Task: Story Composition
Input (English): Fact1: police arrive at top-floor apartment of Joe Adams, Fact2: Adams begins recollection of events leading up to this beginning with first chance encounter with Jo Ann, Fact3: story unfolds in series of flashbacks and even, Fact4: Jo Ann what told him about life, Fact5: Joe At gets to know Charlene bar
Output (English): A dead man tumbles down a flight of stairs. When the police arrive at the topfloor apartment of Joe Adams Henry Fonda, he shoots at them through the door. The sheriff calls in reinforcements and sets up snipers on nearby rooftops. Adams, in his room, begins a recollection of the events leading up to this, beginning with his first chance encounter with Jo Ann Barbara Bel Geddes, who works in a flower shop. It turns out they had been raised in the same orphanage. The story unfolds in a series of flashbacks, and even a flashback within a flashback, as Joe recalls what Jo Ann told him about her life before they met. Finding her behavior suspicious, he follows her to a nightclub where Maximilian the Great Vincent Price is performing a magic act on stage. At the bar, Joe gets to know Charlene Ann Dvorak, who recently quit as Maxs assistant. Max claims to be Jo Anns longlost father. She was picked out of the audience one night by Charlene and brought on stage to take part in the act, then continued a relationship. Jo Ann fiercely denies to Joe, however, that Max is related to her. In fact, she insists that she had to physically fend off Maxs romantic advances to her. The two women have feelings for Joe but leave him mystified, particularly when both appear to have received exactly the same brooch from Max as a gift. Jo Ann naively believes that hers is a rare antique that once belonged to Montezumas daughter. The more worldlywise Charlene suggests she believed Maxs line at first too, but she now has a whole display card of them marked at a price of 85 cents each. He is not sure whom to trust, and when Max comes to his apartment to kill him, Joe shoots first, sending Max falling to his death. When Max first arrives at Joes shabby boarding house room, he demands that he leave Jo Ann alone. In the ensuing argument Joe pushes Max halfway out of the window but cannot bring himself to kill his rival. Max observes that it is not so easy to kill a man, and shows Joe the pistol he brought with the intention of shooting him. Max, who has always been pretentiously snobbish, begins to taunt Joe. He tells him that he thinks Joe is beneath him, and then begins to insinuate that he and Jo Ann had a sexual relationship. Joe becomes enraged and shoots Max. Police are about to smoke him out with tear gas when Jo Ann arrives. She manages to talk Joe into giving himself up, promising to wait for him if he is sent away to prison. Joe had considered himself friendless, but most of the assembled crowd, including Joes coworker and neighbor Bill Pulanski, and Frank Dunlap, a blind man who lives in the neighborhood, support him.