Alfred Hitchcock Presents (TV Series) John Brown's Body (1956) User Reviews

Good...could have been better.

[planktonrules · 6/10 · 20 February 2021]

Harold (Hugh Marlowe) works for Mr. Brown and sometimes they see eye-to-eye and other times they don't. When it comes to the sort of furniture the company sells, Hugh thinks they should switch to ultra-modern furniture....and his boss doesn't. But they are alike in one way...they both are in love with Brown's wife! However, instead of killing him off, Mrs. Brown and Hugh decide to convince him he's losing his mind and then send him off to a sanitarium...and during this time, they can screw around AND Hugh can implement his ideas for the company. Unfortunately, Hugh's ideas about furniture turn out to be wrong...and getting the boss to return to work is problematic.

This is an okay episode of "Alfred Hitchcock Presents". The ending is good...but could have been a bit better. Not bad at all...just that the ending seemed a bit too ordinary.

By the way, I noticed that the reviewer Hitchcoc (interesting name) thought that the modern furniture Hugh preferred was really ugly...and I'm inclined to agree.

I forgot to take the garbage out this morning dear

[sol-kay · 6/10 · 17 October 2012]

***SPOILER*** Feeling that old man John Brown, Russell Collins, is holding him back from making big bucks in the furniture company that he founded his business partner the scheming and as well as not too bright Harold Skinner, Hugh Marlow,plans together with Brown's gold digging wife Vera, Leora Dana, to get him out of the way.

The two plan to convince Brown that he's losing his mind and have him committed to a rest home or sanitarium. It's then that the two can finally take over his business and run it they way that want; Which turns out to be straight into the ground. In the two convincing him that he's losing his both mind and memory Brown ends up in the funny farm far away from the business that he founded and ran so well and effectively over the last 30 years.

As expected the two would be successful entrepreneurs ended up tripping themselves up in getting way over their heads in running Brown's furniture company which they were totally incompetent of doing. In that not only can't they run Old Man Brown's furniture company but ended up, in less then a years time, running it into bankruptcy. In a last desperate attempt to get Brown out of the sanitarium and get him back to run his company both Vera & Skinner try to convince Brown as well as his psychiatrist Dr. Croatman, Edmond Ryan, that he's in fact cured of his mental illness and have him released from the place.

***SPOILER*** As Old Man Brown is about to sign his release papers it's discovered by everyone in attendance that he's in fact at least two cans short of a six pack upstairs. You see instead of signing his name John Brown on the release papers he signed them with the signature of the person that he now thinks he is or whom he had become: George Washington!

Okay, at Best

[dougdoepke · 14 July 2010]

Junior partner Skinner (Marlowe) has designs for modern line of furniture that he thinks will pump up shop profits. On the other hand, senior partner Brown (Collins) wants to stay with traditional line, making Skinner unhappy. However, Skinner has less difficulty persuading Brown's attractive wife (Dana), especially after applying some amorous incentive. But what will the illicit pair do with her old stick-in-the-mud husband now that big money looms.

Despite the promising premise, the story fails to build either tension or suspense. There is curiosity about how the story will end, but not much more. The screenplay doesn't really develop the conflict beyond plotting to send Brown to a home for the mentally impaired. The ending is mildly ironical. To me, the most interesting part is figuring out whether the two lovers are sincere or simply exploiting each other. Nonetheless, the 30 minutes strikes me as a rather flat, lacking the expected Hitchcock edge.

"I think it's a wonderful horrible idea."

[classicsoncall · 5/10 · 14 August 2021]

By almost any measure, this is a totally preposterous and ridiculous story. Good perhaps for a bit of viewing irony, but totally lacking any credibility to justify the payoff. The real villain of this piece would be that incompetent psychiatrist Croatman (Edmon Ryan) who somehow came up with a diagnosis that put Brown (Russell Collins) in the Hillcrest Rest Home. If he had done any kind of testing for memory he would have realized the contrived instances of Brown forgetting mundane things were insufficient cause for commitment. There's also the improbable circumstance of Brown leaving his company behind, leaving it in the care of upstart Skinner (Hugh Marlowe) to run into the ground for ten months. The 'George Washington' signature was the final icing on the cake, marking Brown as a loony when he wasn't one. This was a case of gaslighting by star crossed lovers who deserved what they got, which in this case, turned out to be the only believable part of the whole episode.

The body

[TheLittleSongbird · 5/10 · 25 May 2022]

"John Brown's Body" is the fourth episode of Season 2 that Robert Stevens, the most prolific 'Alfred Hitchcock Presents' director, directed. After "De Mortuis", "None are So Blind" and "Toby". Stevens did direct some great episodes for the series, as far as previous episodes of his go "Our Cook's a Treasure" and "The Cheney Vase" are examples of this. The quality of his episodes though were uneven, with some average or less entries.

Despite being quite intrigued by the premise conceptually, "John Brown's Body" is really not one of Stevens' best 'Alfred Hitchcock Presents' outings (in the lesser end to me). As far as Season 2 goes, it's in the lesser end too and most of the previous episodes of the season ranged between average and good (with "Conversation with a Corpse" being the only great one and was very pleasantly surprised by "Jonathan"). "John Brown's Body" isn't a terrible, or even bad, episode, it is though rather disappointing and could have done better with its premise.

Am going to mention the good first. The three leads are all very committed and do more than enough to get as much mileage out of the material as possible. Harold and Vera are two very twisted characters, the extent of how twisted they and their relationship are being the most believable the episode gets, and Hugh Marlowe and Leora Dana have strong chemistry together. The ending is the one surprise and also the one part that wasn't hard to swallow.

Hitchcock's bookending is amusing and typically dry-humoured. The episode starts off quite well, the production values have some nice atmosphere and the main theme is haunting.

On the other hand, "John Brown's Body" could have been a lot better. The story is one of the most ridiculous (in execution that is) of the season and the ridiculousness is fever pitch level by the latter stages, the whole forgetting even smallest things wore thin and became increasingly more hard to swallow. It could have had a good deal more tension and didn't feel that suspenseful. It is also rather safe and predictable and a lot more could have been done with the more psychological aspect, intriguing but half-baked.

Stevens' direction is competent but also undistinguished. The script could have been tauter and not felt as over-heated. It would have benefitted from being longer, 30 minutes is not long enough for a story like this, which is why the pace felt erratic. Some parts are slow and hurt by the lack of suspense but 10-15 minutes longer would have fleshed things out more.

In summary, watchable but underwhelming. 5/10.

I Thought That Furniture Was Really Ugly, Even in the Fifties

[Hitchcoc · 5/10 · 10 June 2013]

Once again you have to give a guy credit for making things go his way. In the Hitchcock world, however, getting your wish has a price. These people never lose their own money, but the business that was going to float their boat in the future. As it turns out the sure-fire project is a total failure. In the process, they get the only person who can rescue them thrown in a mental institution. There are so many questions left unanswered and such a lack of believability, it really strains my limits as a viewer. The title is really an ironic one in that technically there is no body, not a dead one anyway. The only question I have has to do with the relationship between the two conspirators. How much truth is there in this tryst, or is this a ruse as well?