The Machine That Played God

S01-E07 is an effective courtroom melodrama from behind the headlines: entering the new freeway from the exiting offramp and hitting an oncoming truck, wife and stepmother Anne Francis kills her ne'er-do-well husband and has to hire a lawyer. She's released on $5K bail but still has investigators suspicious: why was her husband drunk after leaving a bar and not she? And why was his seatbelt fastened but not hers (leaving her free to jump from the car)? Turns out Anne's hubby left behind a $100K insurance policy "with the usual double indemnity clause", while the polygraph test she takes (twice!) shows she's lying when she answers she's not suicidal. Breathy, exaggerated performances make this one enjoyable: Francis is a bundle of conflicting emotions, Gary Merrill is her busy-faced attorney, Malachi Throne is the no-nonsense prosecutor, Josephine Hutchinson is Anne's unyielding former mother-in-law, Mary Wickes is a sure-of-herself witness to the accident, and Morgan Mason is Anne's stepson. Good fun!