Van Johnson is a blind playwright who is visiting London with his adoring girl friend, Vera Miles, and is attended to by his valet or butler or bootle boy or whatever these guys are called, Cecil Park in another comic role.
Well, Johnson is at his wits end. Now blind, he can't see any future for his professional self, and of course he doesn't want to burden his beautiful and compliant friend, Vera Miles, with a husband who can't take care of himself. (I would.) One night at the local pub he overhears a mysterious and ominous conversation between a raspy voiced man and a frightened woman. Something about a plot, maybe to kidnap a couple of high-end children for ransom. He's not sure.
But the mystery now animates him, re-energizes his life, fills him to bursting with élan vital. He's determined to track down the apparent conspirators, though he doesn't know what they look like. He only knows which bus line the woman takes to her job as nanny, and he knows which perfume she wears -- La Nuit d'Amour or Fleur de Lys or La Petite Mort or some equally vainglorious French name.
It's dangerous work though -- for him, Miles, and Parker. There really IS a game afoot, and they discover that Johnson is on their trail. There follow some extremely tense moments, no kidding, ending with the inevitable scene in which the blind hero and the chief heavy are together in a totally dark room.
It's always interesting to have a story with a disabled hero. Howard Northrop Frye divided heroes into several kinds. Let's see. There was the high mimetic. That would be James Bond, better than anybody else around. There was the low mimetic. That's more like the typical Hitchcock hero, no better and no worse than average, like Cary Grant unable to figure out that George Kaplan doesn't exist. Then there is the ironic hero, who is dumb and naive, like Candide, or disabled like Van Johnson here -- tapping around with his cane on the edge of the fourth floor (or third, in London) of a building whose walls have been blown away, teetering helplessly over empty space.
It's pretty atmospheric and well written. Johnson is no mastermind, and he doesn't have second sight. He makes mistakes. He goes out into a street that's cloaked in fog, meets an opposition goon with a black belt in bullshit, and asks for guidance through the murk of the unfamiliar city. Later, the thug says, "Rather thinned out a bit," and Johnson agrees, although by this time the fog has lifted entirely and Johnson's reply reveals his absence of sight.
It's not on television very often and I try to catch it when it is. The name of the nanny that Johnson is searching for is "Janet Murch." I love that name. Janet Murch. It's so terribly British. It brushes elbows with Charles Dickens. It could be Doris Buckle.
Well, Johnson is at his wits end. Now blind, he can't see any future for his professional self, and of course he doesn't want to burden his beautiful and compliant friend, Vera Miles, with a husband who can't take care of himself. (I would.) One night at the local pub he overhears a mysterious and ominous conversation between a raspy voiced man and a frightened woman. Something about a plot, maybe to kidnap a couple of high-end children for ransom. He's not sure.
But the mystery now animates him, re-energizes his life, fills him to bursting with élan vital. He's determined to track down the apparent conspirators, though he doesn't know what they look like. He only knows which bus line the woman takes to her job as nanny, and he knows which perfume she wears -- La Nuit d'Amour or Fleur de Lys or La Petite Mort or some equally vainglorious French name.
It's dangerous work though -- for him, Miles, and Parker. There really IS a game afoot, and they discover that Johnson is on their trail. There follow some extremely tense moments, no kidding, ending with the inevitable scene in which the blind hero and the chief heavy are together in a totally dark room.
It's always interesting to have a story with a disabled hero. Howard Northrop Frye divided heroes into several kinds. Let's see. There was the high mimetic. That would be James Bond, better than anybody else around. There was the low mimetic. That's more like the typical Hitchcock hero, no better and no worse than average, like Cary Grant unable to figure out that George Kaplan doesn't exist. Then there is the ironic hero, who is dumb and naive, like Candide, or disabled like Van Johnson here -- tapping around with his cane on the edge of the fourth floor (or third, in London) of a building whose walls have been blown away, teetering helplessly over empty space.
It's pretty atmospheric and well written. Johnson is no mastermind, and he doesn't have second sight. He makes mistakes. He goes out into a street that's cloaked in fog, meets an opposition goon with a black belt in bullshit, and asks for guidance through the murk of the unfamiliar city. Later, the thug says, "Rather thinned out a bit," and Johnson agrees, although by this time the fog has lifted entirely and Johnson's reply reveals his absence of sight.
It's not on television very often and I try to catch it when it is. The name of the nanny that Johnson is searching for is "Janet Murch." I love that name. Janet Murch. It's so terribly British. It brushes elbows with Charles Dickens. It could be Doris Buckle.