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Run For Your Life
Starring Ben Gazzara
Episode:
East of the Equator
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To contact us, click Homepage link above
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Synopsis: When a picture appears in a New York gallery that could have been painted by the husband she thought dead, Carolyn Willins (Dina Merrill), obsessed by the role of a woman and her failure as a wife, goes to Brazil in search of the artist. With Rudy Solari as Da Silva , Alan Bergmann as Jeffrey Willins, Bill Glover as Audrain, Peter Hobbs as Henry Gower, Rodolfo Hoyos Jr. as the Trader, Berry Kroeger as Klein, Ines Pedroza as Estella, Donald Lawton as the Desk Clerk
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Episode 56
Season 2 - #26
First broadcast on
March 20, 1967
Teleplay by Henri Simon
Story by John Thomas James (Roy Huggins)
Directed by Fernando Lamas
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SEE INDIVIDUAL PHOTOS OF ENTIRE CAST AT THE BOTTOM OF THIS PAGE
Watch a  from this episode
Creative Team
Producer
Jo Swerling Jr
Associate Producer
Paul Freeman
Music
Pete Rugolo
Director of Photography
John L. Russell A.S.C.
Art Director
Robert MacKichan
Film Editor
Nick Archer
Unit Manager
Hilton A. Green
Assistant Director
Jack Doran
Set Decorators
John McCartey &
Robert C. Bradfield
Sound
Robert R. Bertrand
Color Coordinator
Robert Brower
Color by Technicolor
Editorial Dept. Head
Richard Belding
Musical Supervisor
Stanley Wilson
Costumes by Grady Hunt
Makeup
Bud Westmore
Hair Stylist
Larry Germain
Assistant to Executive Producer
Robert Foster
Paintings by Ben Roberts
Sculptured head by Leon Saulter
Links to Other Episodes
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Carolyn is struck by East of the Equator
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The Plot:
Paul is looking at pictures in a New York art gallery with Carolyn Willins when she sees one which affects her deeply. They are able to learn little about the artist from the gallery owner, only that the painting, titled East of the Equator, came from a dealer in Brazil the previous week.
Carolyn buys the picture, and tells Paul that it looks as if it could have been painted by her late husband, so much so that she is rather traumatized.
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Henry Gower's opinion is inconclusive
Carolyn talks to the dealer in Brazil
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She explains that she has never been sure that her husband is really dead, so Paul asks a friend of his who is an art expert to compare the new work with other paintings of Carolyn's husband.
The primitive art specialist carefully studies all the work of the amateur painter, and says that East of the Equator is very different from the earlier canvases of Jeffrey Willins, but they still might all have been painted by the same man.
They phone the dealer in Belim where the painting came from, but he says that the man who did the painting, Da Silva, is an artist who brings in pictures occasionally, and he doesn't know where the painter lives.
His description of the man is quite generalized, but could possibly be Carolyn's husband.
Carolyn feels confused and frustrated, and Paul's friend, having analysed everything carefully, says the the new work might just possibly have developed from the paintings on the walls.
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Paul reads from Thoreau's Walden
Carolyn looks to Paul for understanding
Carolyn describes how her husband disappeared
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As Carolyn sees Gower out of the apartment, Paul peruses the many bookshelves, and takes down a copy of Thoreau's Walden.
It turns out to be a favorite work of both Jeffrey Willins and of Paul who reads a line from the classic.
He then puts the book aside and walks over to Carolyn, quoting the rest of the passage from memory.
They look at one another meaningfully, and Carolyn puts her head against Paul's shoulder, and he holds her comfortingly for a moment.
He kisses her then, but as the embrace becomes more serious, Carolyn draws away abruptly.
Paul looks after her with concern. She apologizes and walks away, saying that she keeps trying to tell herself that her husband is dead.
But the proof is as uncertain as the connection between his old paintings and the new one from the gallery.
Her husband had gone out sailing when the weather forecast was for a bad storm, and was never seen again, nor his boat found.
“Just gone,” she concludes, near tears. Paul responds that it doesn't matter whether her husband is alive or dead, but whether she is.
Carolyn says miserably that she doesn't know what to do, but Paul goes to her decisively, and declares that he does. He tells her to start packing for a trip to Brazil.
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Carolyn sees her husband's face in a sculpture
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They fly to Belém and meet the art dealer who sent the painting to New York. He is extremely suspicious of the couple. Caroline tells Klein that she believes the artist is her husband. The dealer is polite but not cooperative. Paul shows Carolyn the sculpture of a head, also credited to an artist named Da Silva, and she recognizes it immediately as her husband. The dealer wakes Paul in the middle of the night, and says that he thinks Carolyn might not be mentally stable, but that qualifies her as harmless, and therefore he has decided to give Paul the address of Da Silva in Manaus.
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They find Da Silva gone from the address Klein gave
Carolyn tells Paul that she feels a failure
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They fly to Manaus the next morning, and go to the address, but are told that Da Silva has moved on, but only when cash is produced is Paul given the name of a woman who knew him.
When they arrive at the location, Da Silva is there, but he is clearly not Jeffrey Willins.
But Paul is suspicious, and believes that the man they met did not paint the picture bought in New York.
Carolyn admits that she wants to find proof that her husband was lost at sea, and not that he left her. But something about this painting leaves her feeling that's exactly what he did, and she is reluctant to pursue the leads for fear they will prove that she was a failure at the thing which was most important to her in life - being a wife.
However, Paul encourages her to continue, saying that it's still worth trying to find Jeffrey, but Carolyn says that will mean facing up to facts. She nevertheless decides to accept fate, and Paul goes looking for the man they met calling himself Jorge Da Silva.
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Paul induces Da Silva to admit the truth
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Paul accosts Da Silva in the street and asks him why he signed his name to pictures he didn't paint, and gets him to admit that he bought the paintings he signed. Da Silva tells Paul that he's heard that the artist lives way down the river with the Indians, and that he's never seen the man, having bought the pictures at the trading post. Paul asks if Da Silva could take them there, and learns that one must first go by sea plane and then by boat. They have extensive negotiations over the price, Da Silva first asking $5000. Paul turns him down, but Da Silva points out that he is the only person who can take Carolyn and Paul to the man who paints.
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After the sea plane, they take a boat up the river
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When they take off in the sea plane the next morning, Paul discovers that Da Silva lied about the availability of charter flights where they're going, and is even using the one they're on for his own metallurgical prospecting. Da Silva laughs off his trickery, and when they get to the trading post, Paul finds that he bought the primitive paintings for $5 and sold them for $100 (with the New York price ending up at $1,200).
The trader shows them the last painting from the man, explaining that the artist exchanged his pictures for paper that would not disintegrate, as he is writing a book.
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Carolyn sees nothing in the magnificent landscape
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Carolyn walks away from the gentlemen discussing the paintings.
Looking out at the glorious landscape, Carolyn declares, “there's nothing here. Nothing!” She can only think about her husband rejecting her for a place where she finds no allure. But the reason she sees nothing in it is just to flail her bruised ego.
“There's room here,” replies Paul. “There's more room here than anyplace on earth.”
“No one would come here unless he were desperate,” Carolyn counters.
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Jeffrey Willins says that he is called The Lonely Person
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They then go on foot until they come to a man writing by a campfire. “Jeffrey Willins?” Paul asks, and without looking up, the man answers, “my name here is Tangunla Tangelo Ungunla,” and he translates this to mean “the lonely person,” or one who has no father and no mother either. Then he looks up at his wife and greets her with a casual hello. He speaks of the natives, how they've withdrawn on arrival of the strangers. After a few more exchanges, he tells Paul that he and Da Silva can have his house for the night, and that they may go there now so that he can speak to his wife in private. Carolyn sits down beside him.
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Carolyn asks how she failed.
Jeff says that it was civilization that failed him
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“How did I fail you, Jeff?” are Carolyn's first words to him, but he says that he never blamed her, and left guilt behind him with civilization.
“What about my guilt?” Carolyn asks, and Jeff replies, that never occurred to him. He apologizes, and she responds that he made her feel like a leper.
Carolyn speaks of having reached out to touch him, but that he wouldn't even look at her, and Jeff responds that he wanted to touch her when she was sleeping, but the walls grew higher every day.
He says that he began reading books on psychiatry, and found everything in Freud's essay on civilization and its discontents.
Jeff tells Carolyn that the thing that makes civilizations work is guilt, that human energy is drained and turned into guilt. He says that he came to this place to escape civilization, and when Carolyn responds that he left her, he says that he left everything, and she was just part of everything.
When she asks again how she failed, he answers once more that it was civilization that failed him.
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Jeff has disappeared, but left behind a manuscript
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After saying that he has been very happy in this environment, he tells Carolyn that his book about tranquility and the primitive life is almost done now,
Carolyn gets up and leaves Jeff alone writing by the fire.
In the morning he has disappeared, but Da Silva finds a note and stack of papers he's left for Paul, stating that the pages should be handed over to his law firm which should have no trouble finding a publisher for the manuscript, and that this leaves him quits with civilization.
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Carolyn talks about her beliefs on women in marriage
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From a distance Jeffrey watches the party board their boat.
Paul tells Carolyn that she is no longer married, and she replies that men don't really want or need marriage, but that marriage is the proof of a woman, and that every marriage that endures - good or bad - represents the work and the will of a good woman, and every one that falls apart is a woman's failure.
“Are you going to waste your life on that proposition?” Paul asks her, but Carolyn replies that she has no choice.
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Carolyn begins reading the manuscript
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As their boat takes them back up river to the trading post, Carolyn begins to look at her husband's writing. “I can't tell you how beautiful this is,” she tells Paul emotionally, and starts reading aloud from it. She quotes a paragraph or two, and then Paul takes up a phrase in mid-sentence and begins speaking the words of the text - not from the page, but from memory. Then he stops and says, “it's Thoreau's Walden.” He looks through the sheaf of papers from the top to the end. “Every word of it,” he says, “he must have remembered it word for word, and put it down from memory, thinking it was all his.”
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Carolyn lets the pages fall into the river
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The reality hits them all, and Paul adds, “Carolyn, he's insane.”
As Carolyn takes the manuscript back, Paul assures that she will be all right now, and able to begin life again.
Tears start to fall, but Carolyn says that they are for her husband.
She then begins taking the pages of the manuscript, and one by one, letting each fall into the water and float downstream.
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  Notes & Comments: Virtually the directing debut of actor Fernando Lamas - who always gave Run For Your Life so much punch in his performances as Ramon de Vega - this episode sparkles in many ways, not least of all in the special theme written by Pete Rugolo.
Hypnotic and succulent, it dominates East of the Equator, setting the tone immediately when it runs over opening credits focusing on the mysterious painting.
Just as much a study in psychology as an adventure in the Brazilian jungle, East of the Equator focuses on a character overcome by her belief in the nature of a woman's role, and a husband who supposedly freed himself of all convention.
This mix is what made people remember Run For Your Life as an outstanding series.
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Dina Merrill as
Carolyn Willins
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Rudy Solari as
Jorge Da Silva
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Alan Bergmann
as Jeffrey Willins
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Bill Glove
as Audrain
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Peter Hobbs as
Henry Gower
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Rodolfo Hoyos Jr.
as the Trader
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Berry Kroeger
as Klein
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Ines Pedroza
as Estella
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Donald Lawton as
the Desk Clerk
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