The Identity Zone

by E. Alan Meece
UU Band of Writers
Band of Writers Essays by Eric Meece
prompt: Are you prompt, or are you late?
June 1, 2023

"August" was the assigned prompt for our Band of Writers meeting in Sept. 2021. I chose to write about August Dalgran, a character from a Perry Mason episode called The Counterfeit Crank, from among several other famous people named August. The month of August was named after one of these other people, Emperor Augustus of Rome. The name means someone who is revered, or held in high regard, or solemn and dignified. But I thought more of the story in this Perry Mason episode needed to be told. August Dalgran was played by Otto Kruger, who was both born and died on September 6th. The date of my essay just happened to be September 5th. It also just happened that soon after watching this episode in May 2023, Jeopardy featured a category about people named after months.

I like to write about these little twilight zone-like synchronicities. It happened that this episode came around again on MeTV and I watched it in the middle of May 2023. Right afterward I saw a Twilight Zone episode entitled "Person or Persons Unknown", in which a man woke up without his identity. I thought too that this episode seemed unfinished and that more of the story could be told. So I was prompted to finish it.

But it's too late for anyone to be prompted to read my essay about August again now. My essay didn't get that much interest originally, anyway. But I like the story of The Counterfeit Crank, one of my favorite Perry Mason episodes. So I will briefly review it again, and tell a little about how I finished the story. Today I see that In fact one review at the IMDB website on The Case of the Counterfeit Crank said that more should have been told about the characters and the plot.

In May 1962 (I also conceived this band of writers essay in May), August Dalgran was a generous man, the elderly owner of a successful real estate firm, and he gave away a lot of his money. Because his firm was in financial and legal trouble, his partners Jay Fenton and Don Morley refused some Christmas cash that he offered them (in May, strangely enough), so he threw the cash out of the office window into the busy street below, causing a disturbance for which he was arrested. He pretended to be going crazy as his defense, but then pleaded guilty, saying he thought it was OK to give away his own money if he felt like it. I liked that quote from the show, and also August's statement to Perry that with the world as crazy as it is, was there any doubt that he was "the only one who was sane?". He thought his nephew Kenneth, whom he had helped, was a fine boy, and the young man pretended to be grateful and loyal. But in fact the nephew cooked up a scheme to declare his uncle incompetent so he could take over ownership of the company.

Left to right: Otto Kruger as August Dalgran, Don Dubbins as Kenneth Dalgran, and John Larkin as Jay Fenton
(The 3 principle characters: Perry Mason's august client, the murder victim, and the killer)

August's partners wanted August to sell the land which he was planning to turn into a new city, his fondest dream. When he found out that his nephew, who was appointed his conservator, was selling the land against his fervent wishes, he threatened to kill his nephew and escaped from the sanitarium his nephew had put him in. Kenneth was plotting with Jay Fenton to take over the land and sell it, but Kenneth alone knew the land was very valuable as the site for proposed defense plants, so he planned to inherit it. But Jay objected to his plan to kill August to do this, so they quarrelled and struggled, the proverbial "gun went off", and Kenneth died; but it was August who was charged with his nephew's murder. The apparently not-so-august August tried to defend himself by pretending to be crazy again, but Perry uncovered the truth. Kenneth's wife Sandra had already been carrying on an affair with August's partner Don Morley, and they became August's new partners as the story ends.

Connie Hines as Sandra, and Michael King as Don Morley

Or does it? As I continued the story in my Band of Writers essay, the once-again very-august August Dalgran lived to see his thriving new city built in the Cold War days of the mid-1960s. His partners married and had a son named Don Junior. By the time August died in the mid-70s, the Cold War was starting to wind down. Then in 1989 it ended, and the city's fortunes declined. By then Don Senior had become something of a crank himself, and gave away a lot of his money. Naturally, like Kenneth Dalgran before him, Don Jr. worried that not much would be left of his inheritance due to his father's cranky and generous ways and the city's decline.

So Don Junior hatched his own scheme to steal his father's money and sell his property. Instead of plotting to kill his father, Don Junior tried to drive him crazy. This didn't work, but his son's disloyalty disturbed him and finally drove him to an early death in the late 1990s. Unfortunately, Senior had become so mad at his son that he had already disinherited him, willing all his money and property to his own wife Sandra instead. This drove Junior crazy instead of Senior, and he committed suicide.

Then Sandra sold the declining city to Greenpeace, and the organization inherited her money too. Dalgran City became a green city, dedicated to peace and ecology instead of war, and every Christmas and every May they celebrate their august founder August Dalgran's generosity by inviting everyone to throw some cash out of their window.

Note: This is the only Perry Mason appearance for Burt Reynolds, who would later star for one season in the television series "Dan August"...MikeM. 2/2/2017

So right after watching The Counterfeit Crank, I saw one of my favorite Twilight episodes, also originally aired in 1962, called Person or Persons Unknown. David Gurney, played by Richard Long, wakes up with a hangover, but his wife sleeping next to him no longer recognizes him. Then he goes to work, but his associates suddenly don't know him anymore either. When he demands to be seated at his work desk, he is thrown out of the office. He continues to assert his identity to his doctor, and to his Mom, to no avail, but then finds a photo of himself with his real wife. But when the doctor arrives with the police, his wife has vanished from the photo. Finally he wakes up and discovers this has all been a nightmare. But then he turns to his wife in bed, and HE doesn't recognize HER.

David Gurney in Person or Persons Unknown

This is a great Twilight Zone-type twist, but it's really unsatisfying. So, then what? I could imagine about 4 or 5 possibilities. The first one is easy. He soon wakes up again, and all is well again; his real wife has returned to his bed and recognizes him. But Rod Serling's closing words say that his search may never end! So that implies it won't be so easily resolved. So how should the search continue?
1. His wife goes to work, and we follow her search, but she finds that no-one recognizes her either. Maybe she never wakes up again, or maybe she does. But where is David's real wife? That remains unresolved too.
2. So instead of searching for his own identity again, David Gurney goes out in search of his real wife, but none of her friends know her anymore. So he comes back home, and suddenly his real wife is there again waiting for him, but now she doesn't recognize him again. David returns to his futile search for identity, The cycle goes on indefinitely.
3. What is personal identity anyway? Maybe everyone they meet suddenly forgets their identity too, and everything is fine anyway; since everyone is God.
4. Maybe like in one of my other essays where I tell a Twilight Zone-like story, husband and his two wives are really dead, and they don't realize it yet, and that's why no-one recognizes them anymore. All three of them discover they have entered the Other Side in a whole different world.
5. OR, maybe they have been whisked away by ETs to another earth-like planet, as happened in another Twilight Zone episode where a couple wakes up hung-over after a drinking party, just as David and his wife did in this episode.

How would you finish this story?

Best of luck finding your own august identity. Keep the Spirit alive.