Patrick O'Neal as the aged Harmon Gordon, gazing upon
a portrait of Ruta Lee as his young wife Flora
a portrait of Ruta Lee as his young wife Flora
“A Short Drink from a Certain Fountain”
Season Five, Episode 131
Original
Air Date: December 13, 1963
Cast:
Harmon
Gordon: Patrick O’Neal
Crew:
Writer:
Rod Serling
And Now, Mr. Serling:
“No one likes to age, but it’s a natural process like death and taxes and the weather. But next time on Twilight Zone we tell the story about what happens when a certain man doesn’t age. As a matter of fact, he grows younger. Patrick O’Neal stars in ‘A Short Drink from a Certain Fountain.’ And if this one doesn’t pull you up by the shoulders, I don’t think anything will. I hope we see you next time.”
Rod Serling’s Opening Narration:
“Picture of an aging man who leads his life as Thoreau said, in “quiet desperation.” Because Harmon Gordon is enslaved by a love affair with a wife forty years his junior. Because of this, he runs when he should walk. He surrenders when simple pride dictates a stand. He pines away for the lost morning of his life when he should be enjoying the evening. In short, Mr. Harmon Gordon seeks a fountain of youth. And who’s to say he won’t find it? This happens to be The Twilight Zone.”
Summary:
Flora
Gordon, an attractive young woman, dances energetically to loud, up-tempo music.
She knocks a decorative object from the bar and breaks it to pieces on the
floor. Flora doesn’t care and continues dancing. Her older husband, Harmon,
arrives home and Flora pulls him to her, dancing, until Harmon is out of breath
and must sit down. Flora is upset that Harmon is too old to keep up with her
and she berates him. “If you persist in telling me about your ailments, I may
just have to run out and get sick,” she tells him. Harmon tries to appease
Flora but she continues to insult him until he retreats to the bedroom.
Later,
the couple returns home from a night out. Harmon is exhausted. Flora is ready
with more insults about Harmon’s age. Harmon telephones his brother, Dr.
Raymond Gordon, and asks to see him. Raymond arrives later that night after
Flora has gone to bed. Raymond expresses his feelings about Flora. He despises
her, and he can’t forgive that she’s turned his brother into a “frightened,
quaking fool.”
Harmon asks about a cellular serum Raymond has been working on, one that makes animals younger. Raymond discourages the notion in Harmon’s mind by explaining that there is danger and uncertainty regarding how the serum would react in a human. Just as many animals tested have died as have benefited from the serum. Harmon begs his brother to give him the serum. Harmon explains that he is at the point where he no longer cares whether he lives or dies. Raymond rejects the idea, saying that he wouldn’t give the serum to a bum on the street, much less his own brother.
Raymond
lingers at the door before leaving. He watches as Harmon walks to the balcony
and looks down. Fearing that Harmon means to jump to his death, Raymond tries
to discourage him from doing so. Harmon says that he loves Flora, despite what
Raymond thinks of her, and that his only desire in life is to be young again so
Flora will love him in return. Without Flora’s love, life isn’t worth living.
Raymond asks for an hour or two to consider before Harmon does something reckless.
Raymond
returns later that night and injects Harmon with the serum. He instructs Harmon
on what to expect and orders him to rest, saying that he’ll check on Harmon in
the morning. Raymond is uneasy about having administered the serum. He blames
Flora, and vows to make her pay if the serum proves harmful.
Raymond arrives early the next morning and is icily greeted by Flora, who is drinking coffee and reading the newspaper. Raymond inquires about Harmon but Flora gives him the brush-off until Raymond slaps the newspaper page from her hand. Harmon emerges from the bedroom. His once white hair is now dark and the wrinkles that once lined his skin have disappeared. Overnight, Harmon appears to have shed forty years.
Raymond
studies Harmon closely while Flora is astonished by the change in Harmon’s
appearance. She responds affectionately when Harmon suggests they leave for a
vacation that evening. Raymond tells Harmon not to go on any trips but Flora
tells him to “blow it” and retreats to the bedroom to get ready.
Raymond
continues to study his brother closely while Harmon gazes in astonishment at
himself in the mirror, appearing every moment to grow younger. If Harmon doesn’t
stop growing younger, Raymond warns, they may be in trouble. Flora emerges from
the bedroom at the word “trouble.” Harmon suddenly doubles over in pain and
Raymond orders him to rest, pushing Flora away and helping his brother to the
bedroom.
Sometime later, Raymond emerges from the bedroom. He tells Flora that from now on she will need to readjust her life. Harmon is sleeping, but when he wakes up Flora will need help. Flora insists on seeing Harmon and forces her way into the bedroom. She reemerges in shock. Raymond tells her that she will now have to put everything else in her life aside in order to take care of her husband. Raymond leads her into the bedroom and they look upon Harmon in bed. He is now a very young child.
Flora
tries to flee the responsibility of taking care of little Harmon. Raymond tells
her that if she leaves she can take with her only what she has on. Raymond
informs her that the de-aging process has stopped and that Harmon will begin to
grow older again, like any little boy. As Harmon grows up, Flora will grow old.
Flora cries out hopelessly that it isn’t fair. “Well, you see, Flora,” Raymond
says, “as you get older, you see how wise you get?”
Rod Serling’s Closing Narration:
“It happens to be a fact. As one gets older one does get wiser. If you don’t believe it, ask Flora. Ask her any day of the ensuing weeks of her life, as she takes notes during the coming years and realizes that the worm has turned, youth has taken over. It’s simply the way the calendar crumbles in The Twilight Zone.”
Commentary:
For
the relatively young writers on the series, aging and dying were themes to
which they returned time and again, producing some of the show’s most
celebrated episodes in the process. These themes have the advantage of being
universal, while also providing room for almost endless variation. Rod
Serling’s finest achievement along these lines is likely “The Trade-Ins,” in
which old age longs for a second chance at youth before finding dignity at the
end of life’s journey. It is a familiar story on the series.
With “A Short Drink from a Certain Fountain,” based on an unpublished story by Lou Holz, Serling aimed for something different yet equally familiar. Although the elixir of life theme was previously used in such episodes as “Long Live Walter Jameson” and “Kick the Can,” and used later in the fifth season for “Queen of the Nile,” “A Short Drink from a Certain Fountain” is closer to the type of brisk, ironic fable that Serling relied upon for story material since the early days of the series. The final season saw a number of these episodes, and the common components are easily recognized: a light element of fantasy, an enclosed setting, a small cast of often unpleasant characters, and an unusual transformation that delivers poetic justice. We saw this as recently as “Uncle Simon.”
Serling’s approach to
this type of story by the final season was to increase the venomous dialogue, often
resulting in requests from CBS to tone down inflammatory language upon review
of the shooting script. Flora’s initial “blow it out of your black bag,” for
instance, becomes simply “blow it” in the finished episode. The episode also
needed to skate around a potentially controversial element by having Raymond
inject Harmon with the age serum while conveniently screened by a bead curtain.
The episode remained
conspicuous by its absence in the years following its broadcast, as it was not
included in syndication packages of the series. The reasons for this were hazy.
Marc Scott Zicree, in The Twilight Zone
Companion (1982), wrote: “For
reasons which are cloudy at this late date, this is one of four half-hour
episodes which are not in syndication. Considering its wordiness and
predictability, however, this is no great loss.” Joel Engel, in his 1989
biography, Rod Serling: The Dreams and
Nightmares of Life in the Twilight Zone, wrote: “In later years of ‘The
Twilight Zone,’ Serling would be sued successfully three times for apparent
plagiarism of stories he had written himself.” Engel lists “A Short Drink from
a Certain Fountain” along with “The Parallel” and “Sounds and Silences.” He
goes on to write: “In all three cases a judge deemed the plaintiffs’ original
stories sufficiently similar to the produced scripts to warrant damages, but
the final products as seen in the series seemed substantially dissimilar.”
Martin Grams, Jr., in
his book The Twilight Zone: Unlocking the
Door to a Television Classic (2008), sheds further light on the situation
through access to CBS documents related to the series. Some episodes were
legally challenged on grounds of plagiarism and the network avoided further
legal consequences by removing the episode in question from any additionally scheduled
broadcasts. After a certain amount of time passed, the episodes reappeared. In
the case of “A Short Drink from a Certain Fountain,” that reappearance came in
1984, when, according to Grams, CBS aired the episode as part of a holiday
special.
The legal entanglement that ensnared
the episode dates to 1960. In May of that year, Rod Serling’s agent, Blanche
Gaines, forwarded an original story outline by television writer Jerome Ross
titled “A Drink of Water,” with a fountain of youth theme. Although Serling was
not interested in the story, series producer Buck Houghton showed interest and
Ross was asked to rewrite the outline. Associate Producer and Story Editor Del
Reisman ultimately shelved the idea when it was resubmitted in June, 1960. Two
years later, in August, 1962, series producer Herbert Hirschman resurrected
Ross’s story and suggested to Serling that they secure the rights for production
as an hour-long episode of the fourth season. Although Serling seemed more
inclined to the idea this time, Ross’s story remained unproduced on the series.
When Serling created a fountain of youth themed episode for the fifth season, he adapted an unpublished story titled “Ah, Youth!” by Lou Holz, who was a retired major working for the Air Research and Development Command in Los Angeles as Chief of Security for the Air Ballistic Missile Division. Holz submitted more than twenty unsolicited story ideas to the series. One of these was a story titled “Snipped Thread,” concerning an airplane and time travel. This was rejected due to the fact that, at the time Holz submitted his story, Serling had recently finished the script for the similarly themed “The Odyssey of Flight 33.” When that episode aired, Holz wrote to Serling claiming that “The Odyssey of Flight 33” was a plagiarized version of “Snipped Thread.” Serling denied this in return and refused to look at any more submissions from Holz. Largely to appease Holz and discourage the writer from embroiling the series in a legal entanglement over “The Odyssey of Flight 33,” Serling arranged for the purchase of an option on Holz’s “Ah, Youth!”, which eventually provided the outline for “A Short Drink from a Certain Fountain.” As irony would have it, the airing of this episode brought a claim of plagiarism filed through an attorney's office related to Jerome Ross’s fountain of youth story in the Cayuga story files. The network quietly shelved the episode after its initial broadcast. This confusing mess surrounding the episode further illustrated the monumentally bad idea that was the acceptance of unsolicited story ideas for the series.
 |
| A close look at the old age makeup applied to Patrick O'Neal |
An interesting element of the production is the use of special makeup on actor Patrick O’Neal in the role of Harmon Gordon. Unlike the earlier episode, “Long Live Walter Jameson,” in which a character rapidly transformed from young to old in a short sequence, Patrick O’Neal’s transformation from old to young took the easier path of transformation in three controlled stages, ending with the character as a young child. O’Neal was thirty-five years old at the time of filming and makeup was applied to make him appear thirty years older. The old age makeup was skillfully applied to O'Neal but was poorly served by the lighting in some scenes. One interesting aspect of the makeup, however, is that by using a clever combination of subtle changes in the makeup, camera angels, and editing, the crew was able to produce the illusion that Harmon is growing steadily younger on the morning after he is given the cellular serum.
Obtaining or creating an elixir of life, one of the two traditional goals of alchemy, is a theme that dates to the earliest works of fantasy literature. The Encyclopedia of Fantasy (1997), in an article by Brian Stableford, describes the earliest examples in literature as displaying how the quest to obtain a universal elixir is often frustrated, and how it “rarely satisfies the optimistic expectations of the seekers.” Some notable examples of the dozen or so stories listed in the essay include “The Mortal Immortal” by Mary Shelley, an 1834 story in which an assistant to the magician Cornelius Agrippa drinks from an elixir of life and gains immortality. He marries soon afterwards, but realizes that his wife will age and die while he will remain forever young. After her death, he exposes himself to the elements and dies. “Dr. Heidegger’s Experiment,” an 1837 story by Nathaniel Hawthorne, recounts how an aged scientist gives four old and bitter people a taste from the fountain of youth, only to watch them transform into young people with no regard for ethics or morality before the effects wear off and they return to their elderly forms. Hawthorne’s story was one of many on the theme that incorporated the myth that the Spanish explorer Ponce de León was searching for the fountain of youth in Florida. The story was memorably adapted for the anthology film Twice Told Tales (1963), with Sebastian Cabot in the role of Dr. Heidegger. Cabot appeared on The Twilight Zone in “A Nice Place to Visit.” Another story of interest is “The Elixir of Youth” (1921) by A.E. Coppard, in which a man watches his friend drink an elixir of youth and grow steadily younger until he disappears entirely.
The highlight of the episode is the small but talented cast of performers, led by Patrick O’Neal (1927-1994). O’Neal was born and raised in Florida. He moved to New York to study acting after serving in the United States Air Force during the Korean War. O’Neal got his start on television with appearances on several dramatic anthology series. Genre television work included appearances on One Step Beyond, The Outer Limits, The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, and Tales of the Unexpected. Later television appearances saw O’Neal guest star in several mystery and detective series, including a memorable appearance during the first season of Columbo. O’Neal returned to the series in a supporting role during the seventh season. Notable film roles included The Mad Magician (1954), with Vincent Price, In Harm’s Way (1965), The Way We Were (1973), and The Stepford Wives (1975). In the 1960s, O’Neal began investing in the restaurant industry in New York, owning and operating a number of restaurants with his wife and brother on the West Side of Manhattan.
 |
| O'Neal in "A Fear of Spiders" |
O’Neal
turned in a memorable performance on television for Rod Serling’s Night Gallery, in the segment “A Fear of
Spiders,” from the fourth episode of the second season. The segment, which
aired on October 6, 1971, was directed by John Astin after Steven Spielberg
dropped out at the last minute. Scripted by Rod Serling from the story “The
Spider” by Elizabeth Walter, it tells of a gourmand named Justus Walters,
played by O’Neal, who possesses an unreasoning fear of spiders. Finding
increasingly larger spiders in his kitchen sink, Justus washes the arachnids
down the drain. Entering his bedroom, he is horrified to find a giant spider
the size of a dog. The creature lunges at him but Justus slams closed the
bedroom door and flees the apartment. After being rebuffed by the building
supervisor (Tom Pedi in a comic role), Justus has no choice but to seek the aid
of Elizabeth, played by Kim Stanley, a woman he has previously cruelly rejected.
Elizabeth uses the opportunity to turn the tables on Justus. She leads him back
to his apartment where she lures him into his bedroom before quickly retreating and locking him inside.
Justus is heard screaming in panic before being attacked on the other side of
the door. Elizabeth leaves the apartment, quietly talking to herself.
Serling’s adaptation of the story by Elizabeth Walter is fairly faithful, moving the action from England to the U.S., adding the comic character of the building supervisor, and changing the names of the characters in tribute to the author. In the original story, the characters are Justus Ancorwen and Isobel Bishop. The story also contains a sexual element absent from the television adaptation, concluding with a surreal epilogue in which Isobel, and her offspring conceived with Justus, are symbolically revealed to be more spider than human. The story was published in The Second Fontana Book of Great Horror Stories, edited by Christine Bernard (Fontana, 1967) and collected in The Sin-Eater and Other Scientific Impossibilities (The Harvill Press, 1967). This collection was published the following year in the U.S. by Stein and Day.
 |
| Cover illustration by Barbara Walton |
Elizabeth
Walter (1927-2006) was an English novelist, translator, publishing editor (for William Collins & Sons), and
short story writer whose uniformly excellent supernatural stories were
collected in five volumes over the course of a decade. Snowfall and Other Chilling Events appeared in 1965, followed by The Sin-Eater and Other Scientific
Impossibilities (1967), Davy Jones’s
Tale and Other Supernatural Stories (1971), Come and Get Me and Other Uncanny Invitations (1973), and Dead Woman and Other Haunting Experiences (1975), all published by The Harvill Press (a division of Collins), with the first two collections reprinted in the U.S. by Stein and Day.
Arkham House put together a collection of her best stories in 1979, In the Mist and Other Uncanny Encounters, and
her collected short fiction, The Spirit of
the Place and Other Strange Tales, was issued by Shadow Publishing in 2017.
For over thirty years, beginning in 1961, Walter was the editor of the
influential mystery publishing series the Collins Crime Club. An excellent history of the series can be found in The Hooded Gunman: An Illustrated History of Collins Crime Club by John Curran (2019).
 |
| Kim Stanley as Elizabeth |
“A Fear of Spiders” was the first of Walter’s stories adapted for television. It is considered one of the better segments of Night Gallery, graced by two fine performances (especially from New York stage actress Kim Stanley) and marred only by an unconvincing spider puppet that is mercifully brief in appearance. The authors of Rod Serling's Night Gallery: An After-Hours Tour called the episode a "series classic" and a "marvelous black-comic segment" that compares favorably with Serling's "A Thing About Machines," with the Night Gallery segment being "vastly superior." Four of Walter’s stories were subsequently adapted for the anthology series Ghost Stories (Circle of Fear), including an adaptation by Richard Matheson of Walter’s story “The New House” for the pilot episode.
Canadian-born Ruta Lee (b. 1935) portrays Flora Gordon in “A Short Drink from a Certain Fountain.” Lee was a busy television actress beginning in the 1950s, including appearances on Science Fiction Theatre, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Suspicion, and numerous westerns. She was a talented performer in movie musicals, and was a familiar face on game shows during the sixties and seventies. In later years, Lee hosted a movie industry interview show. In Dimensions Behind the Twilight Zone (2007), she told author Stewart T. Stanyard that Flora Gordon was "one of the best roles I've ever played." In reality, Lee is the complete opposite of Flora, making her performance the more remarkable for it. She stated that "it was kind of fun because I've always been a Miss Goody Two-Shoes. I may not have played it, but I have always been highly moral and am still to this day. And it was fun to let loose and play a girl who was there just for the money, and just for the good times, and just for what she could get out of it, and to have her get such a punch in the gut and nose in the end of it was just so wonderful, and it gave me a chance to do some very nice work." The interview also covered Lee's personal friendship with Rod Serling, the easy working environment on the series, her pleasant experience working with director Bernard Girard, and her feelings on the episode being left out of syndication for years.
Walter Brooke (1914-1986), whose stony performance does much to ground the absurd elements of the episode, is probably best remembered for recommending plastics to Dustin Hoffmann in The Graduate (1967). Acting since the early 1940s, Brooke appeared in episodes of Tales of Tomorrow, Inner Sanctum, and The Sixth Sense, a series that was shown with Night Gallery in syndication. Brooke appeared in the Charles Beaumont-scripted film The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm, and previously appeared on The Twilight Zone in Beaumont’s third season episode, “The Jungle.”
Emmy nominated director Bernard Girard (1918-1997) was a workmanlike director who began in the industry as a scriptwriter. He worked mainly in television. Even though this is his only episode of The Twilight Zone, Girard directed episodes of Playhouse 90, Suspicion, The Sixth Sense, and many others. Girard directed four episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents, and eight episodes of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, including Richard Matheson's "Ride the Nightmare" and Robert Bloch's "Water's Edge."
Despite its lack of originality, its dense exchanges of vitriolic dialogue, its questionable approach to medical ethics, and its broad characterizations, the episode is graced with three talented performers and is indicative of the typically sleek production under producer Bert Granet, a quality that diminished, sometimes significantly, in the latter half of the fifth season. Although the episode is unlikely to land on anyone's list of great episodes, it can be recommended to the curious and the completists.
Grade: D
Next Time in the Vortex: Another view on aging with a look at “Ninety Years Without Slumbering.” Thanks for reading!
Acknowledgements:
--The
Twilight Zone: Unlocking the Door to a Television Classic by Martin Grams, Jr. (OTR, 2008)
--The
Twilight Zone Companion (3rd
ed.) by Marc Scott Zicree (Silman-James, 2018)
--Rod
Serling: The Dreams and Nightmares of Life in the Twilight Zone by Joel Engel (Contemporary Books, 1989)
--Inside
The Twilight Zone by Marc Scott
Zicree (CBS DVD/Image Entertainment, 1999)
--A
Critical History of Television’s The Twilight Zone, 1959-1964 by Don Presnell and Marty McGee (McFarland & Co.,
1998)
--Dimensions Behind the Twilight Zone: A Backstage Tribute to Television's Groundbreaking Series by Stewart T. Stanyard (ECW Press, 2007)
--Rod Serling’s Night Gallery: An After-Hours Tour by Scott Skelton and Jim Benson (Syracuse University Press, 1999)
--The
Guide to Supernatural Fiction by E.F.
Bleiler (Kent State University Press, 1983)
--The
Encyclopedia of Fantasy, ed. John
Clute and John Grant (St. Martin’s Press, 1997)
--The
Spirit of the Place and Other Strange Tales: The Complete Short Stories of
Elizabeth Walter by Elizabeth Walter
(with an introduction by Dave Brzeski) (Shadow Publishing, 2017)
--The Internet Speculative Fiction
Database (isfdb.org)
--The Internet Movie Database (imdb.com)
--Wikipedia (Wikipedia.org)
Notes:
--Rod
Serling’s teleplay for “A Short Drink from a Certain Fountain” was collected in
volume two of As Timeless as
Infinity: The Complete Twilight Zone Scripts of Rod Serling, edited by Tony Albarella (Gauntlet Press,
2005).
--Patrick
O’Neal also appeared in “A Fear of Spiders,” from the second season of Rod
Serling’s Night Gallery.
--Walter
Brooke previously appeared on The
Twilight Zone in “The Jungle.”
--“A
Short Drink from a Certain Fountain” was one of a small number of episodes
removed from syndication packages of the series due to legal challenges over
the content of the episode. The episode eventually re-aired as part of a
holiday special in 1984.
--“A
Short Drink from a Certain Fountain” was adapted as a Twilight Zone Radio Drama starring Adam West.
-JP
