User Reviews

John Chambers (Gene Barry) writes a newspaper advice column called 'Dear George'. It's a Dear Abby-like job and while John is at work, his wife is apparently having an affair. But how he learns about it is odd....he receives a 'Dear George' letter from someone asking advice on what to do about an affair they think is happening....at John's apartment!

John creates a plan to confront his wife and make it seem like he's at work at the time. This seems to work perfectly, as his secretary thinks he's been in his office the whole time....and the wife readily admits to having cheated on him. In anger, John bashes his wife to death...and when the police later arrive, he plays the part of the grieving husband. There is a lot more to the story than this....but I don't want to ruin the suspense.

This is a very complicated but enjoyable episode. Well written and worth seeing. And, as you'd expect, Barry was quite good....as was Lou Jacobi as the police investigator.

***SPOILERS*** The advice columnist for the New york Examiner John Chambers using the pen name "Uncle George", Gene Barry, has gotten many strange letters from is many fans on what to do but the one from someone calling themselves "Good Samaritan" was a real eye opener. It turned out to be from his next door neighbor Mrs Weatherbery, Charity Grace, who has a habit of looking across the street into her neighbor's window. Mrs Weatherbury's next door neighbor just happens to be "Uncle George" or John Chambers himself! The fact that Uncle George is really columnist John Chambers is totally unknown to Mrs.Weatherbery which in the end turns out to be a fatal mistake on Chambers' part!

Being told by Mrs.Weatherbry in the letters she sends him that her next door neighbor's wife has been cheating on her hard working husband has Chambers notice that the letter was mailed from the same apartment house where he and his wife Louise, Particia Donahue, live. It didn't take much checking that it was Louise who was having a secret affair with another man while Chambers was away at work!

Confronting Louise about her infidelity things get out of hand with Chambers ended up killing Louise by splitting her skull open with a statue of Cupid. Now seeing that he's facing hard time behind bars or even the electric chair Chambers does everything to cover up his crime. As things turn out it's Chambers former fellow employee at the newspaper Tom Esterow, Dabney Coleman, who ends up taking the rap for Chamber's killing of Louise. Esterow just happened to be the right man in the right place, in coming to see Louise about a painting, in being found at the scene of the crime!

Things get a little more complicated when it later turns out that Chambers' boss editor Simon Aldritch, John Larkin, was in fact the other man involved with Louise. This has the really guilty of killing his wife John Chambers in the drivers or cat-bird seat in having two not one suspects in his wife's murder! Both of whom he has, at least with Aldritch, no use for.

***SPOILERS*** With now Aldritch about to be being framed in Louise's murder all Chambers needed was an eye witness in placing him and Louise together in his apartment the evening that she was found dead; and it's there when Mrs.Weatherbery comes in. With the police but not Mrs.Weatherbery knowing that John Chambers is "Uncle George" she tells the cops on hand that she, after fingering Aldritch, in fact wrote "Uncle George" about how Louise was cheating on her poor husband John Chambers with her secret lover who, unknown to her, just happened to be his boss Simon Aldritch! And as it turned out it was non other then "Uncle George's" cryptic reply to her, that for some reason wasn't printed his his column, that in the end implicated him in Louise's murder!

P.S As it turned out John Chambers best witness in framing the innocent Simon Aldritch for his wife's murder instead unknowingly fingered him,or his alter ego "Uncle George",instead!

Average Hitch which means better than most everything else from the time. Lovelorn advice columnist (Barry) finds out from nosy advice-seeker that his wife is cheating. Confronting her, he loses his cool and whacks her. The cops think they've got the culprit when a friend (Coleman) turns up after the killing with incriminating evidence on him. But is he really the one cuckolding Barry.

There's some padding here, but it's smoothed over with good acting from Barry, especially. Catch Lou Jacobi as the first incarnation of a Columbo-type detective (IMDB), replete with frumpy raincoat and un-cop like mannerisms. Must say I didn't recognize Dabney Coleman in a straight role; that is, before he perfected his smarmy egotists on shows like Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman and Buffalo Bill. Overall, the episode is more interesting than suspenseful, but will hold you till the end, which may be a stretch but still manages Hitch's trademark irony.

NYC newspaperman John Chambers (Gene Barry), giving advice to the lovelorn as "Uncle George", receives a letter from an old biddy who witnessed a housewife's adulterous affair and wonders what to do about it. Once "Uncle George" realizes the housewife is his, the cuckolded columnist tells the snoop to mind her own business and takes matters into his own hands by bashing his wife's head in with a statue of Cupid. Chambers begins to frame a one-time co-worker in the art department (Dabney Coleman) for the crime but quickly changes his plans after learning his publisher was the man carrying on with his wife...

The "Dear Uncle George" episode is a highly entertaining entry in Hitch's suspense series and comes complete with his trademark twist ending. The character of the distracted, seemingly bumbling Lt. Wolfson (Lou Jacobi) would later be expanded by the show's writers, Richard Levinson and William Link, into Peter Falk's COLUMBO.

To paraphrase some wag or other, I'd wring elf-eared Gene Barry's neck if he had one. He's the unlikeliest leading man I've ever seen and the comedy is often unintentional. Apparently that hunchback was big in Broadway musicals before Hollywood beckoned in a fit of dementia. Geez, Louise.

This is an average story made weak by the way it ends. Gene Barry murders his wife, who is a despicable woman. He is an advice columnist working late hours (why, I'll never know). It comes to his attention that a nosy woman has been seeing men coming and going from what is probably his apartment. So he checks it out. It is obvious she is expecting someone and strikes her with a statuette. He has set things up so he can come and go from his office unnoticed and some other poor sap gets charged with the crime. His big mistake is overplaying his hand. The person who fingers him would never have been implicated had he not insisted on getting goods on the real lover (who, of course, is not the murderer). The problem for me is that the ending just isn't very well done.