Mirror Image (The Twilight Zone)
"Mirror Image" is episode 21 of the American television anthology series The Twilight Zone. It aired on February 26, 1960 on CBS. Millicent Barnes waits in a bus depot in Marathon, New York, for a bus to Cortland, en route to a new job. Looking at a wall clock she notices, she asks the ticket agent when the bus will arrive, he gruffly complains that this is her third time asking. Millicent denies this. While speaking with the ticket agent, she notices a bag just like hers in the luggage pile behind her, she mentions this to the ticket agent. She does not believe this, she washes her hands in the restroom and the cleaning lady there insists this is her second time there. Again, Millicent denies this. Upon leaving the restroom, she glances in the mirror and sees, in addition to her reflection, an exact copy of herself sitting on the bench outside, she meets a young man from Binghamton named Paul Grinstead, waiting for the same bus. Millicent tells Paul about encountering her double. Paul, attempting to calm Millicent, says it is either a joke or a misunderstanding caused by a look-alike.
When the bus arrives and the two of them prepare to board, Millicent looks in the window and sees the copy of herself seated on the bus. In shock, she faints. Millicent lies unconscious on a bench inside the depot while Paul and the cleaning lady attend to her. Paul agrees to wait for the 7:00 bus. While they wait, now coming to, insists the strange events are caused by an evil double from a parallel world - a nearby, yet distant alternative plane of existence that comes into convergence with this world by powerful forces, or unnatural, unknown events; when this happens, the impostors enter this realm. Millicent's doppelgänger can survive in this world only by replacing her. Paul says the explanation is "a little metaphysical" for him, believes that Millicent's sanity is beginning to unravel. Paul tells Millicent he will call a friend in Tully who has a car and may be able to drive them to Syracuse. Instead, he calls the police. After Millicent is taken away by two policemen, Paul begins to settle himself.
After drinking from a water fountain, Paul notices. Looking up towards the doors, Paul notices another man running out the door of the bus depot. Pursuing this individual down the street, Paul discovers that he is chasing his own copy, whose face shows excited delight, his copy disappears as Paul calls out "Where are you?" while looking around in confusion and shock. Vera Miles as Millicent Barnes Martin Milner as Paul Grinstead Joe Hamilton as Ticket agent Naomi Stevens as Washroom Attendant In a short film pitching the Twilight Zone series to a Dutch television station, creator Rod Serling claimed to have gotten the idea for "Mirror Image" following an encounter at an airport. Serling noticed a man at the other side of the terminal who wore the same clothes and carried the same suitcase as himself. However, the man turned out to be younger and "more attractive"; this is one of several episodes from season one with its opening title sequence plastered over with the opening for season two. This was done during the Summer of 1961 as to help the season one shows fit in with the new look the show had taken during the following season.
This episode inspired Jordan Peele's 2019 film Us. DeVoe, Bill.. Trivia from The Twilight Zone. Albany, GA: Bear Manor Media. ISBN 978-1-59393-136-0 Grams, Martin.. The Twilight Zone: Unlocking the Door to a Television Classic. Churchville, MD: OTR Publishing. ISBN 978-0-9703310-9-0 "Mirror Image" on IMDb
The Chaser (The Twilight Zone)
"The Chaser" is episode 31 of the American television anthology series The Twilight Zone. Roger Shackleforth is in love with Leila, an aloof tease who plays cat-and-mouse with his affections. A stranger hands him the business card of an old professor named "A. Daemon", who can help with any problem, he visits Daemon, after some resistance, sells Roger a love potion for $1. Roger administers it in a glass of champagne, but soon her love becomes stifling. Roger returns to the professor to buy his "glove cleaner", for all of Roger's savings. Daemon cautions Roger that the "cleaner" is odorless and undetectable, but can only be tried once before the user loses his nerve. After Roger leaves, the professor muses, "First, the'stimulant'... and the'chaser'." When he gets home, Roger prepares a glass of champagne with the new potion. Just as he is about to give Leila the glass, she reveals that she is pregnant, which shocks Roger into dropping the glass, he tells himself he could not have gone through with it anyway.
On Roger's terrace, Daemon relaxes with a cigar, puffing smoke rings that turn into little hearts before the professor disappears. This episode was adapted by Jr. from the short story "The Chaser" by John Collier. The script was written for and produced live on television on The Billy Rose Television Theatre in 1951. In Serling: The Rise and Twilight of Television's Last Angry Man, the episode's director Douglas Heyes said, "That was one of the great things about The Twilight Zone. I had total freedom. Sometimes I would think of an idea that would make the episode more Twilight Zone-y that would require some expense. I remember one episode,'The Chaser', in which I devised a huge bookcase that must have doubled the budget, but never blinked an eye, they just said,'Okay, great!' I didn't have to argue with anybody over the money—they'd argue about the money and let me have it! I knew that they were having problems with Jim Aubrey. My responsibility was to get the job done." The short story was adapted in 1951 for Tales from the Crypt, where it was retitled "Loved to Death!!"
This was adapted in 1991 as "Loved to Death" for the HBO adult-horror anthology series Tales from the Crypt. The episode starred Mariel Hemingway; this is one of several episodes from Season One with its opening title sequence plastered over with the opening for Season Two. This was done during the summer of 1961, so that the repeats of season one episodes would fit in with the new look the show had taken during the following season; as aired, this was the final episode of the series with the original UPA "pit and summit" title sequence. List of The Twilight Zone episodes Sander, Gordon F.:Serling: The Rise And Twilight of Television's Last Angry Man. New York: Penguin Books, 1992. Zicree, Marc Scott: The Twilight Zone Companion. Sillman-James Press, 1982 DeVoe, Bill.. Trivia from The Twilight Zone. Albany, GA: Bear Manor Media. ISBN 978-1-59393-136-0 Grams, Martin.. The Twilight Zone: Unlocking the Door to a Television Classic. Churchville, MD: OTR Publishing. ISBN 978-0-9703310-9-0 "The Chaser" on IMDb "The Chaser" at TV.com
The Big Tall Wish
"The Big Tall Wish" is episode twenty-seven of the American television anthology series The Twilight Zone, with an original score by Jerry Goldsmith. It aired on April 8, 1960 on CBS. Bolie Jackson is a washed-up boxer, he is knocked down and just about to be counted out, when he magically switches places with the other boxer. Bolie is now standing over his vanquished opponent. Bolie celebrates his victory, he remembers being knocked down and has no memory of getting back up to win, nor can he figure out why his knuckles feel fine. His manager tells Bolie. Bolie figures. However, there is one other person. Henry Temple, the young son of Bolie's girlfriend Frances, not only remembers, he has an explanation for what happened. Henry tells Bolie that he made "the biggest, tallest wish" he could come up with for Bolie, for the two boxers to switch positions, it came true. Bolie cannot accept this. Henry warns him. If Bolie does not believe, the wish will not work, but he is unswayed. As soon as he rejects the idea that a wish could have been responsible for what happened, he is returned to the fight, on the canvas.
This time the referee finishes counting Bolie out. Neither Bolie nor Henry have any memory of the alternate outcome. Henry remembers making the biggest wish he could for Bolie, but it did not work, so he declares with resignation that he will not be making any more wishes. "There ain't no such thing as magic, is there?", he asks Bolie. "I guess Henry", Bolie replies sadly. "Or maybe...maybe there is magic. And maybe there's wishes, too. I guess the trouble is...there's not enough people around to believe..." Ivan Dixon as Bolie Jackson Stephen Perry as Henry Temple Kim Hamilton as Frances Temple Walter Burke as Joe Mizell Charles Horvath as Joey Consiglio Carl McIntire as Announcer The all-black principal cast was a novelty for television in 1960. Said Rod Serling at the time:Television, like its big sister, the motion picture, has been guilty of the sin of omission... Hungry for talent, desperate for the so-called'new face,' searching for a transfusion of new blood, it has overlooked a source of wondrous talent that resides under its nose.
This is the Negro actor. A few other Twilight Zones followed the example of this episode and cast blacks in significant roles, including the pastor in "I Am the Night—Color Me Black", with Ivan Dixon, a child in the mall in "The Night of the Meek", the electrician in "The Brain Center at Whipple's"; these inclusions, though insignificant by modern standards, were so revolutionary at the time that The Twilight Zone was awarded the Unity Award for Outstanding Contributions to Better Race Relations in 1961. Cast in the lead role was champion boxer Archie Moore, who exclaimed, "Man, I was in the Twilight Zone!" when describing the punch delivered by his opponent Yvon Durelle. This is one of several episodes from season one where some broadcast prints have the opening title sequence replaced with that of season two; this was done during the summer of 1961 to help the season one shows fit in with the new look the show had taken during the following season. They use the same hallway shown in this episode in "Mr. Bevis", episode 33, but altered.
However, the door and stair railings remain the same. The boxing match takes place at "St. Nick's Arena", the name of a boxing arena in New York City, the St. Nicholas Rink. Zircee, Marc Scott: The Twilight Zone Companion. Sillman-James Press, 1982 DeVoe, Bill.. Trivia from The Twilight Zone. Albany, GA: Bear Manor Media. ISBN 978-1-59393-136-0 Grams, Martin.. The Twilight Zone: Unlocking the Door to a Television Classic. Churchville, MD: OTR Publishing. ISBN 978-0-9703310-9-0 "The Big Tall Wish" on IMDb
A Stop at Willoughby
"A Stop at Willoughby" is episode 30 of the American television anthology series The Twilight Zone. Rod Serling cited this as his favorite story from the first season of the series. Gart Williams is a contemporary New York City advertising executive who has grown exasperated with his career, his overbearing boss, Oliver Misrell, angered by the loss of a major account, lectures him about this "push-push-push" business. Unable to sleep properly at home, he drifts off for a short nap on the train during his daily commute through the November snow, he wakes to find the train stopped and his car now a 19th-century railway car, deserted except for himself. The sun is bright outside, as he looks out the window, he discovers that the train is in a town called Willoughby and that it's July 1888, he learns that this is a "peaceful, restful place, where a man can slow down to a walk and live his life full measure." Being jerked back awake into the real world, he asks the conductor if he has heard of Willoughby, but the conductor replies, "Not on this run...no Willoughby on the line."
That night, he has another argument with his shrewish wife Jane. Selfish and uncaring, she makes him see that he is only a money machine to her, he tells her about his dream and about Willoughby, only to have her ridicule him as being "born too late", declaring it her "miserable tragic error" to have married a man "whose big dream in life is to be Huckleberry Finn." The next week, Williams again dozes off on the train and returns to Willoughby where everything is the same as before. As he is about to get off the train carrying his briefcase, the train begins to roll, returning him to the present. Williams promises himself to get off at Willoughby next time. Experiencing a breakdown at work, he calls his wife. On his way home, once again he falls asleep to find himself in Willoughby; this time, as the conductor warmly beckons him to the door, Williams intentionally leaves his briefcase on the train. Getting off the train, he is greeted by name by various inhabitants who welcome him while he tells them he's glad to be there and plans to stay and join their idyllic life.
The swinging pendulum of the station clock fades into the swinging lantern of a train engineer, standing over Williams' body. The 1960 conductor explains to the engineer that Williams "shouted something about Willoughby", before jumping off the train and was killed instantly. Williams' body is loaded into a hearse; the back door of the hearse closes to reveal the name of the funeral home: Son. The "Stamford" and the "Westport/Saugatuck" stops called out by the conductor in the episode exist in real life – Metro-North Railroad stops in Fairfield County, include Stamford and the Westport station serves the town of Westport, where series creator Rod Serling once lived. Gart Williams' home phone number of Capital 7-9899 is a legitimate telephone exchange in Westport. "Beautiful Dreamer", a popular song in Ohio at the time, can be heard being played by a band in the episode. The 2000 TV movie For All Time starring Mark Harmon was based on this episode. Willoughby, Ohio, is the only town with that name in all of the United States, but there is a street called'Willoughby Avenue' within the greater Hollywood area, only a few miles from the Sony Pictures Studios where nearly all Twilight Zone episodes were shot.
Willoughby, Ohio calls its annual neighborhood festival "Last Stop: Willoughby" in honor of the episode. One of the last episodes of Thirtysomething pays homage to this episode, it has the same title, in it Michael experiences a crisis similar to that of Williams, though it does not end tragically. The character Willoughby in Richard Linklater's Everybody Wants Some!!, is a Twilight Zone fanatic and owns every episode on VHS. He pays homage to the episode as he is 30 years old and skips from college to college under the false name of Willoughby so he can keep playing baseball and live the college lifestyle; the British electronic music outfit Funki Porcini sampled audio portions of “A Stop At Willoughby” on the song “The Deep” from their 1995 debut CD'Hed Phone Sex' on Shadow Records. In the TV series Stargate Atlantis episode, The Real World, Dr. Elizabeth Weir awakens in the Acute Care Unit of Willoughby State Hospital, a psychiatric hospital, she is told her memories of the last 2 years off-world was a fantasy and that she had imagined the Stargate project.
Matthew Weiner, creator of the TV series Mad Men, acknowledged the influence of The Twilight Zone on his work. Weiner said. List of The Twilight Zone episodes Zicree, Marc Scott: The Twilight Zone Companion. Sillman-James Press, 1982 DeVoe, Bill.. Trivia from The Twilight Zone. Albany, GA: Bear Manor Media. ISBN 978-1-59393-136-0 Grams, Martin.. The Twilight Zone: Unlocking the Door to a Television Classic. Churchville, MD: OTR Publishing. ISBN 978-0-9703310-9-0 "A Stop at Willoughby" on IMDb "A Stop at Willoughby" at TV.com
Rod Serling
Rodman Edward Serling was an American screenwriter, television producer, narrator known for his live television dramas of the 1950s and his science-fiction anthology TV series, The Twilight Zone. Serling was active in politics, both on and off the screen, helped form television industry standards, he was known as the "angry young man" of Hollywood, clashing with television executives and sponsors over a wide range of issues including censorship and war. Serling was born on December 1924, in Syracuse, New York, to a Jewish family, he was the second of two sons born to Samuel Lawrence Serling. Serling's father had worked as a secretary and amateur inventor before having children, but took on his father-in-law's profession as a grocer to earn a steady income. Sam Serling became a butcher after the Great Depression forced the store to close. Rod had Robert J. Serling, their mother was a homemaker. Serling spent most of his youth 70 miles south of Syracuse in the city of Binghamton after his family moved there in 1926.
His parents encouraged his talents as a performer. Sam Serling built a small stage in the basement, where Rod put on plays, his older brother, writer Robert, recalled that, at the age of six or seven, Rod entertained himself for hours by acting out dialogue from pulp magazines or movies he had seen. Rod talked to people around him without waiting for their answers. On a two-hour trip from Binghamton to Syracuse, the rest of the family remained silent to see if Rod would notice their lack of participation, he did not. In elementary school, Serling was seen as the class clown and dismissed by many of his teachers as a lost cause. However, his seventh-grade English teacher, Helen Foley, encouraged him to enter the school's public speaking extracurriculars, he was a speaker at his high school graduation. He began writing for the school newspaper, in which, according to the journalist Gordon Sander, he "established a reputation as a social activist", he was interested in sports and excelled at tennis and table tennis.
When he attempted to join the varsity football team, he was told. Serling was interested in writing at an early age, he was an avid radio listener interested in thrillers and horror shows. Arch Oboler and Norman Corwin were two of his favorite writers, he "did some staff work at a Binghamton radio station... tried to write... but never had anything published." He was accepted into college during his senior year of high school. However, the United States was involved in World War II at the time, Serling decided to enlist rather than start college after he graduated from Binghamton Central High School in 1943; as editor of his high school newspaper, Serling encouraged his fellow students to support the war effort. He wanted to leave school before graduation to join the fight but his civics teacher talked him into graduating. "War is a temporary thing," Gus Youngstrom told him. "It ends. An education doesn't. Without your degree, where will you be after the war?" Serling enlisted in the U. S. Army the morning after high school graduation, following his brother Robert.
Serling began his military career in 1943 at Camp Toccoa, under General Joseph May "Joe" Swing and Col. Orin D. "Hard Rock" Haugen and served in the 511th Parachute Infantry Regiment of the 11th Airborne Division. He reached the rank of Technician Fourth Grade. Over the next year of paratrooper training and others began boxing to vent aggression, he competed as a flyweight and had 17 bouts, rising to the second round of the division finals before being knocked out. He was remembered for berserker style and for "getting his nose broken in his first bout and again in last bout." He tried his hand with little success. On April 25, 1944, Serling saw that he was being sent west to California, he knew. This disappointed him. On May 5, his division headed to the Pacific, landing in New Guinea, where it would be held in reserve for a few months. In November 1944, his division first saw combat; the 11th Airborne Division would not be used as paratroopers, but as light infantry during the Battle of Leyte. It helped mop up after the five divisions.
For a variety of reasons, Serling was transferred to the 511th's demolition platoon, nicknamed "The Death Squad" for its high casualty rate. According to Sergeant Frank Lewis, leader of the demolitions squad, "He screwed up somewhere along the line, he got on someone's nerves." Lewis judged that Serling was not suited to be a field soldier: "he didn't have the wits or aggressiveness required for combat." At one point, Lewis and others were in a firefight, trapped in a foxhole. As they waited for darkness, Lewis noticed. Serling sometimes went exploring on his own, against orders, got lost. Serling's time in Leyte political views for the rest of his life, he saw death every day while in the Philippines, at the hands of his enemies and his allies, through freak accidents such as that which killed another Jewish private, Melvin Levy. Levy was delivering a comic monologue for the platoon as they rested under a palm tree when a food crate was dropped from a plane above, decapitating him. Serling placed a Star of David over his grave.
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The After Hours
"The After Hours" is episode thirty-four of the American television anthology series, The Twilight Zone. It aired on June 10, 1960, on CBS; the opening narration involves Marsha White riding an elevator to the ninth floor. The rest of the narration is heard. Marsha White, browsing for a gift for her mother in a department store, decides on a gold thimble, she is taken by the elevator man to the ninth floor, although the elevator's floor indicator only shows eight floors. She enters the ninth floor and turns to complain to the elevator operator that there is nothing there, but the door closes abruptly, leaving her to ponder her situation. Upon ringing a buzzer for service, she is approached by a saleslady who guides her to the only item on the floor: the exact gold thimble that Marsha wants. During the sales transaction, she grows puzzled by the comments and actions of both the male elevator operator who transported her to the barren deserted floor, the aloof and clairvoyant female salesclerk behind the counter who addresses her by name and sells her the thimble.
The sales lady asks Marsha. The sales lady appears surprised and insulted, Marsha leaves; as Marsha rides the elevator down, she notices that the thimble is dented. When she tries to convince Mr. Armbruster, the sales supervisor, Mr. Sloan, the store manager, that she bought the item on the ninth floor, she is told that the store doesn't have a ninth floor, she has no evidence of the transaction as she paid cash, has no receipt. Marsha spots the back of the salesclerk who sold her the thimble, is shocked to discover that the woman is not a salesclerk at all. While resting in an office following her frightening discovery, Marsha finds herself accidentally locked inside the closed store, she attempts to find a way out and becomes alarmed by mysterious voices calling to her and by some subtle movements made by the lifeless mannequins around her. Moving about aimlessly, she topples the sailor mannequin, whom she recognizes as the somewhat frustrated elevator operator in earlier encounters. Becoming hysterical, she flees backward to the now-open elevator, which again transports her to the unoccupied ninth floor.
There she realizes that the "ninth floor" is a storage area occupied by thinking, animated mannequins. With the mannequins' gentle encouragement, she realizes that she herself is a mannequin. Within their society, the mannequins take turns, one at a time, to live among the humans for one month. Marsha had enjoyed her stay among "the outsiders" so much that she had forgotten her identity and has arrived back a day late. Now that she has returned, the next mannequin in line — the female salesclerk — departs the store to live among the humans for 30 days; as the other mannequins bid farewell to the salesclerk, the sailor asks Marsha if she had enjoyed her time among the humans. Sweetly and sadly, she replies, "Ever so much fun... So much fun." She and the sailor assume "mannequin" postures, grow rigid. The next day, Mr. Armbruster is making his energetic morning rounds on the sales floor and does a double-take upon passing the mannequin of Marsha White on display; the final shot moves in on her, her face, which fades into the stars as the closing narration begins.
The head of the mannequin double for Anne Francis was made from a cast of Francis' face done by noted make-up artist William J. Tuttle. Tuttle displayed the mannequin head in the 1968 MGM short film "The King of the Duplicators"; the episode was remade in 1986 for The New Twilight Zone. It starred Terry Farrell as Ann Wedgeworth as the Saleswoman; the plot is similar. In addition, the Marsha in the remake is in denial of her identity and doesn't want to be a mannequin, she wants to be human, unlike the Marsha in the original, who forgot who she was and enjoyed feeling human for the month in which she lived among the outsiders. In 2008, the original episode was adapted as a graphic novel, "Rod Serling's The Twilight Zone: The After Hours", by Mark Kneece and Rebekah Isaacs. DeVoe, Bill.. Trivia from The Twilight Zone. Albany, GA: Bear Manor Media. ISBN 978-1-59393-136-0 Grams, Martin.. The Twilight Zone: Unlocking the Door to a Television Classic. Churchville, MD: OTR Publishing. ISBN 978-0-9703310-9-0 "The After Hours" on IMDb "The After Hours" at TV.com
