Route 66 -- A Month of Sundays

I’m watching a grainy broadcast of Route 66, the old sixties tv dramas (with that memorable Nelson Riddle theme), a series about a decade or so ahead of my time, meaning it’s one of those classic tv shows I’d always heard great things about but had never actually seen. It’s an entertaining episode featuring a compelling performance from an actress who has become one of my favorites of the era, Anne Francis (better known as the sexy detective Honey West, another series slightly before my time), who is guest starring here as a young and glamorous Broadway star who has mysteriously fled New York in the midst of the run of a hot new play to return to her Montana hometown, where by chance she meets Our Wayfaring Heroes, Tod (played by Martin Milner, whom I came to know better, more or less, as the older cop on one of my gram’s old favorites, Adam-12) and Buz (George Maharis), both of whom instantly fall for her, especially Buz.

It develops that Arlene—yes, “Arlene,” that’s the very unglamorous name of Francis’s character—has learned she has a degenerative disease (Lupus? Seriously?) and knowing she hasn’t long to live has opted to run away from the bright promise of her life and career and come home to die.

A Month of Sundays was written by the peerless Stirling Silliphant, whose endearingly oddball name is attached as scribe to some of the very best of the classic television shows of the fifties and sixties (M Squad, Perry Mason, Mr. Lucky, Naked City, Alfred Hitchcock Presents) and several fine movies (Charly, The Slender Thread, In the Heat of the Night) as well. His writing is literate and intense, often infused with piercing psychological insight, and this episode is no exception.

Tod: You’re going to Columbia Gardens tonight with Buz, aren’t you.

Arlene: Yes, why?

Tod (heavily): He bought a ring. He’s gonna ask you to marry him—

Arlene (stunned) No--!!

Tod: --and you’re going to accept.

Arlene (agonized): I can’t. You know I can’t, Tod.

Tod: But he doesn’t know you can’t, and that’s why you’re going to!

Arlene: How can I love if I can’t offer a lasting relationship? (Turning away) I don’t even know if I’m gonna see the rain again—I don’t even know if I’m gonna see tomorrow’s sun! How can I hurt Buz by loving him and letting him love me when it can’t go anywhere?

Tod: But it can go somewhere—

Arlene: What, a day? Two days? Maybe a week—?

Tod: A minute if that’s all there is, but a minute that counts!

Arlene: I can’t! I know Buz loves me--I can’t make it worse!

Tod (pleading): Arlene, you’re doing what everybody else does—wasting precious days, just passing the time, going through the motions! Waiting! That’s not really living. Before my father died he taught me something. He knew he was dying. He lived his last days more fully than he lived all the rest of his life. He said ‘Don’t let yourself be hobbled by fatalism and don’t run from death. Recognize it. Accept it for what it is--just as much a miracle as being born, maybe more so. Only when we lose our fear of death can we defeat it. Then we can make every hour of our existence really count.’

Tod (passionately): Arlene, Buz is a guy who’s with things! He feels every minute of every experience in every pore! And if he did know, this is the way he’d want it to be! So take this from him and share it with him and use it!

(She stares at him, wavering, troubled, uncertain, as the scene fades out and a commercial for City Colleges of Chicago begins.)

Strong stuff.

Still, watching this episode--this exchange especially--I'm struck by two things. First, I’m not sure people really talked like this, even in that bygone, presumably better educated, era. I love good television writing and it's fun watching actors eager to strut their actorly stuff sink their perfect teeth into what they know is a well crafted, possibly award-winning, script. Even so, there's dialogue you admire on the page and dialogue you really believe.

More importantly though, I’m a wee bit creeped out--more than a wee bit, actually--by the way Buz’s love, and his plans for them both, is presented by Tod to Arlene as something she’s duty bound to accept regardless of the grim reality of her circumstances (or even because of that) as though his friend’s feelings mattered more than those of a dying woman. Tod’s words seem very heartfelt, but what about Arlene’s words? Would Tod have had more respect for her feelings, would he have taken her objections more seriously, if they were coming from Buz, and it was he confronting the Grim Reaper? I realize this was (and to some extent remains) the culture, rather than a fault of Silliphant's teleplay, the days when, above all, every (normal) girl wanted to be married, supposedly, and most (normal) guys in their swingin' bachelor heart of hearts really didn't, supposedly. You say it was his idea? He went and bought a ring? Well, what on earth is she waiting for? Okay, there was this pesky wrinkle about her not having too much longer to live... but couldn't she, couldn't they, you know, work around that?

Arlene didn't marry Buz, of course; the serie's premise wouldn't have allowed for it. She began to slip away from him while they were foxtrotting on the dance floor, dying as a bewildered Buz watched a priest perform the last rites, asking Arlene if she was sorry for her sins. She said yes, gazed up at the dark night sky, her hand went limp, and Buz burst into wails of grief as a saddened Tod looked on. I felt sad too.

For her.