Alfred Hitchcock Presents, S1E36, "Mink"

“Mink” is a more grounded riff on The Lady Vanishes–an idea the series already revisited, to more fanciful extremes, back in “Into Thin Air.”

Ruth Hussey–most famous to me personally for her work in The Philadelphia Story and the underrated ghost story The Uninvited–stars as upper-middle-class (but not quite upper-middle-class enough) wife Paula Hudson, who finds the provenance of her new mink stole thrown into question when an appraiser recognizes it as belonging to a previous customer of his. Suddenly, Paula has the cops on her back, and her story about how she wound up with the stole in the first place is starting to feel a little shaky.

Some of that is, to her chagrin, more or less on her: while she initially says it was a gift from her husband, she eventually admits to buying the fur herself from a young woman in need of quick cash, a sketchier and less genteel process. She needed the mink to save face in her status-conscious circle, since–according to her, at least–they judged her lack of quality fur as a sign that her husband isn’t doing as well as she says. Indeed, he probably isn’t. But in the cold light of police questioning, that kind of face-saving move looks like evasion. So does her inexactness about where her husband’s doing business and where he stays while he does it. If the episode kept everything in this vein, it could be a fairly wrenching examination of one woman taking a nightmarish plunge into being doubted and suspected all because of a few ego-boosting white lies.

Ultimately, though, while this has its tension, it’s a little lighter than that: once Paula starts actually trying to substantiate her claim to the fur, it becomes apparent that she’s being played. This is agonizing in its own way, particularly when some of the puppeteers, like “innocent” clothes model Dolores (Eugenia Paul of Zorro) and frazzled, pragmatic stylist Lucille (Veda Ann Borg), tell stories that feel more convincing, cohesive, and coherent than her own. (Though Dolores does overplay the wide-eyed, shiny-happy voice, as she more or less admits herself.) We could even be led to wonder if Paula is as confused as they paint her.

But the episode quickly and too explicitly establishes that no, she’s not, they really are conspiring against her, and revealing that so early lets us know that, in the usual morality of the series, the conspirators are all headed for a fall and Paula for some vindication. There’s also an accidental false lead here, with Dolores referring to a pointedly off-screen “Charlie” … and then it turns out that we don’t know Charlie from Adam, so there was no reason to hide him. In fact, showing him there would have added more tension to the scene where he shows up at Paula’s pretending to be an insurance investigator: instead, we just eventually get his name in that later scene and go, “Oh, okay, that’s Charlie.” While the writing on the series can sometimes be a little weak, it doesn’t usually botch the suspense itself. That can’t help being disappointing.

Still, there’s quite a bit to enjoy here. The biggest pleasure is Hussey’s performance: she takes Paula through a real journey, and she’s good at presenting complex blends of emotion (which pays off well in the final few seconds, which I could otherwise live without). Early on, for example, you can sense a kind of impostor syndrome at work: no matter how hard she tries to put on a sleek, well-satisfied act about her “present,” she knows it’s not exactly what it’s cracked up to be, and that comes through Hussey’s expressions and body language even before we get the key reveal. As with Pat Hitchcock in her turn at this kind of story, Hussey has an empathetic ordinariness that makes her a natural fit for a role as an innocent woman plunged into a hell of confusion.

The police duo of Bradford (Vivi Janiss) and Delaney (Vinton Hayworth) are also a hoot: we saw Janiss back in “You Got to Have Luck,” and she’s also a terrific bright spot in two generally lackluster Twilight Zone episodes, “The Fever” and “The Man in the Bottle,” and Hayworth was on I Dream of Jeannie and, in typical early TV fashion, about a thousand other things. They have a funny, naturalistic rapport here, with just enough touches of gratuitous characterization–like Delaney razzing her about the offered permanent–for them to feel like they’re at home with each other. (It helps that they’re both reasonably sympathetic to the beleaguered Paula, too, even as they have to investigate her, so it adds likability.) I’d have watched a spinoff of these two.

So while the tension here doesn’t entirely work–and while it all feels like a lot of trouble to go to for one snatched stole–the character beats are enjoyable, and everyone’s turning in a good performance. It’s a shame it doesn’t quite stick the landing, but it’s still worth it for Hussey and Co.

The Twist: Charlie is the original thief. He tries to buy the fur back from Paula, who refuses because of the complications that would cause; then he nabs it when her back is turned. (I’m not sure of the choreography of that, to be honest.) Paula expects that no one will believe the stolen fur has now been stolen from her, but she reports it anyway and readies a stiff upper lip to face some jail time. Luckily, it turns out that the police nabbed Charlie, who confessed to everything, including the gaslighting chain of accomplices.

Technically, I guess the final “twist,” so to speak, is Sergeant Delaney implying, affably enough, that Paula probably did know on some level that she was buying hot mink, since the camera lingers on Paula’s face after that as she goes through a chain of emotions that seem to boil down to, “Did I? Maybe I did. I didn’t let myself think about it. Should I have?” But it’s a consequence-free ending, aside from shaking her up a little.

This is not an episode that would benefit from a crueler, knockout punch of an ending. A Lady Vanishes-style story really needs to end with the manipulated, misled protagonist being vindicated. So it’s fine to have this one land softly–if anything, it could stand to be more happily cathartic, actually dramatizing Paula’s vindication instead of leaving so much of it off-screen. The last button being a kind of “oh, but maybe you are a little bit culpable” gotcha, even a harmless one that won’t hurt Paula in the slightest, doesn’t work all that well, not after we’ve watched her go through hell while being fairly sympathetic. It would land better if she’d been more entitled about her innocence or even more vicious about the people who are getting in trouble, but since none of that happened, it doesn’t feel like its (very mild) meanness achieves anything necessary.

Directed by: Robert Stevenson

Written by: Irwin Gielgud & Gwen Bagni

Up Next: “Decoy”