(TV Series)

(1958)

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5/10
Golden Age TV Anthology Episode Pops up on the Anniversary of its Original 1958 Telecast
foosie-212 March 2016
Warning: Spoilers
Gig Young oozes charm as the slimy kept husband of a doting rich woman, whom he married because her medical diagnosis called for her imminent demise. When she lives on for years, smothering him with nagging affection, he despairs. Then at the NY airport, he runs into his lookalike; the man tells him his name, and later Young hits on the idea of bribing this duplicate to stand outside a NY TV station during the morning weather report, which his wife watches religiously, thereby giving him an alibi at the time of her death.

Young strangles his wife and gets away with no suspicion, but later makes the mistake of marrying her sister (Montgomery), who is younger and more attractive, but as soon as the honeymoon is over, she turns into the smothering nag his wife was.

Young then decides to use his duplicate again, but makes a further mistake of phoning him from his home, so that the NY man knows Young lives in Sacramento. The New Yorker travels there and goes through old newspapers to discover the never solved murder of Young's wife.

STUDIO ONE started life as a live 90-minute TV series, but by the time of this 1958 episode, at least some of it was on film, allowing Young to play both roles, although without the technical split/screen method available in films, so that he never appeared simultaneously as both characters.

Young was married at the time to Montgomery and they played well together.

Ken Mayer, known to SPACE PATROL nerds like me as Major Robertson, had a small role at the end as a NYC cop; and Anthony Eisley a fair size part as Montgomery's jilted boyfriend.

When this appeared in 2016 on the Decades Channel, which broadcasts old TV series, even the Westinghouse TV commercials with Betty Furness were included. According to an on-screen credit, this was actually aired on the anniversary of its original 1958 debut.
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5/10
This would have been funnier and more interesting had some other man starred in the show.
planktonrules19 February 2024
I cannot in any way blame the makers of "Studio One" for casting Gig Young in the lead. They had no way of knowing that years later, Young would murder his wife and then take his own life. This makes the comedic aspects of "A Dead Ringer" a whole lot less funny! But back in 1958, this wasn't the case...and so the show definitely did not age well.

This show uses a very bad and overused cliche...the notion of two identical strangers. It seems that Philip Adams (Gig Young) has grown to hate everything about his wife...to the point where he just wants her dead. Later, he meets a man who is the exact spitting image of himself...and he hires him to kill his wife....while he himself has a rock-solid alibi. Later, he marries his dead wife's sister...and soon he finds himself wanting to have her killed as well.

Using the identical stranger bit was bad...and really unnecessary. After all, the man could have hired anyone to do this crime. Aside from that, the show is pretty good...well acted and well written.
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