The Self-Improvement of Salvadore Ross

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The Twilight Zone original series Season five (1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5) Fall 1963 – Summer 1964 List of The Twilight Zone episodes
Episodes: In Praise of Pip Steel Nightmare at 20,000 Feet A Kind of a Stopwatch The Last Night of a Jockey Living Doll The Old Man in the Cave Uncle Simon Probe 7, Over and Out The 7th Is Made Up of Phantoms A Short Drink From a Certain Fountain Ninety Years Without Slumbering Ring-a-Ding Girl You Drive The Long Morrow The Self-Improvement of Salvadore Ross Number 12 Looks Just Like You Black Leather Jackets Night Call From Agnes—With Love Spur of the Moment An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge Queen of the Nile What's in the Box The Masks I Am the Night—Color Me Black Sounds and Silences Caesar and Me The Jeopardy Room Stopover in a Quiet Town The Encounter Mr. Garrity and the Graves The Brain Center at Whipple's Come Wander With Me The Fear The Bewitchin' Pool

“The Self-Improvement of Salvadore Ross” is an episode of the American television anthology series The Twilight Zone.

[edit] Details

Episode number: 136
Season: 5
Production code: 2612
Original air date: January 17, 1964
Writer: Jerry McNeely (based on the story by Henry Slesar)
Director: Don Siegel
Producer: Bert Granet
Director of photography: George T. Clemens
Music: Stock

[edit] Cast

Salvadore Ross: Don Gordon
Leah Maitland: Gail Kobe
Mr. Maitland: Vaughn Taylor

[edit] Synopsis

Salvadore Ross is a brutal, ambitious young man who loves an idealistic social worker named Leah Maitland. Leah has great affection for Ross, but she could never marry a man so lacking in compassion. Moreover, Leah's father detests Ross. Telling him that the relationship is finished, Leah slams her door in his face, and Ross slams his fist into the door, necessitating a trip to the hospital because of a broken hand.

Ross's roommate is an elderly man with a respiratory infection. Ross sarcastically suggests that he'd like to trade ailments with the old man, who jokingly accepts the trade. The next morning, as if by magic, the old man has a broken hand, while Ross has a mild cold.

Ross comes to realize that he has a supernatural power to make magical trades with other people. In exchange for a large amount of cash and a penthouse apartment, Ross sells his youth to an elderly millionaire. As a result, Ross is now very rich but very old. But he finds an easy way to regain his youth: he offers a large number of young men (beginning with a hotel bellboy) a small amount of cash for just one year of their lives. The boys accept the money, thinking Ross is just crazy (and since none of them feels any different after aging just one year, none thinks anything has really happened). In short order, Ross is young again, and still rich.

At this point, he attempts to win Leah's hand again. And again, she refuses. She wants a man with a heart, a man with the compassion her father possesses.

Frustrated, Ross approaches Leah's father, and offers to make him financially secure for the rest of his life. When the father skeptically asks how, Ross says hesitantly, "Well, it's kind of hard to explain..."

Sometime later, we see that Ross has become a warm, compassionate fellow who has won Leah's heart. Ross, in consideration of Mr. Maitland's feelings, meets with him in private and asks his assent to the marriage. However, he's failed to reckon with one thing: Leah's father, who'd despised Ross to begin with, no longer has any kindness or mercy in his heart, since he'd given it all to Ross! Incensed at Ross's impertience, the compassionless old man pulls out a gun and kills him.