On Tuesday the day
got ahead of me and I never got caught up. I’d wanted to apply for my pension
and do some cleaning but I spent too much time arguing in the comment section
of Huffington Post Canada.
I got caught up on my journal.
I took a short bike ride around the
neighbourhood and did my afternoon exercises when I got back.
I boiled two small potatoes, sautéed
an onion with the good parts of a yellow pepper, heated the rest of my roast
beef with some gravy and watched a made for television play from 1953 called
“Sentence of Death” starring James Dean. This was part of a weekly show called
Westinghouse Studio One Summer Theatre.
The story begins in a drug store
with a lunch counter. A young socialite named Ellen Morrison walks in to order
a ham sandwich because she’s amused by slumming. The pharmacy is run by Mr. And
Mrs. Sawyer. Mrs Sawyer feels Ellen is making fun of them and asks her to leave
but the sandwich arrives and she stays. She goes to the phone booth to call all
of her friends to come down to the drug store and have a party when a man walks
in; shoots Mr. Sawyer and robs the cash register. Ellen doesn’t show up at the
police line-up but Mrs. Sawyer does and so does an elderly couple that had been
there as well named Sylvia and Eugene Krantz. Mrs. Sawyer immediately points
out James Dean’s character, Joe Palica as the killer but we know it’s not him.
The Krantzes agree with her that it was him. Ellen comes down to look at him
but she says she can’t be sure. Palica is charged with murder and sentenced to
death in six weeks. Meanwhile Ellen is
slumming again and has taken over a dive bar on Third Avenue with all of her
friends. Suddenly a man walks in for a beer and she recognizes him as the one
that killed Harry Sawyer. She leaves to call the police but when she gets back
he is gone. From that time on she becomes serious and begins to spend all of
her time in that bar in case the killer returns. Sergeant Cochrane, who helped
to arrest Palica begins to believe her and often waits with her there as well.
One night the killer returns and they follow him to an apartment where Cochrane
knocks on the door. The killer answers and Cochrane shows his badge, saying
they’re checking on reports of a burglar in the neighbourhood. The killer lets
him in. He says his wife is sleeping. Suddenly a woman gasps and we see it’s
Mrs. Sawyer who’s just stepped from the bedroom, surprised to see Cochrane. The
killer tries to hit Cochrane with what looks like a glass candle holder but
Cochrane blocks him, pushes him back onto the couch, gets on top of him and
hits him with three fake and silent punches out of our view. Cochrane’s partner
arrives to arrest the couple. The play ends with Cochrane and Ellen outside the
place and she’s telling him she wants to investigate Ellen Morrison to see if
she can turn her into a person. Cochrane says for her not to take too long or
he’ll have to come looking for her. She says that’s what she she’s hoping for.
It really wasn’t a very good play.
James Dean had two scenes and in the second he hammed up his despair about
being on death row.
Ellen was played by Betsy Palmer.
She and James Dean began dating after meeting on the set and lived with him for
eight months. They remained friends until his death. Before she got steady work
as an actor she was a reporter for Today. She became a regular panellist on
I've Got A Secret and when she died in 2015 she was the last surviving
panellist from the original game show. She is best remembered as Jason's mother
in Friday the 13th, which she considered a piece of shit that didn’t
even count as a movie.
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