Woody Allen Tonight: Part 2 of "Death Knocks" (from "Getting Even")

Tonight Nat Ackerman's drawing and discarding for his life.

NAT: You want to play a tenth of a cent a point to make it interesting?
DEATH: It's not interesting enough for you?
NAT: I play better when money's at stake.
DEATH: Whatever you say, Newt.
NAT: Nat. Nat Ackerman. You don't know my name?
DEATH: Newt, Nat -- I got such a headache.

-- from tonight's installment of "Death Knocks"

Last night, in our Part 1 of "Death Knocks," we met dress manufacturer Nat Ackerman near midnight in the bedroom of his two-story home in Kew Gardens, Queens, so absorbed reading his Daily News (headline: "NAB COEDS IN POT ORGY") that he fails to hear an intruder climbing up his drainpipe with a view toward making a dramatic entrance, which turns instead into a stumbling and gasping entrance. Death ("for it is no one else") lays out the situation for Nat: His time is up. When he insists, "It's the moment," Nat replies, "How can it be the moment? I just merged with Modiste Originals." Eventually Nat persuades Death -- who doesn't play chess but claims to be good at gin rummy -- to play a hand, bargaining for a chance to win a day's respite from his departure. Let the game begin! -- Ken


FOR PART 2 OF "DEATH KNOCKS," CLICK HERE


THURBER TONIGHT (including WOODY ALLEN, ROBERT BENCHLEY, BOB AND RAY, WILL CUPPY, WOLCOTT GIBBS, RING LARDNER, S. J. PERELMAN, JEAN SHEPHERD, and E. B. WHITE TONIGHT): Check out the series to date

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