The Alfred Hitchcock Hour The Gentleman Caller (1962–1965) watch online HD

Good thing McDevitt and McDowall are such ace performers in this average entry. Aside from an action-filled hook, most of the hour is dialog between the two. Seems bank robber Gerald (McDowall) needs to launder his loot, so he concocts a rather unlikely scheme to use daffy old Mrs. Wright (McDevitt). He plants the cash in her apartment and then ingratiates himself, getting her to will him what amounts to the money. Since she's old and nearly senile, she has no defenses. It's pretty complicated but does set up some patented Hitchcock black humor. And get a load of Gerald's "cousin" Milly (Sayer). With her short shorts and kicky leg action I expect the censors were tearing their hair. Plus, she apparently likes getting slapped around. Oh well, I guess the entry did need more action. Anyhow if Hitch gave out Oscars for his series, I'd recommend McDevitt who makes the whole thing work. And, oh yes, I'd vote too for his "look-alike winner" in this amusing Hitch wrap-around.

Roddy McDowall is supposed to be pretty nasty in this one, especially at the beginning. When he's not robbing a bank or shooting a cop to death, he's slapping his girl friend around.

He makes off with the loot and he and his paramour hole up in a hotel room with more than half a million dollars in unspendable cash. They need to launder it somehow. But one or two scenes suggest that if you must be sequestered in a hotel, there are worse people than girl friend Diane Sayer to be sequestered with. She always wears shorts. Her long legs are alluring and her tiny feet inviting, especially when she has hundred-dollar-bills pinched between her toes. She doesn't mind being tossed around once in a while either, which is an appealing trait.

Not that McDowall gives her much thought. He's worried about figuring out some way to get the stash to someone who will give it legally back to him. I think this is called laundering. I once left a dollar bill in a pair of pants I washed but that's as much as I know about laundering money.

McDowall runs into a senile old lady, Ruth McDevitt, who finds him to be a nice polite boy and more or less adopts him. He calls her "Auntie" and she calls him "Gerald", although she can't spell "Gerald." She's a hoarder too. She has old boxes and piles of magazines strewn around her shabby flat. McDowall and Sayer plant the loot in the pages of McDevitt's years-old magazines, draw up a will for her leaving everything to a church charity -- except the magazines. Then they try to kill her.

I don't think I'll give the ending away except to say that it's a satisfying twist that comes with the crash of cymbals. I had a slight problem with Roddy McDowall as a semi-noir gangster. He's not a murdering sadist. He's the kid in "How Green Was My Valley" who finally throws away his crutches. I had no problem with Diane Sayer. None at all. And as the doddering old lady, McDevitt is as good as they come.

Almost laughable by a fine Hitchock episode where Roddy McDowall kills a night watchman and then flees, only to meet up with a senile elderly woman who has a singing group in the park. The two hit it off and she immediately invites him to her home.

Ruth McDevitt is the senile woman and her performance really gave meaning to dementia.

McDowell plots to leave the stolen money in her apartment, and after a while when he refers to her by Aunt, draw up a will leaving him things so that it appears that the money belonged to the old woman.

This being accomplished, he now sets upon ways to kill the old woman. Being hit by a car and going down a staircase all fail, so he devises one last way.

Of course, McDevitt survives all this, but the ending is quite a surprise. Apparently, Miss Emmy wasn't as senile as we all thought she was.

This episodes starts with a terrificly noirish robbery scene and McDowell is very good playing an unusually nasty character. The scenes with his moll are more shocking now than they would have been at the time now that we're all politically correct about things. The relationship he forms with the helpless old lady works too. It's funny but suspenseful as McDowell's character has real threat to him. Then, and I won't spoil anything, there is this fall down the stairs scene and the show suddenly seems to be totally a comedy/black comedy. The show is fast paced and well directly and acted by all with some twists but the tone shift doesn't really work for McDowell's character or for the show. So the whole is less than the sum of the parts this time.

Hitchcock's intro and outro especially are quite funny and related to the episode giving it a final pay off--which isn't always the case. Wish I could rate this more highly.

"The Gentleman Caller" stars the marvelous Roddy McDowall, equally fine on the small screen as on the big one, playing bank robber Gerald Musgrove, escaping with 100,000 dollars, but shooting dead the unseen guard. He and his wife Milly (Diane Sayer) split up to meet later, while Gerald hides out in the open, singing with a group of elderly people while clutching his booty the whole time. Catching his eye is the lonely Emmy Rice (Ruth McDevitt), who compliments him on his singing, and eventually invites him over for dinner. The apparently absent minded Emmy seems like the perfect patsy for a place to stash his hidden loot, her apartment housing a huge collection of old magazines piled high to the ceiling. Roddy McDowall had been honing his adult acting skills on television, and had only recently revived his screen career, one of the best loved performers in Hollywood history. He would return for one more HITCHCOCK, "See the Monkey Dance."

One thing Alfred Hitchcock could always do was draw major talents to his television productions. In this case it's Roddy McDowell, surprisingly dashing and handsome as a thief who needs a hiding place for himself and his ill-gotten cash. A simple-minded old lady played by Ruth McDevitt literally picks him up at a small town sing along concert, inviting this perfect stranger for dinner in her home where she lives alone. He soon moves in, calling her "Auntie" and taking full advantage of her sheer stupidity. One of her senile eccentricities is that she collects stacks of old magazines, and when Roddy decides to hide his ill-gotten thousand dollar bills within the pages of those magazines, well, it's not too difficult to imagine what happens later. Roddy has his slutty girlfriend move in, which helps in no particular way to further the plot, and although "Auntie" is momentarily jealous, she seems to go along with it in a way that is ultimately unlikely. Unfortunately Roddy is too obviously a slickster, and Auntie is too foolishly, unbelievably gullible to make this episode especially interesting.