1970s Tv Movie With David Hartman Youll Never See Me Again

Nosotros open on what appears to be a newly minted spousal relationship fabricated in sky, as Ned and Vicki Bliss (Seriously?) wrap up a picnic lunch with some champagne and a shared candy bar before once more expressing their countless and undying t'woo wuv for one some other. And then twitter-pated are these two, and and then smitten by their mountain-side environment, Vicki requests her architect husband build them a dream house correct here, around a pine tree. No, in a pino tree. More than overt mooning and giggling follows. But! Earlier y'all tin can say, Oh, go and get a room already, the Blisses pack upwardly and return home, where this blissful honeymoon and love-fest before long comes to a crashing and violent halt for these two lovebirds.

Seems Ned (Hartman) has a bit of a atmosphere and a sore spot concerning Vicki'southward parents -- specially her mother, Mary, whom he's never met. And this starts bubbling to the surface when Vicki (Walton) receives a letter from abode and Ned tin can barely hide his guffawing contempt as she reads it to him. Obviously, her parents didn't remember he was proficient enough for their daughter, which led to a near ii year estrangement. Which is why Ned assumes this rare communication is to inform them Vicki has only been disinherited; simply, no, it's actually expert news of sorts as her mother, who has a centre condition, is feeling meliorate. And and then much so, she and Vicki's footstep-father, Volition, plan to finally retire, get traveling, and see the globe similar they e'er wanted to before she got sick. With love and regards, mom.

Intrigued by this olive branch, Vicki tries to phone home but only gets a busy signal. Then of a sudden, she hits upon the notion they should simply drive up to her old hometown of Denby, almost two hours away, drib in, and finally meet her folks properly and officially coffin the hatchet before they become away. And while Ned tries to put the brakes on this notion for at present due to the late hour and work commitments in the morning, Vicki won't accept no for an respond. They just spent two boring weeks in Minnesota with his parents afterwards all. Yep. Things kinda degenerate from there, and rapidly, when Ned accuses Vicki of acting like a guilt-ridden kid and calls her mother a hypochondriac -- parroting his wife's ain diagnosis. And then Vicki, now really pissed off, threatens to go on without him, especially when Ned forbids this. More heated words are exchanged, and and so the husband makes things even worse when he finally agrees to get but to change the subject but it's already fashion too late for that.

And the amercement continue to accrue as this fight resumes, Ned's atmosphere emerges, more words are taken out of context, and things get dirty and personal until, at concluding, this domestic dispute gets concrete when Ned restrains Vicki from leaving until they settle a few things. And when she bites his manus, he reflexively strikes back, knocking her downward and bloodying her olfactory organ. The stupor of what he's done finally snaps Ned out of his fit. But as he tries to apologize and offers her the car keys to go on alone to make peace, Vicki doesn't desire to hear it, having never seen this side of him before. Maxim she'll take the jitney, the married woman pushes him away and heads for the door, threatening to stay with her folks permanently. When he essentially says skilful riddance, she promises "You'll never see me again" before slamming the door in his face. Disgusted with her and himself, Ned lets her go.

Come the dawn, Ned confesses to a co-worker and friend, Bob Sellni (Chester), what happened last night, even albeit he hit his wife, and how horrible he feels well-nigh this. And when he tries to get a concur of Vicki over the telephone to repent, he talks to her folks, who claim Vicki never arrived last night and have no idea where she is. Concerned, Ned checks at the bus station. The clerk remembers the married woman only says she didn't have plenty coin for a ticket and said she'd only pollex a ride instead. Next, Ned tries to study his wife missing to the police but gets the standard 48-hr castor-off since his wife had only been missing for less than 12.

His insistence gets him kicked upwardly a few grades to a Detective John Stillman (Campanella), who feels his wife's description matches an amnesiac Jane Doe they just placed in the hospital. But it isn't Vicki. And so, Ned starts checking hotels and gas stations forth the road to Denby with no luck until he reaches the town proper, where a surly gas jockey named Sam (Svenson) vehemently denies ever talking to his wife fifty-fifty though the shop's mechanic swears he did.

And so, Ned pushes on to the parent's firm, where Will Alden (Meeker) invites him in, says Mary volition be forth shortly, and asks if there's any news. All Ned can offer is they've nigh reached the magic 48-hr mark and the police volition finally start looking, also. Inside the house, Ned's 'architect sense' starts tingling as he mentions the principal room seems off-centered. He apologizes, proverb information technology's a curse and Vicki always claimed he had a T-square for a brain. Will understands, maxim he was in structure himself. Mary Alden (Hyatt) seems a bit flighty when she joins them, but assures her female parent'southward intuition says Vicki is probably fine. Her step-father isn't so kind, insisting if Ned had only come with her she wouldn't be missing in the start place. And after a few more heated words well-nigh whose fault this all is, Ned leaves before his temper blows over again.

When Ned arrives home to a still empty firm, he barely has time to get off a prayer over his wife'southward rubber and eventual safe return earlier Detective Stillman arrives in forcefulness with a warrant to search the house. Seems they've received an anonymous tip that implicated Ned in the disappearance of his wife. And while several officers start searching the house, Stillman is chosen back outside. Within, an incensed Ned denies doing anything wrong and cannot believe they are wasting fourth dimension searching the one place he knows his married woman isn't. Then, Stillman enters and asks for a description of what his married woman was wearing when she disappeared. Ned describes the dark-brown dress once again, which Stillman then produces, covered in blood. When a startled Ned asked where he plant this incriminating bear witness, Stillman replies they only found it in the torso of Ned's machine...

Though non besides known as Dashiell Hammett or a Raymond Chandler -- but maybe he should be, author Cornell Woolrich definitely left a marker equally a pulp-writer of law-breaking, mystery, and suspense thrillers. Born in New York Urban center at the turn of the last century, Woolrich's parents divorced when he was very immature and this schism would go on to haunt him the residual of his life in many ways. He dropped out of Columbia University when his outset novel, Cover Charge, was published in 1926, which he produced while confined to bed in a lengthy convalescence. Inspired by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Woolrich would proceed to publish five more "jazz age" novels, which concerned "the political party-antics and romances of the beautiful immature things on the fringes of American social club." This success led to a motility to Hollywood, where he got a chore as a screenwriter at First National Pictures, a subsidiary of Warner Bros., and found himself a wife.

Merely his brief marriage to Violet Blackton was a disaster as it was all a forepart to hide Woolrich'south closeted homosexuality. And then, the unconsummated marriage was annulled in 1933, and facing scandal and no screen credits, Woolrich limped back to his mother, Claire, in New York. And by that time, the jazz historic period was dead, the Corking Depression was just getting started, so, Woolrich could find no takers for his latest novel, I Love You, Paris. And still needing to make a living to support himself and his mother, Woolrich wound up tossing the manuscript in the trash and began re-inventing himself as a lurid writer, where he would excel penning tales of violence, suspense, loneliness, despair and futility.

In fact, Woolrich became and so prolific churning out novels, novellas, and serialized adventures in the likes of Dime Detective Magazine, he started using several aliases, including William Irish gaelic and George Hopley. And unlike his beginning tenure in Hollywood, Woolrich started getting all kinds of screen credits as his work was adapted to the big screen with films like Jacques Tourneur's The Leopard Man (1943), based on his novel, Black Alibi, and a cord of same-named classic noir films -- Phantom Lady (1944), Deadline at Dawn (1946), Black Affections (1948) and The Hunt (1948), which was based on The Blackness Path of Fear. Alfred Hitchcock'due south Rear Window (1954) was also based on the Woolrich serialized novella, Information technology Had to Be Murder. And Francois Truffaut adapted The Bride Wore Black (1968) and turned Flit into Darkness into Mississippi Mermaid (1969). Even notorious Italian director Umberto Lenzi adapted Woolrich'south prose, turning Rendezvous in Blackness into The 7 Blood Stained Orchids (1972).

Despite this success, Woolrich was "a haunted man who lived a life of reclusive misery" that was "as dark and emotionally tortured as any of his unfortunate characters." And despite making all that money, the author continuously moved from one seedy hotel to the next with his mother; places that would make perfect settings for his webs of intrigue; but I don't think that'due south why he was staying there. After his mother's death in 1957, Woolrich suffered through a sharp physical and mental decline. Still wracked with guilt by the stigma of his homosexuality, when he reached his sixties, the homo was a self-inflicted wreck of mental-illness, alcoholism, and runaway diabetes, which resulted in an amputated leg. He died alone in 1968, an 89-pound shell of his former self. Upon his expiry, Woolrich'due south estate of nearly one one thousand thousand dollars was given to Columbia University to set up upwardly a scholarship fund for immature writers in his female parent's proper name.

According to Woolrich's biographer, Francis Nevins, more film noir screenplays were adjusted from Woolrich's catalog than Hammett, Chandler, Erle Stanley Gardner, or James Cain. And in the 1940s, many of the author'due south stories were as well adapted for radio programs like Suspense and Mystery Playhouse. And so it would make sense that Woolrich would also start showing upwardly on Idiot box. And he did simply that in several anthology programs like Climax! and Playhouse ninety, and fifty-fifty wound upwards in a couple episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents and Thriller.

Jeannot Szwarc's Made for Boob tube Movie, Y'all'll Never See Me Again (1973), was actually the second fourth dimension Woolrich'south tale of the same proper noun was adjusted for tv. You'll Never Encounter Me Once again showtime saw print in the Nov, 1939, event of Detective Story Magazine, later on nerveless and published every bit a novella by Dell. And it was first adapted to television receiver for the British anthology serial, Armchair Theatre (Season 3, Episode 49), in August of 1959. It was directed by Ted Post and starred Ben Gazzara as the hubby. And while I've never seen that adaptation, past most accounts it sticks to Woolrich's plot of a domestic dispute gone terribly amiss, where a wife's sudden and mysterious disappearance soon finds the husband under suspicion of her murder by the police due to circumstantial evidence of foul play and his desperate attempts to exonerate himself by staying ahead of the cops and finding out what really happened and find his wife, hopefully, still alive.

Director Szwarc and screenwriters William Woods and Gerald Di Pego's after accommodation never strays too far from the source material either -- aside from updating it to the current era of production, which, alas, also kinda grounded it in the avocado-toned globe of the early 1970s, setting things upwardly quick and dirty to fit in the 8:30 Lord's day nighttime time-slot between Adam-12 and the 10 o'clock news.

And while David Hartman is no Ben Gazzara, I call up he holds his own as Ned Elation. Probably nigh well known for his long stint as a co-host on the talk-show Skillful Morning America, Hartman had already well established himself every bit an actor on the small-scale screen with several Idiot box-series before he landed that gig -- near notably with recurring characters in The Virginian and The Bold Ones: The New Doctors. And I idea he was especially proficient in another telefilm, The Feminist and the Fuzz (1971). Anyway, with his hound-canis familiaris face and sasquatch frame, I remember the actor brings an effective every-human quality to the office, making him more relatable, and as well kind of unlikable due to his his temper; and this really helps ratchet up the tension as wronged man Ned tries to explain away the claret on his wife's dress and more trace prove found on the rug where she fell ii nights before.

At present, at this point, Ned, having been upwards for nearly 48-hours himself, is pretty stressed out and isn't thinking besides clearly every bit Stillman keeps pressing him, trying to coax a confession out of his suspect. But Ned remains defiant. Convinced information technology was Vicki's parents who sicced the police force on him, something has been continually nagging at him near his brief visit to their home but his sleep-deprived brain can't lock information technology down. He also tries to cast suspicion on the gas station attendant, who denied talking to Vicki even though another witness said he did. And while Stillman promises to follow up on those leads, we're pretty sure he feels he'south already got his homo. Ned senses this, too, which would explain his next and highly irrational move when he loses his atmosphere again, attacks and incapacitates Stillman, and escapes into the nighttime.

Later on stealing a car and returning to the Denby gas station, with the police hot on his trail, Ned gets the drib on Sam and finally coerces the truth out of him. Seems he did see Vicki the other day. Just with the blood on her clothes, despite her excuses, information technology looked like she was desperately running away from someone. Sam causeless it was her husband; and so, he thought he was doing the right matter past not telling Ned the truth. He then reveals he last saw Vicki go into a green truck with a busted windshield and some kind of writing on the door. Luck is with a drastic Ned every bit he chop-chop tracks down the truck's owner, who says he took Vicki to her parents house. Only why would they prevarication well-nigh this? Are they trying to aid hide her from Ned, or is there something far more sinister going on here?

Well, we get our answer PDQ as our tale needles toward the red of highly implausible when Ned returns to the Alden firm, where he finds Mary alone. Just he can't go whatsoever answers out of the sobbing adult female. Now about completely out of his heed, something finally clicks in that T-square encephalon of Ned'southward: the master room IS off-centered, as if someone had congenital a false wall -- a simulated wall to hide something. Not liking where his brain is going, Ned goes berserk and starts beating a hole into the offending wall, which shortly reveals, indeed, there is a body secreted inside -- only information technology isn't Vicki.

No. The body is actually Vicki's real mother, and the adult female impersonating her was her in-hospice nurse, who conspired with the husband to commit fraud by hiding the trunk and assuming Mary Alden's identity to gain access to her vast wealth as a cherry on top of their long-standing affair. And Vicki stumbled right into this, as the faux Mary continues her confession. She was the one who put Vicki's bloodied apparel in Ned'south automobile while Volition distracted him to get the constabulary on his odor instead of theirs, proverb Will felt they would never get away with it now unless Vicki permanently "disappeared." Asked if Vicki was still alive, false Mary doesn't know, saying Will just took her up into the hills, where the road ends, to go her out of the way for good.

Stillman and the local constables arrive at the house correct after Ned leaves, where they notice false Mary, who begs them for help. Up where the road ends, Ned heads into the woods, yelling for his wife until Will attacks him with a shovel. But Ned easily overpowers the older human being but knocks him out before he can reveal where Vicki is. And as Stillman and the others reach the woods -- and remember, we still don't know what faux Mary told them, then they could still be after their fugitive, and Stillman appears to be a shoot first, inquire questions afterward, kinda guy, Ned's desperate search continues until he stumbles upon an open grave, freshly dug, manifestly intended for his wife. But information technology'southward empty.

And as the police dragnet closes in, Ned runs by a secluded dell where a restrained Vicki has been hidden. And as he calls for her, the woman manages to rub her gag off and cry for help. Ned hears this, finds her, and releases his married woman but as Stillman finally catches up to them, bringing our harrowing lilliputian Hitchcockian melodrama to a close.

You know, there was a hot but brief minute back in the 1970s when the going thought in Hollywood was Jeannot Szwarc was gonna be a rival for Steven Spielberg every bit the best of the New Immature Turks of Hollywood (-- Lucas, Coppola, Milius, Scorsese, and De Palma). Szwarc and Spielberg'due south careers did sort of mirror and echo each other from the beginning as both began directing episodic Telly; with Szwarc making his debut with an episode of Ironside in 1968. Episodes of Information technology Takes a Thief and Marcus Welby, 1000.D. followed, but the French director made the nearly hay by filming nineteen episodes of Night Gallery. And similar with Spielberg, Szwarc soon graduated to telefilms, allowing him to stretch his legs and managing director's eye a flake in Nighttime of Terror (1972) and The Devil'due south Girl (1973). Neither were the caliber of Duel (1971), but were also no worse than Spielberg's other two telefilms, Something Evil (1972) or Savage (1973).

Beating Spielberg to the large screen, Szwarc's ignominious debut was Extreme Close-Up (1973), which was written by Michael Crichton and dealt with voyeurism and personal privacy in an e'er-growing technological age. Inspired by I Am Curious (Yellow) (1967), producer Paul Lazarus approached Crichton, with whom he'd made Westworld (1973), about concocting a plot to get as much nudity on screen as possible in an action thriller without it being considered smut-peddling. And to show how well this was all thought out, Szwarc was hired merely because he was French and they figured being Continental he knew how to make a tasteful skin moving-picture show. Yeah. Earlier it was released, the championship was changed to Sexual activity Through a Window. And as a surprise to no 1, when it bombed spectacularly, both Szwarc and Crichton tried to apace put as much distance betwixt themselves and the film equally possible.

Szwarc's next big screen feature was a nature's revenge tale based on a best-selling novel, Bug (1975), for renowned schlockmeister, William Castle, which debuted the same weekend every bit Spielberg'south ain animal assail movie, also based on a best selling novel, where human is no longer on top of the food chain once he goes into the h2o. Oh, yes, after JAWS (1975), well, crushed Issues at the box office, all that talk of a rivalry dried up real quick.

Personally, I've never been a big fan of Szwarc, finding his follow up features flat, lifeless, and slow-looking. Perfunctory. I've never seen someone who can make cinema on some of his budgets -- Supergirl (1984) and Santa Claus (1985), await like cash-in made for TV movies. And his 2 most remembered films, Somewhere in Time (1980) and, irony of ironies, JAWS 2 (1978), have that same small-screen, washed out, soft-calorie-free sheen. And that's probably why Szwarc spent near of his otherwise prolific 50-yr career making films for television or directing more episodic Tv set; and the director was withal at it as of 2018. And judging by his work in You'll Never Run across Me Over again it's easy to understand why Szwarc stayed employed all those years. For in this medium, he really excels. He but couldn't quite shake these small screen trappings when the screen got bigger.

Simply don't go me wrong; there is a lot to savour and many rewards to exist establish in these sometime televised tropes and Fabricated for Television set mayhem; and the technicians, writers, and actors, who pulled them off deserve some discover and fanfare when they brand something truly righteous, especially when considering the limited budgets, the dictatorially short shooting schedules, and the limited time-frame to get your story told. (This one ran a scant 73 minutes.)

Ever I've appreciated how they can let you know who these characters are with just a few simple strokes, their backstories, and how well they plant what the fulcrum volition be that moves the plot forth with such ruthless efficiency in telefilms like You'll Never See Me Over again. Add together in some veteran actors like Jane Wyatt, Joseph Campanella, and Ralph Meeker, professional all, who know what they're doing and proceed things moving like a motorcar, and and so mix them in with fresh faces like Jess Walton and Bo Svenson, and it'due south pure alchemy with the end event being a nice and taut piddling thriller that you just might wanna encounter once more. Yes. I saw what I did there.

What is Hubrisween? This is Hubrisween. And now, Boils and Ghouls, exist sure to follow this linkage to proceed track of the whole conglomeration of reviews for Hubrisween right hither. Or you lot can always follow the commonage head of knuckle on Letterboxd. That'south 25 reviews down with just one more to go! Wait. Only one? Already?! Wow. Anyhoo. Up Next: We wrap this upwards with a niggling zombie-fu! And beware those leftovers in the fridge, Boils and Ghouls, they may but bite back.

You'll Never Meet Me Over again (1973) Silverton Productions :: Universal Television :: American Dissemination Visitor (ABC) / EP: Harve Bennett / P: David J. O'Connell / AP: Arnold F. Turner / D: Jeannot Szwarc / W: William Wood, Gerald Di Pego, Cornell Woolrich (story) / C: Walter Strenge / E: Richard G. Wray / M: Richard Clements / Due south: David Hartman, Jane Wyatt, Ralph Meeker, Jess Walton, Joseph Campanella, Colby Chester, Bo Svenson

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