Somebody’s Out to Get Jennie
An
industrial engineer is thought to have been died in an air crash, and his
secretary is driven into a mental hospital.
You Always Paint Yourself
The
main structural point is in Jennie’s description of painting. A horizontal line
divides sky and earth. Sky is thought of as “a blue nothingness,” which usually
is filled by steeples and such, or formerly by cherubs and angels. For Jennie,
however, it’s “full of unseen forces.”
The
opening shot reflects this. Sky and earth, a helicopter descending. It lands
beside a lake, Robert Devlin steps out, there is an explosion and the company
bookkeeper still inside is killed.
Gen.
Touhy (retired), beset by an investigation into cost overruns, has decided to
liquidate his partnership with Devlin. The bookkeeper, a CO and “bleeding
heart” only Devlin would have hired, is accused of embezzlement, the blast
might have killed both. Devlin goes on the lam in Mexico, but his secretary
Jennie knows of the plot, she’s a sensitive creature and gets the Gaslight
treatment from Gen. Touhy’s tool Ira Mastin, an insurance investigator with a
showbiz past.
In
the end, McCloud is walking down a sidewalk viewed from above. A flower drops
into view. He picks it up in a reverse angle showing the sky as background. The
flower has a note wrapped around it, from Jennie in her hospital room (with
Devlin).
A
major work from Smight, closely and visibly related to Harper. His
technique is among the finest exhibited in the omnibus, which means, for
example, that rapid tracking pans are executed smoothly and precisely,
dolly-ins and dolly-outs construct the scene at a rare angle, and the pool is
reflected in the patio sunshade moving in the breeze on a conversation over
money and drinks of a sunny day, with some extensive and virtuosic location
work in the city as well.
|
Julie Sommars Diane Parlette/Jennie
Tanaquil |
Written by Robert Presnell, Jr. Directed by Jack Smight |
33411, 11.24.71
Ira Mastin watches what appears to be Edgar G. Ulmer’s The
Black Cat (with Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff) on television in his office.
Robert Presnell, Jr. was nominated for the Edgar Allan Poe
Award from the Mystery Writers of America for this episode.
(A wire figure sculpture not far from the hotplate in the
office of Ira Mastin, an insurance investigator who is secretly in Ralph
Touhy’s employ.)
IRA
MASTIN: You like this, it’s nice, isn’t it?
McCLOUD: Looks
like some haybaler had a slack season.
IRA MASTIN: You know a little place in Taos
called the, uh, Hi Hat Club?
McCLOUD:
(Laughs.) You bet I do. I was the one that closed it down.
IRA
MASTIN: Oh. Well, I closed up a coupla clubs myself. But, uh, if you’d
ever seen my act, you’d understand.
IRA MASTIN: (To McCloud.) I used to
do this act with a Doberman and a parrot. The parrot used to wear this Hawaiian
outfit...
DIANE PARLETTE: (The sky, a painter’s view.) I don’t
really think it’s nothingness at all, I think it’s just filled with unseen
forces. You don’t dig unseen forces, do you.
McCLOUD: I leave them
alone, they leave me alone, know what I mean?
DIANE PARLETTE: (In her fainting condition, asks McCloud
to hold her hand.) Just to keep the monsters and trolls away that might
come. They might come through the trollgate. That’s what you have to watch out
for, the trollgate. (Falls asleep.)
McCLOUD: Ya know, my paternal grandfather used to say that in a
high wind you’re gonna get a lot of dust.
IRA
MASTIN: He said that?
McCLOUD:
Yeah,
yeah, ha-ha, well, grandfather was a little windy himself, ya know?
DR. GORTGAARD: We have enough to treat Jennie for
without having to treat her for stress induced by police third-degree methods.
McCLOUD: Yeah,
well, I don’t have any police third-degree methods, but—see, I’m just gonna
have dinner and sit down and talk to her like a friend, ya know what I mean?
(Ira Mastin asks for more money and gets it.)
IRA MASTIN: A guy can’t help liking you. (Gen. Touhy laughs. Mastin
continues in mock protest.) No, I don’t like a lot of people.
RALPH TOUHY: Corruption is the great leveler.
IRA MASTIN: She changed her name, and McCloud
found her.
RALPH TOUHY: (To Ira Mastin.) What’s a McCloud?
IRA
MASTIN: He’s a cowboy they got down at the detective bureau.
RALPH TOUHY: (Of Jennie.) You take
care of her.
IRA
MASTIN: No, no, that’s not my line. I’m just an accomplice.
RALPH
TOUHY: Push her over the edge.
(McCloud has brought her flowers, etc.)
DIANE PARLETTE: I was just wondering if you were planning to make love to
me.
McCLOUD: To tell
ya the truth, I ain’t come to that fork in the road, yet.
DIANE
PARLETTE: You are so normal, it’s fantastic! How do you do that? I can’t
do that.
DIANE PARLETTE: You have such a sympathetic face.
It’s real. It’s not a mask. Is it?
McCLOUD: Well, whatever
it is, it’s all that I got.
DIANE
PARLETTE: You are so wonderfully straight, whatever you say, it’s what
you mean, right?
McCLOUD: Yeah,
except when I’m lyin’.
JENNIE: (To McCloud.) His name is Gortgaard. Dr.
Gortgaard. Once I told him it sounded like something people used to use when
they fought duels to keep from getting their gort cut off, (McCloud
laughs.) and right away he started looking into my pupils and checking
my knee reflexes.
McCLOUD: Why did you say that Mr. Devlin isn’t dead?
JENNIE:
(Humorous.) Mmmm, because I’m loose in the flue, sir.
JENNIE: (To McCloud.) Whenever you paint anything,
you always paint yourself.
RALPH TOUHY: (Of his partner Robert Devlin, to McCloud.) He was one
of the finest industrial engineers in the country, you know? Whatever the Army
wished they had in the way of electronics, he could dream it up and he could
make it.
(Ralph Touhy’s office, with Robert Devlin’s paintings.)
McCLOUD: Mighty
fine paintings, I’d say.
RALPH
TOUHY: Yeah, Bob painted those. He dabbled in painting.
McCLOUD: Well, he
dabbled pretty good.
(McCloud finagles a painting by Devlin of the city, for
comparison with one in Jennie’s apartment signed “Xeno”, in the name of his
“maternal Aunt Jessie back home,” who visited New York in 1939.)
McCLOUD:
(To Ralph Touhy.) She just loves New York. Yeah, you know, she’s got a
little model of the Woolworth Building that sits right there on her mantle, and
it glows in the dark.
McCLOUD: (To Ralph Touhy.) Happy
trails.
JENNIE: (Of Robert Devlin, to McCloud.) You know
what he told me once? Oh, he was drunk, but... he said he hated himself because
he made a fortune out of war.
(Robert Devlin’s poem, “I think if our craniums...”—recited
by Jennie from memory.)
...Our love intellectual,
Complexes sexual,
Secret ambitions,
And sly inhibitions,
Were exhibited there for the public to view,
They’d differ far less than geraniums do.
JENNIE: (Of Robert Devlin.) He’s not
dead. They tried to kill him.
McCLOUD: Who tried
to kill him?
JENNIE: General
Touhy. OK, I could be wrong. Anybody could be wrong. Even God, look at
evolution.
McCLOUD: Now, Jennie, look now, look. Your hand is in mine, and there’s
not gonna be any monsters, not gonna be any trolls comin’ through the
trollgate. If they do, I’ll just take my .45 and I’ll shoot ‘em. I’ll fill ‘em
full o’ daylight.
(At the art gallery, to have the paintings compared.)
SHIRLEY: (Smitten with him.) I mean, I just adore anything
Western, you know that? The Grand Canyon Suite is one of my favorites.
McCLOUD:
Well—never could afford much more ‘n a room and a bath, m’self.
SHIRLEY: Hey, how about this for an evening? I could pull my
wagons in a circle, see, and you could attack me.
McCLOUD: (Pause.) Ya know,
you might have somethin’ there. Ya mind if I go home and reload?
SHIRLEY: I’ll
call.
McCLOUD: There ya
go.
(Ira Mastin has lured Jennie to a supposed rootftop meeting
with Robert Devlin, and now is disguised as an elderly bearded Irish elevator
operator.)
IRA
MASTIN: (To Jennie.) I’ve taken a few up that didn’t come down. Not with me,
anyway... Four people, aye, four jumped off the roof this year... Two
jackknifes, one swan dive, and a feet first... I’ve seen ‘em come, and I’ve
seen ‘em go. You be careful y’rself, Miss. Life is a gift, don’t you forget
that.
(At police headquarters, after being menaced by Ira Mastin
on the rooftop and seeing her faceless portrait of Robert Devlin walk toward
her and open its eyes.)
JENNIE: (Shrieking, hysterical, to McCloud.) There was
one of them on the roof... and then... he came out of the painting!
(Jennie has a nervous breakdown.)
DR.
GORTGAARD: You didn’t pull any of your medieval police stunts?
McCLOUD: Doctor, I
don’t have any medieval police stunts.
(The report on Ira Mastin, and a phone message.)
DET.
PARKER: He had a small-time vaudeville act, did impressions and magic
tricks... a girl named Shirley wanting you to call, she said something, uh,
about getting her wagons ready, I’m not, uh, quite sure I got that right... (McCloud has
exited.)
(McCloud has found out Robert Devlin is alive.)
CHIEF
CLIFFORD: (Slowly and distinctly.) Absolutely no plane ticket to
Mexico!
CHIEF CLIFFORD: (To McCloud.) Oh,
great. Everybody else, from the Pentagon through the insurance company through
the FBI thinks the case is closed, except you and that girl. Who I understand
is back in the hospital.
CHIEF CLIFFORD: (Quietly.) Get a
voucher from Accounting. Two days. Just two days. If you don’t find Devlin,
keep ridin’ south.
McCLOUD: ‘Preciate
it.
(In Mexico, Devlin’s painterly nom de
guerre, which McCloud pronounces as three syllables.)
McCLOUD: You
wouldn’t be X-eno, would you?
ROBERT
DEVLIN: Xeno.
ROBERT DEVLIN: (To McCloud. Quiet desperation.) It gives
ya the shakes when someone’s tryin’ ta kill ya.
ROBERT DEVLIN: (Of Jennie, to McCloud.) She meant
a lot to me. A lot. But Robert Devlin’s dead, he’s dead.
ROBERT DEVLIN: (To McCloud.) I don’t
belive in terminal morality. I’m a free man, and I feel great! DON’T YOU
GET THAT?? GET IT????
(Robert Devlin telephones Ira Mastin to arrange a meeting
with Ralph Touhy.)
ROBERT
DEVLIN: He says he’s gonna call the police.
McCLOUD:
(Pause.) Well, if he does, I’m swingin’ an empty loop.
(Anticipating an ambush at the rendezvous.)
McCLOUD:
(Pistol drawn.) Get in the passenger side.
IRA
MASTIN: It’s my car.
McCLOUD: Get in
the passenger side!
(Up the driveway to Ralph Touhy’s mansion.)
McCLOUD: I don’t mind tellin’ ya, Mr. Mastin, I don’t care what happens
to ya, after what you did to that girl.
IRA
MASTIN: What girl?
McCLOUD: Mr.
Devlin might kill ya himself for that. Now, I don’t care how ya get it,
personally. Ya better duck down, just in case a bullet comes through the
windshield.
(Chief Clifford has taken Ralph Touhy into custody as Robert
Devlin arrives.)
RALPH
TOUHY: (To Robert Devlin.) Welcome home, Bob. (Pause.
Lightly.) It’s all yours.
(Jennie’s note, wrapped around a carnation flung down to the
sidewalk from her hospital room, where Robert Devlin is visiting her.)
“Help! Being held captive on the 17th floor by monsters and trolls.
We love you, McCloud.”