"Uncle Simon"

 

Robby the Robot in "Uncle Simon"

“Uncle Simon”
Season Five, Episode 128
Original Air Date: November 15, 1963
 
Cast:
Uncle Simon: Sir Cedric Hardwicke
Barbara Polk: Constance Ford
Schwimmer: Ian Wolfe
Robot: Dion Hansen (voiced by Vic Perrin)
 
Crew:
Writer: Rod Serling
Director: Don Siegel
Producer: Bert Granet
Director of Photography: Robert Pittack, a.s.c.
Production Manager: Ralph W. Nelson
Art Direction: George W. Davis and Walter Holscher
Film Editor: Thomas W. Scott
Set Decoration: Henry Grace and Robert R. Benton
Assistant Director: Charles Bonniwell, Jr.
Casting: Patricia Rose
Music: Stock
Sound: Franklin Milton and Philip N. Mitchell
Mr. Serling’s Wardrobe: Eagle Clothes
Filmed at MGM Studios

And Now, Mr. Serling:

“Next on The Twilight Zone, the distinguished Sir Cedric Hardwicke lends us his considerable talent along with the very accomplished Constance Ford. They appear in what can most aptly be described as one of the shockers on our schedule. The play is called ‘Uncle Simon,’ and this, we submit, is a relative you’ve never met before. It’s a story with a final curtain I doubt anyone can predict. Next on Twilight Zone, ‘Uncle Simon.’”

Rod Serling’s Opening Narration:

“Dramatis Personae: Mr. Simon Polk, a gentleman who has lived out his life in a gleeful rage. And the young lady who’s just beat the hasty retreat is Mr. Polk’s niece, Barbara. She has lived her life as if each ensuing moment she had a dentist appointment. There is yet a third member of the company soon to be seen. He now resides in the laboratory and he is the kind of character found only in the Twilight Zone.”

Summary:

Barbara Polk has lived with her elderly uncle, Simon, a cruel and viscerally unpleasant person, for the past twenty-five years. His only living relative, Barbara will inherit Simon’s fortune when he dies. Barbara acts as Simon’s caretaker and essentially his maid, cooking his meals, preparing him hot chocolate, cleaning his enormous house, and is rewarded with pointed insults. She is kept alive by the hope that eventually he will die.

When he is not berating his niece, Simon spends his free time tinkering in his basement laboratory in which Barbara is not allowed. One day she finds it unlocked and sneaks in to quell her curiosity. Simon catches her and an altercation ensues. After a verbal back and forth on the stairs Simon raises his cane in anger and Barbara snatches it out of his hands, causing her uncle to lose his balance and tumble down the stairs. Simon uses his final moments to ask for help but Barbara declines and instead watches him die.

After Simon’s death, Barbara is visited by his attorney, Mr. Schwimmer, to settle the estate. Schwimmer informs her that she will inherit her uncle’s entire fortune on the condition that she continue to reside in the house. She is also tasked with being the guardian to her uncle’s final creation. Barbara and Schwimmer venture to Simon’s laboratory where they find a robot hidden in a closet. The robot informs them that it will learn and develop its own personality as it progresses. Schwimmer informs Barbara that he will pay her weekly visits to insure that the robot is properly cared for.

Days later, Barbara, looking considerably happier, is getting ready to go out for the night when the robot asks her to fix a cup of hot chocolate, Simon’s favorite. Barbara is terrified.

Later, she tries to enter the laboratory but the robot stops her at the bottom of the basement stairway, claiming that the room belongs to him and that she is not allowed inside. While berating her with insults the robot’s voice morphs into the voice of her late uncle. In a moment reminiscent of the death of her uncle, Barbara pushes the robot down the stairs, breaking its leg.

A few weeks later, Schwimmer stops by the house. Barbara is back in the same frumpy clothes she wore to tend to her uncle with the same despondent look on her face. After Schwimmer leaves, the robot, aided now by a cane, hurls a variety of nasty insults at her and then demands that she fix him some hot chocolate, all in a voice identical to that of her late uncle.

“I’ll fix it for you now,” she replies.

“’You'll fix it for me now,’ what?” asks the angry robot.

“I’ll fix it for you now…Uncle.”

Rod Serling’s Closing Narration:

“Dramatis Personae: a metal man who’ll go by the name of Simon, whose life as well as his body has been stamped out for him. And the woman who tends to him, the lady Barbara, who’s discovered belatedly that all bad things don’t come to an end, and that once the bed is made, it’s quite necessary that you sleep in it. Tonight’s uncomfortable little exercise of avarice and automatons, from the Twilight Zone.”

Commentary:

“Uncle Simon” is something of an unusual episode. A black comedy with an absurd plot, two dimensional characters, and over-the-top dialogue, all of which surprisingly work in its favor. Despite its hard science fiction element, the overall tone of the episode suggests that it could have been more at home on Alfred Hitchcock Presents. The plot of the episode is predictable and it doesn’t really lend itself to many repeat viewings, but Serling seems aware of the script’s flaws and leans into them, creating an episode that almost feels like a satire of the show. Serling was, by his own admission, tired by this point in the show’s run after having scripted the majority of the episodes during the show’s first four seasons. So it is no surprise that this late in the series some of his scripts contain familiar elements. With this episode, he seems to be conscious of the fact that the audience has grown accustomed to many of the themes and tropes associated with the show because the entire episode feels vaguely self-aware, which is probably its biggest selling point.

It should be noted that a filmed scene from this episode did not make the final cut. In the scene, Barbara, after witnessing her uncle die, laughs with relief and, presumably, joy. The scene then cuts to Barbara in the study being interrogated by a police officer. With tears in her eyes, she tells him that she heard a crash from downstairs and when she went to investigate, her uncle was already dead. The officer believes her story and offers his condolences. On his way out he tells her that his father was a student of Simon’s at the university where he once taught. After he leaves she begins to smash all of her uncle’s possessions. The officer was played by John Mcliam who appeared in several other episodes, almost always as a police officer. In his adaptation of this episode as a Twilight Zone Radio Drama, writer Dennis Etchison included the cut scene and even expanded on it a bit, with Barbara openly flirting with the officer and asking him to dinner afterwards.

This scene is interesting because including it would have changed the story a great deal. In the final cut of the episode, the audience sees Barbara as a victim of her uncle even though she lets him die, which may or may not be because she wants his money. Given the abuse the audience has seen inflicted upon her up until this point, it is understandable that she holds a great deal of anger and fear towards him, even if she is not a particularly sympathetic character, and may just want him to die so she can finally be at peace. The cut scene would have painted Barbara in a much nastier light and would have suggested that her only goal was her inheritance, which would have made her fate even more predictable. The final cut of the episode relies on a certain ambiguity of her character and attempts to make her fate seem tragic, whether or not that is accomplished is debatable.

Serling’s dialogue is the main reason to watch this episode. It feels as if he is trying to say something with this story, possibly about why people stay in unhappy relationships, but realizes that he isn’t sticking the landing the way he wants to and so instead fills the episode, particularly the first act, with a nonstop barrage of mean language. Simon’s dialogue is so ridiculously over the top that he sounds more like an insult comedian than a feeble old man who builds robots in his basement, something that Serling points out in Barbara’s dialogue.

During the middle of the twentieth century, robots and artificial intelligence became a frequently used theme in science fiction and The Twilight Zone was no exception. So far in the fifth season there had already been two episodes that featured sentient machinery, albeit ambiguously, and there would be several more before the end of the season. The preoccupation with computers, of both their benefits and the perceived threats they posed to humanity, soared during the 1950s and 60s as computers became able to store more information than ever before. This resulted in numerous interpretations of computers and robots in the science fiction of that era. During its time on the air, The Twilight Zone featured robots and androids made for a variety of different functions: human companionship (“The Lonely” “I Sing the Body Electric”), human replacement (“Steel” and the forthcoming season five episode “The Brain Center at Whipple’s”), exploitation (“The Mighty Casey”) and mistaken identity (“The Lateness of the Hour” “In His Image”). “Uncle Simon” is the only episode that features a robot made by and in the likeness of a human to be functional only after they themselves have died. It suggests that robots can prolong a person’s importance on Earth and offer a chance at immortality. The absurd fact that Simon builds a one-of-a-kind mechanical wonder simply to continue torturing his niece after he is gone is part of the charm of the story.

Robby and Earl Holliman
in MGM's Forbidden Planet (1956)

To a modern audience the most recognizable star of this episode is Robby the Robot, although here he is significantly altered from his more well-known original costume. Like many props featured in The Twilight Zone and other science fiction productions filmed at MGM, Robby the Robot first appeared in the 1956 film, Forbidden Planet, directed by Fred M. Wilcox. The film stars Walter Pidgeon, Leslie Nielson, and Anne Francis but the breakout star was Robby. The costume went on to be featured in numerous film and television productions earning it the nickname “the hardest working robot in Hollywood.” Robby was initially depicted on the poster for Forbidden Planet as a robotic monster carrying a dead Anne Francis, but no such scene in the film actually exists and Robby was, and mostly remained in subsequent screen appearances, a gentle, caring companion with a warm, dry wit. This episode is one of the few exceptions which is probably why the headpiece of the costume is altered so as not to tarnish the friendly image of Robby the Robot, who was very popular with children, and also because, by this point in Robby’s fame, it would have been a distraction from the story. The headpiece used in “Uncle Simon” is a much more simplified design than the original costume. A cylindrical head was used in place of the original head with movable eyes and a motionless mouth, placed under the familiar clear plexiglass dome. This makes the robot’s face look more like a human’s. The voice-activated lights that make up the mouth and the protruding tubes that function as Robby’s ears are gone.

Serling and Robby in
a promotional photo

Robby was the brainchild of a handful of different people working at MGM at the time, namely production designer Buddy Gillespie, art director Arthur Lonergan, screenwriter Irving Block, and mechanical designer Robert Kinoshita, who drew the final sketches of the costume that would be seen on the screen. At $125,000, It was the most expensive prop made for the film and proved to be an innovative design. Because Robby was constructed with three interlocking sections (lower, torso, head) that were placed on the performer inside starting from the bottom up, with the actor, usually one of shorter stature, strapped into an internal harness, it allowed the costume to be filmed from every angle without giving away the façade.

Poster for Invasion of the
Body Snatchers (1956)

This is the first of two episodes directed by the great Don Siegel, who also directed another fifth season episode, “The Self-Improvement of Salvadore Ross.” Siegel and Serling worked together years earlier when Siegel directed two of Serling’s earliest television scripts for episodes of the NBC series The Doctor in 1952. When his Twilight Zone episodes were first broadcast, Siegel was already a celebrated director of genre films and television, although the most successful part of his career still lay ahead of him. Siegel’s career began at Warner Bros. in the 1930s as a second unit director and editor who worked alongside directors like Raoul Walsh, Michael Curtiz, and Howard Hawks. As an editor, Siegel specialized in cutting together montages for films including the opening montage for Casablanca (1942). In 1945, he directed two short films, a retelling of the nativity story, Star in the Night, and a post-war documentary, Hitler Lives, both of which won Academy Awards enabling him to direct feature films. Although he directed mostly low budget B movies for the next two decades, he built a reputation for himself as a director who could accomplish a lot with relatively little. His list of credits during this time includes The Verdict (1946), The Big Steal (1949), Riot in Cell Block 11 (1954), and the Elvis Presley western Flaming Star (1960). In 1956, he directed the first adaptation of Jack Finney’s novel The Body Snatchers. Invasion of the Body Snatchers, starring Kevin McCarthy, went on to become a science fiction landmark for its political metaphors and lasting social commentary.

Siegel had always been adept at portraying violence and gritty realism in his work and his interest in these types of stories only increased as he became older. Many of his later films, starting probably with his 1964 remake of Ernest Hemingway’s The Killers (1946), with Lee Marvin, focused on masculine loners living in a corrupt and morally deficient society. Given this, it seems appropriate that Siegel directed John Wayne’s last film, The Shootist, in 1976. Siegel mentored numerous proteges during his career, among them Sam Peckinpah and Clint Eastwood, both of which would go on to direct similar types of films. With Eastwood, Siegel would enjoy the most prominent era of his long career. Siegel made five films with Eastwood as his leading man, among them Escape from Alcatraz (1979) and the cultural milestone, Dirty Harry (1971). Eastwood credits Siegel for launching his career as a director and dedicated his masterpiece, Unforgiven (1992), to Siegel and his other directorial mentor, Sergio Leone.

Siegel’s direction in this episode is relatively simple. The story is driven almost entirely by Serling’s dialogue and the performances of its cast. There are several scenes, however, which are purposely shot to resemble other scenes in the episode as a foreshadowing of the episode’s denouement. The scenes in the study and the scenes on the basement stairs, before and after Simon’s death, are shot and blocked similarly to emphasize the robot’s replacement of Simon in Barbara’s life.

Constance Ford started her career as a teenage model in the early 1940s and eventually worked her way onto the Broadway stage appearing in the original production of Death of a Salesman in 1949. She appeared in a handful on notable films during her career including Delmer Daves' A Summer Place in 1959, John Frankenheimer's All Fall Down in 1962, and the Robert Bloch scripted The Cabinet of Caligari in 1962, but the bulk of her career was spent in television. A regular fixture in episodic television durinng the 1950s and 60s, she appeared in many of the popular live dramas of the period including an episode of Kraft Theatre in 1953 called "The Blues for Joey Menotti" and the Playhouse 90 episode "The Comedian" in 1957, both written by Serling, the latter of which won him an Emmy. Genre fans may recognize her from episodes of Lights Out, Suspense, Inner Sanctum, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Thriller, and 'Way Out. She is probably best remembered for her role as Ada Hobson in the NBC daytime soap opera, Another World, which she played from 1967 to 1992, shortly before her death.

While all three characters in “Uncle Simon” exist simply to service the plot, Ford makes the most out of this limitation and gives a bitter yet restrained portrayal of the damaged and defeated Barbara Polk. The only time she allows the character to display genuinely rousing emotion is immediately after Simon’s death when she vandalizes his possessions while entranced in the ecstasy of her new freedom, doing so with the awkwardness of someone who has twenty-five years’ worth of repressed hatred and anger.

Sir Cedric Hardwicke was a theatrically trained English actor who enjoyed a career that lasted nearly half a century. He was a prolific stage actor, often appearing in plays by Shakespeare and George Bernard Shaw. His stage work eventually earned him a Tony Award and knighthood. He began appearing in films around the same time that talkies took over cinema, appearing at first in both European and American films and later moving to the U.S. permanently. He appeared in a variety of films but was often cast in literary adaptations and genre pictures. His notable film roles include the 1939 version of The Hunchback of Notre Dame, John Brahm’s The Lodger (1944), Alfred Hitchcock’s Suspicion (1941) and Rope (1948), The War of the Worlds (1953), and The Ten Commandments (1956). He worked with Don Siegel before this in the film Baby Face Nelson in 1957. He spent the last decade of his career appearing in numerous television series including The Outer Limits and Alfred Hitchcock Presents. His sole appearance on The Twilight Zone would be one of his final roles as he passed away less than a year after it was originally broadcast. He is only on screen for the first half of the episode but he steals the show, although to be fair he is given pretty much all of the fun dialogue. Considering that his character is absurdly two dimensional, with his only motive throughout the entire episode being the inexplicable need to torture his niece, his performance is surprisingly memorable.

Ian Wolfe’s career as a stage and screen actor lasted nearly seven decades. Even at a young age, he was often cast as bookish old men as he looked much older than he was. This was Wolfe’s only appearance on the series. A highly prolific actor, he usually played small supporting roles and his credits include appearances on One Step Beyond, Star Trek, Rod Serling’s Night Gallery (season two’s “Deliveries in the Rear”), Amazing Stories, and numerous westerns. On the big screen he had roles in Hitchcock’s Foreign Correspondent (1940) and Saboteur (1942), They Live by Night (1948), Rebel Without a Cause (1955), Witness for the Prosecution (1957), The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm (1962), Diary of a Madman (1963), THX 1138 (1971), and Dick Tracy (1990). He appeared in Don Siegel’s first film, The Verdict, in 1946 and his last film, Jinxed, in 1982.

Today, Vic Perrin, who voices the robot before it evolves into the voice of Cedric Hardwicke, is almost certainly best remembered as the control voice heard in the opening segment of The Outer Limits. He appeared earlier on The Twilight Zone in season one’s “People Are Alike All Over” and would appear once more in season five’s “Ring-a-Ding Girl.” He also made several appearances on Star Trek and Mission: Impossible, and his voice work is featured prominently on numerous animated series throughout the 1960s, 70s and 80s.

“Uncle Simon” often gets a bad rap from fans and critics and, truth be told, it probably won’t ever be anyone’s favorite episode. The plot is stilted and revolves almost exclusively around the twist ending, which is immediately predicable, there are several scenes that are simply not interesting, and of the three characters, none elicit any sort of concern from the audience at any point in the episode. Its saving attribute, however, is its self-awareness and its willingness to laugh at itself right along with the audience. For those who have never seen “Uncle Simon,” it is worth a viewing or two simply to hear Serling have tremendous fun with dialogue and see the show essentially poke fun at itself.

  

Grade: C

Grateful acknowledgement is made to the following:

The Twilight Zone: Unlocking the Door to a Television Classic by Martin Grams, Jr. (OTR, 2008)

"Uncle Simon” episode commentary by Martin Grams, Jr., The Twilight Zone: The Complete Series Blu-ray (Image Entertainment, 2016)

“Uncle Simon” Twilight Zone Radio Dramas, adapted by Dennis Etchison, directed by Carl Amari (Falcon Picture Group)

The Internet Movie Database

Wikipedia

 

Notes:

--Rod Serling's script for "Uncle Simon" was collected The Complete Twilight Zone Scripts of Rod Serling, Vol. 5, edited by Tony Albarella (2008, Gauntlet Press)

--Don Siegel also directed the season five episode “The Self-Improvement of Salvadore Ross.”

--Ian Wolfe also appeared in the season two segment of Rod Serling’s Night Gallery, “Deliveries in the Rear.”

--Vic Perrin appeared in the season one episode “People Are Alike All Over” and the season five episode “Ring-a-Ding Girl.”

--Robby the Robot can also be seen in the season five episode “The Brain Center at Whipple’s” where he is again played by Dion Hansen, and a miniature figurine of Robby can be seen briefly in the season one episode "One for the Angels."

“Uncle Simon” was adapted into a Twilight Zone Radio Drama by Dennis Etchison, starring Beverly Garland and Peter Mark Richman.

 

Brian