The Barbara Stanwyck Show Season 1, Episode 3: Discreet Deception

The Mink Coat

While her husband was still alive, Syd Charing enjoyed her life as a well-to-do socialite. Since his death, she has fallen on hard times. Now all she has left to remind of her of her halcyon days is a mink coat.

30 min

Good Citizen

Celebrated pianist Margot LaChelle is asked to perform in a charitable concert which will benefit a struggling youth center. She declines the invitation, telling her manager that she has no desire to be involved with the children.

30 min

The Seventh Miracle

Mary McShane is about to give birth to her seventh child, but her husband George has a broken leg and can't drive. It's up to their teenage son Joe to get his mother to the hospital safely.

30 min

The Key to the Killer

Stella King, wife of a deputy sheriff, finds herself handcuffed to a murderer with a gun. Alone in the mountains of California, she has no recourse but to find the key to his twisted personality.

30 min

House in Order

Faced with heart surgery, Elizabeth Mowry is advised by her physician to put her house in order, but correcting the loss of understanding between herself and her family seems insurmountable.

30 min

The Miraculous Journey of Tadpole Chan

Already involved in a fight with the U.S. Consulate over a shipment of silk dresses, importer-exporter Josephine meets shabby refugee Tadpole Chan, who is having an equally hard time getting a visa to go to America.

30 min

The Secret of Mrs. Randall

Liz Randall, president of an Oklahoma oil company, hires an ex-convict as her assistant and then falls in love with him. Their relationship is fiercely opposed by her mother-in-law who threatens to take custody of Liz's only son.

30 min

Ironbark's Bride

Crusty old farmer and wealthiest man in town, Ironbark, sends for a bride and draws a middle-aged woman and teenaged son. The boy gives him cool reception and repeatedly displeases him. Soon his real father, a gunman, whom was assumed dead all along, shows up looking to blackmail his wife.

30 min

We Are the Women who Wait

Three wives of Strategic Air Command pilots, all of different temperaments, come together to wait for their men to return from a dangerous flight. We see how one (Barbara) has had a difficult time arguing with her husband, trying to get him to quit and take a higher paying, far safer civilian job.

30 min

Out of the Shadows

Dr. Susan Bryce is a psychiatrist who once suffered a nervous breakdown. Now one of her patients, a beatnik trumpet player, is seeking vengeance against her, using an eerie melody to drive her towards a mental collapse.

30 min

No One

Summer stock producer Cara Lester is seeking financial backing to move a new play to Broadway. She finds a willing patron in Jack Harrison. There's just one hitch: Harrison wants an established star to take over the lead.

30 min

The Cornerstone

Sister Thomas Aquinas has finally acquired the funds to build a new high school. But just as the cornerstone is about to be laid, a detective shows up, investigating a recent jewel robbery.

30 min

Night Visitor

Marian Andres is preparing for a trip to Europe when a visitor arrives, posing as her husband's close friend. Failing in her blackmail attempt, the stranger produces a gun and demands money.

30 min

Size 10

A stolen sketch leads successful dress designer Maggie Wenley to point suspicion at members of her staff, destroying the loyalty of all those around her.

30 min

Dear Charlie

Two old maids advertise in a newspaper for a male boarder so they will have a man in the house. Charlie Zane answers their ad and plots to have the two women pass their wealth to him.

30 min

Dragon by the Tail

In return for a possible favor from the U.S. government, import-exporter Josephine Little finds herself enlisted by the CIA to retrieve a nuclear physicist from Indochina and return him to the United States.

30 min

The Sisters

Janet Jones poses as a shoplifter to confront her sister's divorced husband with news that his son needs money for an operation. When they meet, he looks at Janet more as a potential wife than as a sister-in-law.

30 min

Big Career

Attractive business executive Harriet Melvane closes her eyes to the shortcomings of her husband, Roy, and to the desires of her business partner, Phil.

30 min

Confession

Attorney Jud Hollister talks unhappily married Paula Manning into staging a murder to get rid of her husband.

30 min

Along the Barbary Coast

San Francisco detective Pete Bishop and waterfront racketeer Sam Verner declare a personal war over Verner's criminal operation and their mutual girlfriend, Trixie Callahan.

30 min

Shock

On the verge of announcing a new formula, atomic physicist Rachel Harrison is shocked into silence by her daughter's accidental death. Dr. Paul Aldrich looks for the key to her locked mind in Rachel's own childhood.

30 min

The Golden Acres

Ambitious and domineering, Avis Fleming decides to cheat an old family friend to impress Dexter Willis, an attorney she had once hoped to marry. When her two brothers, Ben and Collins, object, Avis sidesteps them with a threat of blackmail.

30 min

Adventure on Happiness Street

Import-exporter Josephine Little uses her Hong Kong contacts to help American doctor Paul Harris obtain medicine for his charity clinic. Her efforts unfortunately backfire and Dr. Harris is forced to turn away the Chinese refugees who look to him as a symbol of hope.

30 min

High Tension

A live, high-tension wire, broken in a storm and dangling from its pole, transforms a bus into a death trap in which the passengers are surrounded by metal walls carrying lethal electricity and saved only by the insulation of the rubber floor matting.

30 min

Sign of the Zodiac

Madge Terry accompanies her sister-in-law, Helene, on a visit to a mysterious fortuneteller named Pierre. Haunted by guilt about the death of her husband, Madge becomes alarmed when the medium claims to have contacted him through a seance.

30 min

Call Me Annie

When a well off family hires a nurse to care for a new baby, she discovers that the mother has no interest in it, and is in fact scared of being a mother. Her husband is a childish, hard to handle dolt, and the mother-in-law is mean and overbearing.

30 min

The Choice

Trapped alone with two men, restaurateur Amanda Prescott is forced to decide which of the two - Horace or Joe - is an escaped psychopathic killer.

30 min

Frightened Doll

Disillusioned and afraid of growing older, Hazel Wexley finds $100,000 and a new set of values. A chance meeting with gangster Jake Lytell and some hard-hitting advice from a bartender finally give Hazel the opportunity to realize a longstanding dream.

30 min

Yanqui Go Home

Mining engineer Clint Evans and his wife, Fanny, wait until the last minute to leave their post in a revolution-torn Latin American country. Their car is commandeered by a group of rebels who are fleeing bandidos -- leaving Clint and Fanny trapped in peril.

30 min

Little Big Mouth

Based on actual events. Famed newspaperwoman Nellie Bly travels to Oklahoma Territory to write an expose on the Indian Reservation scandals. There she meets a heroic young doctor and his nine-year-old daughter, whom the Indians call Little Big Mouth.

30 min

Assassin

Gentle Louise Forest is willing to accept her punishment when her employer, Mr. Carlisle, discovers she has embezzled $22,711. She doesn't, however, expect to be the intended victim of a killer hired by Carlisle to cover his tracks.

30 min

Triple C

30 min

The Hitch-Hiker

Attorney Maggie McClay risks her career and marriage to Mac McClay to help an immigrant mother retain custody of her infant against the wishes of the girl's wealthy mother-in-law, Tess Freeland.

30 min

Big Jake

City detective Jake Sloan is a tough, dedicated policeman with two major problems -- his waistline and his heart -- both of which are so big that they get him into more trouble than the criminals he brings to justice.

30 min

A Man's Game

Chris Mathews is a female saloon-keeper in a lawless Oklahoma Territory town so dangerous that no man dares to be sheriff. Uninhibited, Chris volunteers for the job in order to prevent gunmen from killing any more of her steady customers.

30 min