User Reviews

Sorry, but this episode proposes nothing exceptional, nothing worth to remember. Most of the time you see gals dancing, before suddenly hearing a gunshot. Then you have a classical murder case scheme with a person whom we'll think he may be the suspect. It's closer to Agatha Christie's atmosphere than Alfred Hitchcock.

Robert Mulligan, famed for his film classics ranging from "To Kill a Mockingbird" to "Summer of '42", displays a terrific command of the Live TV medium in this early work for "Suspense". Based on an evocative and concise story by F. Scott Fitzgerald, it drew me in immediately and proved to be quite a powerful miniature, combining drama ever-present just under the merry surface of a party enjoying Sally Gracie's ebullient performance of the Charleston. (After watching the show I was pleasantly surprised to see in IMDb that she was Rod Steiger's wife when this show was performed in 1953.) But the star is Katharine Bard, wife of the show's famous producer Martin Manulis, who holds the story told as a memory play in flashback with her voice-over annotations. It's a powerful framework that adds depth to the immediacy of the "performed live" aspect of the show, and with the exciting climax of murder ending Act I, balances the concise twists & turns of Act II as the sudden murder mystery is deftly solved.

I've seen all of Mulligan's feature films and it was exciting to see this wonderfully directed piece made at the beginning of his career, when he was in his 20s. Robert Altman, his contemporary, is always cited for the fabulous ensemble casts in his movies, but Mulligan's tight control over the timing and emotionality of the ensemble scenes here is more impressive to me and a hint of the sensitivity that permeates his later work.