The Bat

The debut episode of the NBC anthology series "The Dow Hour of Great Mysteries," broadcast live on March 31, 1960 and preserved as a kinescope. Hosted by Joseph N. Welch — the Boston lawyer famous for the Army–McCarthy hearings — this elaborately staged television version of the 1920 Avery Hopwood and Mary Roberts Rinehart play stars Helen Hayes as spinster Cornelia Van Gorder, who rents a rambling country mansion where a fortune in stolen securities is believed to be hidden. A sinister criminal known only as "The Bat" stalks the corridors, determined to find the money first. Jason Robards Jr. and Margaret Hamilton round out the cast of one of television's most lavish live productions of its era, adapted from one of the archetypal "old dark house" mysteries.