"The Mighty Casey"

Dr. Stillman (Abraham Sofaer) tells coach Mouth McGarry (Jack Warden)
all about his new star pitcher.

"The Mighty Casey"

Season One, Episode 35

Original Air Date: June 17, 1960

Cast:

Mouth McGarry: Jack Warden

Casey: Robert Sorrells

Dr. Stillman: Abraham Sofaer

Monk: Don O'Kelly

Doctor: Jonathan Hole

Beasley: Alan Dexter

Commissioner: Rusty Lane

Crew:

Writer: Rod Serling (original teleplay)

Directors: Robert Parrish and Alvin Ganzer

Producer: Buck Houghton
Production Manager: Ralph W. Nelson

Director of Photography: George T. Clemens
Art Direction: George W. Davis and Merrill Pye
Set Decoration: Henry Grace and Keogh Gleason
Assistant Director: Don Klune and Edward Denault
Editor: Joseph Gluck
Sound: Franklin Milton and Philip Mitchell

Music: stock

And Now, Mr. Serling:

"This locker and liniment emporium houses a major league baseball team known as the Hoboken Zephyrs, all of which by way of introduction to next week's show, a wild and wooly yarn about the great American pastime. It's called 'The Mighty Casey' and it's all about a left-hander who pitches like nothing human simply because he isn't. Mr. Jack Warden takes us into the stadium next week for nine fast innings on The Twilight Zone."

Rod Serling's Opening Narration:

"What you're looking at is a ghost, once alive but now deceased. Once upon a time it was a baseball stadium that housed a major league ball club known as the Hoboken Zephyrs. Now it houses nothing but memories and a wind that stirs in the high grass of what was once an outfield, a wind that sometimes bears a faint, ghostly resemblance to the roar of a crowd that once sat here. We're back in time now when the Hoboken Zephyrs were still a part of the National League and this mausoleum of memories was an honest-to-Pete stadium. But since this is strictly a story of make-believe, it has to start this way: One upon a time in Hoboken, New Jersey, it was tryout day. And though he's not yet on the field, you're about to meet a most unusual fella, a left-handed pitcher named Casey."

Summary:

Robert Sorrells as Casey

            A scientist and inventor, Dr. Stillman, invents a robot named Casey. In an attempt to test Casey's skills, Stillman strikes a deal with Mouth McGarry, the manager of the Hoboken Zephyrs, a dreadful team on a tremendous losing streak. Stillman discloses to McGarry the true nature of Casey and after seeing what Casey can do from the pitching mound McGarry, as desperate as he is, agrees to put him on the team.

            Casey is an instant sensation. He pitches shutout after shutout and nobody from any opposing team can figure out how to hit his impossible pitches. The Hoboken Zephyrs zoom into fourth place and make national headlines. Then tragedy strikes and Casey is hit in the head with the baseball, landing him in the hospital where it is quickly discovered by the team doctor that Casey has no heartbeat. He has, in fact, no heart. The commissioner of baseball is brought into the situation and he consults the rules, which state that a team is made up of nine men. It seems that without a heartbeat Casey isn't a man and is disqualified from any further play.

            McGarry appeals to Stillman and the inventor agrees that he can give Casey a heart. Soon after, Casey returns to the team fully healed and with a new beating heart that members of the team can hear pounding away in his chest. Casey is reinstated with the league and put back on the mound for the Zephrys. Unfortunately, there is a side effect involved in giving a Casey a heart and it quickly becomes apparent. Casey no longer strikes out opponents but throws easy pitches that batters hammer away at, sending the Zephyrs right back on the path of a losing streak. Stillman explains to McGarry and the rest of the team that Casey's newly installed heart has built a great deal of compassion within the robot and that Casey no longer can bear to strike out opposing batters. With his baseball career effectively washed out, Casey states that he intends to go into social work where he can help people.

            As a consolation gift, Stillman gives to McGarry the blueprints to Casey and it doesn't take long for it to dawn on McGarry that there is a very real possibility of creating an entire team of incredible robots.

Rod Serling's Closing Narration:

"Once upon a time there was a major league baseball team called the Hoboken Zephyrs, who during the last year of their existence wound up in last place and shortly thereafter wound up in oblivion. There is a rumor, unsubstantiated of course, that a manager named McGarry took them to the West Coast and wound up with several pennants and a couple of World Championships. This team had a pitching staff that made history. Of course, none of them smiled very much but it happens to be a fact that they pitched like nothing human. And if you are interested as to where these gentlemen come from you might check under "B" for baseball, in the Twilight Zone."

Commentary:

"It was try-out day for the Brooklyn Dodgers and Mouth McGarry, the manager of the club, stood in the dugout, one foot on the parapet, both hands shoved deep into his hip pockets, his jaw hanging several inches below his upper lip."
                          -"The Mighty Casey" by Rod Serling, Stories from the Twilight Zone (1960)

        

            "The Mighty Casey" is an episode marred by a series of unfortunate events. To begin with, the episode is a slapstick comedy and this type of episode came across as patently unfunny on the series. Rod Serling and the other writers for the series would continue their attempts to bring comedy to the series and they would more often fail in these attempts as the screwball style of comedy had trouble finding traction on the show. More subtle forms of fantasy/comedy, as displayed in episodes such as Richard Matheson's "A World of His Own" or George Clayton Johnson's "A Penny For Your Thoughts," were much more effective on the series.
           "The Mighty Casey" also suffered from the fact that the episode had to be filmed twice. Little or no footage exists from the initial filming of the episode and none is known to have made it into the episode seen today. The reason for the re-shoot was the death of actor Paul Douglas, who portrayed Mouth McGarry in the first version, directed by Alvin Ganzer. Douglas, who had little experience in comedic roles and who also found the script unfunny, took the job due to a personal invitation from Rod Serling to appear on the series. Serling and Douglas were acquaintances from their days on the live anthology show Playhouse 90. Serling's only major reservation about hiring Paul Douglas was the aging actor's propensity for heavy drinking. Serling contacted Douglas's agent about this and was assured that Douglas no longer had a drinking problem. Satisfied, Serling and producer Buck Hougton went ahead with production.

            When Serling viewed the daily rushes from shooting, he suspected that he'd been lied to about Paul Douglas's drinking. The actor appeared haggard, mottled, and high in color on film. Douglas also had trouble delivering his lines, even brief passages, without running out of breath. When Serling contacted Douglas's agent to complain, the agent again guaranteed that Douglas was not drinking. The truth turned out to be much more tragic. Only a handful of days after the completion of photography for the episode, Paul Douglas died. The symptoms that Serling viewed on the daily rushes were those of heart failure and not excessive drinking. As Serling morbidly stated, "we were watching him literally die in front of us."

            Devastated, Serling vowed that he wasn't going to send out this knuckleball comedy of an episode with a well respected actor slowly dying on camera. Still, he was obligated to show CBS something and, after screening the completed episode, told the network executives that this could not air as is and would have to be entirely re-shot. CBS agreed that the episode was unfunny but, oddly enough, appeared to have no problem with the fact that Paul Douglas died shortly after the shoot and, as a result, were unwilling to part with the additional money required to re-shoot the episode.

            According to Marc Scott Zicree in The Twilight Zone Companion, Serling put $27,000 of his own money on the line to re-cast, re-shoot, and re-edit the episode. Director Robert Parrish was brought in and actor Jack Warden brought on to assume the role of Mouth McGarry. The planned broadcast date of the episode was pushed back from December to the following June with the re-shoot attempting to proceed as efficiently as possible. As a result, little remained on the cutting room floor and nearly all re-shot footage was left in to fill the time length required by the episode.

            Martin Grams, Jr., in his book The Twilight Zone: Unlocking the Door to a Television Classic, reprints several unused or alternate intros, outros, and promos from various episodes that, for one reason or another, went unused in the final cut of the corresponding episodes. Many of these unused passages are of insignificant variation but Rod Serling's unused promo for "The Mighty Casey" is of interest because of the fact that the death of actor Paul Douglas necessitated the change. The unused promo is as follows: "Next week we take you into a state of wonderful confusion. The late Mr. Paul Douglas stars in a play we call 'The Mighty Casey.' Bring your imagination as we recount for you the trials and tribulations of a major league ball club called the Hoboken Zephyrs, a put upon manager, and the most fabulous baseball pitcher you'll ever watch in action. Next week on The Twilight Zone, 'The Mighty Casey.'"

            One result of Serling taking the initiative to fund the re-shoot from his own money was that CBS would forever after have their eyes glued to the financial books and constantly pressure Rod Serling about the budget for the series, a problem Serling often spoke about in a negative way.
            Of additional interest is an early Rod Serling script titled "Old Macdonald Had a Curve." This was one of the earliest sales from Serling to a live drama anthology. The script was performed on August 5, 1953 on Kraft Television Theatre, shortly before Serling rose to prominence with "Patterns" on the same program, a play which brought him the first of six Emmy Awards. "Old Macdonald Had a Curve" appears to have been an early attempt at "The Mighty Casey." "Old Macdonald Had a Curve" is a baseball comedy about a retired major league pitcher (played by Olin Howland) who is wasting away in a nursing home until an accident allows him to throw a wicked curveball. The old man scrambles to join his old team, a team which happens to be in the funk of a long losing streak. Though the old man suffers another accident which takes away his new curveball, he inspires his old team to go on a winning streak. The episode ends with a patent Serling wink, as the old man once again regains his curveball. "Old Macdonald Had a Curve" is also notable for featuring Jack Warden. 

            It would have been difficult for an episode with a fantastic script to come out on the other side of the production of "The Mighty Casey" with any semblance of its initial impact or resonance. By all indications, "The Mighty Casey" was a bad episode with Paul Douglas in the lead role and Alvin Ganzer behind the camera. With an under-budgeted, rushed, and poorly edited re-shoot, the episode comes off as an unfunny blemish on the face of a show generally held to an exacting standard. It is perhaps because of the unfortunate events that characterized its production that "The Mighty Casey" has not simply been forgotten altogether.

Grade: F

Notes:

--Rod Serling apparently found enough fascination in the story of Casey to make it the very first teleplay he adapted into prose for the three short story collections he wrote based on the series. "The Mighty Casey" can be found in Stories from the Twilight Zone, originally published by Bantam Books in April, 1960.

--Actor Jack Warden also starred in the earlier season one episode, "The Lonely." Warden also appeared in Rod Serling's original drama, "Noon on Doomsday," which appeared on April 25, 1956 on The United States Steel Hour. Serling's script was infamously censored as it originally concerned the murder of black teenager Emmett Till by white men in Mississippi in 1955. Also appearing with Warden were future Zone actors Albert Salmi, Everett Sloane, and Philip Abbott. 

--Director Alvin Ganzer also directed the season one episodes, "The Hitch-Hiker," "What You Need," and "Nightmare as a Child."

--Director Robert Parrish also directed the season one episodes, "One for the Angels" and "A Stop at Willoughby."
--Science fiction fans will recognize Abraham Sofaer from a far more memorable role than that of Dr. Stillman. Sofaer played Arch, the Kyben leader who pursued humanity's immortal guardian, Trent, through time in Harlan Ellison's Outer Limits episode, "Demon With a Glass Hand."
--Twilight Zone actor Fritz Weaver ("Third From the Sun," "The Obsolete Man") performed a reading of Serling's story adaptation of "The Mighty Casey" for Harper Audio in 1992.

--"The Mighty Casey" was adapted as a Twilight Zone Radio Drama starring Paul Dooley.
--"The Mighty Casey" was adapted into comic book form for the 1979 book Stories from the Twilight Zone (Bantam; a Skylark Illustrated Book) by Rod Serling, adapted by Horace J. Elias and illustrated by Carl Pfeufer.
--Actor Robert Sorrells, who portrays the robot Casey, received a 32 years to life sentence in 2005 for the 2004 murder of one man in a bar and the attempted murder of another. 
--Rod Serling was partially inspired to write "The Mighty Casey" by the famous baseball poem, "Casey at the Bat: A Ballad of the Republic Sung in the Year 1888" by Ernest Thayer, about a batter whose over-confidence causes him to squander the chance to be a hero at the plate. 

--JP

"Nightmare as a Child"

Image from a nightmare: Janice Rule as Helen Foley and Terry Burnham as Markie

“Nightmare as a Child”

Season One, Episode 29

Original airdate: April 29, 1960

Cast:

Helen Foley: Janice Rule

Markie: Terry Burnham

Peter Selden: Shepperd Strudwick

The Doctor: Michael Fox

Police Lieutenant: Joe Perry

Little Girl on Stairs: Suzanne Cupito

Crew:

Writer: Rod Serling 

Director: Alvin Ganzer

Producer: Buck Houghton
Production Manager: Ralph W. Nelson

Director of Photography: George T Clemens
Art Direction: George W. Davis and Merrill Pye
Set Decoration: Henry Grace and Keogh Gleason
Assistant Director: Don Klune
Editor: Bill Mosher
Sound: Franklin Milton and Philip Mitchell 

Music: Jerry Goldsmith

And Now, Mr. Serling:

“Next week, you’ll spend a few rather unforgettable hours in this living room watching Miss Janice Rule and Mr. Shepperd Strudwick partake of a dramatic delicacy that is one part nursery rhyme, one part terror.  This is designed for those of you who are getting too much sleep.  Next week on the Twilight Zone, ‘Nightmare as a Child.’  I hope we’ll see you then.  Thank you and good night.”

Rod Serling’s Opening Narration:

“Month of November…hot chocolate…and a small cameo of a child’s face—imperfect only in its solemnity.  And these are the improbable ingredients to a human emotion...an emotion, say, like fear.  But in a moment, this woman, Helen Foley, will realize fear.  She will understand what are the properties of terror.  A little girl will lead her by the hand and walk with her into a nightmare.”

Summary:

Helen Foley is a young school teacher who lives a quiet existence alone in her small apartment.  Upon entering her apartment building one day, she encounters a little girl sitting in the stairwell in front on her apartment door humming a nursery rhyme.  She strikes up a conversation with the girl and invites her in for some hot chocolate.  Once inside, Foley immediately begins to feel uncomfortable her.  The girl says her name is Markie and that she lives in the building.  She begins to interrogate Foley by asking her about her childhood.  She seems to know a great deal about her like, for instance, how she got the scar on her arm.  Foley admits to Markie that she does not remember much about her childhood due to a highly traumatic incident she witnessed as a little girl.  Markie asks Foley about the man she saw in town today even though Foley has not mentioned him.

                During their conversation the man in question arrives at Foley’s door.  Before she is able to let him in Markie runs out the back door.  Foley opens the door and the man invites himself in.  His name is Peter Seldon and he was a friend of Foley’s late mother, who was murdered right in front of Foley when she was only a child.  He asks her if she remembers him at all and Foley tells him she doesn’t.  After her mother’s death she moved away to live with relatives and has only recently moved back.  Foley then hears the faint sounds of a child singing somewhere in the building and she recognizes it as Markie’s voice.  She asks Selden if he hears it but he says he doesn’t.  She tells him about the conversation she had with Markie just prior to him arriving at the apartment.  He tells her that “Markie” was her nickname as a child and he shows her a picture of herself when she was young.  The girl in the photograph is unmistakably Markie.  Seldon tells Foley goodbye and takes his leave.

                Some time later, Markie returns.  Again, she begins her rigid interrogation of Foley.  Irritated, Foley suggests that perhaps it’s time Markie went home to her mother.  Markie tells her that she has no mother, at least not anymore.  After pressing Foley even harder to come to a realization, Markie raises the curtain on the mystery and tells Foley that they are, in fact, the same person.  Not emotionally able to cope with the realization that Markie is not a real child but only a frightening manifestation of herself as a child, Foley collapses on the floor, weeping.  When she finally looks up she sees Seldon standing over her.   He informs Foley that she has been living in ignorance for far too long.  He confesses that he was the one who killed her mother.  After discovering that Sheldon was pocketing money from the place where they both worked, Foley’s mother told him that she was going to notify the police.  Enraged, he strangled her to death right in front of eight-year-old Foley causing to child to scream with terror.  Neighbors rushed over before he was able to kill the child.  Afterwards, Seldon learned that Foley did not remember anything about the incident.  So he waited.  One day the pieces would come together for her.

                Realizing that her life is in danger, Foley rushes out of the apartment and into the hallway.  Seldon runs after her and they struggle intensely before he loses his balance and tumbles down the stairs, snapping his neck before landing face down on the floor below.

                Afterwards, after the police and other emergency officials leave, Foley hears the sounds of a child singing just outside her door.  Hesitantly, she opens a door sees a little girl seated on the stairs.  To her relief, it’s not Markie.  She tells the girl that she has a beautiful smile, and that she hopes it’s with her always.

Rod Serling’s Closing Narration:

“Miss Helen Foley, who has lived in night and who will wake up morning.  Miss Helen Foley, who took a dark spot from the tapestry of her life and rubbed it clean-then stepped back and got a good look at the Twilight Zone.”

Commentary:

Episode 29 of The Twilight Zone offers a bizarre story of psychological confrontation.  “Nightmare as a Child” is quite similar to several other Serling episodes that examine the realm of suppressed emotional turmoil, most notably Season Three’s “The Arrival” and Season Two’s “King Nine Will Not Return.”  As with these episodes, “Nightmare” is almost entirely devoid of any supernatural elements because much of the action takes place in Foley’s mind.  Serling may have been inspired by Truman Capote’s 1946 O. Henry Award-winning story “Miriam” when he wrote this episode.  While the two stories are different in many ways there are also quite a few similarities between them, and chances are that Capote’s psychoanalytical story of identity crisis would have appealed to Serling for it is a theme that can be found throughout his work on The Twilight Zone—“The After Hours,” “Judgment Night,” “The Lateness of the Hour” and “Where Is Everybody?” are only a few of the episodes written by Serling that explore the world of mistaken identity.  Capote’s story centers around a sheepish, soft-spoken woman named Mrs. Miller who meets a young girl named Miriam one day at a movie theatre.  Coincidentally, Mrs. Miller’s first name is also Miriam.  The next day the girl shows up at Mrs. Miller’s apartment; Mrs. Miller is a widow and lives alone.  She invites Miriam into her apartment and for the rest of the story the young girl verbally berates and antagonizes her host to the point of tears.  Terrified of her, Mrs. Miller runs downstairs to the apartment of a young couple whom she does not know and tells them about the horrible child who refuses to leave her alone.  The man goes over to her apartment to check on Miriam but when he returns he claims not to have seen her anywhere.  Reluctantly, Mrs. Miller returns to her apartment, realizing that there is no Miriam and that she might possibly be losing her mind.  She sits down on the couch and closes her eyes and after deliberating on her sanity for some time she suddenly hears the sound of a bureau drawer opening and closing and silk being ruffled.  Then she opens her eyes.  The last line of the story, “’Hello,’ said Miriam.” is ambiguous because Capote does not specify whether it is spoken the young girl or Mrs. Miller.  While Serling’s story is different in terms of plot, being a fully realized story versus “Miriam” which is more of a character sketch, thematically these stories are very similar.  Both of them concern women who have experienced the loss of someone close, in Mrs. Miller’s case it’s her husband and for Helen Foley, her mother.  Foley’s fear of confronting her mother’s murder has manifested itself into the image of Markie while Mrs. Miller’s overbearing loneliness and uninspired lifestyle may be the cause for her mental hallucination.  But Serling’s story is far less ambiguous and it places a solid link between the character of Peter Seldon and the reason for Helen Foley’s mental breakdown.  And while this episode may or may not have been based on Capote’s story, the similarities between the two stories are interesting just the same. 

                While this episode does achieve a chilling atmosphere, for the most part it seems to fall flat.  It’s a story that most likely worked well in Serling’s original script but when transferred to film it loses much of its desired effect.  For one thing, it is quite apparent almost from the moment she first appears on screen that Markie is a younger incarnation of Helen Foley.  Likewise, from the moment we first see Peter Seldon and listen to his story we are absolutely certain that he is in some way responsible for the murder of Foley’s mother.  This appears to be done intentionally by Serling in order to heighten suspense and make Foley a vulnerable protagonist.  Not a terribly bad plot structure at all but, once again, it seems to lose much of its effectiveness on the screen and instead of looking vulnerable Foley comes off as painfully naïve and unsympathetic.  There are also several times during this episode where Serling unnecessarily explains the plot to the audience which, in many ways, shatters the subtlety of the story.

                But even if this episode does fall short in many places it’s saved by the delicate, dreamlike atmosphere created by director Alvin Ganzer and composer Jerry Goldsmith.  Ganzer already had two episodes of The Zone on his resume, “The Hitch Hiker” and “What You Need,” both of which have the same ethereal quality found in “Nightmare as a Child.”  As this episode has a great deal of dialogue, Ganzer chose to minimalize Goldsmith’s score and keep most of the scenes very quiet which cloaks this episode in a dreamlike haze and makes the scenes with music that much more effective.

Shepperd Strudwick as the horrible Peter Seldon

                Of the three leading roles in this episode the one that obviously stands out to most viewers is that of Markie played by Terry Burnham.  She never shows any restraint in her interrogative discourse with Foley and her character is the most frightening thing about this episode.  Burnham enjoyed mild success as a child actress in the 1960’s but seems to have abandoned acting upon entering adulthood in the early 1970’s.  Janice Rule turns in an adequate performance here as Helen Foley.  Rule enjoyed a fairly versatile career in television, film and on Broadway.  Because she was known for rebelling against the sexism of the Hollywood studio system in 1950’s, she was often given roles portraying strong, independent women.  She bounced easily from comedy to drama and her notable films include Bell, Book and Candle (1958) with James Stewart and Kim Novak, The Chase (1966) with Marlon Brando, The Swimmer (1968) with Burt Lancaster and 3 Women (1977) with Shelley Duval and Sissy Spacek.  She died in 2003 at the age of 72.  Character actor Sheppard Strudwick, sometimes appearing under the name John Sheppard, garnered his reputation on Broadway before moving to Hollywood in the early 1930’s.  Given his dark, chiseled facial features and chilling voice he often played villains or other visceral-type characters and despite a very successful theatre career he never achieved leading-man status in Hollywood.   He appeared as Edgar Allan Poe in The Loves of Edgar Allan Poe (1942) and in the Hollywood classics Joan of Arc (1948), All the King’s Men (1949) and A Place in the Sun (1951).  He died in 1983 at the age of 75.

                While it is not generally considered a memorable first season episode, “Nightmare as a Child” does have moments of heightened suspense that are as chilling as some of the more well-known episodes.  It is an interesting take on what would be a prevailing theme of the series.

Grade: C

Notes:

--Rod Serling named the main character, Helen Foley, after his favorite high school English teacher.  Richard Matheson would later borrow this name for Kathleen Quinlan’s character when writing the script for Twilight Zone: the Movie (1983).
--Joe Perry also appeared in an episode of Rod Serling's Night Gallery titled "Midnight Never Ends."

--Alvin Ganzer also directed the Season One episodes “What You Need,” “The Hitch-Hiker,” and “The Mighty Casey.”

--"Nightmare as a Child" was adapted into a Twilight Zone Radio Drama starring Bonnie Sommerville.

--Brian Durant

"The Hitch-Hiker"

A haunted woman: Inger Stevens as Nan Adams

"The Hitch-Hiker"

Season One, Episode 16

Original Air Date: January 22, 1960

Cast:

Nan Adams: Inger Stevens

Hitch-Hiker: Leonard Strong

Sailor: Adam Williams

Gas Station Owner: George Mitchell

Mechanic: Lew Gallo

Counterman: Russ Bender

Highway Worker: Dwight Townsend

Crew:

Writer: Rod Serling (based on the radio play by Lucille Fletcher)

Director: Alvin Ganzer

Producer: Buck Houghton
Production Manager: Ralph W. Nelson

Director of Photography: George T. Clemens
Art Direction: George W. Davis and William Ferrari
Set Decoration: Rudy Butler and Henry Grace
Assistant Director: Edward Denault
Casting: Mildred Gusse
Editor: Bill Mosher
Sound: Franklin Milton and Jean Valentino

Music: stock

And Now, Mr. Serling:

                "Next week we'll drive with Miss Inger Stevens, who starts out on what begins as a vacation and ends as a desperate flight. She begins her trip next week on The Twilight Zone. And you'll be with her when she meets . . . "The Hitch-Hiker." We hope you'll be alongside. Goodnight."

Rod Serling's Opening Narration:

                "Her name is Nan Adams. She's twenty-seven years old. Her occupation: buyer at a New York department store. At present on vacation, driving cross-country to Los Angeles, California, from Manhattan. Minor incident on Highway 11 in Pennsylvania, perhaps to be filed away under accidents you walk away from. But from this moment on, Nan Adam's companion on a trip to California will be terror, her route fear, her destination quite unknown."

Summary:          

Leonard Strong as the Hitchhiker

                After her vehicle suffers a tire blowout, Nan Adams is assisted on the side of the highway by a mechanic from a nearby service station. After telling Nan that she's lucky to be alive, the mechanic puts a spare tire on her car and instructs her to follow him into town so that he can get a proper tire placed on her car. It is after climbing back into her car that Nan first sees the figure that will torment her for the remainder of her journey. He is a middle-aged man, shabbily dressed, standing on the side of the road, motioning, as a hitch-hiker does, for a ride. Even at first sight, it is clear that his presence disturbs Nan.

                Back in town, the mechanic puts a new tire on Nan's car. While standing outside the gas station, Nan spies the shabby hitch-hiker in a mirror. He is standing on the shoulder of the highway behind her. She looks away, unnerved by the sight of the man. The mechanic notices the change in Nan's behavior. When prompted, Nan tells the mechanic about the hitch-hiker. When the mechanic looks, he doesn't see a hitch-hiker. The man has vanished. Nan shrugs this off and drives away from the gas station.

                Nan's panic concerning the hitch-hiker increases as she continues her journey. She sees him more and more often, always standing on the side of the road, holding his thumb out for a ride. Nan drives faster, panicked by the fact that it is impossible for the hitch-hiker to stay ahead of her and yet he does. The hitch-hiker never does anything outright threatening but Nan still fears him. When she is stopped by a highway flagman at a construction site, the hitch-hiker appears at her back passenger window, asking if she is headed west. Nan cries out and hits the gas, swerving around the construction site, to the dismay of the flagman.

                Nan's next encounter with the hitch-hiker proves to be the most terrifying. Stopping at railroad tracks to allow an oncoming train to pass, Nan sees the hitch-hiker on the opposite side of the tracks. Once again feeling the pressure of panic, Nan decides to quickly cross the railroad tracks before the train arrives only to have her car stall on the tracks. With the train bearing down on her, Nan manages to get the car moving again at the last second and backs off of the tracks to the safety of the roadway. Nan believes the hitch-hiker compelled her onto the railroad tracks in an attempt to kill her.

                Night falls and Nan attempts to lose the hitch-hiker by getting off the main highway. She runs out of gas on a back road. She runs down the road, frightened and jumping at every shadow, until she reaches a gas station after closing hours. Nan pounds on the door in desperation, waking up the proprietor, a surly man who refuses to provide Nan with the gas she needs until regular hours the following morning. She tries to tell the gas station owner about the hitch-hiker but is unable to say in what way the hitch-hiker is actually threatening her. From out of the darkness comes a hand on Nan's shoulder. She turns around, sure that it will be the hitch-hiker only to find a sailor standing there. The young man is on leave and has been hitching his way back to San Diego to meet up with his shipmates. The sailor manages to get some gas for Nan's car and is eager to hitch a ride with her when Nan tells him that she will drive him all the way to San Diego. 

                Nan sees the hitch-hiker on the side of the road and this time she is determined to kill the man. She swerves dangerously onto the shoulder twice in an attempt to kill the hitch-hiker. The sailor manages to stop the car and tells Nan that there isn't any hitch-hiker on the road, that there wasn't anything there at all. The sailor decides it's safer to hitch his way than to stay in the car with Nan and, despite her frantic pleading, he takes off in the opposite direction, leaving Nan alone once again.

                Nan stops to use a payphone to call her mother and hear a familiar voice. The call is answered by someone Nan doesn't know, a Mrs. Whitney. This woman informs her that Mrs. Adams, Nan's mother, has suffered a nervous breakdown, brought on by the sudden death of her daughter, Nan, when Nan's car suffered a blowout days before on a Pennsylvania highway.      

                Suddenly, Nan understands everything, the panic, the detachment, the road trip that seems never to end. She drops the phone and returns to her car. She sees the hitch-hiker sitting in the back seat. He smiles and says, "I believe you're going my way."

Rod Serling's Closing Narration:
                "Nan Adams, age twenty-seven. She was driving to California, to Los Angeles. She didn't make it. There was a detour. . . through the Twilight Zone."

 Commentary:

"Outside it is night - the vast, soulless night of New Mexico. A million stars are in the sky. Ahead of me stretch a thousand miles of empty mesa, mountains, prairies - desert. Somewhere among them, he is waiting for me. Somewhere I shall know who he is, and who . . . I . . . am." 
     -"The Hitchhiker" by Lucille Fletcher 

"Going my way?"

                 "The Hitch-Hiker" is an excellent stand-out thriller during a first season in which the show was trying to find its niche by trying many different story types on for size. It is one of the show's earliest attempts at outright terror and formed a template for Rod Serling and the other core writers on the series to create a number of episodes involving a single, isolated character menaced by a supernatural device. Serling recreated the structure of "The Hitch-Hiker" for later episodes such as "The After Hours," "Mirror Image," and "Nightmare as a Child."
              As the setting moves from bright sunshine to dark and lonely night, "The Hitch-Hiker" manages to create a high level of tension very much in the style of classic radio and film thrillers of the thirties and forties, no coincidence since the source material is one of the more famous radio thrillers of the forties. The voice-over narration and unadorned directing style give the episode a feeling of quaintness, but render it no less effective. The cast and crew are superb in this one. Inger Stevens provides a highly credible and sympathetic performance as she emotionally unravels in the role of Nan Adams. Leonard Strong plays the Hitch-Hiker in a very unusual manner. He seems largely benign, yet manages to be menacing due to some well designed scenes by director Alvin Ganzer. The use of a mirror became a primary symbolic device for the series ("Mirror Image," "Nervous Man in a Four Dollar Room," "The Mirror," "Number 12 Looks Just Like You," a dozen more) and is put to excellent and effective use in this episode with the rear-view mirror and the mirror in the makeup case.
               Rod Serling displays his skill in adapting another's work with "The Hitch-Hiker." His major innovation in adapting Lucille Fletcher's radio play for television was to change the gender of the main character from male to female, which perhaps further worked at the sympathies of the audience. Serling recognized the excellence of his source material and wisely changed little else, as it is Fletcher's original radio play which truly deserves the credit for story excellence.

               Lucille Fletcher (1912-2000) was best-known for writing the 30-minute radio play "Sorry, Wrong Number," which was originally produced for the Suspense radio series, broadcast on May 25, 1943, starring Agnes Moorehead (star of the second season Twilight Zone episode "The Invaders"). The radio play was later adapted by Fletcher into the 1948 film from Paramount starring Barbara Stanwyck and Burt Lancaster. The screenplay was adapted into a novel that same year by Allan Ullman, who also provided the novelization of Fletcher's screenplay, "Night Man" (1951)* Three years earlier, in 1941, Fletcher wrote "The Hitch-Hiker" as a vehicle for Orson Welles. 
               Orson Welles first starred as the doomed motorist Ronald Adams in the original radio play for The Mercury Theatre on the Air on November 17, 1941. Welles reprised his role for Suspense on September 2, 1942. An additional performance from Welles was heard on October 16, 1942 for The Philip Morris Playhouse. Welles's final performance in "The Hitch-Hiker" was for The Mercury Summer Theater on the Air on June 21, 1946. 

                The radio play was scored by Fletcher's then-husband Bernard Herrmann (they divorced in 1948), a frequent contributor to The Twilight Zone who did much to establish the musical identity of the series. Herrmann composed the first season's main title theme music, created original scores for several notable episodes, and his music was used in more than seventy episodes. Despite the lack of an original composition for The Twilight Zone episode of "The Hitch-Hiker," Herrmann's score from the 1946 broadcast of the radio play was used liberally. Lucille Fletcher told author Marc Scott Zicree, in The Twilight Zone Companion (1982), that the idea for the story occurred to her while driving cross-country with Herrmann and twice seeing an odd-looking hitch-hiker in two different locations, giving the appearance that the hitchhiker was moving forward in some preternatural way. "The Hitch-Hiker" was the only episode of The Twilight Zone adapted from a radio play. 

                The effectiveness of the episode is the result of many small nuances placed into the story by director Alvin Ganzer and also by what Rod Serling transposed and transfigured from Fletcher's original radio play. The first noticeable thing is Serling's incorporation of the tropes of a radio play into the television film, most notably with the ongoing use of the lead character's voice-over narration. The only other time Serling prominently used this device during the first season was for "Mirror Image," a very similar episode to "The Hitch-Hiker" in which a woman, played by Vera Miles, is stalked by her doppelganger in the waiting area of a bus station. The similarity between these two episodes is profound and it is evident that Fletcher's story creatively energized Serling and inspired him again when shaping the teleplays for several thematically related episodes. Serling's script for "The Hitch-Hiker" also injects some morbid humor into the play by dropping some not-so-subtle clues as to the true nature of Nan's plight. The conversation between Nan and the mechanic at the beginning of the episode features remarks that Nan "should have called for a hearse" instead of a mechanic, and that the new tire for Nan's car is "cheaper than a funeral."

                It is interesting to note that the tale of a hitch-hiking ghost has a long history in folklore as well as in several works in the popular culture. The most well-known folktale of a hitchhiking ghost concerns a person who picks up a hitch-hiker who is revealed to have been a ghost some time after their encounter when the driver attempts to return a belonging the ghost left behind in the vehicle. Of the many films and television plays with elements similar to "The Hitch-Hiker," perhaps the most notable is director Herk Harvey's 1962 cult film Carnival of Souls. The film stars Candace Hilligoss as a young woman who seemingly survives a drag-racing accident only to find herself afterwards feeling emotionally detached from those around her. More disturbing is that she is terrorized by a dark-eyed, pale-faced figure (played by director Harvey). At the film's conclusion, the young woman discovers that she is actually dead, having not survived the car accident, when she joins in with a group of spectral figures for a dance of death at some abandoned seaside carnival grounds. The film is an effectively moody chiller and sure to please any fan of The Twilight Zone in general and especially those viewers who enjoy "The Hitch-Hiker."
                 Another tale worth mentioning is Stephen King's novella "Riding the Bullet," which had the distinction of being the first mass-market e-book when it was released in 2000. The story concerns a college student who hitches a ride with a dangerous, and very dead, driver who forces the young man who face his fears and insecurities. The story was collected in King's 2002 collection Everything's Eventual and adapted for film in 2004 by writer/director Mick Garris. 

                 "The Hitch-Hiker" is an easy episode to enjoy, with its steady pacing, compelling lead performance, and pleasingly menacing atmosphere. The final, revelatory scene which finds Nan standing in a phone booth on a stretch of desolate highway is a highlight of the entire series, as is Leonard Strong's placid face and "going my way?" persistence. In all, it's a classic and among the best the series has to offer.

Grade: A

*The Ullman novelization of "Sorry, Wrong Number" was later included in the 1965 anthology Alfred Hitchcock Presents: Stories Not for the Nervous, ghost-edited by Robert Arthur. This volume is of interest to Zone fans as it also includes stories by Ray Bradbury ("To the Future"), Richard Matheson ("Lemmings"), and Margaret St. Clair, whose contribution "The Boy Who Predicted Earthquakes" was adapted for Rod Serling's Night Gallery.

Lucille Fletcher snippet biography
from Volume Two (Spring, 1963) of Reader's Digest Condensed Books

Notes:

Illustration by Douglas Snow

for a 1985 reprint of

Lucille Fletcher's radio play

- Alfred Hitchcock attempted to purchase the rights to "The Hitch-Hiker" from Lucille Fletcher for Alfred Hitchcock Presents prior to its appearance on The Twilight Zone, but Fletcher turned down the $2,000 offered. $2,000 was the price for which the story was later purchased for The Twilight Zone. 
- According to a press release during the week of the episode's original airing, Rod Serling completed the adaptation of the radio play into a television script in just six hours. 
- Rod Serling named the lead character, Nan, after his daughter Anne. Nan was her family nickname. The character was named Ronald Adams in the radio play. 

- "The Hitch-Hiker" was remade as the 1997 short film "End of the Road" starring Nora Rickert as a college student terrorized by a menacing hitch-hiker played by Matthew Sutton.

-Director Alvin Ganzer also directed the first season episodes "What You Need," "Nightmare As a Child," and early sequences of "The Mighty Casey."

-Actress Inger Stevens also starred in the second season episode "The Lateness of the Hour." The talented actress died at 35 years of age on April 30, 1970 from acute barbiturate poisoning.
-Adam Williams also appeared in the second season episode "A Most Unusual Camera." 
-Lew Gallo also appeared in the second season episode "The Rip Van Winkle Caper" and the fourth season episode "On Thursday We Leave for Home." 
-George Mitchell also appeared in the first season episode "Execution," the fourth season episode "Jess-Belle," and the fifth season episode "Ring-A-Ding Girl." 
-Russ Bender also appeared in the third season episode "The Fugitive" and the fourth season episode "On Thursday We Leave for Home." 
-Listen to the original radio play, "The Hitch-Hiker," and other classic Suspense radio plays by clicking here: The Old Time Radio Network
-A 4-page unauthorized adaptation of Lucille Fletcher's radio play can be found in Atlas (now Marvel) Comics Marvel Tales #107 (June, 1952) under the title "Going My Way?" There is no mystery, however, as to the nature of the man pursuing the traveler in this adaptation. Death is illustrated as a grinning skeleton in a top hat. The story was written by Stan Lee and illustrated by Bernard Krigstein. The story can be found in the 2013 volume Messages in a Bottle: Comic Book Stories by B. Krigstein, edited by Gred Sadowski (Fantagraphics). 

--Jordan Prejean