Four Star Playhouse Season 2, Episode 9: The Hard Way

1

Finale

Steve Carlyle is an actor who can't find work because his famous nearly identical cousin Roger takes measures to keep him from getting any parts that would gain Steve any public exposure, because Roger knows that Steve is a better actor.

30 min

2

The Squeeze

Another of the great Willie Dante stories. Stan, the son of the DA, is a secret gambler. He loses big in Willie's joint and pays by check. Stan's pretty sister shows up to ask Willie's help. Deras, a gangster up before the Grand Jury, wants to get hold of Stan's check to blackmail the DA. He shows up at Dante's and Willie turns over the check at gunpoint. Never to be out-witted, Willie has Lt. Waldo waiting in the wings to get the checks back, have Deras arrested, and win Stan's sister.

30 min

3

A Place Of His Own

The Commander, a mildly brain injured war hero, lives with his greedy family. All he wants is his own house, while all they want is to preserve their failing wealth, at all costs. When Frank, his younger brother, kills a man over a gambling debt, the family convinces Claude that he is the one that did it. He takes the blame, but instead of being arrested, he is given a $10,000 reward because the dead man was a most wanted criminal.

30 min

4

Love At Sea

A journalist's wife who, while alone on a sea voyage, becomes the center of male attention.

30 min

5

The Witness

A suave attorney is hired to defend a man on trial for robbery and murder. The attorney finds the real culprit and solves the mystery in the courtroom.

30 min

6

A Matter Of Advice

Weary Dr. Gentry gets no rest from his irritating patients. The pediatrician deals with ill-mannered kids and parents who can't make a move without checking with him first. An evening out with his wife to watch their oldest daughter star in "Romeo and Juliet" becomes a disaster when a panicked new mother interrupts the balcony scene with a silly phone call.

30 min

7

Search in the Night

A newspaper reporter is intrigued as to why a woman hired a dive team to retrieve her purse from the Chicago River.

24 min

8

Moorings

A sickly aging shipping magnate falls in love with a blind mother.

30 min

9

The Hard Way

Vic breaks the bank at Willie's gambling hall, and Willie unknowingly pays him off with counterfeit money. When Vic threatens him, Willie convinces him that they've both been duped, and they cooperate to track down the real culprit.

30 min

10

For Art`s Sake

Ted Parker enlists his friend Addy, a famous art expert, into an elaborate ruse to portray his budding love interest as a break-out artist, despite her lack of talent.

30 min

11

The Girl On The Park Bench

A beautiful, intelligent, and politically savvy young woman takes up residency in the city park to protest the Mayor's decision to end rent control on apartments. The comically ornery mayor seems to have met his match! Sparks fly as the Mayor dispatches the city's handsome attorney in an attempt to oust the young woman, who gives her a friendly warning that she will get evicted and lose in court. The tables get turned as the woman proves she is also good at law, but after some very interesting negotiations, all's well that ends well.

30 min

12

The Room

A doctor encounters suspicion and a dark secret when he rents a house in Cuba.

30 min

13

A Man Of The World

Predictable Andy Bush is taking a train to his annual three week vacation without his wife. A young woman in trouble approaches him and asks him to help her by pretending to be her husband.

30 min

14

The Gift

Businessman Carl Baxter is a good boss for 364 days a year, but his memories of his estrangement with his son causes his mood to change at Christmas.

30 min

15

House For Sale

A woman visits an isolated house expecting to meet with the realtor. Instead, she encounters a murderer who's escaped from a mental hospital. When a couple drops in to tour the home, she tries to escape with them, but they refuse to believe her story of a killer with a body in the fireplace.

30 min

16

The Test

A test pilot learns that it's possible that his sick daughter could have polio, just before he tests a new military plane.

30 min

17

The Bad Streak

An honest professional casino owner runs into bad luck with impending insolvency or sale of his property. He also runs into his ""long-lost"" never forgotten misdirected son who is obsessed to better his hated father at gambling for having abandoned (rejected) him in infancy when it was all the doing of his guardian, one-time socialite, protective maternal grandmother who has fallen from her lofty position as well. Honor, love and pride play their roles.

30 min

18

A String of Beads

Joan Robinson works as a governess for a wealthy family. She attends a party thrown by her employer and, although she is an attractive young woman, she is completely ignored until one of the guests, Count Borselli, appraises the beads she is wearing as a valuable string of pearls. She proteststo no avail, knowing they are imitations. Her whole life changes. She is invited to parties, and wooed by a fortune hunter. When it's finally learned that the beads are worthless, she is fired and her suitor loses interest. The count admits that, provoked by the snobbish socialites, he deliberatly lied about the beads. In the end, he and the governess fall in love.

30 min

19

Indian Taker

A comedy of errors about an insurance executive’s wife. At a party, the impulse suddenly comes over her and she proceeds to steal the jewels of all wealthy guests, who happen to be insured by her husband’s firm.

30 min

20

Second Dawn

A blind man has a chance for surgery to restore his sight, but it may last for just a few minutes.

30 min

21

The Gun

A police detective returns home to his family one morning only to have his meal interrupted by a constant stream of people: the milkman, his neighbor, the postman, the grocery boy, and a salesman. Afterwards, he finds that his gun is missing. In a panic that slowly turns to paranoia, he realizes that each of the visitors had said something that makes them a suspect.

30 min

22

The Bomb

An engaged couple and the woman's former suitor take shelter in an abandoned house, too late to notice an unexploded bomb. Their retreat is cut off by a cave-in, and they must defuse the bomb with instructions delivered over a phone line.

30 min

23

Meet McGraw: Long Count

McGraw, a private eye, is hired by Lila Lamont to protect her from her threatening husband Louis.

30 min

24

Detective`s Holiday

A detective (Dick Powell) takes a trip to a cabin in the woods to get away from it all. A man, his wife, and his two kids entertain him. When one of the kids let's it slip that their step-mother just got her blond hair, the detective predicts she is running from the law and decides to check it out.

30 min

25

Operation In Money

The chief teller of a bank openly embezzles a large sum of money to extort a pay raise from the bank's board of directors.

30 min

26

Lady of the Orchids

An architect's wife endangers his career when she is involved in a car accident. While on a ride to a roadhouse, she accidentally spills brandy on the driver, with whom she has been flirting. The driver is assumed to be responsible for the fatal crash, and only the wife's testimony can save him.

30 min

27

The Book

A stranger tussles with John over a library book and is struck and killed by a passing car. John discovers a message in the book and follows it to a blind meeting, only to be mistaken for a hit man with an assassination team.

30 min

28

A Study In Panic

Wise-guy newspaperman Fred Jordan writes a column making fun of "normal" men who panic during a fire. Soon afterward he gets a letter from a deranged man who promises Jordan that he will soon know the "real" meaning of the word "panic"--because within 24 hours, the man is going to kill Jordan.

30 min

29

Masquerade

A costume ball during the New Orleans Mardi Gras turns sour when the family hosting the festivities discovers that their cousin has escaped from jail.

30 min

30

Village In The City

An artist turns detective to find out who murdered his favorite model and left the body in his studio.

30 min

31

The Doctor and the Countess

A famous plastic surgeon is recruited to severely disfigure the face of a beautiful countess, in order to relate to her husband, who was burned and disfigured in a serious accident and has become a recluse.

30 min