Route 66 (TV Series) Shadows of an Afternoon (1963) User Reviews

Hopkins Gives a Great Performance in the Twilight of her career

[rwint1611 · 8/10 · 25 May 2008]

Excellent episode involving Linc accused of injuring a small dog by a elderly woman who lives next door. This episode becomes quite intriguing as the motivations of this woman, who seems to be an otherwise upstanding citizen, are quite murky and only become completely unraveled at the end.

Hopkins, in the twilight of her career, gives an outstanding performance. The final meeting between her and Linc is both touching and powerful. This is an episode that definitely remains with you afterwords and deserves to be in the top ten of the series.

The only drawbacks to this episode is an annoying music score that gets overplayed. It is also somewhat of a stretch for the incident with the dog to become front page, headline news as well as the uproar of the entire community since the injury to the pet is not severe and he ends up recovering from it completely.

Grade A-

Miriam Hopkins' Superb Final Scene---and she doesn't say a word.

[lrrap · 8/10 · 19 January 2020]

It's too bad that CBS President J. Aubrey was pushing for more babes n' bikinis in the series, hence the pointless scene at the beach, which should have been cut. In it's place, we might have seen more of Tod's desperate search for witnesses, which would have helped to build momentum and tension leading up to the trial. The scene with old Mr. Bell on the porch could then have been better integrated with the plot... a nice, relaxed, philosophical "time-out" from Tod's quest for more crucial evidence.

And what's with that weasely reporter? He sure got dropped in a hurry, as if the director said: "Hey...we don't need any more of that jerk.....".

In fact, with all of the anti-Linc hooplah in town --including street protesters-- I expected the courtroom to be jammed and in total chaos for the big trial. It was pretty sedate.

However--- the episode is very moving, thanks to the performance of the great Miriam Hopkins. Her final scene on the porch with Linc is unbearably sad; the look on her face as she steps out onto the porch clearly indicates the emotional confusion and torment in her mind---since she is re-living her youthful, passionate attraction to her late husband, "reincarnated", as it were, in LInc. It is a riveting dramatic moment, aided immeasurably by Glenn Corbett's restrained and equally heart-felt performance.

(Miriam Hopkins would go on next to deliver an absolute tour-de-force performance --as another eccentric woman who lives alone in a big, old house who also laments her long-lost husband--- in the utterly bizarre "Don't Open 'til Doomsday" episode of THE OUTER LIMITS. If you like Ms. Hopkins and have never seen "Doomsday"-- make it a point to watch it!)

Other notable things:

1.) I checked into the credentials of Roy Fant-- the quaint old guy in his porch rocker who engages Tod in conversation. I couldn't tell if the guy was a very talented amateur-- or a VERY talented professional actor who PLAYED an old man in small-town Florida. He was the latter, and had a very distinguished stage career, appearing in significant roles with Walter Huston, James Dean, Constance Ford, etc.

You never can tell who's going to turn up on Route 66!

2.) I always like Ralph Meeker, but his powerful presence and energy seems to have diminished in the '60's, as he went from playing virile, "manly" characters (the lead role in the stage version of "PICNIC", Mike Hammer in the loopy "Kiss Me Deadly", etc), to much more sedate roles, such as we see here. Something was missing.

3.) I agree that the main musical theme of the episode, pretty as it is (with piano and strings evoking a somewhat "genteel", parlor idiom) is OVERUSED. (I kept thinking it was an actual Old-American folksong (?) IN fact, the cue kicks in at almost EVERY juncture of the show, whether appropriate or not. But it sure works beautifully in the final scene.

4.) Good to see Cliff Hall (Ralph Kramden's "Racoon" Lodge President) as the judge, and young Richard Mulligan as the Prosecuting Attorney.

5.) Another "CHEVY-CENTRIC" town, where nearly everyone drives one. Nothing like "Product Placement" to help sales.

Despite its flaws, this episode leaves quite a powerful impression, due largely to the final 10 minutes. And...oh yes.....the little pooch was fine. LR

The Dog Wags The Tale

[telegonus · 10/10 · 21 November 2012]

Shadows Of An Afternoon is one of the better entries of the third season of Route 66. It begins almost blandly, in a sleepy Florida town, and soon the drama escalates, as a wounded dog, slashed by something or another, is cared for by Linc, while an older woman who lives across the street claims that he slashed the dog himself.

The circumstantial evidence against Linc works against him, and he's soon in jail. Since he was merely house-sitting for a local woman who was away for an extended period abroad, he's viewed with suspicion by the citizens of the town, and before long his case becomes a media circus.

The plot thickens in the second half of the episode, as the top lawyer in town, apathetic at first, agrees to take on the case. Meanwhile, the woman who claims to have witnessed the crime has issues of her own. She's eccentric, lives alone, claims her husband died heroically at sea. The story unfolds at a rather leisurely pace, but then it's not like Linc is up on charges of first degree murder. In the end it's more a character study than a crime story, as was easy to guess early on.

Glenn Corbett's Linc dominates the episode, with Martin Milner playing second fiddle. Corbett gives a good, disciplined performance, and he never overacts. Ralph Meeker is forceful as the lawyer who, with some prodding from his secretary, rises to the occasion. The best performance however comes from stage and screen veteran Miriam Hopkins, who captures the pathos of a lonely older woman who has kept so many secrets for so long that her judgment has become impaired. She's not a bad person, just a wounded one.

5/17/63 "Shadows of an Afternoon"

[schappe1 · 1 January 2016]

Linc is back in trouble. They boys are house-sitting, (still in Florida) and the owner's dog becomes injured. The old lady next door claims she saw Linc cut the little dog, (a dachshund) with a pair of garden shears he was using. He's arrested and his trial becomes front page news in the small town, where nothing ever happens. Tod is going with a girl who works as the secretary for the "best lawyer in town" who agrees to represent Linc. Meanwhile Tod is again placed in the positon of trying to convince people that Linc isn't such a bad guy. He has a hard time doing this, (they are "outsiders" and drifters as well). The lawyer decides it's best for his client to plead guilty.

The old lady is played by Miriam Hopkins who was familiar with this type of story, having been in both "These Three" (1936) and "The Children's Hour", (1962), both versions of the same Lillian Hellman story about the teachers in the girls school who are accused of lesbianism, (although in the sanitized 1936 version it was just a love triangle with Joel McCrea, the leading man). Both are about neurotic gossips, people jumping to conclusions and the tragedy that can result. Ralph Meeker is the initially cynical attorney and Kathryn Hays, one of the most beautiful women I've ever seen, is his secretary.

My earliest TV memory, from Albany, NY

[tforbes-2 · 10/10 · 3 January 2016]

I remember the opening to this only too well. I was a youngster visiting my grandmother in Albany, NY and this was airing on WTEN, then a CBS affiliate. I remember vividly that the dog, a dachshund, and the image of the pruning shears. Scary stuff for someone who was 4 years old or so at the time.

Cut to 50-plus years later in Massachusetts. What I am watching is a character study that centers around a case of alleged animal cruelty the ends up with a character baring skeletons in her closet.

It's not a story that has grand dramatics. It is one of the best stories from the second half of Route 66, perhaps one of the best, period.