Q. You may not believe this one. On July 1, 1956, my new wife and I were honeymooning at Niagara Falls. It was a Sunday night and we were watching the Alfred Hitchcock show on TV. Unfortunately, the power went out halfway through, and I missed the rest of the show. It has sort of bothered me ever since.
I am calling on you, oh great Answer Man, in hopes of finally making my honeymoon complete. The only thing I recall after all these years is that the show starred Peter Lawford, and he was driving a couple of women across the country. I've tried searching the Internet without success, and none of Lawford's biographies mentions a Hitchcock appearance. Can you tell me anything about the show I was watching and whether I finally can see it in its entirety?
-- M.M., of O'Fallon
A. Niagara Falls. Slowly I turned ... no, actually, quickly I turned to the Internet Movie Database for an easy answer to your vexing wedding-week dilemma.
I only hope your marriage was as good as your memory. From your description, what you apparently saw was the opening of episode nine on the first season of "Alfred Hitchcock Presents" -- a show entitled "The Long Shot."
First aired on Nov. 27, 1955, it starred Lawford as Charlie Raymond, a man heavily in debt to his bookies. When he is hired by a British tourist (John Williams) to accompany him on a trip across the United States, Raymond looks for a way to scam his guest out of the money he needs so badly. But, like the Aretha Franklin song, it turns out to be a question of just who's zoomin' who.
How do I know so much about it? Because I just watched it -- and you can, too, thanks to the latest Web site for video junkies, www.hulu.com. By simply registering, you can relive any of dozens of TV shows and movies new and old for free -- everything from "Flipper" and "Fantasy Island" to "28 Days Later."
So it will be easy (and a whole lot cheaper) to put back a little suspense in your life, complete with that famous "Funeral March of a Marionette" theme by Gounod. Just go to Hulu, sign up, look for "Alfred Hitchcock Presents," and click "The Long Shot." Then, sit back and enjoy.
Of course, if you'd like the episode to have and to hold forever, you can buy the entire first season (39 episodes) on DVD. It's just $22.99 at amazon.com. Spend a couple of bucks more and you get free shipping, too.
By the way, for those wondering about the origin of that classic Niagara Falls comedy routine, it apparently wasn't the Three Stooges, Abbott and Costello or Lucille Ball, even though they (and many others such as Steve Martin) used it over the years.
Many people point to vaudeville and movie star Joey Faye, who last appeared as the green grape in Fruit of the Loom commercials before he died in 1997. (What a way to go out!) Others, however, credit comedian Harry Steppe, who claims to have not only penned the skit but also performed it with the Stooges during their vaudeville days on stage. Steppe died in 1934. A third possibility often cited is famed movie producer Schmuel Gelbfisz -- aka Samuel Goldwyn.
Q. Last fall, I was down in Florida and enjoyed LandShark Lager, produced by the Margaritaville Brewery Co. in Key West. Is there an outlet locally where this beer can be purchased?
-- C. Rhodes, of Cahokia
A. Good news, metro-east Parrotheads -- you now can enjoy your cheeseburgers in paradise with a cold, frosty LandShark now that Anheuser-Busch began distributing the beer nationwide earlier this year.
Wait a minute. A-B? What's that beer behemoth got to do with it? Turns out the "Margaritaville Brewing Co." is a marketing ploy dreamed up once singer Jimmy Buffett turned to Anheuser-Busch to develop a beer that would reflect his laid-back, Caribbean island lifestyle.
For a long time, A-B distanced themselves from it -- as I found out when I waited months for someone to answer my questions about LandShark despite repeated calls. And, not surprisingly, Corona beer canceled its sponsorship of Buffett's concert tour once they got wind of his cozying up to Busch.
Now, LandShark, which was recently ranked the 25th best seller in convenience stores despite its limited distribution, is surfacing throughout the metro-east.
While on a quest for pork chops, I just happened to spy it at Main Street Market in Belleville last Saturday. The folks there tell me they added it to their beer lineup just within the last week or so. Then, on a beer-shopping run Thursday morning (putting that one on my expense account may prove interesting), I also found it at Schnucks in Swansea, a 12-pack for $13.49. I'm sure you'll be seeing its telltale fin at plenty more places soon.
Q. I thought I heard somewhere that the post office is going to allow us to mail letters free of charge one day a week. True?
-- N.G., of Edwardsville
A. Not quite.
To promote its current blockbuster series on the life of John Adams, Home Box Office decided it would be appropriate to try to entice people to write letters again.
Not text messages or e-mails. No, real old-fashioned, pen-on-paper, hold-it-in-your-hands epistles that people once eagerly anticipated finding in their mailboxes once a day. The same kind of communications, held by the Massachusetts Historical Society, that proved so valuable to historian David McCullough in writing Adams' biography. (You have to wonder how much insight into the founding fathers we would have lost if their e-mails had vanished into the ethernet.)
At any rate, with funding by HBO, the Postal Service put its stamp of approval on a plan they hope will, in some small way, revive what is fast becoming a lost art. (Thanks to cell phones and the Internet, first-class letters now lag behind junk mail in total volume.)
So, until March 31, you're invited to go to www.poweroftheletter.com and request one of six free John Adams greeting cards. You can customize it with a message and photo, and they'll mail it to you free along with additional postage so you can send it to a loved one.
It's one to a customer, but you could be the lucky winner of a trip to Colonial Williamsburg for four, which would make one of John Adams' recorded messages prophetic: "Now letter-writing," he wrote on April 12, 1764, "is, to me, the most agreable amusement, and writing to you the most entertaining and agreable of all letter-writing."
Just like writing the Answer Man column.
Send your questions to Roger Schlueter, Belleville News-Democrat, 120 S. Illinois St., P.O. Box 427, Belleville, IL 62222-0427 or rschlueter@bnd.com
