I try never to miss this episode when a Twilight Zone weekend rolls around on Dish. This one is a pure classic.
One of serling’s best. I can relate to the desire for a simpler time and place.
Thanks for that. I remember seeing the original, and this read was good therapy.
I am thankfully at a point where I can very comfortably retire, and even though I work for a very good company, I’ve also had it with the present state of affairs. We do things for the gubmit, and safe to say that I wouldn’t hire any of our “customers” to be a janitor in an engineering firm were I to be in such a position.
So, it’s retirement...very soon.
Thanx
It’s quite possibly my favorite episode. James Daly’s performance was Emmy-caliber. One thing I would have done differently is the manner of his death. I think he should have simply died of a heart attack or a stroke in his seat. He is under so much stress, his death is expected. The earlier brief visits to Willoughby could be seen as little mini heart attacks or strokes from which he comes back, until he has the fatal one at the end. Ah well, still a great episode. I have them all on Blu-ray now.
There are several variations of this story, before and since, and even within The Twilight Zone series.
It may have begun with Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court (1889). More contemporary was the stage play Brigadoon (1947) that was a huge Broadway hit, and made into a 1954 movie, that really showed the New York City business pressure-cooker.
Within The Twilight Zone there was also “Walking Distance”.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walking_Distance
“The Trouble With Templeton”.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Trouble_with_Templeton
Just FYI for any old geezers like me that watch the Twilight Zone on METV, the geniuses at METV have removed the Twilight Zone from their Fall 2014 schedule.
Loved that episode on many levels: the somewhat creepy/sinister 1890s conductor, the song “Beautiful Dreamer” the band was playing, the way the clocks pendulum segued into the lantern the engineer was swinging, and the blindsiding ending that left me saying “WOW!”.
Mark Harmon did a retake of that episode, albeit with a happier ending in “For All Time”. The movie even gave credit to Willoughby at the beginning.
Ooohh, let’s play “choose your fave twilight zone!”
Mine has always been Willowby also Bunny Lake (the Ring girl who saves her town), the one with Anne Francis, and the one that scared the living daylights out of me for years and years and year of my life (and I bet Steven Spielberg too, because I see it in Poltergeist) Little Girl Lost - the Little Girl Lost in the Wall, although that one I always had a small problem with the obviously fake voice they used for Tina, the little girl.