Stealing Through Time: On the Writings of Jack Finney (27 page)

Ted continues to say that the government eventually makes time-travel illegal when it begins to affect the population. They send out investigators to track down those who have escaped back in time; each person may be traced by a distinct set of mental vibrations that are as individual as fingerprints, and the only way to avoid detection is to hide in an area filled with electronic circuits and magnetic force fields. Al remarks that the area where they both live would make a perfect hiding place. The electrical storm gets worse, and Ann returns from the kitchen, terrified. She and Ted go home.

Late that night, Al and Nell are talking as they lie in their twin beds. Al tells Nell that he thinks that Ted's science fiction story is true. A bolt of lightning strikes and the power fails. Ted and Nell hear a scream from next door. Ted gets up and looks out of his window, only to see a light rising by the Hellers' house, accompanied by a whine. The power comes back on and he and Nell go next door to investigate, only to find no trace of the Hellers, except for some clothes and debris on the floor. Ted ruminates and says that the neighbors will never be found because they were never really there.

"Time Is Just a Place" was directed by Jack Arnold from a script by Lee Berg ("Science Fiction Theatre — Time Is Just a Place"). It stars Don DeFore as Al Brown and Marie Windsor as Nell Brown. DeFore was a familiar face in early television, appearing in a recurring role as a neighbor on
The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet
from 1956 to 1960 and in a starring role on
Hazel
from 1961 to 1965 ("Don DeFore's Television Credits"). Windsor is familiar from numerous television roles, but is best remembered for parts in such films noir as
The Killing
(1956). She is an odd choice for Nell Brown, too voluptuous for the role of Don DeFore's homemaking wife ("Marie Windsor"). Ted Heller is played by Warren Stevens, who brings a nervous intensity and intelligence to the role of the visitor from the future. Stevens appeared in numerous television shows from the late 1940s on, and is familiar from guest starring roles on such well-remembered series as
Alfred Hitchcock Presents
and
The Twilight Zone
("Warren Stevens").

"Time Is Just a Place" is filmed on a very small set, which gives it a claustrophobic feeling. The characters spend the entire story either in the Browns' house or in the driveway between the two houses. The story is also changed from its source in some significant ways. The most notable change comes at the end, when the Hellers presumably are caught and killed by an investigator from the future. While this makes for a more exciting conclusion to the television show, it begs the question of why the government of the future would bother to track down escapees through time only to kill them, if its goal was to keep the population at an acceptable level.

Also awkward are the attempts to fit hard science into the somewhat whimsical tale. The introductory comments by Truman Bradley seem to have little to do with the story that follows, and the nonsense about electrical fields and test planes seems out of place. The scene in which Al shows Ted a model of a plane and demonstrates how it burns up at high speeds does little to move the story along.

The next story by Jack Finney to be adapted for television was "All My Clients Are Innocent," which was published in the July 1959 issue of
Cosmopolitan.
The story was broadcast as the April 17, 1962 episode of the prestigious drama series
Alcoa Premiere,
which aired every Tuesday night on the ABC television network ("Television"). Adapted by Jameson Brewer ("Alcoa Premiere —All My Clients Are Innocent"), the program starred Barry Morse as attorney Max Mcln-tyre and Richard Davalos as his junior partner, Alan Michaels. The brief note in that day's
New York Times
television listings summarizes the plot: "a criminal lawyer tries to prevent his junior partner's marriage." This appears to follow the plot of the short story.

"All My Clients Are Innocent" also features Vic Morrow as the accused criminal, Carl Balderson ("Guest Appearances for 'Alcoa Premiere'"). The series,
Alcoa Premiere,
ran on ABC for two seasons, from 1961 to 1963, and was later syndicated as
Fred Astaire's Premiere Theatre.
The programs do not appear to have been broadcast in many years, and the only print of this episode available for viewing is a non-circulating research copy on 16 mm film at the UCLA Library's Film and Television Archive in Los Angeles, California ("Alcoa Premiere. All my clients are innocent").

Jack Finney's stories were absent from television from 1962 until March 20, 1987, when "Such Interesting Neighbors" aired as an episode of the series,
Amazing Stories.
This series ran for two years on the NBC network and this episode appeared near the end of the show's run ("Amazing Stories Episode Guide"). This time, the story is set in a new housing development in the Arizona desert. Al Lewis, a buffoon-like husband and father of a precocious boy, comes home from work, followed by his very-pregnant wife, Nell. They have recently moved into a new house and are surprised by things like the dead rattlesnake son Randy brings in from the back yard. Nell asks, "what else have we got to look forward to?"

They soon find out, as they see that the unfinished house across the street has suddenly become occupied. Al sneaks across the street, baseball bat in hand, to investigate, but retreats when he sees a man inside the house destroying a futuristic machine. The next day, the Lewises pay a visit to their new neighbors, the Hellenbecks, who sit strangely in dining room chairs around a pot of water in an unfinished section of the house. Their clothes and manners are strange, and Ted Hellenbeck tells Al that he "vivisects information" on "sociological substructures" and that his wife Ann is a "cataloguer" who is "working on atomic deformities in the rare earths." While the adults chat, Randy steals the pieces of the futuristic machine from the Hellenbecks' garbage.

Randy goes home and rebuilds the gizmo, which proceeds to cause heat-seeking spheres to appear all over the house and burn through anything warm. This leads to some excitement as the Lewises try to avoid the spheres by directing them into the toaster, the oven, and so on, until Ted Hellenbeck rushes over to provide an explanation. He tells the startled Lewises that he and his family are visitors from 400 years in the future, and that they fled after having their son naturally. It seems that, in their time, babies are made scientifically, and their decision to have one the old-fashioned way made them criminals.

A futuristic robot appears at the door, looking like a person wrapped in tinfoil with a cooking pot on his head. Al and Ted are able to subdue and destroy the machine, and the Hellenbecks say goodbye and disappear. Al remarks that they "sure were interesting neighbors."

Unlike the 1955 adaptation of Finney's short story, this version of "Such Interesting Neighbors" is hard to watch. The acting is uniformly awful, the special effects are an embarrassment, and the changes to the storyline make little sense. The wry humor that made the original story so effective has been replaced with forced humor wrung from poorly developed characters. In the short story, the Hellenbecks simply move away, leaving the narrator to wonder just who they were. In the 1955 teleplay, this was apparently too dull an ending, and the neighbors presumably are killed by police from the future. In the 1987 teleplay, the Hellenbecks simply disappear, and it is not clear where they go or why. The entire episode leaves a bad taste in the viewer's mouth and makes one glad that this series did not adapt any other stories by Jack Finney.

The last television adaptation of a Jack Finney story was broadcast on February 1, 1998, when "The Love Letter" premiered on the CBS network as part of the
Hallmark Hall of Fame
series. The Hallmark greeting card company began sponsoring television programs in 1951, and "The Love Letter" was the 317th broadcast of the sporadic series that had been running for 37 years ("Hallmark Hall of Fame — Episode List"). To expand a several-page story to fill a two-hour time slot required considerable fleshing out, and the screenplay, by James Henerson and Pamela Gray, expands the original tale in a manner consistent with Jack Finney's vision.

The program begins in present-day Boston, Massachusetts, where Scott Corrigan and his fiancée, Debra Zabriskie, buy a nineteenth-century desk in an antique shop. Scott is a Civil War buff who discovers a hidden compartment in the desk after he has brought it home and cleaned it. In the compartment is a letter by Elizabeth Whitcomb, dated April 16, 1863. She is a 29-year-old woman who wrote this letter to an imaginary lover and hid it in her desk. Scott does not take the letter seriously at first, writing a reply on his modern word processor and signing it, "Rhett Butler."

At work the next day, Scott thinks about the desk, the letter, and its writer. He telephones the antique dealer from whom he bought it and learns that the dealer had purchased the desk in a town called Willoughby, near the town of Salem.

The writers of "The Love Letter" appear to have known Jack Finney's work well, because this important addition to the original story is also a reference to an episode of the television series,
The Twilight Zone,
which Stephen King has suggested was influenced by Finney's time travel stories of the 1950s. In "A Stop at Willoughby," written by Rod Serling, a weary businessman escapes from his unhappy modern life by getting off of a commuter train in the town of Willoughby, which exists perpetually in about the year 1900. The town is idyllic and represents all that the man wishes existed in his own life.

Viewers of "The Love Letter" who are familiar with the work of both Finney and Serling will appreciate this choice of name for a town where the Civil War sweetheart of Scott Corrigan's imagination used to live. Scott drives to Willoughby and visits the house from whence the desk had come; it is located at 3 Mill Plain Road, perhaps another reference to Finney, who lived for much of his career in Mill Valley, California. Scott is prevented from entering, though, by an old black woman who guards the elderly resident of the home from her relatives, who want to put her in a nursing home. In essence, Scott is not serious enough about Whitcomb's letter yet, so he is not allowed to enter the past in any way.

Scott's interest in the letter is encouraged by his eccentric mother, who speaks to him about time travel. His fiancee Deb, on the other hand, reads the letter but shows no interest nor support. Scott's mother's encouragement continues as she gives him a one cent stamp from 1863 and a vintage bottle of ink. She tells him, "it's got to be perfect or we don't have a prayer of erasing the barrier." This remark, and the actions that follow, suggest that the authors of the screenplay were familiar with Finney's time travel work, especially "Second Chance," where an antique car is able to take its driver back in time when the conditions are right, and, most of all,
Time and Again,
where the method of time travel is based on the creation of accurate conditions.

Scott's mother locates a post office that was built in 1857. She says that it is the only pre-Civil War post office in existence and prods her son to go there to mail his letter to Elizabeth Whitcomb. After some restless attempts at sleep, Scott writes a letter to Elizabeth using the old pen and ink. No longer sarcastic, he signs it, "A friend," and mails it at night at the old post office.

The scene then switches to 1863, as we meet Elizabeth Whitcomb, a pretty young woman who is more interested in composing a poem in her garden than she is in responding to the advances of a dull suitor. Her father is pressuring her to marry but she is stunned when she receives and reads Scott's letter. She looks in the secret compartment of her desk and confirms that her own letter is gone. Elizabeth and Scott then begin an exchange of letters; she leaves hers in the desk's secret compartment and they disappear; he mails his at the old post office. He writes that "the connection between us is so strong that we're able to talk to each other across the chasm of time."

We learn that Elizabeth is a poet who has sent her verses to Ralph Waldo Emerson and others in an attempt to get them published. Her relationship with Scott deepens with each letter. However, his relationship with Debra, his fiancee in the present, begins to suffer as his mind and heart are drawn toward the past. This leads Scott to stop writing to Elizabeth and to take another trip to the house in Willoughby. This time, having demonstrated his resolve and having established a relationship with Elizabeth, he is allowed to enter and explore the house, where he meets Clarice, an elderly woman. She is the niece of Elizabeth Whitcomb, but she does not answer Scott when he asks if her aunt ever married. While in the house, Scott feels a connection with Lizzie, one that she also appears to feel in 1863. His visit to Willoughby leads him to resume his correspondence, and he promises not to be silent again. Elizabeth sends Scott a photograph of herself, as well as her final poem — criticism from her suitor has led her to give up poetry writing.

Scott sends Elizabeth a photo of himself and encourages her to keep writing poetry. His encouragement does not extend to his present fiancee, however, and their relationship grows increasingly strained.

The plot takes a surprising twist at this point, wholly invented for the television adaptation. Scott is injured in a bicycle race and lies comatose for a long period. In 1863, Lizzie meets Colonel Caleb Denby, who looks exactly like Scott, and they fall in love. Their romance is interrupted by Denby's need to return to the battlefield, and we learn that he is heading for Gettysburg. In the meantime, Scott awakens from his coma and reads Elizabeth's letters about Denby. Research reveals that Denby died at Gettysburg, and Scott rushes a letter to Elizabeth to try to save her lover. He is able to mail the letter at the old post office, which is burning down in a fire as he does so. This scene is reminiscent of the fire at
The World
building in Finney's novel,
Time and Again.