Episode Spotlight: "The Self-Improvement of Salvadore Ross" (1/17/1964)

Season 5, Episode 16 (136 overall)

Originally aired 1/17/1964

Cayuga Production # 2612

I recently turned 44, which isn’t terribly old in the grand scheme of things, but I’m experiencing some fairly significant hair loss. It really bugs me to see older men --- like really old --- sporting full heads of hair. They’ll probably be dead within a few short years; meanwhile, I've still got a few decades left, during which I’ll continue to lose hair. It doesn’t seem fair, dammit. Old men don’t need hair in their twilight years; in fact, it’s kinda strange to see an old man who isn’t balding. They’d probably prefer to live longer and have less hair, given the choice, and I’d happily trade a few of my years for a thick, lustrous head of hair. Sounds like an equitable trade to me.

Fifty years ago tonight, a man inexplicably gained the ability to make such impossible trades. “The Self-Improvement of Salvadore Ross” is exactly what it sounds like: the titular Salvadore Ross uses his newfound supernatural bartering talents to better himself. 

Sal is aggressively courting Leah; it’s not a matter of love, it’s a matter of possession. He makes no attempt to hide it, either: “I want her,” he unabashedly tells Leah’s disapproving father. Leah, however, has standards when it comes to choosing a mate, and the crude and directionless Sal doesn’t measure up. Sal angrily punches a wall after she breaks things off with him and ends up in the hospital.

He’s kept overnight for some reason (did a broken bone really require an overnight hospital stay back in the 60’s?), and is roomed with an old man with the flu. They joke about trading maladies and, the next morning, Sal is shocked and delighted to discover that his hand is healed, but he has a cold. The old man objects; his new broken hand will never heal, given his advanced age. No take-backs, Sal decrees as he leaves.

Sal then uses his new talent to systematically improve himself: he sells his youth for a vast fortune, then regains it by buying time from others, a year at a time. Soon he’s young again (but still quite rich) and back on Leah’s scent. She’s still not interested, though, seeing as how he lacks the non-material qualities she prizes most: kindness, selflessness, compassion.

When we next see Sal, he’s a changed man. Leah sees the change and relents; he is the man she wants after all. Her father will have none of it, and pulls a gun on Sal. Sal begs for him to show him mercy and compassion, to which he coldly replies: “Compassion? Don’t you remember? I sold it to you yesterday.” He pulls the trigger.

Written by Jerry McNeely from a short story by Henry Slesar, “The Self-Improvement of Salvadore Ross” is one of the better offerings of the fifth season despite the ridiculously implausible and confusing ending. Leah is convinced that Sal has evolved into a man worthy of her love… in a single day? Sal’s proven himself to be a manipulative bastard in the past; she has no reason whatsoever to think he’s not simply putting on an act. Why does Sal ask Mr. Maitland for compassion when he knows for a fact he no longer possesses it? Does the acquisition of compassion somehow impair his memory? And if Mr. Maitland is the upright saintly type we've been led to believe he is, why would he ever sell his compassion --- his defining, honorable trait --- to anyone, especially a slimeball like Sal? It’s sloppy, expedient and… yes, another example of the dreaded deus ex machina. The end renders everything before it moot.

If there’s one thing I like about the ending, it’s that it serves as a nice bookend for season one’s “The Four Of Us Are Dying,” which also ends with Don Gordon getting shot by an old man. But that ending was organic and jibed with the events that preceded it; I guess we can argue that cosmic justice is indeed served here by Sal getting blown away, but at what cost? A good man (Mr. Maitland) is now a soulless shell of a man (and will almost certainly go to prison for murder), and the innocent Leah just lost the man she loves and her father in one shot (har har). If this is cosmic justice, it’s hugely skewed.

But “The Self-Improvement of Salvadore Ross” is still an entertaining episode, thanks largely to the great cast and the clever story (up till that ending, that is). The concept of buying and selling years is a fascinating one: the 2011 sci-fi film In Time uses this idea as the basis for its parallel-earth society, the citizens of which have built-in bio-clocks that keep them frozen at the age of 25 forever… as long as they continually acquire time, which is their currency.

There's particularly effective bit at the top of act two. The elderly Sal enters an elevator, which is operated by a young man. When he gets off, he's young again... and the bellhop is now an old man, holding a big fat check in his hands.

Rod’s not smoking during his opening narration: he’s holding a pair of sunglasses. I dunno, maybe sponsor American Tobacco was giving away sunglasses in some kind of promotion or something (remember all that Joe Camel and Marlboro Man merchandise?).

THE MUSIC

The episode is stock-scored, mostly with non-TZ cues from the CBS Music Library; however, we do hear a few bits of Fred Steiner’s scores for “King Nine Will Not Return” (“Sand”) and “The Passersby” (“Morning,” which was also used in last week’s “The Long Morrow”).

FAMILIAR FACES

The major players this week should be quite familiar to Twilight Zone fans. First up is Don Gordon (Salvadore Ross), who memorably played one of Arch Hammer’s alternate identities in season one’s “The Four of Us Are Dying.” He also appeared on The Outer Limits twice (“The Invisibles” and “Second Chance”).

*Sigh* Gail Kobe (Leah Maitland) is on hand for her third and final TZ appearance (she made me swoon in season one’s “A World of Difference,” then again in season four’s “In His Image”). Like Don Gordon, she popped up on The Outer Limits twice (“Specimen: Unknown” and “Keeper of the Purple Twilight”).  If you can’t tell, I have something of a crush on her. She passed away last August. Rest in peace, you beautiful thing you.

Mr. Maitland is played by Vaughn Taylor in his fifth and final TZ excursion (he appeared in season one’s “Time Enough at Last,” season three’s “Still Valley” and “I Sing the Body Electric,” and season four’s “The Incredible World of Horace Ford”). He also did two episodes of The Outer Limits (“The Guests” and “Expanding Human”).

The unnamed old man in the hospital is played by J. Pat O'Malley, whom you may remember from “The Chaser” in season one and “The Fugitive” in season three. He’ll also be back later this season for “Mr. Garrity and the Graves.” Interestingly, the unnamed hospital nurse is played by Kathleen O'Malley… his daughter!

“The Self-Improvement of Salvadore Ross” is quite good, better than many season five offerings, and it shines despite its unsatisfying conclusion. If we could just take a page from Sal’s book and trade its ending for a different one….

Next week:

“The Eye of the Beholder,” but without the pig people. It’s better than it sounds.

TZ Promo: "The Incredible World of Horace Ford" (4/18/1963)

Season 4, Episode 15 (#117 overall)

Cayuga Production # 4854

Originally aired April 18, 1963

50 years ago tonight, yet another of The Twilight Zone’s nostalgic misfits found himself visiting his own idealized past.  No, it’s not last week’s episode all over again.

“The Incredible World of Horace Ford” (written by Reginald Rose, adapted from his own 1955 Studio One teleplay) finds the title character, an overgrown man-child, designing toys for a living and aching for his treasured childhood on Randolph Street (is this the same Randolph Street from “A Game of Pool”?) as he nears his 38th birthday.  He takes an evening stroll down to the old neighborhood and marvels at how little has changed.  

A gang of kids runs by, one of whom bumps into him and knocks his pocket watch out of his hands. The boy smiles at him before running off, and Horace recognizes him as Hermy Brandt, a kid he knew as a youth, impossibly still a child. Horace, understandably freaked out, gets the hell out of there.  Later that night, Horace’s wife answers the doorbell: it’s Hermy, who hands her the pocket watch and smiles, “He dropped this.”

It’s a pretty obvious hook to get him to return to Randolph Street… which he does.  He won’t like what he finds, though, as time has a tough lesson to teach him.

It’s impossible to watch “The Incredible World of Horace Ford” without drawing parallels to season one’s “Walking Distance” (and other similar nostalgia-driven time travel stories throughout the series’ run).  It’s fairly successful on its own, but the been-there-done-that vibe is palpable.  In all fairness, Rose’s original version was written before Serling's 1959 teleplay, which makes one wonder if Serling remembered the live broadcast and, um, subconsciously borrowed from it.  However, one could draw a parallel between Rose’s original 1955 teleplay and Ray Bradbury’s 1953 short story “The Playground,” in which a man is beaten to a pulp by a mob of children (oops, spoiler alert!), and wonder if Rose did some, um, borrowing of his own.

Hey kids!  If you've ever had difficulty making paper airplanes (like yours truly), we’re given a very useful step-by-step close up of Horace doing just that at the end of the prologue.

And I’m not sure it’s an actual Forbidden Planet connection, but Horace’s robot toy design looks, at least from the waist down, an awful lot like Robby the Robot.

Is it just me, or does there seem to be a little something-something going on between Horace's wife Laura and Leonard, his coworker at the toy company?  Watch as he stares intently at her with the burning gaze of unrequited passion, and gasp in shock as he basically paws the hell out of her, never mind that her husband is in the next office over.

Down with O.P.P.? Yeah, you know me.

Pat Hingle is pretty effective here as Horace, swinging wildly from wide-eyed glee to sullen brooding, oftentimes in a matter of seconds (you know, like a little kid).  It’s impossible not to get caught up in his excitement as he giddily relives his childhood to whoever happens to be in the same room, and it’s easy to forgive his childish behavior once we've witnessed his living situation (he shares a home with his wife AND mother!). Hingle is probably best remembered by modern audiences as Commissioner Gordon in the Tim Burton (and later Joel Schumacher) Batman films (1999-2007).

Nan Martin is fine as Laura in her only classic TZ appearance (I’m undecided if she qualifies as a TZ babe; she’s not bad looking, though….). She’d return to The Twilight Zone for two appearances (“If She Dies” and “A Saucer of Loneliness”) in the 1985-1987 revival series on CBS.

We last saw Phillip Pine (Leonard) playing Virgil Sterig, one of Arch Hammer’s alternate faces, in season one’s “The Four of Us Are Dying.”  He also plays a pivotal role in the “Hundred Days of the Dragon” episode of The Outer Limits as Vice President Ted Pearson.

Mr. Judson, Horace’s boss, is played by Vaughn Taylor in his fourth (out of a total five) TZ appearance.  We previously saw him in season one (“Time Enough at Last”), twice in season three (“Still Valley” and “I Sing the Body Electric”), and we’ll see him again in season five (“The Self-Improvement of Salvadore Ross”).  He also showed up twice on The Outer Limits (“The Guests” and “Expanding Human”).

“The Incredible World of Horace Ford” is yet another stock-scored episode with disparate cues by multiple composers, including Rene Garriguenc, Lyn Murray, Fred Steiner, Nathan Van Cleave and, most significantly, Bernard Herrmann.  Herrmann’s “Walking Distance” evokes the sweet ache of nostalgia, so it fits in quite well here (as it did in season three’s “Kick the Can”).

"The Incredible World of Horace Ford” is decent, but it would undoubtedly be more effective as a half-hour episode. Horace goes back to the same moment in time on Randolph Street three different times, stretching the proceedings out into three stages instead of one.  Martin Sloan, meanwhile, learned his lesson in a single trip and that, ladies and gentlemen, is the power of the half-hour format.

Ha! Suck it, Horace!

Two weeks from tonight:

A bunch more Forbidden Planet eye candy but, more importantly, a great episode.

TZ Promo: “I Sing the Body Electric” (5/18/1962)

Season 3, Episode 35 (100 overall)

Cayuga Production # 4826

50 years ago tonight, The Twilight Zone aired its landmark 100th episode.  Thankfully, Cayuga didn’t pick a dud to mark the occasion (see “The Whole Truth,” which was the 50th episode aired).

“I Sing the Body Electric” was written by sci-fi luminary Ray Bradbury, his only contribution to the series.  We meet a grieving widower (his name is never given, he’s simply referred to as “Father”) who endeavors to purchase a robot to act as a maternal proxy for his children.  It appears that a company called Facsimile Limited has just what he needs… unfortunately, his oldest daughter’s bitterness over losing her mother is a much bigger roadblock than he realizes.

“I Sing the Body Electric” is moderately successful (while fairly soap-operatic), but the scenes inside Facsimile Limited elevate things considerably.  There’s a delightful phantasmagorical quality to its selection of body parts, not to mention a chute in which one’s selections are deposited.  If only we could build our spouses and children in such a way…. maybe the New Life Corporation should partner with Facsimile Limited…?

“Grandma” (similarly unnamed) is well-played by Josephine Hutchinson, warm but never cloying.  Genre fans may remember her as Elsa von Frankenstein in 1939’s Son of Frankenstein (I didn’t, despite the fact that I’ve seen it numerous times and own it on DVD twice over; good thing I have the internet to do my remembering for me!).

“Father” is played by David White (best known as Larry Tate, Darin’s boss on TV’s Bewitched), who last visited The Twilight Zone in season one’s “A World of Difference,” where he played harried agent to Jerry Regan (or was it Arthur Curtis?).

Vaughn Taylor, the Facsimile Limited rep, is a TZ vet.  We first saw him in season one’s “Time Enough at Last” as Henry Bemis’s stick-in-the-mud boss at the bank, then again earlier this season as a grizzled warlock in “Still Valley.”  Here he’s a congenial salesman with just a hint of Willie Wonka about him (Facsimile Limited is a bit magical, after all, not entirely unlike Wonka’s storied chocolate factory).  Quite a diverse trio of roles; happily, Vaughn is quite good in all three.  He appeared in several episodes of TV’s The Fugitive, but he’s probably best remembered as Janet Leigh’s boss in Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho.

Veronica Cartwright is quite good as the eldest child Anne, sullen and distrustful of the new addition to the family.  Watch her face light up when she finally gives in and accepts “Grandma.”  Cartwright is something of a fixture in the sci-fi genre: she was most recently seen as the beleaguered human-alien hybrid Cassandra Spender on TV’s The X-files; she also met a gruesome end in Ridley Scott’s original Alien.

Many have lamented the fact that this is Ray Bradbury’s sole contribution to the series.  I’m not going to go into the troubled history between Bradbury and Serling, but I will say that, while I’m a big fan of Bradbury’s work, I think it usually works best on the printed page.  Most all adaptations of his work… well, just don’t work for one reason or another.  And it’s not always because of Bradbury’s unique dialogue either… Serling himself said that Bradbury is “hard to dramatize,” and I completely agree.  Not everything needs a visual translation (I’m talking to you, Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.  You too, Hunger Games).   Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 is one of my all-time favorite novels, and (IMO) the 1966 Francois Truffaut adaptation leaves a lot to be desired (despite featuring my all-time favorite film score, by none other than Bernard Herrmann).  No mechanical hound?  C’mon, seriously?  

Anyway, Bradbury’s prose approaches the poetic, and adapting it for TV or film strips that aspect away.  Sure, the story’s still there, but the Bradbury voice is silenced.  Something huge and wonderful gets lost.

Having said that, I quite like “I Sing the Body Electric.”  It’s not one of the more popular TZ episodes, and it’ll never make my top 20, but I do like it.  It’s funny: Serling was so hot on serializing his lame guardian angel idea (see the god-awful “Mr. Bevis” and next week’s “Cavender in Coming”), but don’tcha think Facsimile Limited would’ve made a much better springboard for an anthology series?  A different electric grandmother each week, a different family…. Ah, the possibilities!

Next:  “Mr. Bevis” --- that wretched creature --- gets a remake.  The horror!  The horror!!!