I
spent a lot of time on Tuesday working on my essay. I’ve whittled it down to
ten pages of text and organized it a bit more, though I still don’t have a
solid thesis with one week till the deadline.
I watched The Alfred Hitchcock Hour.
Gena Rowlands plays a mother named Louise with two school age daughters and one
baby boy. The daughters love to play spy and the youngest one’s name is
Harriet, one year before Harriet the Spy was published. Louise’s husband is
away and, interestingly, there are no males older than seven months in this
story. A dark haired woman named Vera arrives at the door saying she’s there
about the room. Louise and her husband had been considering renting a room but
she hadn’t put up a notice yet, so she just assumed that her husband did. Her
baby, named Lonnie is in a high chair in the kitchen and Vera is taken with him
immediately. She rents the room and moves in that evening while Louise is
having coffee with her friend Grace. As Grace and her daughter are leaving,
Grace asks Louise to come to a fashion tea the next day but she says she can’t
find a baby sitter for Lonnie. Vera offers to look after him, and following
some hesitation, Grace agrees. Vera says she is going upstairs to bed but
before going to her room she enters the nursery and begins talking to Lonnie.
She calls him “Michael” and tells him everything’s going to be alright because
she is never going to leave him. The
next day after Louise leaves for the tea, Vera takes Lonnie to an apartment she
rents in another part of town. Her landlady greets her at the door and sees the
baby but she thinks it is Vera’s because up until this point Vera’s been
carrying a large, blanket covered doll around, which the landlady has thought
was a sleeping baby. When Louise comes home and calls out, “Where is
everybody?” there is no answer. She begins to look worried. She runs upstairs
to the nursery and Vera and Lonnie are there. More incidents follow and Louise
is starting to be creeped out by Vera. Her daughters, who think that Vera is a
spy, have been playing spy themselves (one year ahead of the book Harriet the
Spy) and say, “We found a book in the spy lady’s drawer that had daddy’s name
in it!” After scolding them for snooping Louise went to look at the book. The
page indeed had her husband’s name along with the names and addresses of two
others. She took the page and went to the other addresses. The two mothers she
met each had seven-month-old boys as well that had been born at the same
hospital as Lonnie. Each confirmed that Vera had come to see them. The first
was under the pretence of representing a baby-modelling agency but Vera was not
interested in the blonde boy and the second was a response to an ad for a
secretary but Vera lost interest in the job when she saw that the couple was Black.
Louise then went to the hospital where Lonnie was born to find out if any other
women had given birth around the same time. The nun told her that there had
only been one other, and that was a woman named Williams, whose baby had died
at birth. The next time Louise sees Vera she comes in while Louise is having
coffee. Louise tells her that her husband is coming back the next day and she’s
about to gently tell her that she would like her to move out when Vera
announces that she’s found a place and will be moving out tomorrow. Louise is
relieved but she holds back expressing it. Vera asks if she could have a cup of
coffee. While Louise is in the kitchen, Vera slips some sleeping pills into
Louise’s coffee. A few minutes later when the drug has started to take effect,
Louise is struggling to stay conscious as she thinks she sees the blurred image
of Vera in front of her and holding Lonnie. Vera tells her that she’s taking
Michael away because he’s really her baby due to the fact that their babies
were deliberately switched at the hospital and she ended up with Louise’s dead
one. The last thing that Louise sees before the dope overwhelms and she loses
consciousness is Vera walking out the door with her baby.
Several hours later Louise’s
daughters are desperately trying to wake their mother so they can have
breakfast and go to school. Louise wakes up, finds that Lonnie is gone and then
calls the police. That afternoon, one of her daughter’s walks in wearing a
grown up coat, “Look mommy!” she cried, “It’s the spy lady’s coat and I found a
secret message inside!” The secret message was a rent receipt for another
address in the name of Williams. Louise called to notify the police but the
lieutenant on the case wasn’t in. She left the address and said she was going
on ahead. When she gets there she barges in demanding to see Lonnie, Vera
blocks the door and tells her, “Michael is asleep and Michael is not your
baby.” Louise says, “That baby is not yours! Your Michael is dead!” Vera
responds, “Your Lonnie is dead!” “Hospitals don’t make mistakes!” “They meant
to do it!” “I was conscious every minute while Lonnie was delivered!” “I want
you to go away and stop annoying us!” The door buzzer goes off. The female
police officer is extremely polite and smiling. Vera invites her in. The
officer, still smiling, tells Louise that she’s been asked to come upstairs and
straighten everything out. She asks how old the baby is and Vera tells her. The
officer says, “I’d love to have a look at him. Where is he?” She says she
doesn’t want him to be disturbed. “I just want you to tell her that he is my
baby!” The officer says, “I thought you’d like to set the record straight.”
“The records were changed.” “But you don’t want to leave them that way do you?”
“No!” “Well we really ought to go to the hospital and confirm the fingerprints
and footprints that were taken at birth. We could go together. You and Michael
and I.” “I’ll go and get Michael ready.” She goes to the nursery and Michael
begins crying. Louise tries to rush in but the officer gently stops her. Vera
picks up Lonnie and tries to comfort him but he keeps on crying and she begins
to get upset and shake him. This was a real crying baby in distress being
shaken while he was in distress. I guess in 1963 that was considered hunky dory
for a television show set. The officer takes the baby from her and hands her to
Louise. Vera sits in the living room complaining that it’s because Michael
spent too much time with Louise and so he doesn’t know her. Louise comes out of
the bedroom holding Vera’s large baby doll in a blanket and says, “He’s quiet
now.” She hands it to Vera and she carries it lovingly as she is taken away.
This teleplay was based on the novel
“The Hours Before Dawn” by Celia Fremlin, which was published in 1958. I
suspect that the spy-obsessed daughter named Harriet Henderson in that book was
the inspiration for Louise Fitzhugh’s Harriet the Spy.
As I was getting ready for bed the
wifi signal had been off for more than 12 hours. I checked and saw that the
donut shop downstairs was on my network list even though I’d set it to
automatically connect. I tried to reconnect but the password seemed to be no
longer the same. I tried a few combinations and then gave up and connected to
the café across the street instead, whose signal is fine for overnight. I would
go downstairs to find out the password the next day.
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