Of Late I Think of Cliffordville

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“Of Late I Think of Cliffordville”
The Twilight Zone episode

Julie Newmar as Ms. Devlin
Episode no. Season 4
Episode 116
Written by Rod Serling
(From the short story "Blind Alley" by Malcolm Jameson.)
Directed by David Lowell Rich
Guest stars Albert Salmi : Feathersmith
Julie Newmar : Ms Devlin
John Anderson : Deidrich
Wright King : Hecate
Raymond Gibbons : Guy
Harmon Clark : John
Hugh Sanders : Cronk
Production no. 4867
Original airdate April 11, 1963
Episode chronology
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List of Twilight Zone episodes

"Of Late I Think of Cliffordville" is an episode of the American television anthology series The Twilight Zone.

Contents

[edit] Opening narration

“ Witness a murder. The killer is Mr. William Feathersmith, a robber baron whose body composition is made up of a refrigeration plant covered by thick skin. In a moment, Mr. Feathersmith will proceed on his daily course of conquest and calumny with yet another business dealing. But this one will be one of those bizarre transactions that take place in an odd marketplace known as the Twilight Zone. ”

[edit] Synopsis

William J. Feathersmith, the 75-year-old president of a large corporation, is a self-centered, sadistic boor, always talking of his youth. He is bored with success. Feathersmith talks with the janitor, Mr. Hecate, who comes from the same town, Cliffordville, Indiana. Both Feathersmith and Hecate have been working in the same building for 34 years. The president dreams of returning to Cliffordville and starting life anew.

He meets the devil (Miss Devlin) in a travel agency in his own building, on a floor that wasn't there before, and agrees to sell his soul for the chance to start life over again. Unfortunately, since he's already driven so many people to suicide with buying out their factories and looting assets, among various other things, his soul is already the devil's legal property. Not fazed by the fact that the devil now owns him, the president bargains his entire liquidated worth, and ends up with $1,412.14 and his own thirty-year-old looking body.

Back in Cliffordville in 1910, he spends his last money on land which he knows to contain deposits of oil. He forgets, however, that high-power drills to access the oil have not been invented yet. To make matters worse, he realizes his insides are still the same age as before, as Ms. Devlin has only promised to make him look younger. When he tries to make money by capitalizing on foreknowledge of future improvements on the automobile — then in its infancy — he fails when it turns out he is a financier, but has no knowledge of practical mechanics of how to use the primitive technology of the past for future technology.

Devlin gives him the chance to go back to the future as it would ensue from this past, although not before giving him a tongue-lashing scolding about how viciously greedy he has been throughout his life. To buy his ticket, he quickly sells the land to a boy who otherwise, in the future, would be his janitor

He boards the train and is whisked away into this new future, where he and Hecate have changed places. The new president speaks as Feathersmith did, repeating in swapped roles the scene which began the episode.

[edit] Closing narration

“ Mr. William J. Feathersmith, tycoon, who tried the track one more time and found it muddier than he remembered—proving with at least a degree of conclusiveness that nice guys don't always finish last, and some people should quit when they're ahead. Tonight's tale of iron men and irony, delivered F.O.B. from the Twilight Zone." ”

[edit] Trivia

 Trivia sections are discouraged under Wikipedia guidelines.
The article could be improved by integrating relevant items and removing inappropriate ones.
  • In the original story Feathersmith goes back in time as an old man and dies.
  • "The Devil" is often encountered in The Twilight Zone but only in this episode is the diabolical personage female, a distinction for Julie Newmar.
  • A sketch from an episode of Saturday Night Live featured a similar premise, minus the supernatural aspects; a CEO and a janitor who grew up in the same town and in similar upbringings, and switch roles (the CEO becoming the janitor and vice versa) numerous times throughout the sketch.

[edit] External links

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