User Reviews

****SPOILERS**** Handsome ladies man and con artist Roger Fellon, Bradford Dillman, has been smooching his way east from his hometown of San Francisco targeting lonely homely and single middle age women to pay for his bills and for his lifestyle by conning them that he's in love with them. Fellon ran out of luck in the Big Apple, New York City, when the NYPD finally caught up with him but only after he broke two more hearts of the women that he claimed to be in love with by winning over their confidence, as well as love, and robbing the homes that they worked in as maids. In the 65th police precinct lock-up Fellon shows his true feeling about the women that he took advantage of by virtually spitting in their faces when they came there to either press charges against him or even try and bail the ungrateful jerk out.

Fellon's first victim in the Big Apple Josephine Herdon, Frances Heflin, was devastated by his actions and almost ended up not wanting to press charges against him even when he threw a cup of hot coffee in her face! But the second and far more homelier and less attractive and elderly women Virginia Cort, Eileen Hackart, didn't take Fellon's uncivilized actions laying down. She knew just what a slime-ball he is and despite falling for his act at first she was ready to let him know what she felt about him in ways that he never expected!

***SPOILERS*** Both touching as well as powerful performance by actress Eileen Hackart as lonely and taken advantage of Vrginia Cort makes this Naked City episode a cut above the rest. Confronting Fellon in his holding cell Virginia wasn't taken back by his actions of both putting her down and trying to humiliate her like Josephine Herdon did. She not only stood her ground but let Fellon know what a decent and feeling person she was even towards a low life like himself. Virgina even thanked Fellon for making her feel wanted by a handsome devil like himself when almost every other man she came in contact with who were far less attractive then he is wouldn't even give her a second look.

Fellon was taken totally off guard in what Virgina told him and for once in his rotten life realized what rat he really was. Here he had a women who was ready to give up everything for the creep and at the same time he treated her like dirt! What that all showed Fellon was that Virginia Cort was far more decent loving and yes beautiful inside then he'll ever hope to be both inside as well as out!

VIOLENT types of Street Crime has always been a favourite topic of our Detective Stories and Police Dramas; yet, although homicide, armed robbery, sexual assault and theft of motor vehicle (replete with a chase and gunplay) are far more spectacular, the fact remains that the Con Man, the Grifter, bilks the public out of far more money each year than the bad ass gunmen ever could.

WORKING on that very premise, we were treated to the TV Series, RACKET SQUAD (Hal Roach/Showcase Productions/Columbia Broadcasting System, 1951-53); which dramatized real life scams in its weekly episodes. As Captain John Braddock (Series Star & Narrator, Reed Hadley) stated in the opening of the show, "It is intended to expose the confidence game – the carefully worked out frauds by which confidence men take more money each year from the American public than all of the bank robbers and thugs with their violence."

BRINGING a dramatic hour teleplay to the NAKED CITY Series in the form of "Her Life In Pictures", the Production team goes it all one better. Our story involves one predatory and evil Lothario, Roger 'Romeo' Fallon (Mr. Bradford Dillman), who makes it a practice to seek out lonely, older women and proceed to manipulate their behaviour in otherwise unheard of manners; making them into conspirators in his criminal enterprise of the moment, usually theft of valuables such as jewelry and artworks.

COMPLICATING any sort of successful prosecution of this sort of parasite is the human emotions of Love and Need. In a state of mental condition akin to the now famous and infamous Stockholm Syndrome*, the duped female is reluctant to give evidence implicating her former lover and often will take the rap herself; refusing to believe that she has been conned and that this man, who has given her much needed attention, is a fraud.

SOLVING the problem, Lt. Parker (Horace McMahon), Detectives Flint (Paul Burke) and Arcaro (Harry Bellevar) arrange for one victim, Virginia Cort (Eileen Heckhart) to listen in unseen to another victim, Josephine Hendon (Frances Heflin), as she related her story to the Police. The details varied only slightly, but otherwise it could have been her story.

BRAVELY and bitterly Miss Cort confronts her phony suitor and eventually turns State's Evidence. She proves to be a bitter woman; refusing an act of kindness from Det. Flint in his offer to drive her home.

IN this particular episode, the production team concentrates even more than usual on the plight of victims, and this is a good thing; for although our Courts have been quick to assure that the Rights of Criminals are protected, never has the same thing been done for those violated, whatever the Crime.

NOTE * "Stockholm Syndrome" is a term used to describe a criminal situation in which hostages have been taken and held; consequently becoming friendly and sympathetic toward those who violated them, their captors. The name comes from a botched Bank Robbery attempt in Stockholm, Sweden. Multi hostages were taken and none would later testify in court. A couple of the women hostages went so far as to MARRY some of the hold-up men! (You can look it up, Schultz!)

GENERAL NOTE: The title, "Her Life in Moving Pictures" comes from a Diary kept by Miss Heckhart's character, which, although factual, was written as if it were a screenplay.

POODLE SCHNITZ!!