he turns and walks away as Grimes is apologetic and explains that he cannot understand why it was sent there.

Grimes opens the letter and discovers it is a letter from a stranger who has psychic and prophetic abilities but cannot use the power for himself so he has to work through others. Benedict goes over to Grimes and says, “So that’s how you’re going to beat the system. Marry a rich widow.” Grimes says it’s not a woman and hands him the letter from a ‘Joel Christianai’ as somebody’s idea of a joke. In the next scene, the two friends from work are at a restaurant for dinner and Grimes is late because of the rain. He wants to go to the warm Bahamas, but Benedict says that’s a dream and to forget it. He states that he got another letter from Joel Christianai, the man who can foretell the future. Benedict thinks he’s pulling his leg. Grimes says he was right about the election being the biggest political upset in years. He admits that he was wrong about it being a political scheme because Christianai sent him another prediction of the winner of the championship fight coming up. Benedict says he can call the fight himself as the champ will win by knockout. Grimes states that Christianai said the winner will be the challenger. Benedict can’t believe it because he knows boxing. Christianai also wrote that he could get very good odds. Benedict agrees that he can, but not to do it as it will be throwing away money. He says that Christianai was lucky about predicting the election. Benedict warns his friend Grimes that no one can predict the future; it’s impossible.

Later, we see Grimes stop off at a bar where the fight is on and there’s still time to bet because he wants to bet on the challenger. He strikes up a conversation with a woman excited to see the champion is pulverizing the weak challenger. Just as she states it’s too late to be on the champion unless you wan to bet on the challenger, we see that the challenger starts to come back and gets in a lucky right-hand punch that puts the champion down. The champ is counted out and challenger Matthews has won. Incredible. The woman says Grimes is lucky that he was late to bet on the champion, but he exclaims that he wanted to bet on Matthews. She gives him a very puzzled look. The two workers are back at the office and there has been a time jump. Benedict walks by and asks, “Another one?” and Grimes replies in the affirmative. He says that it has been four or five letters and prophecies. Benedict finally lets out that this is the craziest thing he’s ever heard of and asks when Grimes is going to get some sense. This upsets Grimes and he breaks his pencil. Benedict says it’s none of his business but doesn’t want his friend to be a chump and be duped in a scam. Grimes retorts “Am I a chump?” Benedict says that he’s been betting on the predictions, so he’s being a chump. He’s very serious in warning Grimes. However, Grimes says that while he missed betting on the first two of Christianai’s predictions, he’s been betting since and that Christianai has been right for five straight predictions. He states that this proves that he can foretell the future while Benedict remains skeptical and gives an emphatic “No!” and that Grimes is being set up for a bigger swindle. It’s a only a phenomenal run of good luck with the predictions. The law of averages will beat him in the end. However, Grimes is convinced that Christianai knows the future. Benedict again tries to talk some sense into Grimes, but Grimes is convinced. He has had made almost $700. Benedict says that’s fine, but Grimes has to quit while he’s still ahead.