Here I am with another recap of an episode from The Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries show from 1977.
As I’ve mentioned before, in the first season of this series the episodes switched back and forth from Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew episodes and in the next season they started to join together. Eventually they began to phase out the Nancy episodes and focus more on The Hardy Boys. A new actress also started as Nancy when Pamela Sue Martin became disenchanted with the parts that were being written for her character.
This time around I am writing about a Nancy Drew centered episode called A Haunting We Will Go.
As far as episodes go, this one wasn’t the worst. It had a lot of humor mixed in and kept the mystery going for quite a long time. It also had some absolutely ridiculous elements, but that’s totally okay. That’s what makes these episodes fun.
Nancy, George, and Ned are producing a play to raise money to demolish the old town theater so they can build a children’s home. What exactly is the children’s house? I have no idea, but it is supposed to be a good cause, from what I can tell.
They’ve already recruited a former well-known local actress to perform in the play. Then Ned starts receiving notifications from other people who used to act in the community theater and are now famous.
They want to come and help out too.
The young people are confused, but excited for them all to come, even though a prop chandelier fell and almost killed Nancy the scene before.
Here are our characters who used to be actors at the theater: Alex Richmond, Seth Taylor, Danny Day, Thelma March, and Janet Musant.
Janet remained living in the town but everyone else moved away. Janet isn’t too happy about having been left behind and everyone returning either. She’s pretty unpleasant all around but she seems to have reason to be. Life hasn’t been easy to her. Her hotel, located across the street from the theater, is old and run down and she uses a cane. We aren’t sure why she has the cane and limp but it’s clear some kind of illness or injury has befallen her.
Nancy is trying to figure out what happened with the light fixture that almost fell on her when the other people start to arrive.
We feel the tension among the group fairly fast, especially between the others and Thelma, who is now a movie actress and is very condescending to everyone. She tells the one man she wonders how he is able to spend all his time sharing bad news as a newscaster and then says, “Oh well, I always turn way from you to channel 3. It’s a much better quality of news.”
This is how things will go for a good portion of the first half of the show — the actors shooting verbal barbs at each other.
The actors all claim they came back to the theater to act on the stage one more time before the theater is destroyed, but Nancy recognizes right away there isn’t a ton of truth in these statements.
Something else is definitely up.
Arguments are breaking out, snide remarks are being made, and when Nancy suggests they came for a reason other than raising money for the children’s house, they all get funny looks on their faces.
Nancy was only referring to the fact they were all in the same play together years ago, but they certainly looked panicked. Nancy doesn’t miss these expressions either.
Later that night, after an argument between Seth and Thelma that is witnessed by Nancy and George, the five actors begin searching the theater.
We aren’t sure what they are searching for, but it seems like some kind of treasure from the comments they are making. “It should be back here!” “This is where we put up the wall!”
During the search they insult and accuse each other of vague offenses, keeping us from knowing what is really going on.
At one point Seth and Janet end up in an argument at the top of the stairs in the theater. The actors have been put up at Janet’s hotel. Janet snottily asks Seth if he is happy with his room.
He sneers back that he expected it to be lined with mink.
“Someone has been making a very good living out of this nightmare,” he snaps.
Janet is incredulous. “You think it’s me? Would I stay on in this town, in this run down mausoleum?”
“Where else would you fit in so well?” Seth asks.
Ouch.
Seth snaps out some more accusing remarks and Janet swings at him with her cane. He grabs her at the moment Nancy shows up at the bottom of the stairs and it looks like Seth is about to throw the woman down the stairs. Yikes. He clearly has anger issues, if not homicidal tendencies
The pair of actors claim they were simply practicing a scene to attempt to cover up their fight, but Nancy’s way too smart for that. She knows something is going on.
She tells Ned something is going on and Ned sort of groans and says, “Why are you always playing detective when there’s no crime?”
Burn.
Nancy isn’t letting Ned deter her though. She knows these people are hiding things and she’s going to find out what they are.
I have to say that Nancy is really, really rude to Ned in this episode. She mocks him incessantly because he is proud of bringing all the actors in and organizing the play. Nancy is often very mean to him, and I don’t know why he keeps pursuing her.
I’m sure the writers were trying to add humor, but it’s not funny when Nancy compliments him only to bait and switch and tell him he needs to see a psychiatrist because he worked so hard on a project that she talked him into working on.
*pulling out soapbox*
I think he’s a pretty weak man for putting up with her belittling him all the time, but I think that’s what 70s shows were like at times. They were trying to give women independence and much like today there is an attitude that to make women appear stronger they have to tear men down. I don’t like that idea or to see it pushed here.
*putting soapbox away*
Anyhow, Ned does start to wonder if Nancy is right about something weird going on when he stops by the theater at night to check the props and lights again and finds Thelma and Alex carrying bricks out the back door of the theater.
See, right before Ned shows up, the viewer is shown that all four of the actors are digging with pickaxes into a wall in the basement of the theater. They’re saying something about them not remembering it being so thick and they thought it was more hollow.
When Ned catches them, they toss out a lame excuse that Alex has a bad back and needs to sleep on the bricks to help his back. I think that was a thing people did back in the day but ouch!
They talk Ned into leaving to get some rest by suggesting he’s offended Thelma by calling her old, so they can go back to digging.
In the morning, Ned and Nancy find the actors all asleep in the dressing room and they claim they were running their lines.
Nancy again knows they are lying, and Ned admits he saw them sneaking bricks out of the theater the night before.
“I knew it!” Nancy declares.
When Ned and Nancy leave, the actors start talking about how they’ve been bled dry financially by someone in the room and that someone has their money and they’re going to find out who. All four (Janet isn’t there) deny being the blackmailer.
The actors agree to stumble out onto the stage for a rehearsal but after a few runs they are ready to go back to their rooms and crash. Nancy argues that they need to stay to help her learn her part (which seems to consist entirely of her carrying drinks out to the stage and asking if they want one … so not too challenging to me.)
While arguing about going or staying, an entire light fixture falls and would have killed Alex if Nancy hadn’t pushed him out of the way.
Nancy is certain it was done on purpose, but, as usual, her father (Carson Drew) and Ned disagree and offer up excuses like: “The theater is old. Maybe we shouldn’t even have people there for a play,” and “These are fine, upstanding members of society. Why would they have anything to do with people almost getting killed in the theater, Nancy? It’s preposterous!” (Not actual dialogue but imagine all that said in a very posh British accent. I did and it made me giggle.)
Nancy pushes out her lower lip and stomps her foot and says, “Well, I am going to find out what is going on! I am! I am!”
She doesn’t actually say this but it’s very close.
She stomps out the door like a toddler after that. Very mature for an “18-year-old” sleuth.
Things get worse after she leaves when her dad’s sexism rears it’s ugly head when he suggests she’s just being emotional because she’s working with so many stars. The he leans back with his pipe and grins.
Ick. The way Carson Drew is portrayed in this show is so icky to me. In the books he was fairly clueless — letting Nancy run all over the place without really checking on her, but in the show he’s downright dismissive of her and practically calls her an emotional woman on her period. He is a lot more misogynistic in the show in other words.
Nancy decides she’s going to put some ultra-violet paint on things around the studio, like the door, to see if any of the actors are the person who has been sneaking around and sabotaging things in the theater.
During the episode we have little snippets of someone walking around spying on Nancy and George or some of the actors. It’s always just someone in black boots and pants so we are never sure if it is one of the actors or who.
The next day during rehearsals, Nancy shuts off the lights and shines ultra-violet light onto the stage to see who is guilty and discovers that all of the actors have the paint on their hands. We won’t get into how she found an ultra-violet light that big to shine on them because I have no idea.
This leads the actors to discuss in private how Nancy knows too much and that “we know what we have to do.”
“No, oh no,” says Seth. “I can’t do that again.”
“You can’t do what again?” asks Thelma (who has a fake theater voice…it’s weird).
“I can’t do away with that sweet, innocent girl.”
Thelma says she didn’t want to do away with her anyhow.
“She’s talking about him,” Danny says. “We’ve got to get rid of him.”
“In the cellar,” Alex says. “Before he does away with us.”
I’m sorry? Blink. Blink.
Before who does away with you?
Oh my!
So, next, Nancy and George go to the library to find newspapers that will tell them what happened when the first play was held some 20 plus years ago. They find out that the original play was promoted by a producer named Jason Hall. Hall took in several donations from the community businesses to promote the play and promised that New York critics would come in to see it. The play flopped , no critics came, and Jason Hall disappeared the first night of the performance with all the money.
A humorous moment comes in the next scene comes when the actors pull a sarcophagus out of the basement of the theater. The entire time they are saying things like, “Jason has gotten heavier,” or “Good grief, where did you think Jason was going to go after all these years.”
Yikes. So, we have already figured out what happened to Jason.
Ned stumbles onto them while coming back to check something at the theater and Seth, while holding one end of the sarcophagus says, “Oh..” nervous laugh. “Beautiful night, isn’t it?”
“That looks like a sarcophagus,” Ned says.
Seth, barely able to hold on to his end of the thing says breathlessly, “Well, yes, it is a sarcophagus.”
Like this is something that happens every day. Two grown men carrying a sarcophagus.
Seth says that the item was a souvenir he wanted to keep and that he collects them
“I have nine of them. I have just the spot for this one in my Hollywood apartment.”
“Do you think he’s suspicious of anything?” Alex asks when Ned leaves.
“What’s suspicious about two men carrying a sarcophagus down a dark alleyway at midnight?” Seth asks while rolling his eyes.
Har. Har. Cue the cymbal tap.
Nancy hears about the sarcophagus and tells her dad that she just knows that Jason Hall’s body is in the sarcophagus.
Carson isn’t very sure about this, because, you know, it would be a travesty for him to believe his daughter, but he calls the police anyhow.
Before the police get there, the actors talk about how they can’t believe Jason is still in there. Janet says how she’s the one who has had to live across the street from where his body has been buried while they all went to live their lives somewhere else.
When the police get there, bursting through the doors, they make the actors open the sarcophagus and — Oh. It doesn’t have a body inside. Instead, it is full of bricks.
Even the actors are shocked but try to play it off.
“Of course there isn’t a body in there!” they declare. “We knew there wouldn’t be!”
But they all look a bit panicked and when everyone else leaves, Danny says that the body was removed by the blackmailer who has been demanding money from them to keep the secret a secret.
The show must go on and the next night they are all on the stage, while the local TV station broadcasts it live.
Nancy, though, standing in the wings, knows what really has happened.
Jason Hall never died. He’s been alive this whole time and he’s the one who has been blackmailing all the actors and creating all the havoc at the theater. When George asks why, Nancy says it is because he’s been trying to end the performance. Once the theater was torn down and the sarcophagus uncovered, it would be clear he wasn’t really dead and had been blackmailing them all along.
When it is Nancy’s time to go out and they are all supposed to take a drink of champagne, Nancy smells something odd in the bottle and yells for them all not to drink it. She then demands Ned shut off all the lights and use the ultra-violet light on the audience. They see a man with glowing hands in the front row. He takes off up onto the stage and runs across it, but the actors and the police (where did they even come from?) catch the man. He is revealed to be none other than Jason Hall! Alive and well! Gasp!
Later the actors all share what really happened with Nancy, Carson, Ned and George. They say Jason tricked them all those years ago and took all the money from the investors for the play and the ticket sales. They found out before he could leave town. A violent argument ensued and Jason fell and hit his head, they say. They all thought they had killed him, but instead of calling the police (hello!!) they tossed him in the sarcophagus to pretend it never happened.
“At sometime, he must have recovered consciousness and gotten out of the sarcophagus, weighted it down with bricks, and then not realizing it we all came back to the theater after the performance and bricked it up,” Alex theorizes.
Everyone agrees that must have been what happened but no one expresses guilt at having shoved Jason’s body in the sarcophagus in the same place. Seth does express guilt at how they have all acted and how they went all cray cray about finding the body before anyone else.
The actors agree they will do the performance again, with no pretenses this time, and raise the money to have the theater torn down so the children’s house can be built.
By the way, when Jason was caught, the dude didn’t even get a line. Not one line. He just scowled at Nancy. I guess that was one way to cut down on how much he had to be paid. Another cost saving measure in this episode is how much was shot with a dark background since they were on a theater stage for much of it. Less lighting expense I suppose.
Everyone agrees at the end that Nancy is an amazing sleuth. She, however, is not an amazing actress, Thelma tells her.
The episode ends with everyone laughing at Nancy, which I thought was a bit called for since she’d been so mean to Ned the entire episode.
If you want to read some of the other episodes I’ve written about, there is a search bar to the right and you can just type in Hardy Boys or Nancy Drew.
Up next will be The Hardy Boys: The Mystery of the Flying Courier!
Lisa R. Howeler is a blogger, homeschool mom, and writes cozy mysteries.
You can find her Gladwynn Grant Mystery series HERE.
