Route 66 (TV Series) Kiss the Maiden All Forlorn (1962) User Reviews

Slack

[dougdoepke · 8 September 2015]

A millionaire embezzler sneaks back across the border to prevent his daughter from becoming a nun. On the way, he hijacks Buzz and Tod.

A mild episode, at best. Not much happens even though the premise tries to play up some kind of menace. Reviewer shappe1 is right: Fairbanks plays embezzler Clayton as too nice a guy to generate any real suspense. I suspect that's why the script has tough guy Antonio (Tolan) pull a gun, but as it turns out, to no particular effect. Then too, this is a religiously themed show, so the answer to whether Bonnie (Bethune) will become a nun or not is all to predictable. It might help if Tod and Buzz were given something to do besides tag along, but they're not. Then too, we don't even see much of location Dallas.

The ending is thought-provoking and maybe the entry's only notable feature. I'm guessing it was the writers' effort to compensate for the generally lacklustre remainder. Plus, it also explains why embezzler Clayton has to be a good guy. However that may be, for all Buzz and Tod get to do, they could have mailed this one in.

morally reprehensible

[lrldoit · 1/10 · 22 August 2014]

This usually excellent series has its protagonists lost their way morally. An embezzler forces a meeting with his daughter through the embezzlers strong arm man. Todd and Buzz (who are attempting to assist the daughter) have a gun drawn on them. Most people reading this have not had the trauma of having a gun pulled on them and wondering if they will survive.

Fortunately, when the crook leaves, the others are turned lose instead of killed, something that would not happen. The scene with the nun was the only thing to come off well as the nun seemed to have no sympathy for the man (who tried to bride the nun into rejecting his daughter - who wanted to be a nun). He failed.

The embezzler had some tender words with his daughter and Buzz and Todd in effect wait some time before telling the police, in order to give the man a chance to evade the law. The terrible thing this man had done to them is forgotten. Sterling Silliphant had the criminal, kidnapper and planner of assault get away clean and whitewashed this monster. Earlier, with the nun, he argued that he was justified in being a crook because all of the human race had become corrupt and let him down. This is the kind of liberal baloney we have to put up with now. Fortunately, this is ATYPICAL for the series.

4/13/62 "Kiss the Maiden All Forlorn" (spoilers)

[schappe1 · 21 June 2015]

This is an odd number. We are back in Dallas. The boys stop to help out Zina Bethune, whose car has stopped functioning. (Zina was previously in the third ever episode, "The Swan Bed ". She looks a lot older here, although she's still only 17.) Another car pulls up. Michael Tolan gets out and offers to help. He suggests that Zina would be more comfortable in his car, with him and his sister, (Elena Verdugo, later to become Marcus Welby's nurse). When Zina says she's prefer Tod and Buz, Tolan produces a gun and orders them in his car- Buz and Zina in front and Tod in back- under his feet. He takes them to a hotel and holds them there.

Then a tycoon who had been forced to flee the country, Robert Vesco style, (a decade before Vesco), and who has eluded the police to re- enter the country just to see his daughter, who, ashamed of what her father has done, is entering a convent. Tolan, (who set up Zina's car for the breakdown), is his henchman and his sister is the tycoon's lover. The tycoon tries to convince her not to "throw away her life" because of him. When that fails, he goes to the convent and tries to bribe the nun with a $100,000 contribution in exchange for refusing to take his daughter. But he finds his money can't buy everything.

Throughout the episode you assume that the police will close in and capture the tycoon and the mean-spirited Tolan will get his and die in the arms of his avaricious sister. (They are the types a cynical tycoon would likely find himself surrounded by.) You also wonder what Tod and Buz's fate will be, (but I bet they'll survive). They don't kill our heroes, even though they are witnesses and the cops do not get them. The tycoon and his hangers-on fly off at the end. I guess their punishment is that they deserve each other. Tod and Buz, touched by the tycoon's fatherly concern, (he even lets the nun keep the money), stall the police so they can get away.

The tycoon is played by a very unlikely actor, Douglas Fairbanks Jr., whose acting style is very reminiscent of Ronald Coleman. Both play poetic, idealistic characters very well. When Fairbanks tells the nun that he did what he did because the meanness and selfishness of others convinced him the human race shouldn't be dealt with fairly, it lacks credibility. Fairbanks otherwise does very well with the flowery Silliphant dialog and makes the character as sympathetic as the writer wanted him to be. But he hardly seems like a ruthless businessman or international crook.

Beatrice Straight appears as the nun and, as in "Most Vanquished, Most Victorious" from season one, (as well as "Network", for which she won an Oscar), makes a very strong impression in a very short appearance, giving the episode what little moral anchor it seems to have.

James Brown appears for the fourth of his eight times in this series. In both this and "Aren't Your Surprised to See Me?" he's playing a Dallas police officer who interacts with Tod and Buz but there's no reference in either episode to the other one. In the prior episode he's "Captain Strode". In this one he's just listed as "Sheriff". Why not make him the same character?