Alfred Hitchcock Presents Series 1, Episode 13    Robert Stevens    Robert Blees (story & teleplay)    Patricia Collinge, Darren McGavin    25 December 1955    24:21 (total) • --:-- (film) • -:-- (Hitchcock)    9/10

The Cheney Vase

The curator of the Manhattan Museum of Art (George MacReady) fires his unreliable employee Lyle Endicott (Darren McGavin) for little reason. Both men are on friendly terms with an elderly woman, Mrs. Cheney (Patricia Collinge) who is in possession of a priceless antique vase. Now out of work, Lyle offers his services to the frail Mrs. Cheney as her personal house-assistant, attending to her every need... and a few things she doesn't need - such as manipulating a broken cup and blaming it on the mousemaid, opening her mail and scheming to make her think she is losing her mind, whilst all the while trying to locate and steal the precious vase so he can sell it to an art collector in Germany. After some time Mrs. Cheney begins to suspect Lyle and comes up with a brilliant scheme to get one over on him! TRIVIA •It's a second outing in the series for Darren McGavin as the charming carer for Mrs. Cheney (he was one of the gunmen in "Triggers In Leash"); it's also the second outing for George Macready also appeared in "Premonition".

HITCH'S PROLOGUE (0 secs): X HITCH'S EPILOGUE (0 secs): X SPOILERS Well, did you see that coming? When Lyle goes to Mrs. Cheney's house to finally relieve her of the precious vase he finds she has made several duplicates and only she knows which is the original. To add insult to injury she tells him she intends to sell the fakes and make a lot of money from them. Genius!

IN MY HUMBLE OPINION... As early as five minutes into the episode I was already predicting the old lady will be bumped off and the vase is stolen by one of the men. It's amazing to note how far off I was with that prediction! Now that the series has been established, it is noticeable that the host is expected to lend some humour to his pre-episode antics. The viewer begins to wonder what Hitch will be up to when we first see him. Here he is seen about to give an injection to a doll. At the end of the episode he continues with the wicked humour of inviting the audience to send $45,000 in cash for one of the vases seen in tonight's episode.

THE CAST (click any image to enlarge)

Martha Cheney... PATRICIA COLLINGE Lyle Endicott... DARREN McGAVIN Pamela Waring, secretary... CAROLYN JONES Herbert... GEORGE MACREADY Old maid... KATHRYN CARD Ruby Boignton, young maid... RUTA LEE

GALLERY (click any image to enlarge)

Acknowledgements: The Alfred Hitchcock Presents Companion by Martin Grams Jr & Patrik Wikstrom (book) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0508270/ [IMDb] This page was last updated on: 20 February 2021