The Whole Truth

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The Whole Truth is also an episode of Lost

The Twilight Zone original series Season two (1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5) Fall 1960 – Summer 1961 List of The Twilight Zone episodes
Episodes: King Nine Will Not Return The Man in the Bottle Nervous Man in a Four Dollar Room A Thing About Machines The Howling Man The Eye of the Beholder Nick of Time The Lateness of the Hour The Trouble With Templeton A Most Unusual Camera The Night of the Meek Dust Back There The Whole Truth The Invaders A Penny for Your Thoughts Twenty Two The Odyssey of Flight 33 Mr. Dingle, the Strong Static The Prime Mover Long Distance Call A Hundred Yards Over the Rim The Rip Van Winkle Caper The Silence Shadow Play The Mind and the Matter Will the Real Martian Please Stand Up? The Obsolete Man

“The Whole Truth” is an episode of the American television anthology series The Twilight Zone.

[edit] Details

Episode number: 50
Season: 2
Original air date: January 20, 1961
Writer: Rod Serling
Director: James Sheldon
Producer: Buck Houghton
Director of photography: none [third of six episodes consecutively recorded on videotape—see "Episode notes"]
Music: none credited

[edit] Cast

Starring

Jack Carson as Harvey Hunnicut
Loring Smith as Honest Luther Grimbley [first of two TZ appearances—see "Episode notes"]
George Chandler as Old Man (who sells the truth-enforcing car to Harvey Hunnicut)

and

Jack Ging as Young Man (who, accompanied by his wife, is contemplating a car purchase)
Arte Johnson as Irv
Patrick Westwood as The Premier's Aide (Khrushchev's interpreter)
Lee Sabinson as The Premier (Nikita Khrushchev)
Nan Peterson as Young Woman (who, accompanied by her husband, is contemplating a car purchase) [second of three TZ appearances—see "Episode notes"]

[edit] Rod Serling's opening narration

As the Old Man drives his Model A car into Harvey Hunnicut's lot and gets out, the camera pans to the right to reveal Rod Serling standing four steps up on the landing of Hunnicutt's office:

"This, as the banner already has proclaimed, is Mr. Harvey Hunnicut, an expert on commerce and con jobs, a brash, bright, and larceny-loaded wheeler and dealer who, when the good lord passed out a conscience, must have gone for a beer and missed out. And these are a couple of other characters in our story: a little old man and a Model A car—but not just any old man and not just any Model A. There's something very special about the both of them. As a matter of fact, in just a few moments they'll give Harvey Hunnicut something that he's never experienced before. Through the good offices of a little magic, they will unload on Mr. Hunnicut the absolute necessity to tell the truth. Exactly where they come from is conjecture, but as to where they're heading for, this we know, because all of them—and you—are on the threshold of the Twilight Zone."

[edit] Synopsis

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

The dealership of glib, conscienceless used-car salesman Harvey Hunnicut is visited by a mild-mannered elderly gentleman who offers to sell his vintage Model A car for a pittance. The old gent warns Hunnicut, however, that the antique contraption is haunted, forcing its owner to tell nothing but the truth. Laughing off such superstitious nonsense, Hunnicut buys the jalopy, intending to quickly unload it. To his dismay, he quickly realizes that the vehicle's previous owner was indeed being truthful, as he, himself, must now always be.

After a series of vain attempts to sell his substandard merchandise, Hunnicut comes to the conclusion that his livelihood depends on his ability to rid himself of this supernatural burden. Just as he's losing hope of ever doing so, he sees a newspaper story about the U.S. playing host to visiting Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev. Hunnicut calls the Soviet embassy and convinces its representatives to visit his dealership. By being absolutely half-truthful, he sells the car as a potential anti-American propaganda tool, exemplifying shoddy, outdated U.S. automobile workmanship. By the concluding scene, we realize that Hunnicut is about to change the course of history, since the passenger watching the sale from the embassy limousine will now be considered the haunted vehicle's official owner. It appears to be none other than Khrushchev himself.

[edit] Rod Serling's closing narration

"Couldn't happen, you say? Far-fetched? Way-out? Tilt-of-center? Possible. But the next time you buy an automobile if it happens to look as if it had just gone through the Battle of the Marne, and the seller is ready to throw into the bargain one of his arms, be particularly careful in explaining to the boss about your grandmother's funeral when you were actually at Chavez Ravine watching the Dodgers. It'll be a fact that you're the proud possessor of an instrument of truth manufactured and distributed by an exclusive dealer...in the Twilight Zone."

[edit] Episode notes

Five weeks into The Twilight Zone's second season, the show's budget was showing a deficit. The total number of new episodes was projected at twenty-nine, more than half of which, sixteen, had, by November 1960, already been filmed. CBS suggested that in order to trim the production's $65,000 per episode budget, six episodes should be produced in the cheaper videotape format and then transferred to 16-millimeter film. The studios of the network's Television City, normally used for the production of live drama, would serve as the venue. There would be fewer camera movements and no exteriors, making the episodes seem more akin to soap operas, with the videotaped image effectively narrowing and flattening perspective. Even with those artistic sacrifices, the eventual savings amounted to only $30,000, far less than the cost of a single episode. The experiment was thus deemed a failure and never attempted again.

Even though the six shows were taped in a row, through November and into mid-December, their broadcast dates were out of order and varied widely, with this, the third one, shown on January 20, 1961 as episode 14. The first, The Lateness of the Hour was seen on December 2, 1960 as episode 8; the second, Static appeared on March 10, 1961 as episode 20; the fourth was the Christmas entry Night of the Meek shown as the 11th episode on December 23, 1960; the fifth, Twenty-Two was seen on February 10, 1961 as episode 17; and the last one, Long Distance Call was transmitted on March 3, 1961 as episode 22.

Loring Smith (1890-1981), the exuberant comic actor portraying Honest Luther Grimbley, the city alderman who, quite understandably, decides not to buy the honesty-enforcing automobile, spent four decades as a radio and stage character performer with occasional small parts in films and TV. In his seventies, near the end of his career, he appeared in two TZ episodes, the other one being fourth season's I Dream of Genie.

Nan Peterson, an attractive small-part actress, played mainly decorative roles in TV shows and a handful of films during a five-year period between 1959 and 1964. She has virtually no dialogue in her three TZ appearances, which are spread from the beginning to the end of her brief acting career. In one of her first performances, she is seen near the merry-go-round in first season's memorable fifth episode Walking Distance. Fifteen months later, she and Jack Ging here play a young couple planning to start their married life with the unfortunate choice of Harvey Hunnicut's dealership as a potential automobile purchase venue, and finally, after a passage of three years, in February 1964, she makes her final screen appearance in fifth season's From Agnes—With Love, where her bit as a secretary is so small, she doesn't even rate inclusion in the end credits.