The Disappearance

If this story from The Big Valley seems familiar to you it is probably because you recall the film So Long At The Fair from the United Kingdom. In that one brother and sister David Tomlinson and Jean Simmons go on holiday to the Paris Exposition and Tomlinson goes missing. Simmons spends the rest of the film looking for her brother and trying to convince everyone else there really is a brother.

When Barbara Stanwyck and Linda Evans stop at a town and Evans goes to her hotel room feeling tired from the trip things seem as they should be. Except that everyone in the town after a spell tells Stanwyck she traveled to their fair metropolis by herself. Stanwyck spends the rest of the episode proving she's not in the Twilight Zone and looking for her abducted daughter.

If you've seen So Long At The Fair you know how this comes out. Of course Linda Evans is back for next week's episode. This is one of Barbara Stanwyck's best acted episodes from The Big Valley. She gets some able assistance from another big screen legend Lew Ayres playing an old and somewhat dissolute sheriff who develops a conscience about what's going on.