Appearing as Allen Gebhart

Broadcast 28 October 1984 on the CBS television network.

Synopsis by curator@jmdigitalscrapbook.com:

When Jessica (Angela Lansbury) learns that sleazy producer Jerry Lydecker (John Saxon) is producing a dreadfully sensationalized movie version of her book The Corpse that Danced at Midnight , she is incensed. She immediately flies to Los Angeles to see what she can do to stop the production.

Battling her way past studio executives and officious security guards, Jessica makes her way onto the set and finally arranges to have a meeting with Lydecker to try to reason with him. They end up having a nasty argument and Jessica storms from his office.

When she learns that the contract she signed with her publisher gives Lydecker full rights to make whatever he changes he chooses, Jessica realizes she is in the wrong and goes to Lydecker to apologize, only to discover his dead body among the tombstones of the graveyard set.

Now Jessica and Lt. Hernandez (Jose Perez) must discover whodunnit. Was it second-rate actress Eve Crystal (Melissa Sue Anderson), for whom Lydecker was a Svengali, pushing and driving her to succeed; recovering alcoholic screenwriter Allen Gebhart (James MacArthur), who objected vehemently to Lydecker's rewrites of his script and pay cuts and who threatened Lydecker in Jessica's presence; has-been director Ross Haley (John Astin), desperately seeking a comeback but chafing under Lydecker's heavy-handed and brutal management; costume designer Marta Quintessa (Samantha Eggar), Lydecker's ex-lover; untalented but good-looking hunk actor Scott Bennett (Morgan Stevens), whom Lydecker was planning to fire from the picture, thus ending his career for good; or even Jessica herself, whose motive is every bit as good as those of the others?

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