Twilight Zone Companion (47 page)

Devil is having such a good time making these events occur that hes no longer at all concerned about whether the young man is happy or not. Our hero decides that the Devil must be gotten rid of. With the aid of a lovely blonde reporter whos come from New York to interview him and with whom hes fallen in love he lures the Devil away from the press long enough to feed in a story that includes the Devil returning to Hell, his father escaping to Heaven, the newspaper office disappearing, and himself getting a job as a reporter on a large metropolitan newspaper. All of these things come to pass, but he suddenly realizes something: he forgot to mention the lady reporter. He finds her working for the same paper, but things have changed ( Dont you remember, honey? You were doing me a favor, coaxing the devil to buy you a few drinks …It was there in her eyes. She could have been staring at an escaped orangoutang). Dejectedly, he realizes that he should have left things just as they were. It wasnt very peaceful, he says, but so what. I ask you, so what?

In adapting the story, Beaumont removed the character of the lady reporter and changed the astonishing headlines to merely sensational ones: murders, robberies, fires, and the like. This had the effect of reducing Printers Devil to a fairly run of the mill deal-with-the-Devil story. One of the few positive changes was the more appropriate title: printers devil is a term that applies to a printers apprentice or errand boy.

The best thing about the show, however, and the thing that saves it, is Merediths bravura performance as Mr. Smith. With his hair cut in a widows peak, his eyebrows pointing slightly upward, a twisted cigar in his mouth, he certainly looks the part. He is a grinning, leering Devil, full of subtleties. His interpretation goes well beyond the lines.

The problem was to get him so that he was witty [while] still being menacing, Meredith says of the characterization, and charming without losing his danger. I think it was a rich part. You know, you cant do anything if the possibilities are not there.

I remember going to Wardrobe the day that Burgess came in for wardrobe, recalls the episodes director, Ralph Senensky (Star Trek, The Waltons, etc.), and that was a revelation, to watch this man, because he stood in front of the mirror and put on all the possibilities and he just changed. He put on different items and you could see that he was feeling whether that would work for him. Im sure that most of the wardrobe, in black and white, didnt really register, but it was important to him, because he drew from it and it was just a part of his putting together the character.

One item Meredith had to wear definitely was not his idea. In an early scene, Smith, lacking a match to light his cigarette, snaps his fingers and one of them bursts into flame. They had him wired, explains Ralph Senensky. There was a wire that went onto a battery and ran up his pant leg through his shirt to his hand. Then they stuck his finger into a coffee can of ice water. It would just get good and cold. They poured lighter fluid over it and then, when he did this [snaps his fingers], they would hit the switch, the spark would ignite it, and the lighter fluid would burn. The finger was literally a step from being frozen, so that it wouldnt hurt. Unlike the original story, in Printers Devil it is the main character not his fatherwho makes the deal with the Devil. A high point in the episode comes when Smith, having saved the paper, confronts Winter and lays his cards on the table:

smith: Now first of all, I should like to ask whether or not youre happy with the way things have been going.

winter: Just what are you leading up to, Mr. Smith?

smith: A simple proposition. I hereby guarantee understand? guaranteethat you will become the most successful newspaper editor in the world, if you will affix your signature to this little document. (Hands the document to him)

winter (Reading): I, Douglas Winter, agree to relinquish my immortal soul to the bearer upon my death, in exchange for his services. (Starts to laugh) Youre the Devil!

smith (Laughs): Mr. Winter, as a sophisticated, intelligent twentiety-century man, you know that the Devil does not exist. True?

winter: True.

smith: But you also know that the world is full of eccentric, rich old men, crazy old men who do all kinds of things for crazy reasons. Now, why dont you think of me like that? Heres a pen. (Hands it to him)

winter: This is ridiculous!

smith (Chuckling): Yes, isnt it … You dont really believe Im the Devil, do you?

winter: No.

smith: Well then, why dont you put it this way.

Youre humoring me. After all, what good is

the soul, anyway? Its sort of like an appendix these days, particularly since it doesnt exist in the first place.

winter:

smith:

winter:

smith:

winter:

smith:

winter:

smith:

winter:

SMITH

WINTER

Well, just for the sake of argument, why do you want mine}

Well, for the sake of argument, lets say Im something of a connoisseur. You have a very choice soul, and as the vintners sayits a good year.

Well then again, just for sake of argument, why dont you just take it? Now, if youre the Devil, as you say you are, well you can do everything.

Unhappily, not everything. I am bound by certain rules, and I do have my limitations.

Youre nuts.

Yes, lets drink to that. I think I should warn you, however, that if you do not sign this, then the certain gloomy predictions you made about the Courier’s future will certainly come to pass. Ill have to resign, andWell, lets not even consider such a proposition. After all, you dont want to go visiting that bridge again, do you?

Hardly.

No. Now, why not humor an old man? It would mean such a lot to me. And if you dont sign it, it would be admitting fear and belief. Youre not afraid, are you?

No. {He raises the pen to sign, then hesitates)

{Taunting): Fancy thata grownup man who believes in the Devil!

CAngrily): This stupid thing! {He signs furiously) There. Now lets not hear any more about this, shall we?

In handling the striking of the bargain in this fashion, Printers Devil avoids all the cliches. Beaumont has done it so cleverly, says Ralph

Senensky, because the Devil tricks him into doing it, predicated not on that he believes, but that he cant be foolish enough to believe. Its a marvelous approach.

Senensky has a final recollection regarding Printers Devil, one that seems particularly apt. On that last confrontation between Smith and Doug, I shot the master, shot the two closeups, and with this whole soundstage full of people we didnt know until we went to the dailies the next day that this strange little man from the printing house that we had borrowed equipment from, who had been around observing, was standing back in the doorway, over Bob Sterlings shoulder. Nobody had seen him, including the operator, who sat and looked at this long closeup, never saw him. We went to the dailies and there he was, just as big as life. It almost seemed ghostlikehe looked like a ghost! So we had to do pickups of that shot.

NO TIME LIKE THE PAST (3/7/63)

Written by Rod Serling

Producer: Herbert Hirschman

Director: Justus Addiss

Director of Photography: Robert W. Pittack

Music: stock

Cast: Paul Driscoll: Dana Andrews Abigail Sloan: Patricia Breslin Harvey: Robert F. Simon Japanese Police Captain:James Yagi Lusitania Captain: Tudor Owen Bartender: Lindsay Workman Prof. Eliot: Malcolm Atterbury Mrs. Chamberlain:Marjorie Bennett Hanford: Robert Cornthwaithe Horn Player: John Zaremba

Exit one Paul Driscoll, a creature of the twentieth century. He puts to a test a complicated theorum of space-time continuum, but he goes a step further or tries to. Shortly, he will seek out three moments of the past in a desperate attempt to alter the present one of the odd and fanciful functions in a shadowland known as the Twilight Zone.

Sick to death of the constant threat of nuclear obliteration in the modern world, Driscoll utilizes a time machine in order to change past events. He soon finds, however, that it isnt as simple as he had thought: a Japanese police captain steadfastly refuses to believe that Hiroshima is about to have an atom bomb dropped on it; his assassination attempt on Adolf Hitler is foiled when a German maid summons the Gestapo; and the captain of the Lusitania rejects his claims that the ship is going to be torpedoed as the ravings of a lunatic. Driscoll returns to his own time, convinced that the present cant be changed. Frustrated, he decides to escape into an idyllic past. He uses the time machine to transport him back to Homeville, Indiana, on July 1, 1881. Finding the town lovely and serene, he checks into the local boardinghouse and meets Abigail Sloan, an attractive schoolteacher. Driscoll intends to stay, and is determined not to interfere with events; when he realizes that President Garfield is shortly to be assassinated, he keeps mum. All goes well for two days, but then Driscoll refers to a book of Midwestern history hes brought along with him and discovers that a kerosene lantern is about to be thrown from a runaway wagon, setting Abigails school building afire and seriously injuring twelve children. Driscoll feels compelled to intervene. Seeing Professor Eliots medicine wagon near the school, he pleads with Eliot to unhitch the horses. When Eliot refuses, he tries forcibly to unhitch them himself. Eliot, in trying to knock Driscoll away with his whip, frightens the horses and they run out of control. The lamp is thrown from the wagon and the school burns. In trying to stop the fire, Driscoll has caused it. Driscoll bids Abby farewell, telling her that he can be no part of her world. He returns to the present, content to leave the yesterdays aloneand determined to work on changing the tomorrows.

Incident on a July afternoon, 1881. A man named Driscoll who came and went and, in the process, learned a simple lesson, perhaps best said by a poet named Lathbury, who wrote, Children of yesterday, heirs of tomorrow, what are you weaving? Labor and sorrow? Look to your looms again, faster and faster fly the great shuttles prepared by the master. Lifes in the loom, room for itroom! Tonights tale of clocks and calendarsin the Twilight Zone.

Time travel was a subject that repeatedly fascinated Serling. With No Time Like the Past, he again explored the potentials. Unfortunately, the story is chock full of illogic and dramatic cheats. Driscoll arrives in Hiroshima only six hours before it is bombed. Even if his warnings were believed, they would accomplish no more than a futile, hysterical prelude to the horror to come. As it turns out, he gets to the police chief of Hiroshima only minutes before the blast. In spite of this, he delivers his forecast, which he claims comes from the Voice of History. In another scene, Driscoll is in a hotel room, kneeling by a window, looking through

the telescopic sight of a high-powered rifle. Through the sight we see Adolf Hitler. The year is 1939, the place Germany. Driscoll aims and slowly squeezes the trigger. Click. It was just a test run.

This is the worst kind of cheat. No assassin in his right mind would get his intended victim centered in the cross hairs of his rifle without intending to fire. He would know that he might not get a second chance as indeed Driscoll does not.

Despite a few bright moments, such as when Driscoll argues with a belligerent Homeville resident over nineteenth-century American military policy, No Time Like the Past fails to present a thoughtful, speculative story. Some months after its broadcast Serling summed it up quite succinctly like this: On Twilight Zone … weve run the time travel theme to death …

I DREAM OF GENIE (3/21/63)

Written by John Furia, Jr.

Producer: Herbert Hirschman

Director: Robert Gist

Director of Photography:George T. Clemens

Music: Fred Steiner

Cast: George P. Hanley: Howard Morris Ann: Patricia Barry Roger: Mark Miller Genie: Jack Albertson Watson: Loring Smith Starlet: Joyce Jameson Masters: James Millhollin Clerk: Robert Ball Patricia Barry and Howard Morris Sam: Bob Hastings

Meet Mr. George P. Hanley, a man life treats without deference, honor or success. Waiters serve his soup cold. Elevator operators close doors in his face. Mothers never bother to wait up for the daughters he dates. George is a creature of humble habits and tame dreams. He’s an ordinary man, Mr. Hanley, but at this moment the accidental possessor of a very special gift, the kind of gift that measures men against their dreams, the kind of gift most of us might ask for first and possibly regret to the last, if we, like Mr. George P. Hanley, were about to plunge head-first and unaware into our own personal Twilight Zone.

Searching for a birthday present for Ann, an attractive secretary at the office where he works as a bookkeeper, George is suckered into buying a tarnished Arabian lamp for twenty dollars. When Roger, a handsome, aggressive coworker, gives Ann a revealing negligee, George is too embarrassed to present his own gift. Feeling very much the sap, he takes the lamp home and tries to shine it up with a rag. Suddenly, a genie appears speaking in modern slang and wearing modern clothes (with the exception of his curl-toe shoes). George is allowed only one wish, so he must ponder it carefully. The genie returns to the lamp to give George time to think it over. At first, wishing for love appeals to him. He fantasizes being married to Ann, now become a movie star. Unfortunately, shes so famous and busy that she has no time for him and then he discovers that shes having an affair with Roger, her leading man! The next day at work, he daydreams about wishing for great wealth. He is G. Peter Hanley, magnanimous industrialist. Ann is his secretary, Roger his chauffeur. Filled to the brim with charity, he gives a bedraggled newsboy a hundred dollar bill for a paper. But when he tries to donate $1,200,000 to his alma mater, his gesture is labeled ostentatious and when he decides to stop buying things hes called subversive! Clearly, wealth is not the answer. Finally, George imagines what it would be like to wish for power. He is George P Hanley, President of the United States. When Ann, now an elderly mother, pleads mercy for her son, who is about to be hanged for falling asleep on guard duty, George grants the boy a pardon. But then Roger, a four-star general, barges in with a group of presidential advisors. Alien spaceships have been sighted on radar; George must decide whether to shoot them out of the sky or let them land and risk possible invasion. The responsibility is too great, George cant decide and power isnt the answer, either. But George has decided on his wish at last. Later, a bum fishes the lamp from a trash can and rubs it tentatively with a rag. A genie appears, dressed in turban and traditional Arabian garb. This genie offers three wishes and his name is George P. Hanley!