Approved | 30min | Drama, Fantasy, Mystery, TV Series | Episode aired 10 May 1960
Alcoholic Ellen Grayson summons her husband Harry to her isolated house to announce their marriage is over, after which he crashes his car. Helen is then visited by a man, the exact double of a much younger Harry, whose account of the love his has for his wife moves her to reconciliation and inadvertently saving her husband's life.
Director: John Newland
Writers: Merwin Gerard, Lawrence B. Marcus
Stars: Joan Fontaine, Warren Beatty, John Newland
Alcoholic Ellen Grayson summons her husband Harry to her isolated house to announce their marriage is over, after which he crashes his car. Helen is then visited by a man, the exact double of a much younger Harry, whose account of the love his has for his wife moves her to reconciliation and inadvertently saving her husband's life.
Director: John Newland
Writers: Merwin Gerard, Lawrence B. Marcus
Stars: Joan Fontaine, Warren Beatty, John Newland
Category
🎥
Short filmTranscript
00:00Have you ever had the feeling that you knew what someone was going to say just before he said it?
00:06Or have you ever walked into a strange room and had the sensation that you'd been there before?
00:12Well, if you have, you've taken a small step beyond.
00:17Now watch a giant step.
00:30Sooner or later, each of us feels the need to escape.
00:41The country folk go to the city, the city folk go to the country.
00:46This, for example, is a very pleasant form of escape.
00:50Here on this mountaintop, we are a mere ten miles from a city of 80,000 people.
00:56Each of whom, like us, has fashioned a small cage of reality out of the chaos of unreality.
01:04Each of whom, like us, lives his life by the steady, reassuring ticking of the clock.
01:12Forgetting that the clock is merely man's invention and that tomorrow is a creation of the human mind.
01:21Forgetting that there is only the constant now.
01:26But if that be true, where does that leave yesterday?
01:33Now here comes a man from that city below, that city of ticking clocks, who's about to escape his cage of reality.
01:43Ellen.
02:02Ellen.
02:07Ellen.
02:38Seal tight with the stamp of the U.S. government.
02:43You scared me.
02:46Why?
02:48Well, first the telephone call, and then I came up to an empty house.
02:52So you thought I got roaring drunk and fell off the mountain?
02:55Well, I didn't. I went out for a walk.
02:57I love it here. It's so wild and lonely.
03:01Always seems such a joke.
03:03The full bottle is proof that I have a will of iron.
03:06You look absolutely wonderful.
03:08But five days in the country won't do for some people.
03:12Why did you want to talk to me about, Ellen? What was so urgent?
03:16I checked with the hospital today.
03:19This person goes home at the end of the week.
03:21I knew that.
03:23Harry, when I think of how close I came to killing that man.
03:26Well, you didn't.
03:28No, I didn't. I didn't even see him.
03:30No, I didn't. I didn't even see him.
03:32I was so drunk, he wasn't even a blur.
03:36Now, come on, Ellen.
03:37What next?
03:38What new escapade for the madcap alcoholic?
03:44Maybe a school bus. Wipe out the whole kindergarten.
03:47Really hit the jackpot.
03:48No.
03:50I'm not smashing into anything, Harry.
03:52Of course you won't.
03:53I'm through nearly killing people.
03:55Of shouting drunken curses in police stations.
03:58Of being bundled into straight jackets and whipped off to sanitariums.
04:02Oh, and seeing lovely little goodies drift through the walls.
04:06Oh, I didn't tell you.
04:08Last time I was pursued by an open coffin.
04:10Now, that's a little more original than bats and pink elephants, wouldn't you say?
04:15Fun and games are over.
04:17Guess why?
04:18I don't know why, but I'm sure I'm in favor of it.
04:21Because I've stopped kidding myself about us.
04:24About us?
04:26Harry, I have a little speech to make.
04:29A simple, sober little speech which couldn't be phoned in and which should have been said 500 drinks ago.
04:35I don't need alcohol anymore.
04:37And I don't need you anymore.
04:39I mean it, Harry.
04:41You mean what?
04:43I mean at last I've faced the truth.
04:46It's a tired little cliche, isn't it?
04:47But that's just what happened.
04:49And I don't need a drink instead.
04:51And I don't need to have an affair instead.
04:53And I don't need anything instead.
04:55Where's the other bottle of booze?
04:58Oh, so I sound drunk.
05:00Want me to walk a straight line, officer?
05:02Because I can.
05:04Ellen, this is all a lot of female emotionalism.
05:06Now, it's probably your hormones or something.
05:08Why don't you stay up here for the rest of the week the way that Dr. Mason told you to?
05:13I intend to.
05:15And then what?
05:17I don't know what then.
05:19I expect the governor to declare a goodbye Harry with the parades and dancing in the streets.
05:27Ellen, I know what's wrong with us and so do you.
05:29Indeed I do.
05:3217 years times 365 days times 24 hours, drift, drift, drift.
05:38Now, Ellen, I'm sorry. It's not that simple.
05:41Mind if we skip that?
05:42You want to sweep it all under the rug again and pretend it doesn't exist?
05:45I don't even think about that anymore.
05:47You don't talk about it.
05:48You drink instead.
05:50Spare me the amateur analysis.
05:54Ellen, where was I when we became strangers?
05:58Right here.
06:00You've never believed me.
06:02Nope.
06:03What do you want me to do, stand on my head?
06:05Oh, let's not talk about it.
06:06You never want to talk about it.
06:08Oh, and I don't want to fight.
06:09I'm not fighting.
06:12Lovers fight.
06:15You better be getting back.
06:17The way it's snowing, the road may be closed pretty soon.
06:21Would it be that much of a catastrophe if I spent the night here?
06:24Harry, it wouldn't be any more of a catastrophe than every night.
06:36I think I like you better when you're drunk.
06:44Harry.
06:45Harry.
06:46Harry.
07:13Oh, no you don't.
07:16No.
07:46No.
08:17Oh, excuse me.
08:19I'm trying to reach Portersville, but I got lost in all this snow.
08:23Where's your car?
08:25It's down the road.
08:26I've been driving around in circles for I don't know how long.
08:29You should have turned left about two miles back.
08:32This is a dead end.
08:40Yes?
08:41It's me again.
08:42It'll take me ten years to get out of these hills,
08:45and this is the only house I can find anywhere around here.
08:48Would you mind if I used your telephone?
08:50I'm all alone here.
08:52My wife's in the hospital.
08:54There's an emergency phone just as you turn off the highway.
08:58How am I going to find it in all this snow?
09:00I told you, I'm all alone.
09:02Thanks a lot.
09:05Young man.
09:07Huh?
09:08Of course you may use the phone.
09:10Help yourself.
09:11It's right over here.
09:13Thanks.
09:17I'm sorry I was so...
09:19I'm sorry your wife's in the hospital.
09:35Your phone must be out of order.
09:37I dial and dial and nothing happens.
09:39But it was working.
09:42What's the matter?
10:05Everything's okay.
10:07You better?
10:09Okay, that's better.
10:12How gentle you are.
10:15I'd forgotten how gentle you could be.
10:19Are you okay?
10:21Are you sure you're okay?
10:25I don't want to leave you alone here.
10:29I don't want to leave you alone here.
10:34It's nine o'clock.
10:36Visiting hours are over.
10:42I don't know what I'd have said to her even if I did see her.
10:59It's a boy, well...
11:01I was a hundred percent wrong about that.
11:05My wife just had a baby.
11:08An eight pound, five ounce girl.
11:13Great big beautiful kid.
11:16Except she was dead.
11:23I only saw her for a second, she was wrapped up in a little blanket.
11:27She looked like a life-sized little doll.
11:31She had enough hair on her for a five-year-old.
11:37You hand these things out and...
11:41everybody slaps you on the back and says congratulations, Dad.
11:47My wife congratulated me when they were...
11:51taking her out of the delivery room.
11:57I went over to her and she wouldn't even let me hold her hand.
12:01She said, well, this is your lucky day, the baby died.
12:06Your lucky day, I remember. Your lucky day.
12:10She thinks I wanted that.
12:13Didn't you?
12:28We've only been married for a year and a half.
12:32We're flat broke, I work three times a week and I'm lucky to get that.
12:37I guess you don't know what it means to have nothing to come home to...
12:42but fried liver.
12:44Or maybe a keno movie.
12:46Is there some law against trying to get some fun out of life?
12:50You settle down soon enough. Ellen and I wanted to travel.
12:54That was our dream. We wanted to rub shoulders with everybody else in the world.
12:59You just can't do that with a kid strapped to your back.
13:03We'd saved up about $200.
13:07And then, surprise, Ellen was pregnant.
13:12So I told her that...
13:15OK, so you're pregnant, it's not the end of the world.
13:20We can do something about it.
13:24But she wouldn't.
13:30I guess that sounds awful selfish to you, but let me tell you something.
13:33I've got a little bomb in my pocket.
13:35It's a time bomb, it's called a draft card.
13:37This one's got one A on it.
13:40If I've got any living to do, I've got to do it right now.
13:42I haven't got time to be unselfish.
13:45You are lucky the baby died.
13:54I was sitting in that...
13:57...in that hospital waiting room.
14:02All the rest of us expecting fathers pacing up and down,
14:05jumping out of their skins every time a nurse went by.
14:07A bunch of boobs.
14:10And all of a sudden, a kid started to yell.
14:12And I thought, hey, that must be my kid.
14:16Well, it wasn't, but...
14:19...the funniest feeling came over me.
14:21All right, I know, I don't fit into the pattern.
14:23I mean, I'm not crazy about hot dogs,
14:25and I don't go out bowling with the boys, and I don't...
14:28I never went over and felt every time the baby moved.
14:33And I didn't go out rushing out in the middle of the night
14:35to buy Ellen pickles and ice cream.
14:38But sitting there in that waiting room...
14:42...I began to realize...
14:45...that whatever was going to be born...
14:48...that whatever was going to be born...
14:51...would live and breathe and...
14:55...grow up and be a part of the world.
15:00Just because Ellen and I love each other.
15:10Did you ever get into Porter'sville very much?
15:12If you wanted to see a really beautiful girl,
15:14you could go into the National Bank.
15:17She was a blonde secretary behind the desk in the escrow department.
15:21There's an expression on her face.
15:24It's a look in her eyes.
15:30Like just being alive...
15:33...is something so red-hot and special, it should be in all the headlines.
15:37Sometimes I used to just go in there and look at her and say,
15:40Baby...
15:42Well...
15:44I guess I catch on slow.
15:49But sitting there in that hospital waiting room...
15:53...it really began to hit me what this child really meant.
15:58The flesh-and-blood proof of what Ellen and I really were to each other.
16:02And all of a sudden this feeling came over me.
16:06It made all the cities and the mountains and the trains and...
16:10...the countries seem like nothing.
16:15So then when they came and told me that the...
16:19...things weren't going very well in the operating room and delivery room...
16:25Well, they got a chaplain in the hospital. Maybe I should have gone down there to pray.
16:29I went to the men's room...
16:32...and cried.
16:36And then I told myself that everything was going to be okay.
16:39I don't know why, but I felt absolutely sure of it.
16:42And...
16:45...just for good luck and to...
16:48...show my confidence, I guess, I got some of these things in the lobby.
16:53And then I went upstairs and that's when they were wheeling her out.
16:58And that's when she said it to me.
17:02This is your lucky day. The baby died.
17:05We could live together for 50 years. She'll never think I wanted that baby.
17:12And it'll ruin everything.
17:18I do believe you.
17:21Am I so different? Am I so changed?
17:26Who are you?
17:35Ah!
17:41Ah!
17:43Ah!
18:04Ah!
18:14Look, I called Dr. Mason an hour ago.
18:17Yes, of course I'm sure. Yes, of course I am.
18:21Well, he couldn't have left then. It's only a 20-minute drive.
18:25I am... I am controlling myself.
18:28Oh, I'm sorry. I'm sorry.
18:34I'm sorry.
18:46Oh, my God.
18:59Dr. Mason, I'm not imagining things. It's not like before.
19:02You see, I called you and you're here and he was here the way he was.
19:06He was here.
19:10I'm not drunk.
19:12Ellen, I made a stupid mistake.
19:15I put your records in the inactive file.
19:17I didn't open that bottle.
19:20I suppose he did then.
19:22He did. Please believe me, believe me. He was here.
19:27I was where, Ellen?
19:28He was in a burning car. That's where he was.
19:31And by extremely good luck, I saw him as I came up to see you.
19:36Are you all right?
19:38I was out cold for a while, but I'm all right now.
19:42Ellen, Ellen, Ellen. How did it start this time?
19:48You hand these out and they slap you on the back and say,
19:51Congratulations, Dad.
19:54It's a boy. It's a boy.
19:56It's a boy. It's a boy.
19:59Well, she couldn't have had much to drink. The bottle's almost full.
20:03She's not drunk.
20:05Well, then what is she?
20:07Good night, Doctor.
20:09Harry, I think I know Ellen's problems a little better than you do.
20:13Do you?
20:17Ellen, I'm going to leave some of these for you.
20:20And you can take them if you need them.
20:22If you need them, you know how. You've had them before.
20:25And I'll call you in the morning.
20:27And I think a couple of these might help you.
20:31Good night.
20:39Ellen, what happened here tonight?
20:43You wouldn't believe me.
20:45Try me.
20:48Oh, Harry.
20:52Harry.
21:03He believed her.
21:05He had to.
21:07Well, was it all a delusion?
21:11It's a boy.
21:13Now, that certainly was not a delusion.
21:15Then what happened to Ellen Grayson?
21:18Was it an hallucination?
21:20Was it an accident in time?
21:22Or did the unconscious Harry Grayson
21:25will himself back to the man he was
21:28to convince Ellen of his love?
21:31What you've just seen
21:33is not so uncommon as you might think
21:35in the annals of psychic experience.
21:38Man has just begun to probe the world beyond his
21:41cage of reality.
21:43In that
21:45constant and marvelous and eternal world of the
21:48now.
21:50Who knows what he'll find.
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