The Alfred Hitchcock Hour Starring the Defense (1962–1965) Online

The hour's a slim premise that gets stretched beyond capacity. Good thing production hired that fine actor Richard Basehart to carry the show. It's his intelligently restrained turn that kept me interested in what amounts to a one-note Perry Mason episode. Seems civil attorney Crawford's (Basehart) gets involved in his young son's (Pollick) killing of a rival over a girl's affections. Feeling guilty for being a poor father, Crawford seeks redemption by going all out in son's defense.

It's hard to tell where the story's going since there's no doubt about the youth's guilt. Seemingly, the only outstanding question is the degree of culpability—was it intentional (first degree murder), or spur-of-the-moment (manslaughter). Unfortunately, that's not a lot to drum up suspense for a dramatic hour confined mainly to a courtroom. Then too, Pollick's stumbling performance doesn't help. But, guys, there's the luscious Jean Hale providing brief blonde relief with a witness box turn. (Catch her in Perry Mason's "The Murderous Mermaid", where she shows both talent and striking good looks.)

Anyway, to me, the hour's a sub-standard entry, distinguished only by the superb Richard Basehart.

I won't add much more to what has already been told about this court room scheme episode. It's pretty effective if you compare it to other Alfred Hitchcock's Hour series épisodes. The only little thing that I found very funny, amusing, is the scene where Basehart goes to see the lawyer, to defend his son, at the beginning of this story. He enters the lawyer's office and the lawyer's secretary is no one than the lawyer's young daughter, a ten year old child. Believe it or not, I found this very amusing, offbeat, unusual at the most. For the rest, it's good, I repeat, and I also agree to what the other user said, concerning the viewing of the old Richard Basehart's character's movie, when he plays a lawyer. The cameras angles are exactly the same between the actual sequence of Basehart defending his son and the cameras angles in the old feature.

With a good set up and good pay off the middle section of this episode falls a little bit flat. It's a courtroom drama with the seemingly pointless twist of an actor father defending his son but there's a reason to it all. Director Pevney doesn't add much flash to this episode but Basehart has a good and unusual opportunity in this episode that puts it as an above average episode that could have used a bit more flash and snap to the courtroom aspects to make it better. Mild spoiler follows to explain what I mean about Basehart's role. I won't try to spoil it but you have been warned.

The whole key to the dad character deals with a speech his gives as his son's lawyer that is revealed to be from one of his father's old movies. Basehart plays the role of the dad as roughly his own age so this "0ld" movie shows him younger. What's really good about this is the way Basehart plays two versions of the same scene. In the old movie he plays it with an almost faux English accent and in a slightly higher voice--which would be true of both a younger man but also of a earnest, if not very good, actor playing a scene. This comes after we've seen him give the speech to sum up and try to save his son for what we thought was real. He's much more convincing in that version of the speech. It's a master stroke from Basehart and or director Pevney. But whoever had the idea, could have been suggested in the script it's Basehart who pulls it off and it would belong on his acting reel.

It's too bad Pevney visually doesn't do anything differently in the film and in the real trial that's a missed opportunity on his part. Instead the real trial and the reel trial are filmed as if he directed both at the same time--which of course he did--but it shouldn't look that way.

BIGGER SPOILER: It's too bad the sort of double twist way the end works out, which is quite clever, isn't built up and paid off as well as it could have been, again Pevney isn't in top form here. You sort of feel how good the ending is after it's over rather than having the true "ah ha, wow." moment that a true powerful twist can have.

Richard Basehart is an ex actor turned lawyer. His son kills someone in a knife fight and is arrested and tried. Basehart defends him in court and delivers a stirring summary. The prosecutor, however, finds that the speech in its entirety was lifted from one of Basehart's old movies in which he played a lawyer. Basehart demonstrates to the judge that, in the movie, the speech didn't save the defendant, who was duly executed. The execution scene is harrowing, as all of them are, and when Basehart's son is found guilty, the judge gives him life instead of the chair and recommends early parole.

It may be my imagination but the hour-long show seemed to have a bigger budget than the half-hour quickies. There are more sets, more elaborately appointed. When Basehart visits a criminal lawyer for advice, there is a shot of him walking down a fully dressed hallway, pausing in front of the door, then entering the office. Money could -- and would -- have been save by a simple shot of the lawyer's name on the door and the door's being opened by Basehart. The shot of the hallway makes the scene more expansive, lavish, real. I applaud that hallway. I applaud its little table and the decorations on its walls.

Basehart is good, as always, whether in old-age make up or as a younger man in the movie within the movie. Alas, his son, cannot act. He has a curious face with a flat nose, and that's it. His friend, a witness to the knife fight, doesn't take us anywhere either. He had a smallish skull from which is suspended a massive jaw. One of the girls the two boys fought over is okay, though. She can't act either but she's young, glamorous, and slutty. Any normal man would throw himself at her tiny shoes and beg to be allowed to run his toes through her lissotrichous mane.

The story is an adaptation of a piece from "Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine," edited by Hitchcock's daughter, Pat. She was a clumsy editor. The magazine still owes me a manuscript that they never bothered to return despite the stamped, self-addressed return envelope. I hope she's shaped up.

***SPOILERS*** Former film actor and now famed defense attorney Miles Crawford, Richard Basehart, really got his hands full in finding that his troubled 21 years old son Tod, Teno Pollick,is wanted for murder by the local police. It turned out that Tod go into a fistfight over that hot collage chick-woman-Babs Riordan, Jane Hale, with his life long friend Julie Herman which turned deadly. Switching from fists to knives Herman ended up getting cut to pieces by Tod with him ending up bleeding to death.

Taking on the case of his accused son Miles Crawford together with fellow attorney and friend Ed Rutherford,S.John Launer, get very little help from Tod in trying to defend himself by admitting that he in fact killed Julie in a jealous rage! As the trial comes to it's final summations Crawford knowing that he has nothing to lose lets it all hang out in giving one of the most heart rendering speeches to the jury in US judicial history that by the time it's over there wasn't a dry eye in the courtroom. Not even from prosecuting D.A the and judge!

***SPOILERS*** Just when the verdict was about to be delivered it's discovered that Crawford was not really genuine, even though heart felt, in his remarks in that the speech he made in his son Tod's defense was copied word for word from a film he starred in some 30 years ago before Tod was even born! Still it in fact wasn't the jury who didn't known about Crawford's movie and the part he played in it but the judge ,John Zaremba, who knew of Crawford somewhat underhanded tactics in getting his son off from being executed who came,on sentencing day,to Tod's defense. Not it what Tod's dad did but his willingness,and possibly facing disbarment, to do it to save the very obviously guilty Tod's life!