Way Out — Season 1, Episode 5: I Heard You Calling Me
Drama, Sci-Fi & Fantasy • 25 min • 1 season, 14 episodes • ★ 7.0/10
Episode synopsis
Freda Mansfield (an American, age 38) is checking out of a London hotel; she is planning on eloping with her British lover George Frobisher (age 43, who already has a wife, Monica, and kids) and they are going to New York City together. But Freda keeps getting mysterious phone calls from some strange woman, who says that Freda will never run away with George-- Freda is going with her. The strange woman keeps phoning Freda; the caller says her name is Mrs. Rose Thorn, and adds that she is coming up to her hotel room to see her. Freda sees what might be a ghost (dressed in 1912 clothing), and goes hysterical, and faints. Later, a doctor examines Freda's body-- he tells George that she died of pneumonia-like symptoms: both lungs are filled with water, sort of like drowning. George says that his mother was Mrs. Rose Thorn, who died of drowning nearly half a century ago-- she was a passenger aboard the doomed Titanic. (He was later adopted by the Frobisher family; he had never mentione
About Way Out
Way Out was a 1961 fantasy and science fiction television anthology series hosted by writer Roald Dahl. The macabre 25-minute shows were introduced by Dahl's dry delivery of a brief introductory monologue, sometimes explaining a method of murdering a spouse without getting caught. The taped series began because CBS suddenly needed a replacement for a Jackie Gleason talk show that network executives were about to cancel, and producer David Susskind contacted Dahl to help mount a show quickly. The series was paired by the network with the similar The Twilight Zone for Friday evening broadcasts, running from March through July 1961 at 9:30 p.m. Eastern time, under the primary sponsorship of Liggett & Myers. Writers included Philip H. Reisman, Jr. and Sumner Locke Elliott. The premiere episode, "William and Mary", adapted from a Roald Dahl short story, told of a wife getting revenge on her husband. In "Dissolve to Black", an actress cast as a murder victim at a television studio goes through a rehearsal, but the drama merges with reality as she finds herself trapped on the show's near-deserted set. Other dramas offered startling imagery: a snake slithering up a carpeted staircase inside a suburban home, a disembodied brain in a jar, a headless woman strapped to an electric chair, with a light bulb in place of her head and half of a man's face erased.