What a solid albeit unspectacular acting career Jeanne Cooper has had. I remember seeing her on several Perry Mason television shows and of course, her decades on the soap The Young and The Restless - a show that my mother never misses. Cooper is so good at playing the cold, two-timing femme fatale. In this episode she talks her husband into stealing money and her lover into knocking the husband out and taking the money. What a gal! This Louise Douglas is so cold that Mathews is suspicious and checks into her background more throughly. Knowing that Mathews is hot on their trail, Louise dumps the boyfriend and picks up another guy. Good show - mostly because of Cooper.
2 Reviews
The bad "guy" is a female, but this script has holes like Swiss cheese
FlushingCaps23 June 2021
Warning: Spoilers
This one seemed like the writers really rushed to finish the script. So much of what happened makes no sense. Here's the basics: Louise Douglas has talked her bank-messenger husband to steal $53,000 and run away with her to some other country. But she actually is plotting with a truck-driver boyfriend to clobber her husband and they will make a getaway, riding in the truck he is to drive somewhere south the night after the robbery.
I believe the boyfriend was supposed to kill the woman's husband. They were most upset to learn he is in the hospital, unable to talk, but expected to recover. The doctor seems psychic, because without the man saying a word, he figures the look in his eyes reveals that before he was hit, he was shocked by something. This seems to be just for the viewers because Dan never used any of this suggestion/diagnosis to help him at all.
So Louise now wants to not wait a day to getaway. She schemes to have the boyfriend bop another truck driver and conveniently be hanging around the office when the boss learns that his driver of a truckload of perishable vegetables was attacked, so the boyfriend will be asked to take that truck that evening. This all goes off well.
The pair, with the well-dressed woman riding beside the truck driver, having no problems with those ubiquitous road blocks Mathews has set up everywhere (more on that later), and only then do we viewers learn Louise is even more creepy than we thought. She tells the driver she's hungry, so he pulls into a diner. Before entering, she wants to go back for something.
Instead, while he goes inside, she rushes over to the car of a stranger who was just leaving as they approached the diner and tells him she hitched a ride but is afraid of the driver, pleading with this man to take her away quickly. He agrees, and she retrieves her purse and makeup box-which is where the $53,000 was stashed, but before they pull away, the boyfriend emerges and sees what she really did.
That's good because minutes later, Dan pulls up and he tells Dan what happened. Dan goes in pursuit of the green convertible. Now Louise has told the man she wants to listen to the radio, to keep him from asking too many questions. Of course, there's a news bulletin about the wanted female fugitive, and even though she switches the station quickly, the man becomes suspicious. He tells her he wants to stop for cigarettes. She offers him some of hers, but "that's not my brand." He pulls up to a little store and heads for the door.
Even though he's in sight of the car, with Louise in the passenger seat, he walks toward the end of the building to a phone booth. She turns and sees this and immediately slides over and takes off in the car. Along comes Dan and without any backup vehicles in sight, she pulls over and stops as though she's only going to get a speeding ticket.
Analyzing the script troubles will take a few sentences. Louise's original plan was to have her husband killed, then she and friend wait a full day until he is to drive a truck out of town and she'll ride away with him. Since he wasn't dead and might talk, she works really hard to get the guy into a truck leaving town that day so they can get through the roadblocks.
The highway patrol had no description of a hold-up man, no specific vehicle to search for. Were they supposed to be blocking all the roads out of this city and searching every vehicle for someone with $53,000 in cash? As depicted, all of it fit into a makeup case, about 10" x 6" x 7". For all the police knew, it was two bandits who split the money and were going their separate ways. In any car, it would be easy to hide that amount of money-inside the spare tire, under the carpet, inside pockets in men's suits in a suitcase and a dozen other places. And they had no knowledge that whoever took it WAS leaving town. They could have just taken it home and stayed there, figuring they were not suspected.
So Louise and friend get into a commercial truck and just ride through the roadblocks. I ask: Couldn't they have just done the same in a car? If she didn't attract attention being well-dressed riding in a truck, she surely could have gotten through any roadblock riding in a car.
Once through the roadblocks, but not long after leaving the city, she is now suddenly desperate to dump the boyfriend. As shown, the man she hitched a ride with at the diner was a total stranger. She's going to just trust this stranger to not do anything instead of letting the boyfriend she knew drive her much farther toward safety?
When she came up to the man's car, she tossed her purse in the back and placed that boxy makeup kit on her lap. Now my mother had the same type of makeup kit and the hard shell box and boxiness of its shape would make it most uncomfortable to hold on one's lap. Louise was really advertising to this stranger "I have something really valuable in this box. I hope you're an honest man."
Furthermore, when the man stopped "for cigarettes" when he really wanted to phone the police to say he thinks he is with the wanted fugitive he just heard about on the radio, why the Sam Hill did he leave the keys in the car? Even in the 50s, I cannot imagine picking up a stranger to give them a lift, then getting out of the car to do anything and leaving the keys there. He might as well have put up a sign saying "Hey lady, if you want to steal my car, this would be a good time."
There were a few other holes I don't have space to mention. A very weak script keeps the score here from being higher than a 4.
I believe the boyfriend was supposed to kill the woman's husband. They were most upset to learn he is in the hospital, unable to talk, but expected to recover. The doctor seems psychic, because without the man saying a word, he figures the look in his eyes reveals that before he was hit, he was shocked by something. This seems to be just for the viewers because Dan never used any of this suggestion/diagnosis to help him at all.
So Louise now wants to not wait a day to getaway. She schemes to have the boyfriend bop another truck driver and conveniently be hanging around the office when the boss learns that his driver of a truckload of perishable vegetables was attacked, so the boyfriend will be asked to take that truck that evening. This all goes off well.
The pair, with the well-dressed woman riding beside the truck driver, having no problems with those ubiquitous road blocks Mathews has set up everywhere (more on that later), and only then do we viewers learn Louise is even more creepy than we thought. She tells the driver she's hungry, so he pulls into a diner. Before entering, she wants to go back for something.
Instead, while he goes inside, she rushes over to the car of a stranger who was just leaving as they approached the diner and tells him she hitched a ride but is afraid of the driver, pleading with this man to take her away quickly. He agrees, and she retrieves her purse and makeup box-which is where the $53,000 was stashed, but before they pull away, the boyfriend emerges and sees what she really did.
That's good because minutes later, Dan pulls up and he tells Dan what happened. Dan goes in pursuit of the green convertible. Now Louise has told the man she wants to listen to the radio, to keep him from asking too many questions. Of course, there's a news bulletin about the wanted female fugitive, and even though she switches the station quickly, the man becomes suspicious. He tells her he wants to stop for cigarettes. She offers him some of hers, but "that's not my brand." He pulls up to a little store and heads for the door.
Even though he's in sight of the car, with Louise in the passenger seat, he walks toward the end of the building to a phone booth. She turns and sees this and immediately slides over and takes off in the car. Along comes Dan and without any backup vehicles in sight, she pulls over and stops as though she's only going to get a speeding ticket.
Analyzing the script troubles will take a few sentences. Louise's original plan was to have her husband killed, then she and friend wait a full day until he is to drive a truck out of town and she'll ride away with him. Since he wasn't dead and might talk, she works really hard to get the guy into a truck leaving town that day so they can get through the roadblocks.
The highway patrol had no description of a hold-up man, no specific vehicle to search for. Were they supposed to be blocking all the roads out of this city and searching every vehicle for someone with $53,000 in cash? As depicted, all of it fit into a makeup case, about 10" x 6" x 7". For all the police knew, it was two bandits who split the money and were going their separate ways. In any car, it would be easy to hide that amount of money-inside the spare tire, under the carpet, inside pockets in men's suits in a suitcase and a dozen other places. And they had no knowledge that whoever took it WAS leaving town. They could have just taken it home and stayed there, figuring they were not suspected.
So Louise and friend get into a commercial truck and just ride through the roadblocks. I ask: Couldn't they have just done the same in a car? If she didn't attract attention being well-dressed riding in a truck, she surely could have gotten through any roadblock riding in a car.
Once through the roadblocks, but not long after leaving the city, she is now suddenly desperate to dump the boyfriend. As shown, the man she hitched a ride with at the diner was a total stranger. She's going to just trust this stranger to not do anything instead of letting the boyfriend she knew drive her much farther toward safety?
When she came up to the man's car, she tossed her purse in the back and placed that boxy makeup kit on her lap. Now my mother had the same type of makeup kit and the hard shell box and boxiness of its shape would make it most uncomfortable to hold on one's lap. Louise was really advertising to this stranger "I have something really valuable in this box. I hope you're an honest man."
Furthermore, when the man stopped "for cigarettes" when he really wanted to phone the police to say he thinks he is with the wanted fugitive he just heard about on the radio, why the Sam Hill did he leave the keys in the car? Even in the 50s, I cannot imagine picking up a stranger to give them a lift, then getting out of the car to do anything and leaving the keys there. He might as well have put up a sign saying "Hey lady, if you want to steal my car, this would be a good time."
There were a few other holes I don't have space to mention. A very weak script keeps the score here from being higher than a 4.
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