Four Star Playhouse 1.01

My Wife Geraldine

starring Charles Boyer, Porter Hall, Una Merkel

directed by Robert Florey

Mr. Graham (Charles Boyer) pretends like he has a wife, Geraldine. He keeps everyone in the dark about the fact that Geraldine is a fiction including the Rose Barton (Una Merkel), his landlady, and J.R. Martin (Porter Hall), his boss.

People start to suspect that Graham murdered his wife when they are unable to find her, after he was hit by a car. His boss sends a private investigator around to figure out what happened to Geraldine. Graham's landlady helps him deal with the private investigator after Graham tells her the truth about his situation.

Thoughts

This feels like it might be the first chapter of a longer story but I don't think that there is another installment in this story.

I think the performances are good by the three lead actors but even if there was a part two to this story this installment feels incomplete. They left it on a cliffhanger of sorts. Rose Barton helped him prevent the PI from going to the police but eventually someone else is going to find out that Graham has been lying to them.

Notes

Charles Boyer was one of the four stars of Four Star Playhouse. This is the first of 30 episodes of this show in which he appeared. I've seen a few movies he was in but nothing that I've watched in the past 25 years.

This is the only episode of Four Star Playhouse in which Porter Hall appeared. He died the year after this episode was made. I've seen him in at least half dozen films including Sullivan's Travels (1941), His Girl Friday (1940), and The Miracle of Morgan's Creek (1943).

This is the only episode of Four Star Playhouse in which Una Merkel appeared. The only movie that she was in that I've seen is The Maltese Falcon (1931).

This is the first of 38 episodes of this show that Robert Florey directed. He directed 17 of the 19 episodes in the first season of Four Star Playhouse in addition to a handful of episodes from each of the next three seasons. He directed episodes of a number of other anthology shows including Alfred Hitchcock Presents, The Twilight Zone (1959), and The Outer Limits (1963). The only film of his that I believe I have seen is the Cocoanuts (1929), the Marx Brothers first film.