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Run For Your Life
Starring Ben Gazzara
Episode:
The Girl Next Door Is A Spy
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To contact us, click Homepage link above
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Synopsis: When Paul spots his childhood sweetheart on the street in Berlin, she seeks his support, but US agents appeal to Paul.s patriotism to find out her secret. With Diana Hyland as Eileen Henderson, Macdonald Carey as Mike Allen, Britt Semand as Anna, Robert Knapp as Riessler, Walter Friedel as the Interrogator, Walter Janovitz as the Chemist, Maya Van Horn as the Drug Store Proprietress
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Episode 2
First broadcast on
September 20, 1965
Teleplay by Luther Davis
& John Thomas James (Roy Huggins)
Story by John Thomas James (Roy Huggins)
Directed by Leslie H. Martinson
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SEE INDIVIDUAL PHOTOS OF ENTIRE CAST AT THE BOTTOM OF THIS PAGE

Creative Team
Associate Producer
Paul Freeman
Music Score
Benny Carter
Theme
Pete Rugolo
Director of Photography
John F. Warren A.S.C.
Art Director
*Frank Arrrigo
Film Editor
Douglas Stewart
Unit Manager
Willard Sheldon
Assistant Director
Frank Losee
Set Designers
John McCartey &
Perry Murdoch
Sound
Earl Crain Sr.
Color Coordinator
Robert Brower
Color by Pathe
Editorial Dept. Head
David J. O'Connell
Musical Supervisor
Stanley Wilson
Costumes Supervisor
Vincent Dee
Makeup
Bud Westmore
Hair Stylist
Larry Germain
Links to Other Episodes
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Paul stops Eileen on a street in Berlin
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The plot:
Riding in a taxi through West Berlin, Paul recognizes his childhood sweetheart Eileen walking along the pavement. He gets the cabbie to stop, shouting her name.
The driver advises him to play more gently, and not let the lady know he's interested, to which Paul replies, “she already knows I care. I proposed to her when she was six.”
But Eileen pretends not to know him.
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Eileen tries to find why Paul is in Berlin
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Eventually, he gives up, telling her his hotel as he goes away.
Later she rings him there, and we learn that Eileen has been recently widowed.
She asks a question to determine whether the person on the other end of the line is really Paul, and telling him that she hasn't spoken to anyone for a month, mysteriously sets up a rendezvous on a street corner.
He takes her out to a late night spot, but she tells him little about herself.
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They reminisce while dancing
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They dance and reminisce about when they were growing up together, and the ambience between them warms.
Though it's late, Eileen takes Paul to a garden where the same pair of swans have lived for a hundred years.
It's her special place where she feels safe.
In the relaxed atmosphere of the park and Paul's protective company,, Eileen falls asleep against his shoulder until well after daybreak.
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She speaks of her fear of suicide
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When she wakes up Eileen tells Paul that she's not usually able to sleep without pills, then confesses that she never keeps more than two sleeping tablets in her possession at any one time, for fear of taking a final step against the fear and disgust she feels in her present circumstances, but she still won't reveal anything about them.
Touched by her plight, Paul sympathetically asks if he can be of some real help to her, more than being just a “horse-drawn sandman.”
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Eileen tells Paul about her marriage to a spy
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After more gentle coaxing from him Eileen finally admits to Paul that she's being followed by the intelligence forces of three countries, maybe four, adding that the weight of their constant watching and listening brings her down to her knees, but she still doesn't say why she's being followed so closely.
Then Eileen suddenly muses how much it says about the world when Paul comes to Berlin and finds that his childhood sweetheart, “the girl next door is a spy.” When he asks her if she is one, she laughs and says no.
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Eileen says that she can't divulge her secret
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Eileen says that she was married to an agent who was a killer, and when she found that out, his gentleness seemed as false as his passports and cover names.
She wonders if someone has used Paul as a plant from her past, and referring to his possible cooperation with such intelligence agencies,questions whether anyone could say no to them.
Paul replies that he's someone who's in a position to say no to anyone he likes, and now says no to people like that so he can say yes to the things that are really important.
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"IA few weeks ago I started saying no to people I used to
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When she asks how he can be so uncorruptable, Paul replies that he too was being watched.
That a successful law partnership even led him to an offer to run for California Attorney General, and then a personal thing rearranged all the equations, and wrote simpler ones.
Eileen asks him what happened, but he counters by asking her to tell him about her problem first, and she says that she can't. They are at an impasse with their secrets.
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Paul refuses to divulge Eileen's secret place
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Back at his hotel, Paul emerges from the bathroom and finds a man in his room who introduces himself as American intelligence officer Mike Allen, brusquely telling Paul that US security demands his cooperation.
Allen tells Paul that the body of Eileen's husband hasn't been found, and that he wants to know her reason for being in Berlin. If they assume that all George Henderson's contacts are blown and information developed by him is no longer effective, that would throw away years of intelligence efforts.
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Paul counters Allen's argument
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The truth lies with Eileen.
When Paul is uncooperative, Allen challenges his patriotism, and Paul answers, “I love my country because it gives me the right to say no.”
Paul declares that he's taking the long view, and Allen reveals he knows about Paul's terminal illness.
"The day of the dossier," Paul says, "everything is excused in the name of necessity."
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Mike Allen shows Paul an escape from East Berlin
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So Allen takes Paul to a secret location where escapees are arriving from East Berlin to appeal to his sense of morality, then asks him to betray his friend.
Allen says that they must know by the 15th why Eileen is in Berlin, whether she's been frightened by the other side or made to believe they're holding her husband in the East, or that he defected.
After appealing on countless grounds, including seeing an escape from the East, Paul finally agrees to help.
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They share a few happy moments
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He takes Eileen out to sample some West Berlin nightlife.
She brightens a little, and says how much she'd love to be back in California with him.
Paul invites her to go to Pamplona with him.
She quotes her husband saying, “to feel safe in a world that's held together by lies, cunning and barbed wire is either madness or stupidity.”
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Paul removeds a bug from the lamp
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Though he is now working for American intelligence, Paul tells his vulnerable and fragile friend that she can trust him, and she appears to have come to the point where she's wondering if she should tell someone her problem, but says that she can't talk in the nightclub.
Paul removes a bug in the lamp on the table, attempting to show her that she can speak freely now. He drops the microphone in a glass, and gives it to the waiter. A horrified Eileen says that she is a coward who was married to a hard, cold, brave man.
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A fight is staged in the nightclub
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She appears ready to take Paul into her confidence, but just as she begins her story, a loud and violent fight ensues between a man and woman hitting one another.
They are dismissed by the staff, but in the process, Eileen's drink was knocked over, spilling the liquid over her clothing.
She leaves the table to deal with the problem. But soon as she is out of sight, Eileen is immediately abducted by the very people who had staged the fight.
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Eileen is taken away at gunpoint
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Driven away at gunpoint, Eileen is taken to an agent from the East who challenges her that she has not been following orders.
When she denies that she's remained silent, he plays a tape of her about to tell Paul what is going on in her life.
Having proved his point, Eileen tries to explain that Paul is only a childhood friend, but she is told that he is working for American intelligence.
Eileen replies that this isn't possible.
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Eileen says she's followed orders
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But the interrogator shows her a photo of Paul with Mike Allen, a man known to Eileen as an American agent.
She is unconvinced, but of course, her trust is shaken.
The man from the East tells her to go on with what she has been doing, speaking to no one, just remaining on in Berlin - only a few more days. It's becoming clear that whatever she is doing, Eileen is nothing more than the victim of the Eastern European operatives who have some power over her.
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Eileen tells Paul that he disgusts her
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After her mysterious disappearance in the nightclub, Paul is worried, and tries to reach Eileen without success.
She finally rings him, but as he is asking her if she is all right and where she is, Eileen asks him why he didn't tell her that he knew Mike Allen. Paul says that he will meet her, and explain everything, but she ends the call with the line, "you disgust me," and then repeats the remark. The phrase alerts Paul to the time when she used the word when speaking about often feeling near to suicide.
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Paul solicits Allen's help to save Eileen
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When she hangs up, he speaks into the phone, telling the wire tappers to get Mike Allen to contact him immediately.
When Allen comes to his hotel room moments later, Paul tells him about his fears for Eileen's safety.
An alert goes out to watch pharmacies in the area. Allen seems concerned about Eileen, but only because, if she dies, he won;t have a resolution to the puzzle of her lengthy and mysterious presence in Berlin
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Eileen tells Paul not to come closer or she'll shoot
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Eileen goes into a drug store and asks for sleeping pills.
Paul takes a taxi to the gardens where the swans are, hoping that he might find Eileen in this place where she feels safe and out of the view of people watching her.
She arrives there by taxi, but instead of pills, she has a gun, and when Paul approaches her, Eileen points it at him.
He tells her that he wants to keep her alive, but she says he's already killed her.
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Eileen stumbles, weeping
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“With you, the lies went over my head,” she accuses, “but you didn't do it alone, you were just the last - the one who made me face that the world was exactly what my husband said it was.”
Paul denies that he was lying to her, and she responds, “how do they take the souls out of people?”
Having no fear of her killing him, Paul walks over to Eileen, and removes the gun from her hand. He tells her it's all over, but she runs away and falls to the ground, sobbing that nothing is solved.
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Paul tells Eileen about the diagnosis
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She accuses him of using their friendship, that he came to Berlin to betray her.
Denying that could ever be, Paul describes how Allen saw their chance meeting and asked for his help.
“I said no,” he emphasizes, “but all he wanted to know was whether or not your husband was still alive,” and Paul admits to trying to find that information, but no more than that.
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They agree to forgive one another
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She challenges his strange presence in Berlin, and to finally make her understand, as she listens in tears, Paul tells her with difficulty that a few weeks ago he found out that he had little more than a year to live.
He says that what they've had together could never be for sale.
Eileen is moved by his story, and asks Paul's forgiveness, and he suggests that they forgive each other. He says that he is an optimist, and hopes there will be a cure for his disease.
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They agree to forgive one another
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One doctor said that the odds were a thousand to one that would happen before his time was up, Paul says optimistically, adding, “better than a sweeps stakes ticket.”
They get up to leave, and Eileen says she wants to explain her presence in Berlin. He deters her, but she says she needs his help, so he lets her go on. Eileen says that she is sure that her husband is dead, but was approached by a man who said George Henderson was in Czechoslovakia, but she saw the proof of this was false.
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She details how her life was threatened
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Then the Eastern agents told her she had to go to Berlin, and give no reason for being there, and that they would kill her if she didn't follow their instructions.
They told her that five months of her silence would confound the Americans into discarding all her husband's work and contacts.
Eileen explains that she didn't inform the Americans, and seek their help because she couldn't believe that they could protect her from being killed.
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Eileen is both caught and rescued
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Then Mike Allen suddenly appears from the trees, and Eileen again believes that Paul has surely betrayed her.
However, Allen says that they only found her because, unbeknownst to him, they were following Paul, and that she will now be safe.
Eileen leaves with the American agents, and Mike Allen promises that she will be spirited away and protected in the United States.
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Notes & Comments: A plausible story with adequate suspense, but the overly quick ending is a let down with Eileen's docile reaction less than believable. Probably the right one would have been for her to have been shot by Eastern agents, and die in Paul's arms just after her revelations.
Also nearly impossible to believe that anyone outside Paul's doctors would have known about his condition, and inclusion of this information in Mike Allen's dossier was unnecessary in moving the story along. Paul's reluctance to assist him works well, but while his eventual help with “a little thing” (as he later describes his betrayal to Eileen) appears too easily won. Although reluctant, the handshake between them almost felt like a betrayal to the viewers as well.
Though her abduction was violent, the agents threatening Eileen seem a little too mild with her to represent such a diabolical threat, but the torment of her experience is nonetheless understandable.
A little off-putting was the garden set which looked very artificial, and one wonders why the scene couldn't have been shot somewhere more realistic.
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Diana Hyland as
Eileen Henderson
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MacDonald Carey
as Mike Allen
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Robert Knapp
as Riessler
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Britt Semand
as Anna
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Walter Friedel as the Interrogator
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Maya Van Horn as the Drug Store Proprietress
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