TV's 25 Scariest Episodes #14 - Alfred Hitchcock Presents: 'The Case of Mr. Pelham'

October 16, 4:44 PMClassic TV ExaminerDoug Krentzlin

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      Tom Ewell as the title role in The Case of Mr. Pelham (Universal Pictures)

One of the many paradoxes about Alfred Hitchcock is that, for a filmmaker who spent his entire career scaring the bejeezes out of people, he, with one exception, avoided stories dealing with the supernatural. That exception was the first season episode of his TV show Alfred Hitchcock Presents entitled The Case of Mr. Pelham (originally broadcast on Dec. 4, 1955), adapted from the classic short story by Anthony Armstrong by regular Hitchcock scribe Francis Cockrell.

Broadway actor Tom Ewell (best known for The Seven Year Itch) was cast against type as the title role, a wealthy Manhattan bachelor and owner of a successful brokerage firm. In the opening scene, Pelham offers to buy lunch for fellow country club member and psychiatrist Dr. Harley (Raymond Bailey, best remembered as Mr. Drysdale on The Beverly Hillbillies) if he’ll listen to Pelham’s story in return.

Pelham proceeds to tell about numerous instances where friends and acquaintances claim to have seen him at times and places when he was elsewhere. After ascertaining that Pelham doesn’t suffer from memory blackouts, Harley suggests that the most obvious explanation is that there’s someone who’s a dead ringer for Pelham and that he’s the one people mistake for him.

Pelham would like to believe that’s the case, but then he reveals his conviction that something much more sinister is going on. He is convinced that his “double” is some sort of malevolent spirit, a doppelganger who has deliberately targeted him. Harley asks Pelham what possible motive could someone or something have to persecute him like that.

Pelham: No. I don't think he's trying to persecute me, Doctor. In fact, I can think of no reason at all for him to do what he's doing. I have the feeling that he's trying to... to move into my life, to crowd closer and closer to me, so that one day he is where I was... standing in my shoes, my clothes, my life. And I... am gone. Vanished.

Harley suggests to Pelham that, if his double is trying to duplicate his daily routine, the best way to throw him off track is to vary his routine. Pelham uneasily agrees to give it a try. For starters, since he is normally a very conservative dresser, Pelham buys a loud necktie before returning to his office.

Pelham also decides to vary his schedule and calls home to inform his servant Peterson (Justice Watson) that he will be late for dinner. But the person who answers the phone isn’t Peterson, although the voice does sound familiar. “Who’s this?” Pelham demands. The voice calmly says: “This is Mr. Pelham. Whom did you wish to speak to?”

In addition to being one of the most memorable episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents, The Case of Mr. Pelham turned out to be highly influential as well. Harlen Ellison wrote a variation on it called Shatterday that became the premiere episode of the 80s remake of The Twilight Zone. (A young Bruce Willis played the unfortunate victim of a duplicate.) And Joss Whedon did a parody of the story on Buffy the Vampire Slayer called The Replacement in which Xander (Nicholas Brendon) is haunted by an exact double (played in two-shots by Brendon’s twin brother Kelly Donovan.)