"The Midnight Sun"

Betty Garde (left) and Lois Nettleton (right) struggle for survival during a solar apocalypse

“The Midnight Sun”

Season Three, Episode 75

Original Air Date: November 17, 1961

Cast:

Norma Smith: Lois Nettleton

Mrs. Bronson: Betty Garde

Intruder: Tom Reese

Mr. Shuster: Jason Wingreen

Mrs. Shuster: June Ellis

Doctor: William Keene

Radio Announcer: Robert Stevenson

Crew:

Writer: Rod Serling (original teleplay)

Director: Anton Leader

Producer: Buck Houghton

Associate Producer: Del Reisman

Production Manager: Ralph W. Nelson

Director of Photography: George T. Clemens

Art Direction: George W. Davis and Phil Barber

Set Decoration: H. Web Arrowsmith

Assistant Director: E. Darrell Hallenbeck

Editor: Jason H. Bernie

Story Consultant: Richard McDonagh

Sound: Franklin Milton and Bill Edmondson

Casting: Stalmaster-Lister

Music: Nathan Van Cleave

 And Now, Mr. Serling:

“Next week we see what will happen to a world that, with each passing hour, draws closer to the sun. This is a nightmare in depth in which we watch two doomed women spend their last hours struggling for survival against the fiery orb that moves over the top of a hot, still, deserted city. We call it ‘The Midnight Sun’ and we also recommend it most heartily.”

 

Rod Serling’s Opening Narration:

“The word that Mrs. Bronson is unable to put into the hot, still, sodden air is ‘doomed,’ because the people you’ve just seen have been handed a death sentence. One month ago the Earth suddenly changed its elliptical orbit and in doing so began to follow a path which gradually, moment by moment, day by day, took it closer to the sun. And all of man’s little devices to stir up the air are now no longer luxuries. They happen to be pitiful and panicky keys to survival. The time is five minutes to twelve, midnight. There is no more darkness. The place is New York City and this is the eve of the end, because even at midnight it’s high noon, the hottest day in history, and you’re about to spend it in The Twilight Zone.”

Summary:

            Norma Smith, a young woman, is alone in her apartment, painting the scene outside her upper-floor window. She swoons in the heat, wiping sweat from her brow. A huge, monstrous sun looms in the sky, pouring heat and blinding light down upon a deserted New York City. Norma looks into the face of the sun and quickly turns away, wincing in pain. She moves to her small kitchen where she allows herself a small ration of drinking water from a container in the refrigerator.

            Norma hears movement outside the apartment and opens her door to see a small girl standing in the hallway. The girl looks weary and her eyes plead for a taste from the water glass in Norma’s hand. Norma bends to give the girl some water when suddenly Mr. Shuster, the girl’s father, comes rushing down the stairs, yelling for the girl not to take the lady’s water. No one can afford to give away water anymore, he explains, pulling the girl away. The man’s wife follows behind him. They are sweating heavily and carrying suitcases.

            Mrs. Bronson, the middle-aged landlady, opens the door to her apartment and enters the hallway. Mr. Shuster tells Mrs. Bronson that he’s gotten hold of twelve gallons of gas and is using it to take his family to Syracuse to eventually try and make it to Toronto, where it is cooler. Norma and Mrs. Bronson wish the family luck and watch them leave the building. Norma and Mrs. Bronson are now the only two tenants remaining in the building. Mrs. Bronson speaks of a scientist who came onto the radio to explain that the Earth’s orbit has altered, bringing it closer to the sun each day. The thought causes Mrs. Bronson to break down, unable to voice the fact that the human race is doomed.

            Norma arrives home the following day struggling with two bags of groceries. Mrs. Bronson helps her get the bags inside the apartment as Norma describes the chaos of looting the grocery store. Norma has managed to acquire two cans of grapefruit juice. Mrs. Bronson grabs greedily at the cans, dropping one. She falls to her knees and apologizes. Norma comforts Mrs. Bronson before picking up the can and pouring each of them a glass of juice. A radio announcer comes on to report the news and slowly breaks down into delirium before being removed from the air. Soon after, the electricity shuts off. It is now a severely rationed service.

            Norma attempts to sleep, struggling to do so in the suffocating heat and permanent daylight. She crosses the hallways and knocks on Mrs. Bronson’s door. They stand in the doorway of Mrs. Bronson’s apartment, talking, when suddenly they hear a crash from upstairs. Mrs. Bronson cannot remember whether or not she locked the door to the roof exit. The exit door slowly opens. The two women dash into Norma’s apartment and lock the door. 

            Heavy footsteps stop at Norma’s door. A man calls out to be let in. Norma rushes to a table and picks up a gun. She moves to the door and cocks the gun, threatening the man and telling him to leave. After a silence, the man acquiesces. Norma moves to the window to watch him leave by the front exit. Mrs. Bronson unlocks the door before Norma can stop her and the man, lying in wait, burst into the apartment, sending Mrs. Bronson sprawling. Norma points the gun at him but he rushes her and takes it away, pushing her to the floor.

            Norma stands up to the intruder but Mrs. Bronson continues to cower near the sofa. The man opens the refrigerator and drinks all of Norma’s carefully rationed water. He sees Norma’s paintings spread out near the window. This causes the man to break down. He explains that his wife liked to paint. She has recently died from the heat, he says, soon after giving birth to their only child, a boy, who also perished in the heat. The man drops the gun and apologizes to the women, begging forgiveness before slowly leaving the apartment. 

            Norma calls Mrs. Bronson’s attention to a new painting she has recently completed. It is a picture of a waterfall. Mrs. Bronson looks at the painting and slowly descends into hysterics, imagining water cascading down upon her. She moves to the blazing hot window and leans against it. She shutters in the brutal rays of the sun and collapses down upon the floor, dead.

            Norma cradles Mrs. Bronson in her arms as the heat quickly increases, melting the paint on the canvases and causing the thermometer to burst. Norma screams in pain and falls to the floor, her eyes wide and staring, the life leaving her body.

            It is night now. Heavy snow pelts the frost covered windows of Norma’s apartment. Norma lies upon the sofa, a doctor at her side. Mrs. Bronson stands nearby. The doctor tells Norma that she has suffered a very bad fever that has only just broken. Speaking privately to Mrs. Bronson, the doctor informs her that he won’t be able to come back again. He has decided to move his family south, to Miami, where it is warmer. The Earth has gotten colder and colder ever since its orbit has changed, moving it farther away from the sun with each passing day. 

            Norma tells Mrs. Bronson about her terrible dream of a burning hot sun and remarks how wonderful it is to have darkness and cold again.

Rod Serling’s Closing Narration:

“The poles of fear, the extremes of how the Earth might conceivably be doomed. Minor exercise in the care and feeding of a nightmare, respectfully submitted by all the thermometer watchers in The Twilight Zone.”

Commentary:

"Outside the snow fell heavier and heavier and the glass on the thermometer cracked. The mercury had gone down to the very bottom, and there was no place left for it to go. And very slowly night and cold reached out with frozen fingers to feel the pulse of the city, and then to stop it."
           -"The Midnight Sun" by Rod Serling New Stories from the Twilight Zone (1962)

            “The Midnight Sun” can be considered Rod Serling’s coda to his earlier episode, “The Shelter.” He substitutes the threat of nuclear annihilation with the threat of extreme natural disaster, yet both episodes function in relatively the same manner, as a lens through which to view the unpredictable methods in which human individuals maintain or lose their basic humanity in the face of imminent doom.

            What Serling achieves with “The Midnight Sun,” however, is clearly the opposite of what he set out to illustrate in “The Shelter.” With “The Shelter,” Serling attempts to display how quickly individuals can descend into violence and savagery when faced with a crisis. “The Shelter” functions to drive home the undeniable principle of social behavior that the person we are in public is not, to varying degrees, the person we are in private. He uses the catalyst of a life and death situation to show the ugly side of our hidden personalities, areas filled with suppressed prejudices. “The Shelter” uses hateful rhetoric and sudden, shocking acts of violence to drive this point home, with all of the action taking place between supposedly friendly neighbors.

            “The Midnight Sun” takes an entirely different approach to a similar situation by focusing on a more humanistic reaction to crisis. “The Shelter” is, perhaps unfairly, dismissed, or at least disliked, because of the pessimistic leanings of its narrative. Generally speaking, the negative response it generates in many viewers is evidence of its power and effectiveness. In other words, this is exactly the reaction Serling was looking for in his audience. He wanted people to be horrified by the behavior exhibited in the episode. However, for viewers that disliked the earlier episode, “The Midnight Sun” remedies this by presenting a small group of individuals that retain their basic humanity in the face of calamity. It is an episode that presents an optimistic view of ourselves, in its way as unbelievable in its extremes as is the behavior in “The Shelter.” Interesting to note is that, with “The Midnight Sun,” it is not until the final act and the end of Norma’s nightmare that any violence or death is shown on-screen. It is not until the climatic confrontation with a violent intruder, who eventually leaves begging forgiveness from those he has harmed, that the viewer is confronted with tangible evidence of society’s descent into chaos outside Norma’s apartment. Of course, the situation is eventually revealed to be a dream and when Norma awakens we are returned to a calm, collected setting despite the persistence of a deadly threat. The characters in “The Shelter” may have escaped the misfortune which is certain to befall the characters in “The Midnight Sun,” but their failure to maintain basic civility in the face of disaster indicates that these characters will never again possess a meaningful relationship among themselves. Serling stresses in both episodes that we can destroy ourselves without the need of any physical disaster.

            The viewer can assume that some of the residents of Mrs. Bronson’s apartment building died because of the heat, likely in a horrible state. Yet, we are never given evidence of this. The radio announcer speaks of maniacs, allowing the viewer to imagine the varied horrors individuals are inflicting upon one another in the lawless streets. Again, Serling never shows us any of this, or even a hint of it. Instead of showing the chaos of Norma’s grocery store trip, for instance, he merely has her speak of it after it is over. She does not appear to be physically harmed and she speaks of the experience not in a frightened way but rather in a sad, mournful manner, as though her experience left her feeling pity rather than fear.

            It aids the episode that Serling has no discernable political message to convey as he had in “The Shelter” or in the similarly themed “The Monsters are Due on Maple Street.” This allows Serling to concentrate solely on developing character, clearly his strongest talent as a writer. It is character which drives the episode along, aided by a strong central performance and serviceable support. It is important that Serling paid such close attention to character development as he is certainly not breaking new conceptual ground with “The Midnight Sun,” as tales of natural apocalypse have been a regular theme of popular science fiction since the early 19^th century (for examples see editor Michael Kelahan’s 2010 compilation The End of the World (Fall River Press), which collects apocalyptic science fiction from 1816-1920). 

            Initially, Serling included two additional characters in his teleplay that did not make into the finished episode. Shortly after the Shuster family departs, a refrigerator repairman finishes repairing Mrs. Bronson’s refrigerator. This excised scene was placed into the teleplay to show how desperate times have become for the remaining citizens of the city. When the repairman tells Mrs. Bronson that the job will cost her $100 and he can only accept payment in cash, Mrs. Bronson, who uses a charge account, offers her wedding ring as payment, which the repairman declines on principle. Interesting to note here is that the wedding ring calls direct attention to the fact that Mrs. Bronson is or was married, something otherwise left out of the finished episode if one is not paying close attention to the Mrs. in her name. If left in the episode, it leaves a wide spectrum of possibilities as to the fate of her husband. Has he been dead for years? Did he die earlier in the heat? Did he abandon her when she refused to leave her apartment building? Was he killed by some maniac? It is clear to see that the repairman character was unnecessary to move the narrative forward but it is still an interesting exchange that adds gravity to the situation.

            The second excised character is that of a policeman that arrives after Norma’s grocery trip. He appears in the doorway of her apartment in a tattered police uniform and explains that the police are making rounds to all those left in the city to inform them that the police are disbanding and that no more help will be available from the civil force. More importantly, it is this character that gives Norma the gun she later attempts to use to get rid of the intruder. When the policeman determines that the two women have no protection against any psychopath that may come into the building, he gives Norma his service revolver.

            For viewers that would like to read the excised scenes with these characters, Serling includes them in his adaptation of the teleplay for his 1962 collection, New Stories from the Twilight Zone, a book that has been reprinted dozens of times since. The decision to cut the two scenes resulted from Associate Producer Del Reisman’s concerns about both budget and time constraints. Ned Glass portrays the repairman and John McLiam portrays the policeman, with the scenes excised in post-production. 

            Interesting as these scenes are, however, it was probably wise to cut them for no other reason than logic, as it is highly unlikely that members of any occupation would still be making service rounds at this late date in the crisis. After showing scenes of completely deserted city streets, the idea that a refrigerator repairman would be out making services rounds and presumably leaving his family at home is preposterous. Especially if the streets are as dangerous as the radio announcers indicates. The refrigerator repairman also states that he is trying to get his family north, not only reinforcing the notion that it is absurd he would be out making service rounds but adding another mirrored juxtaposition to the doctor’s journey south at the end of the episode, a parallel which was previously established by the northern journey of the Shusters. The policeman continuing to do his job is a bit more believable but his character appears only to say that he won’t be around any longer.

            Serling’s adaptations of his teleplays often allowed him to elaborate and expand upon dialogue, setting, and characters with little of the space limitations of the television series. In his adaptation of “The Midnight Sun,” Serling presents extended dialogue sequences, including a harrowing extension of the radio announcer’s on-air breakdown, as well as more subtle changes, such as the fact that the Shusters are traveling to Buffalo and not Syracuse, as in the episode. Serling also ramps up the violence and impact of the situation in his adaptation. One memorable scene is that of Mrs. Bronson’s death, describing how portions of the woman’s face are burned away onto the scorching hot glass of the apartment window as she presses against it. The intruder is also a bit more violent in the adaptation, going so far as to slap Norma across the face during their encounter. Interestingly enough, Serling’s adaptation of “The Shelter” is also included in New Stories from the Twilight Zone and presents a fascinating juxtaposition of the two similarly theme stories.

            “The Midnight Sun” was directed by Anton M. Leader, born in Boston in 1913, who began his directing career in New York radio, at the helm for several memorable episodes of Suspense (1942-1962), working with many Golden Age Hollywood stars. Leader moved to Los Angeles in 1948 and began to work in the burgeoning television medium, where he was directing by 1954 with his first credit for the mystery anthology series The Web (1950-1954; 1957). He continued to work on anthology series in the 1950s, including work on Celebrity Playhouse (1955-1956), Four Star Playhouse (1952-1956), and The Ford Television Theatre (1948-1957). Leader could hardly avoid the flood of western television programs that descended upon the small screen in the 1950s and 1960s, helming episodes of The Adventures of Jim Bowie (1956-1958), Rawhide (1959-1966), and The Virginian (1962-1971). His science fiction and fantasy credits include episodes of Lost in Space (1965-1968), Tarzan (1966-1968), and Star Trek (1966-1969).

            Leader previously directed the excellent first season Twilight Zone episode "Long Live Walter Jameson" and, like that technically challenging episode, he again displays his directing skills behind the camera. Aided by Emmy Award-winning cinematographer George T. Clemens, Leader manages to convey the inherent suffocating atmosphere of the episode with an effective number of subjective camera shots. In one particularly memorable shot, Leader focuses down on Norma as she awakens from sleep with a long shop from the ceiling of the apartment. As she comes awake, Leader brings the camera swooping down to a close shot of her confronting an empty water glass. It is a marvelous shot and one which Leader managed to expertly employ in an episode otherwise devoid of opportunities for camera flourishes.

            Adding verisimilitude to the atmosphere is the fact that the episode was filmed in summer on a set without air conditioning. Though the actors were continually spritzed with water, much of the sweat and weariness in their performances is authentic. Leader even went so far as to occasionally have the temperature brought up on set to simulate the setting of the episode.  

            Leader is perhaps best known for directing the film Children of the Damned three years later in 1964. This film was the sequel to the classic 1960 science fiction thriller Village of the Damned, taken from John Wyndham’s 1957 novel, The Midwich Cuckoos. Children of the Damned, though greatly different in tone than its predecessor, has gained a loyal following in the years since its release and is a fine film in its own right. Leader died in Los Angeles on July 1, 1988, aged 74 years.

            Although ably supported by Betty Garde and Tom Reese, both of whom perhaps succumb a bit too much to melodramatic acting, the episode relies heavily upon the performance of Lois Nettleton, here playing Norma Smith. Nettleton brings to the role a calm, steely reserve, giving a highly effective and unusual performance during a time in which women were mostly cast in a science fiction play to panic and scream. She does get the one ringing scream off but it comes as the fever subsides and the nightmare breaks down.

            Nettleton was born in 1927 in Oak Park, Illinois. She was a former beauty queen (Miss Chicago 1948) who began an acting career at Chicago’s Goodman Theatre and made her Broadway debut in 1949 in Dalton Trumbo’s comedy The Biggest Thief in Town, using the stage name Lydia Scott. Nettleton remained committed to stage work, appearing on stage well into her seventies. Although she did not make her official film debut until 1962, for Period of Adjustment, Nettleton quickly moved from the stage to the television screen, making an early appearance in an episode of Captain Video and His Video Rangers (1949-1955) in 1954. Her genre television credits include an adaptation of Wilkie Collins’s The Woman in White (1859) for The Dow Hour of Great Mysteries (1960), an adaptation of Conrad Aiken’s 1931 short story “Mr. Arcularis” for Great Ghost Tales (1961), The Alfred Hitchcock Hour (1962-1965) (in Alec Coppel’s “The Dark Pool”), and Rod Serling’s Night Gallery (1969-1973) (for an adaptation of Rene Morris’s 1966 short story “I’ll Never Leave You-Ever”). Nettle went on to win two Daytime Emmy Awards for her portrayal of Susan B. Anthony in The American Woman: Profiles in Courage (1976) and in 1983 for “A Gun for Mandy,” an episode of the Roman Catholic anthology series Insight (1960-1983). Nettleton was nominated for three Primetime Emmy Awards. She died on January 18, 2008 in Woodland Hills, California, aged 80 years.

            I ultimately feel that “The Midnight Sun” is an underrated episode, one of the efforts well above average that warrants a repeated viewing to fully appreciate the nuances of directing and acting on display. Anton Leader only directed two episodes of the series and both are outstanding scripts (one from Charles Beaumont, one from Serling) that Leader manages to effectively frame in a stylized array of subjective camera shots which enhance both the performances and the carefully realized settings and effects. “The Midnight Sun” remains an episode perhaps remembered for its unexpected ending but certainly not an episode which fully relies upon it. And this is what separates it from the less successful episodes of a similar type. It comes recommended. 

Grade: B

Notes:

-Anton Leader also directed the first season episode “Long Live Walter Jameson.”
-Lois Nettleton appears in an episode of Rod Serling's Night Gallery titled "I'll Never Leave You-Ever." In 1993, Nettleton recorded a reading of Rod Serling's prose adaptation of "The Midnight Sun" for Harper Audio. 

-Betty Garde also appears as a passenger in the second season episode, “The Odyssey of Flight 33.”

-Jason Wingreen also appears in the first season episode “A Stop at Willoughby” and (uncredited) in the fourth season episode “The Bard.” He appears in two episodes of Rod Serling's Night Gallery, "The Nature of the Enemy" and "Silent Snow, Secret Snow."

-June Ellis also appears (uncredited) in the first season episode “What You Need.”

-William Keene also appears (uncredited) in the second season episode “The Prime Mover.”

-Rod Serling adapted “The Midnight Sun” into a short story for New Stories from the Twilight Zone, first published in May, 1962 by Bantam Books.

-“The Midnight Sun” was adapted into a Twilight Zone Radio Drama, starring Kim Fields.

-“The Midnight Sun” was adapted into a graphic novel by Mark Kneece (writer) and Anthony Spay (illustrator), first published in May, 2009 by Walker.

-The waterfall of which Mrs. Bronson speaks is The Taughannock Falls in Taughannock Falls State Park, located in Ulysses, New York, in Tompkins County. The park is northwest of Ithaca, which is the county seat.

-The effect of the melting paint was achieved by painting wax onto a hot plate, which could then be heated up to melt the wax.

--Jordan Prejean            

"Long Live Walter Jameson"

"Long Live Walter Jameson"

Season One, Episode 24

Original Air Date: March 18, 1960

Cast:

Professor Walter Jameson: Kevin McCarthy

Professor Samuel Kittridge: Edgar Stehli

Susanna Kittridge: Dody Heath

Laurette Bowen: Estelle Winwood

Crew:

Writer: Charles Beaumont (original teleplay)

Director: Anton Leader

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
Makeup: William Tuttle

And Now, Mr. Serling:

"Next week the culprit is Charles Beaumont, the gentleman responsible for a story unlike any you've ever seen. You talk of immortality, the business of being able to live for as long as one wants. Well, next week you'll see Kevin McCarthy at the tail end of a life that's gone on for two thousand years. The play is called, 'Long Live Walter Jameson,' on The Twilight Zone."

Rod Serling's Opening Narration:

"You're looking at act one, scene one of a nightmare, one not restricted to witching hours and dark, rain-swept nights. Professor Walter Jameson, popular beyond words, who talks of the past as if it were the present, who conjures up the dead as if they were alive. In the view of this man, Professor Samuel Kittridge, Walter Jameson has access to knowledge that couldn't come out of a volume of history but rather from a book on black magic; which is to say that this nightmare begins at noon."

Summary: 

                Walter Jameson, a middle-aged professor of history, gives a lecture on the American Civil War. He reads passages from the private journal of Union Officer Hugh Skelton. The journal describes, in great detail, the hatred felt by Union soldiers for the ruthless Union General William T. Sherman, the man who ordered Atlanta burned. Listening to Jameson's lecture is Professor Samuel Kittridge, an elderly man. Kittridge approaches Jameson after the lecture and inquires about Union Officer Hugh Skelton and in what manner Jameson came to possess Skelton's journal. Jameson dodges the question. When Kittridge instead asks to borrow the journal Jameson denies him on the grounds that Kittridge misplaced an earlier borrowed item. Kittridge invites Jameson to dinner at Kittridge's home. Jameson agrees and we learn that Jameson is engaged to Kittridge's daughter, Susanna.

                We meet Susanna as she answers the door when Jameson arrives later that evening. Susanna is young and beautiful, and clearly in love with Jameson. Samuel Kittridge enters and, after some light banter, announces that dinner is ready. After dinner, Kittridge sends Susanna upstairs to continue studying for a PhD. Susanna reluctantly agrees and Kittridge and Jameson sit down to continue a game of chess in the living room.

                We soon learn the cause for apprehension on the part of Kittridge. When the hands of the two men meet, one young and smooth, the other old and wrinkled, Kittridge begins to question Jameson's real age. Kittridge does the math, adding up the time between when Jameson arrived in town and the present, and realizes that the age Jameson claims doesn't add up. Jameson gives another false "true" age and furthermore states that he believes Kittridge's apprehension is that Jameson is too old to marry Susanna. This, Kittridge tells him, is true, in a sense.

                Kittridge fetches a book of the Civil War photographs taken by Matthew Brady. He tells Jameson that his curiosity had been aroused by the story of Union Officer Hugh Skelton. He shows Jameson a photograph of Skelton and the Union Officer is identical in appearance to Walter Jameson, even down to a mole on his face and the ring on his smallest finger. Realizing he cannot lie his way out from under the evidence presented by the photograph, Jameson decides to tell Kittridge the truth. Jameson walks to a sculpted bust of Plato and tells Kittridge that he, Jameson, is old enough to have known Plato personally, making him over two thousand years old!

                Kittridge believes the fantastic tale and clings to the hope that Jameson holds the key to eternal life. Jameson, however, can provide no such key. He tells of being afraid of dying and of visiting an alchemist. The alchemist gave Jameson the gift of immortality, a gift he now knows to be a curse. He tells Kittridge of the horror of watching loved ones grow old and die while he remained young. He tells of never being able to stay in one place for fear of those around him finding out his secret. He also poses the question of whether Kittridge would really want to achieve immortality as an old man with an old man's body. Kittridge, angered and afraid, forbids Jameson to marry his daughter, stating that sparing her the heartbreak of when Jameson must inevitably abandon her is worth Susanna being angry now. But Jameson will not be so easily dismissed. When Susanna is roused by their raised voices and comes downstairs, Jameson tells her to get her things together, they are going away tonight to get married. Susanna is excited and, defiant of her father, runs upstairs to get ready. After an idle threat by Kittridge, Jameson walks across the street to his own home. Unseen by Jameson, an old woman lurks in the shadows of a large tree, spying on Jameson as he walks across the street.

                Inside his home, Jameson sits behind the desk in his office. From the desk drawer he draws a revolver. For a moment suicide crosses his mind but is quickly rejected. He places the gun back in the drawer. Then a voice speaks. It is the voice of the old woman calling the name "Tommy." Jameson is startled and turns on a lamp to illuminate the old woman who had spied on him outside. After taking a good look at Jameson she is satisfied. She tells him that she is Laurette Bowen and that he was her husband, Tommy, when she was a young woman. The old woman is suddenly holding a gun. Jameson begins to plead with the woman. She tells Jameson he is unnatural and that he cannot go on hurting others the way he hurt her. Before Jameson can get another word out, the woman shoots him.  

                Kittridge hears the gunshot and rushes across the street where he encounters the old woman in front of Jameson's house. Kittridge asks what happened but the old woman rushes away down the sidewalk. Inside Jameson's home, Kittridge is confronted with a horrible sight. He finds Jameson in the office. Jameson's death is two thousand years in the making and he rapidly ages before Kittridge's eyes until Jameson is nothing but dust and an empty set of clothes upon the floor. 

                When Susanna rushes into the office, Kittridge attempts to shield her from the sight but dust and empty clothes only leave Susanna confused as Kittridge leads her away.

Rod Serling's Closing Narration:

"Last stop on a long journey, as yet another human being returns to the vast nothingness that is the beginning and into the dust that is always the end."

Commentary:

"Nothing lasts forever. Thank God."
-Walter Jameson

Kevin McCarthy and Edgar Stehli

               "Long Live Walter Jameson" is Charles Beaumont's first original teleplay for The Twilight Zone. Beaumont's friend Richard Matheson preferred to create original material for the show, choosing not to adapt one of his own stories until the third season's "Little Girl Lost." Beaumont, on the other hand, seems to have been more comfortable, at least initially, adapting his own short stories for the series. With "Long Live Walter Jameson," however, Beaumont created perhaps his most powerful script of the first season. Though it is certainly one of the more memorable episodes, it is also notable in that it was the first episode to display the astonishing special makeup effects that veteran makeup artist William Tuttle brought to the series. The makeup department at MGM became as important a member of the production as any other and Tuttle's creations are instantly recognizable moments from the series. Aided by strong performances, "Long Live Walter Jameson" remains a remarkably well-crafted and thought-provoking episode.

                Unlike Beaumont's earlier episode, "Perchance to Dream," "Long Live Walter Jameson" is acted and directed in a very naturalistic manner. There is no frenetic camera work and the stock soundtrack cues are subtle and unobtrusive. The actors, through the unadorned nature of their performances, effectively convey the introduction of a fantastic element into an otherwise rational world, basically the premise for the entire series. 

                One of the more powerful scenes in the episode was later cut from the syndicated version. This is the scene in which Kittridge and Jameson play chess. The scene represents the battle between these two men, one to protect a secret and the other to find it out. It is also important for the hand comparison scene, in which the hands of the two men meet and are seen to be markedly different on account of aging. The entire episode hinges on the mounting tension between these two men. It is entirely dramatic action until the episode's shocking final sequence. Walter Jameson, the man, is presented not so much as a villain but as desperate and adapted to a certain form of survival. Once threatened, he panics and attempts to flee with Susanna. He realizes he has made a mistake and remained too long in one place, too close to one man intelligent enough to discover his secret. 

                There is a second scene, left on the production floor, which actor Kevin McCarthy discusses on a commentary track for the Definitive Edition DVD. McCarthy describes a scene in which Jameson and Susanna are walking along a midway and a man, against Jameson's wishes, takes their picture for an engagement announcement in the local newspaper. Laurette Bowen, the scorned lover from Jameson's past wonderfully played by Estelle Winwood, later mentions viewing the photograph and using it to track Jameson down. It is the second time that a photograph is the cause of Jameson's undoing. 

                "Long Live Walter Jameson" displays the major themes of Charles Beaumont's fiction, especially that of his Twilight Zone output. Though there are exceptions, Beaumont's episodes are mostly concerned with death and dying, often through the perspective of a dream or nightmare. Beaumont's best short stories not adapted for the series, "Miss Gentilbelle," "The Hunger," "A Death in the Country," "Mourning Song," and "Black Country," reflect deeply upon death and the emotional and physical aspects of dying. Among his first three episodes for The Twilight Zone, the theme of death and dying is all-pervasive. "Perchance to Dream" concerns a man afraid to go to sleep for fear that a recurring nightmare will take his life. "Elegy" takes a morbidly humorous approach when three astronauts land on a planet which serves as a unique mortuary for those wishing their preserved bodies to be forever displayed performing their favorite activities. With "Long Live Walter Jameson," Beaumont gives us two men, one old and one eternally young, both afraid of death, and both running out of time. By the end of the episode, Kittridge's dream of defeating death is dispelled by the sight of Walter Jameson's body turned to dust on the floor. Beaumont further explored the themes of death and dying in such notable episodes as season two's "Shadow Play" and season four's "Passage on the Lady Anne," both of which are based on previously published stories. The episode that most resembles "Long Live Walter Jameson," however, is the fifth season's "Queen of the Nile," a virtual rewrite of the material. This episode was ghost-written by Jerry Sohl under Beaumont's name in a period when Beaumont's health began to rapidly decline. It concerns an ageless movie star who manages to remain immortal by the use of an ancient Egyptian scarab ring and occasional human sacrifice. Though much darker in tone, "Queen of the Nile" is not as effective as "Long Live Walter Jameson."

                Makeup artist William Tuttle joined the production of The Twilight Zone as head of the makeup department at Metro Goldwyn Mayer Studios, where The Twilight Zone utilized the studio's vast production resources. Tuttle apprenticed under Jack Dawn at MGM when Dawn was the head of the makeup department. Tuttle worked with Dawn on such films as Tod Browning's Mark of the Vampire (1935) and The Wizard of Oz (1939). Dawn retired in the fall of 1950. Tuttle served as head of the MGM makeup department until 1969, when a change in ownership of the studio directed Tuttle toward teaching at USC and freelancing his makeup skills instead. Tuttle was awarded the first Academy Award ever given to a makeup artist for his work transforming actor Tony Randall into The Seven Faces of Dr. Lao in 1964. The film was scripted by Charles Beaumont from Charles G. Finney's 1935 novel The Circus of Dr. Lao. Tuttle's other makeup creations can be seen in such films as Forbidden Planet (1956), The Time Machine (1960), Young Frankenstein (1974), and The Fury (1978), working on the latter alongside a young Rick Baker, an artist who later amassed more Academy Awards for makeup than any other artist. Tuttle and Baker won Saturn Awards for their work on the film. Some of Tuttle's most memorable makeup creations appeared in episodes of The Twilight Zone, including notable work in "The After Hours" (working with talented sculptor Charles Schram), "Eye of the Beholder," "Will the Real Martian Please Stand Up?," "The Dummy," "To Serve Man," "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet," and "The Masks."

                For "Long Live Walter Jameson," Tuttle and cinematographer George T. Clemens used a proven method for black and white film effects when aging actor Kevin McCarthy in a single continuous shot. It is the same method used for the famous transformation scene in 1931's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, starring Fredric March. Clemens worked on that film as an assistant camera operator for cinematographer Karl Struss. For the initial stages of the aging process, Tuttle drew aging lines on Kevin McCarthy's face using red makeup. Photographer George T. Clemens used a red color filter over the camera lens to conceal the makeup on the actor's face. When the red filter was removed and replaced with a green filter, the red makeup turned a very dark hue to reveal the aging lines, giving the effect of McCarthy aging before the viewer's eyes. As stated before, this method works only for black and white photography. Tuttle's primary method as a makeup artist was to create a mold of an actor's likeness, formed in flexible wax with a structural layer of Plaster of Paris, which could be manipulated to fit the needs of the desired effect.  For the deep aging process undergone by Walter Jameson, Tuttle made several molds of different portions of Kevin McCarthy's face, manipulated the features to look aged, and then refitted them upon McCarthy's face with foam adhesive. The effect is convincing and wonderfully done. Tuttle was assisted in this, and in several other technically demanding episodes ("The After Hours," "The Masks," etc.) by talented sculptor and longtime friend Charles Schram, who met Tuttle during their undergraduate days in the USC Art Department in the early 1930s. William Tuttle is the subject of a 1968 MGM short documentary film, King of the Duplicators.

William Tuttle's makeup progression on actor Kevin McCarthy:

                Kevin McCarthy (1914-2010) is likely best-remembered as Dr. Miles Bennell in director Don Siegel's Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956), an adaptation of Jack Finney's 1955 novel The Body Snatchers. Earlier in his career, McCarthy received a Best Supporting Actor Academy Award nomination for his role as Biff Loman in the 1951 film version of Arthur Miller's 1949 Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award winning play, Death of a Salesman. In later years, McCarthy gained memorable roles as a regular in the films of director Joe Dante, including Piranha (1978), The Howling (1981), and Twilight Zone: the Movie (1983), in which he appeared in the film's third segment, Dante's re-imagining of the classic episode "It's a Good Life," based on the 1953 Jerome Bixby story. In a playful move, McCarthy's character is named Walter Jameson in the film. He is repeatedly referred to as "Uncle Walt." Like the character of Walter Jameson, McCarthy had the gift of longevity. He died on September 11, 2010 at the age of 96.

                In a terrible way, "Long Live Walter Jameson" mirrors the unfortunate real-life plight of writer Charles Beaumont. By the spring of 1963, the young writer was displaying aberrant behavior that was initially attributed by friends and family to the effects of increased drinking of alcohol. The truth was much worse. Beaumont was displaying the symptoms of very early onset Alzheimer's Disease or a similar degenerative disease of the brain, such as Pick's Disease. Beaumont displayed signs of acute memory loss, weight loss, trouble in speech and motor skill function, an inability to keep track of time, chronic fatigue, severe headaches, an increase in the physical signs of aging, and, of course, an increasing inability to write new material. He soon found it impossible to finish any work and was therefore unable to sell new material. As author Marc Scott Zicree commented upon in The Twilight Zone Companion (second ed., 1989), Beaumont began to "farm out" his ideas for new episodes of The Twilight Zone to close friends and fellow writers Jerry Sohl and John Tomerlin. These included "The New Exhibit," from season four, "Number Twelve Looks Just Like You," and the classic "Living Doll," both from season five. Beaumont's friend and former fiction editor at Playboy, Ray Russell, was also at this time helping Beaumont complete film scripts for producer/director Roger Corman at American International Pictures, where Beaumont was credited with work on Corman's The Masque of the Red Death (1964), The Premature Burial (1962), The Haunted Palace (1963), and The Intruder (1962), the latter based on Beaumont's 1959 novel of the same name. Beaumont's other screenwriting credits include Burn, Witch, Burn (1962), co-written with Richard Matheson based on Fritz Leiber's 1943 novel Conjure Wife, producer/director George Pal's The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm (1962), and several teleplays for episodic television including work for Wanted: Dead or Alive, One Step Beyond, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, Suspense, Have Gun-Will Travel, Route 66, Naked City, and Boris Karloff's Thriller. At the time Beaumont's mysterious disease ended his writing career, he was as the height of his creative powers.

                Beaumont editor and biographer Roger Anker relates, in The Twilight Zone Scripts of Charles Beaumont, Volume One (Gauntlet, 2004), that by early 1964 Beaumont decided to temporarily move from his home in California to the east coast, opting to take a small apartment in Manhattan in which he planned to finish a novel tentatively titled Where No Man Walks. Beaumont's time in Manhattan was disastrous. His novel was never finished and by July Beaumont returned to California and allowed himself to be checked into the UCLA Neuro-Psychiatric Clinic for testing. It was then that the severity of Beaumont's situation became known. UCLA doctors diagnosed Beaumont with Alzheimer's, or possibly Pick's, Disease. 

                Beaumont's condition rapidly worsened. He acted as though films he had seen dozens of times, such as King Kong, were only now being viewed for the first time. After his release from the UCLA medical center, he accidentally set two fires in his home, once setting the drapes on fire with a cigarette, unaware of the danger to his life, until friends and family were able to get him away and put out the flames. Beaumont's meetings with producers and publishers were disasters during this time. He struggled to speak clearly and was forced to speak slowly and deliberately. He would often arrive unshaven and unable to remember and articulate his prepared plans for the meetings. Beaumont would lose control of his emotions, often erupting into anger or tears as his awareness and understanding of what was happening to him would come and go with cruel irregularity. By the end of his terrible ordeal, Beaumont would be unable to perform such basic tasks as dressing and walking. The situation was a nightmare of emotional and financial strain on Beaumont's family, which included four young children.

                By the end Beaumont was largely unaware of what was happening to him. In March of 1965, Beaumont entered the Motion Picture Country Home and Hospital in Woodland Hills, California, where he died on February 21, 1967, aged just 38 years. He reportedly appeared ninety years old when he died. Fortunately, Charles Beaumont left behind exceedingly fine work and his legacy is secure through his contributions to The Twilight Zone.

               

Grade: A

Notes: 

--Anton Leader also directed the third season episode, "The Midnight Sun."

--Writer Charles Beaumont was enamored with the production aspects of The Twilight Zone and was often on-set during the filming of episodes he scripted. Actor Kevin McCarthy recalled meeting Beaumont on the set of "Long Live Walter Jameson." McCarthy remembered that Beaumont was a motor sports enthusiast. Beaumont was, in fact, an amateur racer who owned a sports car and often traveled, along with his friends William F. Nolan and John Tomerlin, to compete in racing tournaments. Beaumont edited, with Nolan, two books on the subject, The Omnibus of Speed: An Introduction to the World of Motor Sport (Putnam's, 1958) and When Engines Roar: Nineteen Action Packed True Stories That Capture All the Daring and Drama of the Greatest Moments in Auto-Racing History (Bantam Pathfinder, 1964). One of Beaumont's finest short stories also concerns auto-racing. Initially titled "The Deadly Will to Win" and first published in the November, 1957 issue of Playboy, it has subsequently been reprinted as "A Death in the Country."
--"Love Live Walter Jameson" was initially submitted under the title "Forever and a Day" but producer Buck Houghton felt this title too ambiguous and wisely suggested a change. Episode titles often changed between the time of submission and the time of filming. Examples include the second season episode "Static," scripted by Charles Beaumont and OCee Ritch from Ritch's story "Tune in Yesterday," and Earl Hamner's third season episode "A Piano in the House," which was originally titled "Won't You Play a Simple Melody?"
--"Long Live Walter Jameson" was the final episode produced before the premier of the pilot episode, "Where Is Everybody?" on October 2, 1959. 
--"Long Live Walter Jameson" was adapted as a Twilight Zone Radio Drama, starring Lou Diamond Phillips.

--Of further interest: Richard Matheson remembers Charles Beaumont

--Charles Beaumont memorial

--JP