"Printer's Devil"

From left: Robert Sterling, Burgess Meredith, Patricia Crowley

“Printer’s Devil”

Season Four, Episode 111

Original Air Date: February 28, 1963

Cast:

Douglas Winter: Robert Sterling

Jackie Benson: Patricia Crowley

Mr. Smith: Burgess Meredith

Mr. Franklin: Ray Teal

Andy Praskins: Charles Thompson

Landlady: Doris Kemper

Molly: Camille Franklin

Crew:

Writer: Charles Beaumont (based on his story, “The Devil, You Say?”)

Director: Ralph Senensky

Producer: Herbert Hirschman

Production Manager: Ralph W. Nelson

Director of Photography: George T. Clemens

Associate Producer: Murray Golden

Film Editor: Richard W. Farrell

Art Direction: George W. Davis & John J. Thompson

Set Decoration: Henry Grace & Don Greenwood, Jr.

Assistant Director: John Bloss

Assistant to the Producer: John Conwell

Music: stock

Sound: Franklin Milton & Joe Edmondson

Mr. Serling’s Wardrobe: Eagle Clothes

Filmed at MGM Studios

And Now, Mr. Serling:

“Some rather special ingredients to a bizarre brew served up next on The Twilight Zone, an oddball printing press, an editor with a stringer from the lower regions. They’re just a few as we bring you Robert Sterling, Patricia Crowley, and special guest star Burgess Meredith in Charles Beaumont’s ‘Printer’s Devil.’”

Rod Serling’s Opening Narration: 

“Take away a man’s dreams, fill him with whiskey and despair, send him to a lonely bridge, let him stand there all by himself looking down at the black water, and try to imagine the thoughts that are in his mind. You can’t, I can’t, but there’s someone who can and that someone is seated next to Douglas Winter right now. The car is headed back toward town but its real destination is The Twilight Zone.”

Summary:

            Douglas Winter is the struggling owner/editor of the Dansburg Courier. He is drowning in debt due to the fact that not much happens in Dansburg as well as the recent arrival of the syndicate newspaper the Gazette. When his longtime linotype operator, Andy Praskins, leaves to find work at the Gazette, the writing becomes clear on the wall: the Dansburg Courier is finished. Despite the pleadings of his girlfriend Jackie Benson, Doug is prepared to throw in the towel. 

            Doug soon gets to drinking. He drives to the outskirts of town and stops his car on a bridge. He gets out and stands near the edge looking down at the water, contemplating taking his own life by jumping. Suddenly, a voice is heard behind him. It is a small, older man asking for a light for his cigar. The man is odd and begins teasing Doug about his uncertain method of suicide. The man convinces Doug to give him a ride back into town.

            Over drinks Mr. Smith (as the man introduces himself) informs Doug that he, Smith, is an expert reporter and a skilled linotype operator. Mr. Smith offers to go to work for Doug and revive the Courier but does not divulge what he expects to receive in return.

            Doug brings Mr. Smith back to the newspaper office and asks for a demonstration of Smith’s skills. Smith is lightning fast on the linotype machine, amazing Doug and Jackie, though Jackie takes an immediate dislike to the man and his gruff manner. Soon, business picks up tremendously for the Courier. Mr. Smith is the first to report increasingly strange happenings around town and his skill on the linotype machine (to which he has added some unique alterations) means that the papers are out on the street unbelievably fast.

            When the building which houses the rival paper the Gazette burns to the ground, Doug begins to suspect Mr. Smith of more than just reporting the news. Jackie has noticed something as well. Doug’s attitude and behavior are getting worse. He’s sullen and surly and allows Smith to run the newspaper while Doug drinks and naps in his office. Jackie confronts Doug about this and receives indifference in return.

            Doug finally confronts Mr. Smith and forces Smith to admit who he really is: the Devil. Mr. Smith produces a contract and induces Doug to sign away his immortal soul for the continued success of the newspaper. Doug is at first an unbeliever until Smith demonstrates that he knows the news before it happens. Finally understanding the gravity of his situation Doug tries unsuccessfully to renege on his contract with Smith.

            Mr. Smith is in a hurry and eager to gather Doug’s soul. Using the linotype machine, he writes a news story: Jackie will be grievously injured in a car wreck a few hours hence. Smith informs Doug that the alternations he made on the linotype machine allow to pass whatever is written there. Smith produces a gun and states that if Doug does not kill himself by the time of the accident Jackie will die from her injuries. Doug tries to use the gun on Smith without success. Smith tips his hat and leaves.

            Doug frantically searches for Jackie but cannot find her. As the time until her accident draws near he decides he has only one other option. He returns to the office of the Courier and sits down at the linotype machine. He begins to write a news story.

            Meanwhile, Jackie has agreed to give Mr. Smith a ride to the airport as he has surprisingly agreed with her request to leave Dansburg forever. Mr. Smith offers to drive. Once on the highway, however, Smith begins driving too fast toward a head-on collision with another motorist.

            At the last moment Jackie is able to wrench the wheel from Smith’s hands and avoid the greater severity of the accident. Smith has vanished from the driver’s seat. Doug used the linotype machine to write the Devil away. He immediately has the machine taken away. But is Mr. Smith out of their lives forever?

Rod Serling’s Closing Narration:

“Exit the infernal machine and with it His Satanic Majesty, Lucifer, Prince of Darkness, otherwise known as Mr. Smith. He’s gone but not for good. That wouldn’t be like him. He’s gone for bad. And he might be back with another ticket to The Twilight Zone.” 

Commentary: 

            Immediately following “Miniature,” perhaps his finest script for the series, Charles Beaumont countered with this darkly humorous take on the deal-with-the-Devil tale. Although Rod Serling, Richard Matheson, and Earl Hamner produced fine work for the fourth season, Beaumont flourished writing hour-long episodes. He saw an opportunity to revisit previously published material and to expand upon ideas and themes prevalent in his fiction. Beaumont never seemed comfortable with the twist-in-the-tale formula the show found itself falling into time and again. Although Beaumont was more than capable of crafting a satisfactory twist-ending tale, “Perchance to Dream” and “Shadow Play” come to mind, few of his other efforts in this regard, such as “Elegy,” “A Nice Place to Visit,” “The Jungle,” or “Dead Man’s Shoes,” are among the show’s highly regarded episodes. The hour-long format generally alleviated the need for this sort of story and Beaumont produced some of his finest work writing in a narrative format with which he was more comfortable. The result was that he produced more scripts for the fourth season than for any of the previous three seasons, made tragically ironic by the fact that during the fourth season Beaumont began to suffer the effects of the disease which eventually took his ability to write and then his life. Even an episode for which Beaumont provided the story and which was ghostwritten by Jerry Sohl, “The New Exhibit,” is an expertly sustained one-hour dramatic narrative. Beaumont’s only misstep during the fourth season was “Shadow of the Valley,” a tale which simply did not have enough story to propel it fifty plus minutes.

            Devil stories were common enough on the series to approach the subject from different angles, from the humorous in “Escape Clause” to the horrifying in Beaumont’s “The Howling Man” to the poignancy of “Of Late I Think of Cliffordville.” An earlier, and less regarded, Beaumont episode is “A Nice Place to Visit” from the first season. This was a typical Twilight Zone twist-ending tale but it allowed Beaumont to give the Devil, played by Sebastian Cabot, plenty of clipped dialogue, thus allowing for the type of wordplay and tongue-in-cheek humor he would display to greater effect in “Printer’s Devil.”

            Beaumont’s Devils may employ humor but the characters are never played for laughs. Outside of the obviously malevolent performance of Robin Hughes in “The Howling Man,” Sebastian Cabot in “A Nice Place to Visit” and Burgess Meredith in “Printer’s Devil” are both seemingly harmless characters who eventually show the dark side to their nature. Meredith’s performance in particular must be singled out for its expert combination of cranky humor and lecherous unease. Meredith understood that the Devil could be funny but he must also make the audience uncomfortable, and few audience members are not uncomfortable with the way Mr. Smith runs his fingers across Jackie Benson’s cheek in a particularly creepy moment; or the way in which Mr. Smith lecherously describes Molly, the waitress. Meredith’s cigar chomping caricature may be over-the-top but he never becomes a teddy bear of a Devil the way Thomas Gomez did in the first Devil episode of the series, “Escape Clause.”

            Beaumont’s original story “The Devil, You Say?” was the author’s first professional sale. It appeared in the January, 1951 issue of Amazing Stories. Beaumont apparently liked the idea enough to revisit it for Twilight Zone but made significant alterations which indicated he was not entirely satisfied with the original story. Oddly, “The Devil, You Say?” was not included in any of the collections of Beaumont’s fiction compiled during his lifetime. The story was reprinted in the UK edition of Amazing Stories in May, 1952 but was not collected in book form until The Twilight Zone: The Original Stories (1985), a volume which collected most of the source material for the series. The story was reprinted in the definitive retrospective of Beaumont’s fiction, Charles Beaumont: Selected Stories, published by Dark Harvest in 1988. An interesting aspect of that volume is that many of the stories included introductory essays from Beaumont’s friends and colleagues. “The Devil, You Say?” featured an introduction from Howard Browne, editor of Amazing Stories at the time of the story’s publication. “The Devil, You Say?” was sold to Amazing Stories by Beaumont’s then-agent Forrest J. Ackerman, who became famous as the editor of Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine but worked for many years as a literary agent. Beaumont later signed with the Don Congdon Agency, which also represented Ray Bradbury and Richard Matheson. 
            Another interesting note on "The Devil, You Say?" is that Hollywood's Dracula envisioned himself in the role of the Devil in a film adaptation of the tale. Bela Lugosi read Beaumont's story and contacted Forrest J. Ackerman to express the desire that Beaumont write a film treatment to resurrect the dire conditions not only of Lugosi's career but of his life. It is probable that Ackerman brought the story to Lugosi's attention as a possible comeback role for the ailing actor.  Beaumont spent a day with Lugosi in 1952 and drove Lugosi to a film studio where Lugosi assured Beaumont there was a friendly producer who would be interested in financing the film. Unfortunately, it was wishful thinking on Lugosi's part and they were unable to secure any funding for the proposed film adaptation. Beaumont details the day spent with Lugosi in the December, 1956 installment of his column "The Science Screen" for The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction (Lugosi died in August of that year). The essay was reprinted as "The Undead" in Beaumont's 1963 nonfiction collection Remember? Remember? (Macmillan) and again, as "Lugosi: The Compleat Bogeyman," in P.S. magazine for April, 1966. 

            Beaumont used the opportunity of adapting his first published story to make a number of changes to the narrative. Some of these changes are superficial, dealing with names and appearances which do little to alter the course of the narrative. The town in which the original story takes place is called Danville, and the newspaper the Danville Daily Courier. Beaumont changed the town to Dansburg and the newspaper to the Dansburg Courier for the episode. The editor of the newspaper is Richard Lewis in the story, changed to Douglas Winter for the episode. The Devil is Mr. Jones in the story and Mr. Smith in the episode. The appearance of the Devil is altered as well. In the story Beaumont writes: “An old boy who must have been crowding ninety stood in front of the desk, staring at me. And I stared right back. He was dressed in the sporty style of the eighteen nineties, with whiskers all over his face and a little black derby which canted jauntily over his left eye.” The cigar is a prominent prop in both story and episode.

            A more significant change from the story is in the female lead. In Beaumont’s original story the romantic relationship develops quickly when a reporter from a city newspaper arrives in Danville to interview Richard Lewis. Lewis and the reporter, named Elissa Traskers, hit it off immediately and conspire to outwit the Devil. The romance serves an ironic ending as Lewis forgets to include his relationship with Traskers when he uses the diabolical linotype machine to write the Devil away. When Lewis tracks her down later and attempts to rekindle their relationship she does not remember him and rejects his advances.

            Beaumont did make changes to the structure and course of the narrative. The story includes an odd narrative framing device in which a larger story is told by a newspaper reporter which switches to Richard Lewis’ story when the newspaperman encounters Lewis in a bar. This framing device also serves an ironic ending as Mr. Jones makes his return: “I was about to start the laughter when I saw something that cut it off sharp. I saw a very old gentleman, with derby, spats and cane, leaning against the bar and winking at me. It didn’t take me long to get home.” Beaumont wisely scrapped this awkward way of telling the story. Also, the suicide angle is new to the episode. In the original story, Lewis decides simply to skip town when it becomes clear that he will not be able to repay his creditors. Mr. Jones, who reveals himself as the Devil much sooner than in the episode, appears to Lewis in this time of need because Lewis’ father, the deceased original owner of the newspaper, struck a deal with the Devil many years ago to ensure prosperity for himself and his son. Lewis’ father has inadvertently cursed him. Also, the news items in the original story have more of a National Enquirer flavor than the tragic news stories in the episode. Examples of headlines from the original story include: Mayor’s Wife Gives Birth to Baby Hippopotamus, and Farmer Burl Illing Complains of Mysterious Appearance of Dragons in Back Yard.

            Beaumont incorporates a good amount of humor and wordplay in the episode. Notable instances include a reference made by Mr. Smith to the Italian violinist Niccolò Paganini, a musician so prodigiously talented that it was suggested he made a deal with the Devil. The term printer’s devil refers to a position of apprenticeship in a printing shop. Mr. Smith also makes a reference to a need for “a touch of the creature” in reference to whiskey when he prepares to reveal his true nature to Douglas Winter. Interestingly, A Touch of the Creature was the proposed title of a fourth Charles Beaumont collection from Bantam Books tentatively scheduled for publication in 1964. Negotiations for the volume eventually fell through and the book never saw publication during Beaumont’s lifetime. A volume of Beaumont’s unpublished fiction later appeared under the title A Touch of the Creature in 2000 from Subterranean Press.

            Burgess Meredith (1907-1997) is the most recognizable performer in the episode and perhaps the most recognizable performer on the series. He appeared in a lead role in four episodes, “Time Enough at Last,” “Mr. Dingle, the Strong,” “The Obsolete Man,” and “Printer’s Devil,” a feat matched only by Jack Klugman. “Printer’s Devil” is probably the least familiar of Meredith’s episodes despite the actor’s strong performance and the overall quality of the play. This is likely due to the fact that it is an hour-long fourth season episode which is rarely seen in syndication relative to the half-hour episodes. Nevertheless, for viewers who do not have an aversion to the hour-long format, “Printer’s Devil” offers a wealth of interesting and engaging material, prime among which is Meredith’s performance as the devilish Mr. Smith. Meredith’s long and fruitful acting career frequently took him into the horror, fantasy, and science fiction genres. He appeared in two episodes of Rod Serling’s Night Gallery, including Serling’s adaptation of Cyril Kornbluth’s “The Little Black Bag” and Serling’s original script, “Finnegan’s Flight.” Meredith also found opportunity to occasionally play Devils and demonic characters throughout his career. Meredith played the Devil in the framing narrative of the 1967 Amicus horror anthology film Torture Garden, written by Robert Bloch based on his short stories. He was supremely creepy as a demonic neighbor who terrorizes a fashion model in a New York City brownstone in the 1977 film The Sentinel, based on Jeffrey Konvitz’s 1974 bestseller. Meredith also appeared in the 1976 haunted house film Burnt Offerings, adapted by writer William F. Nolan and writer/director Dan Curtis from Rober Marasco’s 1973 novel. Meredith is probably best known for playing the boxing trainer Mickey Goldmill in the Rocky films, the first performance of which earned the actor an Academy Award nomination. Meredith also portrayed Ammon in Clash of the Titans (1981). The actor has various other connections to the series and the writers of The Twilight Zone. He appeared in an episode of Lights Out, “The Martian Eyes,” based on a story by Henry Kuttner, coauthor of the story “What You Need,” adapted by Rod Serling for the first season of The Twilight Zone. Meredith narrated two of Ray Bradbury’s tales, “There Will Come Soft Rains” and “Marionettes, Inc.,” for vinyl record in 1962. Meredith also provided the voiceover narration for the 1983 film Twilight Zone: The Movie. Meredith’s long and varied career saw the actor play an incredible variety of roles, from historical figures such as Thomas Edison to the voice of Puff the Magic Dragon. Among his most treasured and well-remembered performances is as the doomed Henry Bemis in Rod Serling’s unforgettable adaptation of Lyn Venable’s “Time Enough at Last” for the first season of The Twilight Zone.

            Robert Sterling (1917-2006) was born William Sterling Hart, he signed with Columbia Pictures in 1939 and changed his name to avoid confusion with actor William S. Hart, the foremost star of silent western films. The advent of television offered Sterling a wealth of opportunities in a variety of series. He crossed paths with the horror and suspense genres via appearances on The Clock, Lights Out, Climax!, and The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, in the episode “House Guest,” adapted by Henry Slesar from a novel by Andrew Garve (Paul Winterton), an episode which also featured child actor Bill Mumy, who appeared on The Twilight Zone in “Long Distance Call” and, unforgettably, “It’s a Good Life.”

            Patricia Crowley (b. 1933) is another new face to the series. Although she appeared in several films, most of Crowley’s work was on television and she was for many years a recognizable face on the small screen, amassing dozens of credits in a fifty-plus year career. Crowley appeared on such mystery and suspense series as The Web, Suspense, Inner Sanctum, The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, and Tales of the Unexpected, the short-lived 1977 series not to be confused with Roald Dahl’s long-running UK series of the same title. Crowley’s most recent credit is for the independent romantic comedy film Mont Reve (2012).

            Director Ralph Senensky (b. 1923) is also new to the series with “Printer’s Devil,” his only work for the show. The episode was Senensky’s second directing credit after working as a production designer and assistant to the producer on such series as Playhouse 90 and Dr. Kildare. Senensky bounced around television series for decades working in the director’s chair on a variety of shows such as Route 66, Kraft Suspense Theatre, The Fugitive, Star Trek, Planet of the Apes, The Waltons, and many, many more. He directed the second season Night Gallery episode which included the segments “The Miracle at Camafeo” and “The Ghost of Sorworth Place.” Senensky retired from directing in 1986 after a stint on The Paper Chase but returned to direct the 2013 short film The Right Regrets.

           

            Despite its hour length and derivative subject matter, “Printer’s Devil” succeeds enormously as a darkly humorous tribute to Devil tales in the vein of Stephen Vincent Benét’s American classic, “The Devil and Daniel Webster” (1936). It possesses a unique setting in the offices of a small town newspaper, some neat special effects, and features fine performances from the cast, particularly Burgess Meredith, who steals the show as Mr. Smith. One of the more remarkable aspects of the episode is that it moves quickly, a quality the hour-long fourth season episodes consistently struggled to maintain. Charles Beaumont was able to revisit his earliest short story and greatly enhance its charms and correct its missteps. The script also manages to approach some very dark subject matter, such as suicide and sexual harassment, in the context of a dark comedy or fantasy. It is an underexplored and underrated aspect of Charles Beaumont’s work in general. The result is yet another enjoyable fourth season episode which dispels the persistent notion among a certain segment of viewers that nothing good came out of the hour-long episodes. This one comes recommended. It is a solid, above-average offering from one of the show’s best writers and a fun, diabolical good time with a perfect mixture of humor and horror.           

Grade: B

Grateful acknowledgment to:

The Internet Movie Database (imdb.com)

The Internet Speculative Fiction Database (isfdb.org)

Wikipedia (Wikipedia.org)

Notes: 

--Charles Beaumont’s original short story, “The Devil, You Say?” was first published in the January, 1951 issue of Amazing Stories. It was reprinted in the UK edition of Amazing Stories for May, 1952. The story was first collected in book form for The Twilight Zone: The Original Stories (1985), edited by Richard Matheson, Martin Harry Greenberg, and Charles G. Waugh. It was included in Charles Beaumont: Selected Stories (1988), edited by Roger Anker with an introduction to the story by Amazing Stories editor Howard Browne.

--Ralph Senensky also directed the second season Night Gallery episode which included the segments “The Miracle at Camafeo” and “The Ghost of Sorworth Place.”

--Burgess Meredith also appeared in the first season episode “Time Enough at Last” and the second season episodes “Mr. Dingle, the Strong” and “The Obsolete Man.” Meredith appeared in two segments of Rod Serling’s Night Gallery: “The Little Black Bag” and “Finnegan’s Flight.” Meredith also narrated the 1983 film Twilight Zone: The Movie.

--“Printer’s Devil” was adapted as a Twilight Zone Radio Drama starring Bobby Slayton.

Original magazine illustration by Enoch Sharpe (Amazing Stories, Jan, 1951)

-JP

"The Obsolete Man"

Mr. Romney Wordsworth (Burgess Meredith) stands
ready to be judged by jury and Chancellor (Fritz Weaver)

"The Obsolete Man"

Season Two, Episode 65

Original Air Date: June 2, 1961

Cast:

Romney Wordsworth: Burgess Meredith

The Chancellor: Fritz Weaver

The Subaltern: Josip Elic

The Guard: Harry Fleer

First Man: Barry Brooks

Second Man: Harold Innocent

Third Man: Bob McCord

Woman: Jane Romeyn

Crew:

Writer: Rod Serling (original teleplay)

Director: Elliot Silverstein

Producer: Buck Houghton
Production Manager: Ralph W. Nelson

Director of Photography: George T. Clemens

Art Direction: George W. Davis and Phil Barber

Set Decorations: Henry Grace and H. Web Arrowsmith
Assistant Director: Darrell Hallenbeck
Editor: Jason Bernie
Sound: Franklin Milton and Bill Edmondson

Music: Stock

And Now, Mr. Serling:

            “Mr. Burgess Meredith is no stranger to the Twilight Zone, but his role in next week’s story is a unique one, even for him. The Time will be the future, the place just about anywhere where men have been taken over by a machine state. Our story is called ‘The Obsolete Man.’ It may chill, it may provoke, but we’re certain it will leave a mark. Next week on the Twilight Zone, ‘The Obsolete Man.’”

Rod Serling’s Opening Narration: 

         “You walk into this room at your own risk, because it leads to the future, not a future that will be but one that might be. This is not a new world, it is simply an extension of what began in the old one. It has patterned itself after every dictator who has ever planted the ripping imprint of a boot on the pages of history…since the beginning of time. It has refinements, technological advancements, and a more sophisticated approach to the destruction of human freedom. But like every one of the super states that preceded it, it has one iron rule: logic is an enemy and truth is a menace. This is Mr. Romney Wordsworth, in his last forty-eight hours on Earth. He’s a citizen of the state but will soon have to be eliminated, because he’s built out of flesh and because he has a mind. Mr. Romney Wordsworth, who will draw his last breath…in the Twilight Zone.”

Summary:

            The future. Dark, cold, empty. A door opens onto a large, shadowy court room, and Mr. Romney Wordsworth, rigid with fright, enters to await his doom. Wordsworth is ordered to approach a large podium where a chancellor will tell him if he is worthy of living. The Chancellor takes the podium and asks Wordsworth what his occupation is. “A librarian,” he replies. Laughter rolls from the shadows of the courtroom. “A librarian?” the Chancellor says. He tells Wordsworth that since all books were banned by the state that there is no need for librarians. Wordsworth then mentions God and the Chancellor tells him that the state has proven that there is no God. A state-run jury declares Romney Wordsworth to be obsolete and sentences him to death. He is, however, given a choice as to his execution method. He chooses for his death to be broadcast live from his library. He also asks that his method be known only by himself and his executioner. The Chancellor seems amused by this and eagerly agrees.

            Later. The Chancellor, upon Wordsworth’s request, meets the condemned man in his library hours before his execution. Wordsworth tells the Chancellor that a bomb is set to explode at midnight right there in his library. Frightened, the Chancellor runs for the door but finds it locked. He demands that Wordsworth unlock the door. But the librarian refuses. The Chancellor has no choice but to sit and wait.  They are being filmed live in front of millions.

            Hours, minutes, seconds tick by. The Chancellor squirms like an impatient child. Wordsworth reads his tattered bible paying little attention to his guest. Finally in the last minutes before the explosion the Chancellor begs that Wordsworth release him. “For the love of God!” He shouts. Wordsworth hands him the key and the Chancellor escapes just moments before the room explodes.

           The next day. The Chancellor arrives in the court room to start his work for the day. To his horror he finds that his podium is occupied by another man. The new chancellor informs him that his declaration of a deity renders him unable to perform his task and therefore declares him obsolete. The former chancellor begs like a child for his life as a mob of mindless zombies converge on him and rip him apart.

Rod Serling’s Closing Narration:

“The Chancellor—the late Chancellor—was only partly correct. He was obsolete. But so was the State, the entity he worshipped. Any state, any entity, any ideology that fails to recognize the worth, the dignity, the rights of man, that state is obsolete. A case to be filed under ‘M’ for mankind…in the Twilight Zone.”

Commentary:

            For the second season closer Serling turned in this Orwellian horror story of a machine-like society that disposes of anyone or anything deemed unnecessary by the all-powerful forces of the State. I have always enjoyed this episode but it’s definitely not without flaws. If it is didacticism that Serling strives for then he loses his audience almost from the start. The world he creates here pushes the tolerance of the audience. It is ominous simply for the sake of being ominous. A world populated by mindless, monotone citizens absolutely devoted to a callous, faceless government. The audience never really gets the sense of what the structure of this imagined future is supposed to accomplish, or what exactly constitutes a person or idea as being “obsolete.” Serling simply fills his dystopia with any restriction of personal freedom that allows him to get his point across which is simply that totalitarianism is bad and a lack of free will is never fun. His plot is also littered with implausible circumstances, the most notable of which is that the Chancellor diligently accepts Wordsworth’s invitation to join him in his room on the night of his execution. Why doesn’t the Chancellor bring any kind of entourage or security with him? What if he doesn’t show up at all? This would spoil Wordsworth’s plan and would end Serling’s script rather abruptly. But despite all of these limitations this episode still manages to work quite well and, in many ways, still evokes in the audience the moral dread that Serling intended.

            Now that I have pointed to the flaws in this episode and probably given the impression that it’s basically celluloid garbage I can move on to why I think it’s great.

            He may over-indulge the message here but Serling saves “The Obsolete Man” by filling it with sharp, powerful dialogue between Fritz Weaver and Burgess Meredith. The dialogue works so well because its focus is not on Serling’s message but simply on the difference of ideals between two characters, which is why the tension between these two men seems completely natural instead of forced in order for Serling to make his point. Both characters have lengthy, carefully sculpted monologues saturated with the type of rhetoric that makes Serling’s work memorable.           

           Casting was a key element in this episode. While Serling’s dialogue is amazing it could have been worthless in the hands of lesser actors. So Silverstein and the producers turned to familiar faces as a safety net to assure great performances. Making his third of four appearances on the show is veteran actor Burgess Meredith. All of the characters that Meredith has portrayed thus far on the program have been lowly, bookish types in varying degrees of seriousness. Although some may feel that “Time Enough at Last” is his best effort on the show I have always enjoyed him best in this episode. Making his second and final appearance on the show is Fritz Weaver. In Season One’s “Third from the Sun” Weaver plays a quiet family man trying to keep things afloat while he and his family attempt to leave their planet in the face of a looming nuclear holocaust. Here he plays the complete opposite: a boisterous, unforgiving authority of the State. He displays an impressive range of emotions in this episode and the result is one of the most interesting characters to ever appear on the show. His monologue in the opening scene has always been one of my favorites.

            But the hero of this episode is director Elliot Silverstein. This is his first of four episodes for the show. It’s interesting to point out that his other three episodes (Season Three’s “The Passerby” and “The Trade-Ins” and Season Five’s “Spur of the Moment”) are all episodes that also focus on dialogue and acting rather than story. And like “The Obsolete Man” most would have worked well on the stage (with the exception of “Spur of the Moment,” which features a chase scene on horseback in which the audience isn’t supposed to see the pursuer’s face). Silverstein had a background in theater and began his career as a television director in the live dramas of the fifties. “The Obsolete Man” features only two sets, which are radically different from one another. The first and last acts take place in a large, open courtroom which features sharp, expressionistic shadows reminiscent of the German horror movies of the 1920’s. There are only two pieces of furniture in this room: a long, narrow table in the center of the room and the Chancellor’s tall, obnoxious podium at the far end of the table. The only other visible set piece is a twenty-five foot double door that opens into the courtroom. The walls are covered in black velvet and an off-screen light fixture placed above the door appears to be only source of light inside the courtroom. The government officials, there are about a dozen of them places randomly around the large room, are all dressed in drab, colorless uniforms and stand expressionless behind Wordsworth. The room is cold and unwelcoming. This set is highly effective to both the scene and the story and gives the audience an immediate idea of what this future society is like.

            Act Two takes place in Wordsworth’s apartment. A tiny studio apartment consisting of a single room cluttered with furniture and lined wall-to-wall with overflowing bookshelves, it is a striking juxtaposition to the lifeless courtroom in the other two scenes. The cozy, cluttered room feels immediately warm and welcoming and it gives the audience a better understanding of Wordsworth’s personality. In many ways these two sets are the unspoken stars of the episode.

            While it has some sore spots, “The Obsolete Man” is still a remarkable episode and a good choice for the season finale. The final scene, in which the Chancellor is judged and then presumably ripped apart by his comrades, was an extremely bold choice for the show, especially for 1961. It’s weird and vague and doesn’t really make sense but it somehow works perfectly. It closes out the season on a high and shocking note and leaves the audience talking all summer long while they wait with anticipation for the start of the third season.

            If The Twilight Zone started on a high note with Season One, then it’s safe to say that it hit its stride both creatively and commercially with Season Two. Season Two produced many of the show’s best including “Eye of the Beholder,” “The Howling Man,” “Nick of Time,” and “The Invaders” to name a few. While not every episode is a masterpiece (“A Thing about Machines” and “The Man in the Bottle” among the sore spots), and don’t forget the experiment with videotape that proved unpopular with nearly everyone, the show began to grow into its own during this season. The viewership had grown and the pacing was faster. The producers settled on an opening theme which would become one the show’s trademarks and one of the most well-known pieces of popular culture to ever exist. Serling began to appear onscreen during his opening monologues (also one of the show’s trademarks that has become a universally known and often mimicked phenomenon) and the monologues themselves grew shorter and tighter and were officially given the “…in the Twilight Zone” closing tagline. Also important in Season Two were writers Richard Matheson, Charles Beaumont, and George Clayton Johnson. All three made contributions to the first season but their personalities and writing styles became known to the audience and became part of the personality of the show. When accepting the Emmy for Outstanding Writing Achievement in Drama that summer, Serling held up the award and shared its credit with all three men and stated that they could “carve it up like a turkey.” Director of Photography George T. Clemens also nabbed an Emmy for his work on Season Two. The show also won the Hugo Award for this season.

Unfortunately, the show would begin to unfold toward the end of the next season for numerous reasons. But for now, with two groundbreaking seasons and sixty-five episodes under its belt, The Twilight Zone drifted quite comfortably into its third season.

Grade: B

Notes:

--As mentioned, director Elliot Silverstein also directed Season Three’s “The Passerby” and “The Trade-Ins” and Season Five’s “Spur of the Moment.” He would go on to direct feature films including 1965’s Cat Ballou with Jane Fonda and Twilight Zone alumni Lee Marvin. His last work in television was as the director of four episodes of HBO’s seminal anthology show Tales from the Crypt.

--Burgess Meredith also appears in Season One’s “Time Enough at Last,” Season Two’s “Mr. Dingle the Strong,” and Season Four’s “Printer’s Devil.” He appeared in two episodes of Rod Serling's Night Gallery, "The Little Black Bag" and "Finnegan's Flight."

--Fritz Weaver also appears in Season One’s “Third from the Sun” and in the episode of Rod Serling's Night Gallery titled "A Question of Fear." Weaver also recorded a reading of Rod Serling's prose adaptation of "The Mighty Casey" for Harper Audio in 1992.

--“The Obsolete Man” was adapted into a Twilight Zone Radio Drama starring Jason Alexander.
--This marks the second of three Rod Serling appearances on screen at the end of an episode (excluding promotional material). The first time was the Season One closer "A World of His Own" and the third and final time was the third season episode, "The Fugitive."

-Brian Durant

"Mr. Dingle, the Strong"

Luther Dingle (Burgess Meredith), under the spell of a
double-headed Martian.

“Mr. Dingle, the Strong”
Season Two, Episode 55
Original Air Date: March 3, 1961

Cast:
Luther Dingle: Burgess Meredith
Bettor: Don Rickles
Anthony O’Toole: James Westerfield
Joseph J. Callahan: Edward Ryder
1^st Martian: Douglas Spencer
2^nd Martian: Michael Fox
Boy: Jay Hector
Woman in Park: Jo Ann Dixon
1^st Man: Douglas Evans
2^nd Man: Phil Arnold
3^rd Man: Frank Richards
Abernathy: James Millhollin
1^st Venusian: Donald Losby
2^nd Venusian: Greg Irvin

Crew:
Writer: Rod Serling (Original Teleplay)
Director: John Brahm
Producer: Buck Houghton
Associate Producer: Del Reisman
Production Manager: Ralph W. Nelson and Darrell Hallenbeck
Director of Photography: George T. Clemens and William Skall
Art Direction: George W. Davis and Philip Barber
Set Decoration: Henry Grace and H. Web Arrowsmith
Assistant Director: Henry Weinberger
Casting: Ethel Winant
Editor: Bill Mosher
Sound: Franklin Milton and Charles Scheid
Music: Stock

And Now, Mr. Serling:
“I’ve only got about 18 seconds to tell you that next week Mr. Burgess Meredith returns to The Twilight Zone as ‘Mr. Dingle, the Strong.’  He plays the role of an incredible little man who’s given the strength of about five hundred men and comes out of it as a kind of twentieth-century Hercules and Sampson all rolled into one.  It’s designed to send you right from your set into a fast bowl of spinach. [Serling smashes a ringing telephone that rests on a table.] It’s catching.”

Rod Serling’s Opening Narration:

“Uniquely American institution known as the neighborhood bar.  Reading left to right are Mr. Anthony O’Toole, proprietor who waters his drinks like geraniums but who stands foursquare for peace and quiet and booths for ladies.  This is Mr. Joseph J. Callahan, an unregistered bookie, whose entire life is any sporting event with two sides and a set of odds.  His idea of a meeting at the summit is any dialogue between a catcher and a pitcher with more than one man on base.  And this animated citizen is every anonymous bettor who ever dropped rent money on a horse race, a prize fight, or a floating crap game, and who took out his frustration and his insolvency on any vulnerable fellow barstool companion within arm’s and fist’s reach.  And this is Mr. Luther Dingle, a vacuum-cleaner salesman whose volume of business is roughly that of a valet at a hobo convention.  He’s a consummate failure at almost everything but is a good listener and has a prominent jaw. [Narration interrupted by action and dialogue].  And these two unseen gentlemen are visitors from outer space.  They are about to alter the destiny of Luther Dingle by leaving him a legacy—the kind you can’t hardly find no more.  In just a moment, a sad-faced perennial punching bag who missed even the caboose of life’s gravy train, will take a short constitutional into the most unpredictable region that we refer to as…the Twilight Zone.”

Summary:
          Luther Dingle is a vacuum cleaner salesman who spends most of his evenings inside a dingy, forgotten bar alongside dingy, forgotten people.  A frail, timid individual, he has accomplished almost nothing during his time in the world and is, additionally, a terrible salesman.  He is trampled upon, pushed about, smacked, slapped, taken advantage of, and, most of all, unanimously ignored.
            He sits in the bar one afternoon in the company of three other gentlemen: a man named O’Toole, the owner/bartender, and two worthless, angry patrons who spend their days arguing over unpaid gambling debts.  When they cannot settle their disputes they often turn to Dingle to settle it for them.  Unfortunately, Dingle has the inability to remain neutral and always voices his opinion honestly, winning the admiration of one and the unabashed hatred of the other which is why he often goes home with bruises.  Two very odd creatures sort of float into the bar.  They appear to be unseen by the patrons.  They talk amongst themselves and we learn that they are visitors from Mars here to conduct an experiment.  They want to give an ordinary human being superhuman strength.  They are here in the bar because they have chosen Luther Dingle as their specimen.  His transformation is instantaneous and he immediately feels a sense of physical empowerment.  He notes to O’Toole that his vacuum cleaner suddenly feels as light as a feather, demonstrating by tossing up into the air effortlessly.  He then opens the door to leave but rips it completely off its hinges.  Dumbfounded, he exits the bar. 

         For the rest of the day he experiences similar events.  He rips the handle off of a taxi cab then accidentally lifts the car off the ground.  He lifts a park bench—with a woman sitting on it—off the ground with one hand.  He breaks a gigantic rock in half with his bare hands.  He lifts a statue off the ground with one hand.  While doing this he is spotted by a photographer for the local paper who snaps his picture.
            The next day he is sitting in the bar surrounded by a crowd of people who have come to witness his extraordinary physical prowess.  He is also being filmed by a television crew for a show about people with unusual talents.  He demonstrates his new strength by breaking a table in half, lifting a bar stool out of the floor with one finger, and by lifting one of the angry patrons that used to beat him up on a daily basis above his head with one hand and spinning him around.  Meanwhile, the two extraterrestrial visitors  are watching Mr. Dingle display his strength for the cameras and are disgusted.  They see that he has not used his power for anything constructive as they had hoped but merely exploited it for his own popularity.  They decide to take his powers away.  Mr. Dingle tells his crowd of onlookers that for his next trick he will lift the entire building with only his hands.  Unfortunately, he has now been stripped of his extraordinary strength and the trick does not work.  Not giving up, he attempts to lift another bar stool out of the floor but this also fails.  He then tries to break another table in half but only manages to almost break his hand in the process.  Finally, desperate for a win, he attempts to punch another hole in the wall but this, too, does not work.  By this time the crowd has turned on Dingle and O’Toole ushers them out the door to spare him the humiliation.
            On their way out of the bar the Martians run into two other outer worldly visitors from Venus.  They have come to Earth to give someone superhuman intelligence and the Martians suggest Mr. Dingle.  They agree and give him intellect five hundred times that of the average human being.  And within moments Mr. Luther Dingle, vacuum cleaner salesman, will take another journey into…the Twilight Zone.

Rod Serling’s Closing Narration:
“Exit Mr. Luther Dingle, formerly vacuum cleaner salesman, strongest man on Earth, and now mental giant.  These latter powers will very likely be eliminated before too long, but Mr. Dingle has an appeal to extraterrestrial note takers as well as to frustrated and insolvent bet losers.  Offhand, I’d say that he was in for a great deal of extremely odd periods.  Simply because there are so many inhabited planets who send down observers.  And also because, of course, Mr. Dingle lives his life with one foot in his mouth and the other…in the Twilight Zone.

Commentary:

"As Dingle felt consciousness slowly stream back into him he became aware of yet another odd and indefinable sensation. It was a warm tingle that ran through and through him and it lasted for perhaps three or four glowing minutes. The ray of light that shot across the room from the invisible two-headed creature could not be seen by any of the sports enthusiasts, but it had landed directly on Dingle's face and remained on him for several minutes."
                 -"Mr. Dingle, The Strong," More Stories from the Twilight Zone

          It goes without saying here in the Vortex that the screwball comedy episodes, most of which were written by Serling, are not among our favorites.  This is not to suggest that the ideas or even the scripts for these episodes are bad but simply that they would be far more suited to a show like The Jack Benny Program than to  a fantasy program of the darker variety like The Twilight Zone.  The show could jump effortlessly back and forth between dark horror and nostalgic sentimentality because there was, despites many different directors, writers, composers, and performers, always a uniform atmosphere.  By design, the primary goal of situational comedy is to make an audience laugh.  And most episodes of The Twilight Zone are chiefly concerned with the human condition and their intent is to make the viewer think, either through self-evaluation or through reflection of the world around them, or, at the very least, to guess the twist at the end of the episode.  Instead of complimenting each other evenly the two drastically different styles clash and the comedy episodes feel awkward and out of place.

          “Mr. Dingle, the Strong” is no exception to this rule.  Director John Brahm realized that he was making a screwball comedy and simply let the episode poke fun at itself and at the science fiction genre as a whole.  The Martians are decorated like cartoons with ridiculous props (the child Venusians are even worse) and the special effects are silly and cheap (despite the fact that this episode ran over budget).  But this self-effacing attitude does little to save the story which feels quickly written and just awkward. 

          What rescues this episode from being a total failure is a surprisingly good ensemble cast.  This was the only episode to feature a young Don Rickles as the Bettor.  Rickles was on the rise as a stand-up comedian and had just begun appearing on television and in films.  Here he basically plays himself and does a more than convincing job as the oppressive bar patron.  Another noteworthy performance is that of James Millholin as ham television host Jason Abernathy.  His time on screen is quite brief and his role small but he still manages to steal the spotlight for the few minutes that he is on the screen.  But the reason anyone remembers this episode at all is of course because of Burgess Meredith.  What is remarkable about Meredith’s four appearances on The Twilight Zone is that his performances are all completely different despite the fact that three of the four characters that he plays are quite similar in that they are all quiet, meek individuals who tend to be pushed around by everyone else.  Here he is totally believable as the downtrodden Luther Dingle, stuttering and all. 
            While the performances in “Mr. Dingle, the Strong” are themselves quite strong they are not enough to make this a memorable episode.  It seems to be the result of Rod Serling’s legal obligation to churn out eighty percent of the show’s scripts himself which, unfortunately, occasionally produced cheap, uninspired episodes like this one.  Unless you are a Burgess Meredith fan, or a Don Rickles fan, then this episode comes poorly recommended.

Grade: D

Notes:
--Burgess Meredith also appears in three other episodes of the show:  Season One’s “Time Enough at Last,” Season Two’s “The Obsolete Man” and Season Four’s “The Printer’s Devil.”  He also appeared in two episodes of Rod Serling's Night Gallery, "The Little Black Bag" and "Finnegan's Flight."
--James Millhollin also appears in Season One’s “The After Hours” and Season Four’s “I Dream of Genie.”
--“Mr. Dingle, the Strong” was made into a Twilight Zone Radio Drama starring Tim Kazurinsky.  It was also adapted into a short story by Serling in his collection More Stories from the Twilight Zone (Bantam, 1961).  According to his daughter Anne Serling in her introduction to in the 2013 edition to this book published by CreateSpace, it was based loosely on an unpublished story he wrote called "Old MacDonald."
--During the scene where Burgess Meredith lifts Don Rickles over his head and spins him the stunt double's face can be seen clearly for several seconds. Notice in the photograph as well the empty alien costume in the background.

Up Next: Next in the Vortex we'll stop by a boarding house where a nostalgic old man finds a second chance at life in the form of  an antique radio and the songs of his youth.  Don't miss our review of an often overlooked episode called "Static."  Take care, readers.

--Brian Durant