Into Thin Air
- Episode aired Oct 30, 1955
- TV-14
- 30m
When a young woman leaves her ill mother in a Paris hotel room and comes back later, she finds her mother is missing, and all the hotel's employees deny she and her mother were ever there.When a young woman leaves her ill mother in a Paris hotel room and comes back later, she finds her mother is missing, and all the hotel's employees deny she and her mother were ever there.When a young woman leaves her ill mother in a Paris hotel room and comes back later, she finds her mother is missing, and all the hotel's employees deny she and her mother were ever there.
- Diana Winthrop
- (as Pat Hitchcock)
- Bellhop
- (as Albert d'Arno)
- Director
- Writers
- Marian B. Cockrell
- Alexander Woollcott(uncredited)
- All cast & crew
- Production, box office & more at IMDbPro
Storyline
Did you know
- TriviaThe story is based on a late 19th Century legend known as the Vanishing Hotel Room. It previously served as the basis for one of the segments of Eerie Tales (1919) and So Long at the Fair (1950).
- Quotes
[first lines]
Himself - Host: Tonight we are going to tell the story of a woman who disappears into thin air. By the way, have you noticed that thin air seems to be the type of air most conducive to disappearances? There, certainly, is a fact well worth knowing. Now, in case you seem to recognize parts of the story, don't be alarmed. It is familiar because it is a classic of its kind. Many, many people have borrowed this legend, quite profitably, too. Two novels have been written about it, and it has been made into a motion picture called "The Lady Vanishes." Once by no less a personage than, uh, Alfred Hitchcock. It was also related by Alexander Woollcott in his book, "While Rome Burns." Here, following our sponsor's all too brief message, is our version of that famous old tale. Now I had better get out of the way to enable you to see better. May I have a bit of thin air, please?
- ConnectionsReferences The Lady Vanishes (1938)
- SoundtracksFuneral March of a Marionette
Written by Charles Gounod
When Diana Winthrop (Hitchcock) books herself and her sick mother (Mary Forbes) into a Paris hotel, she doesn't give a second thought to her own mental health. However, after being sent away to collect some medicine for her mother, Diana returns to find that her mother is missing, and, worse still, nobody in the hotel claims to remember her. Beginning to doubt her sanity, she seeks help from the British embassy, but they have a hard time taking her word over that of half a dozen hotel employees and a sign-in register from which the name Winthrop has disappeared. The story fits snugly into the half-hour time-slot, though the conclusion is not as satisfying as it might have been. "Into Thin Air,' just like 'The Lady Vanishes,' toys with the intriguing question of how one can maintain confidence in their own sanity if everybody is scheming against them. After all, as Orwell put it, perhaps a lunatic is simply a minority of one.
- ackstasis
- Jan 30, 2009
Details
- Runtime30 minutes
- Color
- Aspect ratio
- 1.33 : 1