TZ Promo: "Jess-Belle" (2/14/1962)

Season 4, Episode 7 (#109 overall)

Cayuga Production # 4855

Originally aired 2/14/1963

Fair was Elly Glover

Dark was Jess-Belle

Both they loved the same man

And both they loved him well.

On Valentine’s Day exactly fifty years ago, The Twilight Zone returned to Appalachia to present a bewitching tale of lust, love and tragedy.

Earl Hamner Jr.’s “Jess-Belle” opens with good ol’ boy Billy Ben Turner popping the question to his sweetheart, Ellwyn Glover, during a barn dance.  Casting a bit of a shadow on the proceedings is Jess-Belle Stone (a previous conquest of Billy Ben’s), who suggests that Elly shouldn't buy that wedding dress just yet.  Yup, sounds like a triangle all right, and it sounds like Jess-Belle’s planning to stir up some trouble.

Bubble, boil, toil and trouble.

She visits Granny Hart, the resident witch of these back hills, looking for help. She trades her soul for a love potion that will make Billy Ben blind to every woman but her. It works all too well: he promptly dumps Elly and proposes to Jess-Belle instead. Jess-Belle has successfully landed her man, but now it’s time to pay the price: every night, she transforms into a leopard. Yes, you heard me right.  A LEOPARD.

Meeeeeeeeow.

The two women warring for Billy Ben’s affections are nicely contrasted:  Elly is blonde and affluent, sweet but somewhat dull, while Jess-Belle is dark-haired and troubled, unrefined yet complex.  Billy Ben’s quandary is easy to understand:  Elly represents wealth and status (and gosh, won’t their kids be gorgeous?), while Jess-Belle… well, she puts out.  Billy Ben’s got some wild oats, and he just wants to sow ‘em before he settles down.  Ellwyn is the long haul, while Jess-Belle is right now.

A literal roll in the hay.

In the hands of a less-capable actor, Jess-Belle could easily come off as villainous and conniving, but Anne Francis imbibes her with so much passion and pathos that she somehow emerges as the heroine of the piece (albeit a tragic one).  It’s pretty apparent that Billy Ben took advantage of her in the past, so her motivations seem sourced more in emotional damage than possessiveness.  We don’t really blame her for her actions, since her all-consuming, aching need for love is portrayed so utterly believably. 

I must mention that Anne Francis is impossibly hot, even more so with that jet black hair (sigh).  We last saw her in season one’s “The After Hours.”  And hey, Forbidden Planet alert!  Francis was delicious to behold as Altaira in the 1956 sci-fi classic whose imagery and props frequently pop up on The Twilight Zone.

Laura Devon is certainly easy on the eyes as well, but the superficial character of Elly Glover doesn't give her a whole lot to work with as far as complexity of character goes.  She truly shines, however, in the all-too-brief scene in which she is possessed by Jess-Belle’s spirit.  She becomes lusty and aggressive, as if some carnal switch was suddenly flipped on inside her.

There’s a great scene in act three in which Jess-Belle encounters Elly in a meadow, picking flowers (I imagine birds and mice help her get dressed in the morning, like the Disney princesses she strongly evokes), and the claws come out:

Jess-Belle:

“Lots of wildflowers around here. Saw a patch of old maid’s fern up on the mountain.”

Elly:

“I notice a lot of vixenwort around here myself.”

Oh, snap.  Cat fight!

“Jess-Belle” is chock full o’ TZ alumni.  James Best (Billy Ben Turner) appears for his third and final episode (we saw him in season two’s “The Grave” and season three’s “The Last Rites of Jeff Myrtlebank”).   Jeanette Nolan, last seen in season three’s “The Hunt,” is excellent as Granny Hart.  The town minister is played by Jon Lormer in his fourth and final TZ appearance (we saw him in season one’s “Excecution,” season two’s “Dust,” and in season three’s “The Last Rites of JeffMyrtlebank”).  Luther Glover, Ellwyn’s father, is played by George Mitchell in his third of four TZ appearances (we saw him in “The Hitch-hiker” and “Execution” in season one, and we’ll see him again in season five’s “Ring-a-Ding Girl”).  Ossie Stone, Jess-Belle’s beleaguered mother, is played by Virginia Gregg, who will return for “The Masks” in season five.  And finally, Obed Miller is played by Jim Boles, who also appeared in season three’s “The Arrival.” 

Thank cue (groan).

Nathan Van Cleave contributes a perfectly serviceable score (some cues of which are reminiscent of his earlier “Perchance to Dream” and “A World of Difference” scores), but what’s really memorable is the original song (music by Van Cleave, lyrics by Earl Hamner, Jr.), gradually interwoven throughout the episode one verse at a time.  Note that each verse shares its title with the corresponding cue; however, I prefer to think of the collective song as, simply, “The Ballad of Jess-Belle.”  I've gone ahead and pieced the verses together for your listening enjoyment:  

“Jess-Belle” is one of the better offerings of TZ’s fourth season, elevated considerably by Anne Francis’s tortured performance in the lead.  And did I mention there’s a real live leopard?

Next week:  Robert Duvall finds a tiny little soul mate.

TZ Promo: “The Last Rites of Jeff Myrtlebank” (2/23/1962)

Season 3, Episode 23 (#88 overall)
Cayuga Production # 4811

50 years ago tonight, a dead man sprang back to life… right in the middle of his own funeral. Oh, snap!


Season three found The Twilight Zone visiting the south multiple times (with varying results), and “The Last Rites of Jeff Myrtlebank” is arguably the single most successful sojourn. The episode adeptly mixes countrified humor with a profound supernatural mystery and emerges with a winning concoction. The episode is a joy, through and through.


The town doctor attributes Jeff’s miraculous revival to a condition he calls ipso suspendo animation. Others think perhaps an evil spirit has taken possession of Jeff’s body, and pretty soon the men form a posse to force Jeff to leave town. The ensuing showdown plays out beautifully, and it’s only at the very end of the episode do we find out the truth.


Leading the cast is James Best in the second of three TZ roles (all of them good old country boy types; he’d go on to a career-defining role on TV’s The Dukes of Hazzard playing bumbling Sheriff Roscoe P. Coltrane). Best is marvelous as the recently-deceased (and suddenly quite ambulatory) Jeff, but really the entire cast is spot-on. Sherry Jackson (as Jeff’s fickle girlfriend Comfort) is sure as hell easy on the eyes, and most definitely qualifies as a bona fide TZ babe.


As I’ve reported previously, I used to archive episodes when I was a kid by placing my little portable tape recorder directly in front of the TV speaker (that’s audio tape, folks; VCRs weren’t common items yet). In my original tape of this episode, at the 4:51 mark when Jeff says “Well I’ll be double-dogged,” our family dog Benji could be clearly heard barking, as if on cue. Sadly, both my audio tapes (not to mention Benji himself!) are long lost to time.


“The Last Rites of Jeff Myrtlebank” is one of The Twilight Zone’s better comedies, which means Rod Serling most certainly did NOT write it. We have Montgomery Pittman to thank for this one (he wrote and directed it, as he did with his previous “Two” and “The Grave”). Pittman’s contribution to the series may have been relatively small, but he was batting a thousand all the way. Pittman, who undoubtedly had a bright career in front of him, died of cancer in June of 1962, just four months after “The Last Rites of Jeff Myrtlebank” premiered.

Next week, “To Serve Man” asks the age-old question: if you lead a Kanamit to humans, can you make him eat?

TZ Promo: “The Grave" (10/27/1961)

Season 3, Episode 7 (#72 overall)
Cayuga Production # 173-3656

After the horrible “The Mirror,” Twilight Zone fans were happily treated to a solid month of excellent episodes. 50 years ago tonight, viewers were offered a good old fashioned ghost story, the first time the series ever offered such a tale. It’s hard to believe it took this long, especially for a show so steeped in the supernatural. We’ve certainly encountered our share of dead folks over the past 71 episodes, but I’m hesitant to label any of them as true ghosts. Tonight, we meet our first true Twilight Zone ghost.


“The Grave” is the second of three third season episodes both written and directed by Montgomery Pittman. The setting is the Old West, but not the brightly lit Old West depicted in the countless western shows that ruled the airwaves in the early 60’s. Here it’s dark and cold, swept by a constant wind, relentlessly ominous. Perfect for a ghost story, wouldn’t you say?


Pinto Sykes is a notorious outlaw and general ne’er-do-well who has successfully evaded bounty hunter Connie Miller (a brooding Lee Marvin), who may or may not be intentionally dragging his feet in the chase due to cowardice. The townsmen, tired of waiting for Miller to do the deed, surround Sykes in the street and gun him down. On his deathbed, Sykes promises that, if Miller ever comes near his grave, he’ll “reach up and grab him.” Miller arrives after Sykes expires, and finds his honor in serious question. To redeem himself, he must visit Sykes’ newly-dug grave.


James Best co-stars as a jittery guitar-strumming local whom Connie bullies. Best, who will also appear in the upcoming “The Last Rites of Jeff Myrtlebank,” as well as season four’s wonderful “Jess-Belle,” is best known as Roscoe P. Coltrane, one of Boss Hogg’s bumbling deputies, on TV’s The Dukes of Hazzard. It’s really too bad…. in his three TZ outings, Best displays a talent far above such teledrivel.


The production number (173-3656) indicates that this episode was actually produced during the show’s second season, but held back until the third (the same is true of “Nothing in the Dark,” which we’ll get to in January). In his The Twilight Zone: Unlocking the Door to a Television Classic, Martin Grams Jr. reports that “The Grave” was originally intended to open the third season, but was pushed back to coincide with Halloween (interestingly, the episode chosen to replace it as the third season opener, “Two” was also written and directed by Montgomery Pittman). The opening shot of act one does not feature the usual season three title cards (episode title, writer, director): we simply open on a long shot of Lee Marvin riding up to the saloon on his horse (the title shot at the top of this entry is from the episode’s end credits; the only place the episode title was ever seen during season two).

Next week: Anthony Fremont is just an innocent little boy… right?