Episode 330: Suspense - "The Brush Off" (November 14, 1950)
Leslie Nielson! George Reeves! And... Suspense!
What I watched: A third-season episode of the anthology series Suspense, created by Robert Stevens. “The Brush Off” was directed by Stevens, written by Burt R. Lewis and Sal Herzig, and stars Leslie Nielson, Mary Sinclair, George Reeves, Gene Lyons, and Royal Dano. The episode aired on Tuesday, November 14, 1950 at 9:30 pm on CBS, and is available to watch on YouTube.
Starring: George Reeves had spent a decade in Hollywood, including appearing in a small role in Gone with the Wind, co-starring alongside Ronald Reagan and James Cagney, and acting in several Hopalong Cassidy films. After participating in the US’s propaganda wing during World War II, Reeves found that his film work dried up. This Suspense episode comes in the middle of a short period where Reeves lived in New York after separating from his wife, and appeared on a number of anthology shows. Of course, Reeves’ most famous TV role would come a few years later starring in Adventures of Superman, but that’s a post for a different day.
What happened: An amateur actor, Ralph Farley (Nielson) is using a pay phone to call looking for work, to no luck. As he’s leaving, he hears two men (Lyons and Dano) talking about “bumping off” a movie agent named Frank Sherman. The next morning, the paper has a story about Helen Nelson, the wife of a district attorney, who died from an overdose of sleeping pills. Sherman (Reeves) reads about it in the paper. He gets a call about Helen’s death, and asks his secretary Paula (Sinclair) to burn documents, as it quickly becomes evident that he was having an affair with her.
Farley is trying to get a job from Sherman, but the agent not interested. The two thugs storm into the office, only to find that Sherman has disappeared. The men track Sherman down to a fancy restaurant, and Farley tries to warn everyone that they’re trying to kill Sherman, but he gets thrown out for rowdiness. The men then track down Farley and beat him up. He gets a call from Paula, who says she’s about to meet with Sherman. The gangsters cut the line before he can warn her.
After we’re informed of the importance of spark plugs, Sherman comes into his office. Farley tries to warn him, but Sherman still doesn’t believe him. The two gangsters watch out for Sherman from a tenth-floor window, and they have a little banter about one of them’s fear of heights. They have the note from Helen, and decide to use it to frame Sherman’s death as another suicide. Meanwhile, Farley is still trying to save Sherman, and tries to call the cops, but they don’t believe him either. He tries calling the operator for Sherman’s number, but they won’t give it to him.
Next, Farley tries to talk the landlady into letting him into the apartment that the two men have rented. He sees “Sunset 2020” carved into the wall. Yeah, that was a rough year, but the sun came up again. We cut back to the men’s apartment, where Paula has wandered in. Sherman calls her and decides to head home. Farley finds his way there, and gets attacked by the two guys. The one who’s scared of heights falls out of the window.
Paula charges in accompanied by the police, who arrest the remaining gangster. She explains that she left to go get them when they noticed the window was open. Sherman arrives, still not believing Farley, and says he’ll blacklist him for being a pest. But, after everyone else has left, there’s another man with a gun, and it’s Nelson. He shoots Sherman, then calls the cops on himself. I guess that’s a happy ending?
What I thought: Suspense goes back to a fairly familiar well in this episode, with a story about an ordinary man trying to alert a heedless world to an incoming crime. The main difference in this episode is that the victim of the anticipated crime is an entirely unsympathetic character. Sherman is a Saul Goodman-like sleaze, unconcerned with anyone except himself and not even caring about the damage his affair unleashed. Even when Farley saves his life, Sherman isn’t grateful.
This is, I think, actually what makes this episode a lot of fun. Sherman heedlessly cutting a path through society while narrowly dodging the anvils around him is a lot more entertaining than the do-gooders trying to help him. George Reeves gives such a fun and energetic performance that you want to root for this scumbag. The character threatens the moral order of the television world so much that he has to be killed at the end, even if the whole episode was about keeping him alive.
This is also another Suspense episode with a surprisingly straightforward plot. Farley overhears two men talking about killing someone, and the conversation is exactly what he expects it is. The idea that it might just be actors rehearsing, which would be used as a twist in a thousand other stories, is brought up as a lame excuse from the baddies. That straightforwardness makes the episode kind of thin, but there’s an admirable purity to it.
Coming up next: Cisco and Pancho are breaking another innocent person out of jail, but this time it’s a woman.