In the spring of 1952, 18-year-old Pete Darling lands his first professional acting job on a TV show done live and starring elegant matinee idol Gerald Manley, still going strong at 61. Actually, the star gives a wan and lifeless performance, while his wife, Cass, 21, a gorgeous model, shows what a model wife she is by flirting with every male in sight.
Pete steals the show as a comical office boy. That night, too excited to sleep, he savors his success. He has never thought of himself as leading man material. But now-why not? Hamlet. Henry the Fifth. Stanley Kowalski in Streetcar. Nah, he tells himself. Too short, too nutsy looking.
He shivers. Ambition vaults over common sense, and doubt shrivels into dust. Maybe the reality, the real reality, is that he has boundless talent in a world of boundless possibilities.
Too true. The next morning, he becomes a murder suspect. After watching a kinescope of the show, the detectives agree that Pete's performance was taut, luminous and compelling. The kid will go far-maybe even to the chair.
Enter reporter Ster Brewster of the rowdy New York Daily Express. Ster is one well-dressed man about town, with his fedora brushed till it purrs. Mid-forties and divorced, but about as lonely as a porch light on a summer night. He covers the case with glee; almost every day presents him with a different angle, another Page One story.
The Tea Scene Was Murder, as told by a retired reporter who says he prefers being inspired to being expired, is by turns humorous, poignant and suspenseful. As the case unfolds, Pete and Ster face multiple challenges-particularly when each of them falls for Cass and her seductive ways.