Once Upon a Time (The Twilight Zone)

"Once Upon a Time"

The Twilight Zone episode

Buster Keaton and Stanley Adams in Once Upon a Time

Episode no.

Season 3
Episode 78

Directed by

Norman Z. McLeod (with an uncredited sequence by Les Goodwins)

Written by

Richard Matheson

Featured music

William Lava (piano score played by Ray Turner)

Production code

4820

Original air date

December 15, 1961

Guest stars

Buster Keaton: Woodrow Mulligan
Stanley Adams: Rollo
Jesse White: Repairman
James Flavin: First 1962 Policeman
Gil Lamb: Officer Flannagan
Milton Parsons: Professor Gilbert
Warren Parker: Clothing Store Manager
Harry Fleer: Second 1962 Policeman
George E. Stone: Fenwick

Episode chronology

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"The Jungle"

Next →
"Five Characters in Search of an Exit"

List of Twilight Zone episodes

"Once Upon a Time" is a 1961 episode of the American television anthology series The Twilight Zone.

1 Synopsis
2 Inspiration
3 References
4 External links

Synopsis

Woodrow Mulligan (Buster Keaton) is a grumpy janitor in 1890, dissatisfied with his time and place: a backwater town called "Harmony" with seventeen-cent cuts of meat, two-dollar hats, livestock freely roaming the streets, and penny-farthing bicycles that knock him down while going the speed limit (eight miles per hour). He works for Professor Gilbert, who has just invented a time helmet. Pouncing on the opportunity, Mulligan uses the helmet to transport himself to 1960, which of course turns out to be a surprise with even higher prices and more noise. He meets Rollo (Stanley Adams), a scientist and authority on the 1890s, which he regards as "charming."

Rollo tries to go back alone, but Mulligan jumps on him and they go back together. The 1890s turn out to be not entirely what Rollo thought of them. Mulligan, however, is relieved, and when he hears Rollo griping ("This guy sounds worse than my mother-in-law," Mulligan observes through an intertitle), he sets the helmet for 1960, puts it on Rollo's head, and sends him back to his own time.

This episode was one of the Twilight Zone's comedy episodes. The parts set in the 1890s have no sound, silent film intertitle cards (except, of course, for Rod Serling saying "Mr. Mulligan, a rather dour critic of his times is shortly to discover the import of that old phrase 'Out of the frying pan, into the fire'. Said fire burning brightly at all times, in the Twilight Zone") and a saloon piano. Much is made of the fact that Mulligan shows up in the 1960s with no pants due to his getting run over by a "high speed" bicycle. A running gag involves a helpless Mulligan being chased by a policeman in both the past and the present.

Inspiration

Buster Keaton was one of the biggest stars of the silent era, starring in and devising elaborate stunts and gags for such classic comedies as The General and Steamboat Bill, Jr.. His career suffered with the advent of sound films, and he spent decades struggling in Hollywood. This episode was intended as an homage to his early work.

References

DeVoe, Bill. (2008). Trivia from The Twilight Zone. Albany, GA: Bear Manor Media. ISBN 978-1593931360
Grams, Martin. (2008). The Twilight Zone: Unlocking the Door to a Television Classic. Churchville, MD: OTR Publishing. ISBN 978-0970331090

External links

Twilight Zone (1959) episodes

Season 1	"Where Is Everybody?" "One for the Angels" "Mr. Denton on Doomsday" "The Sixteen-Millimeter Shrine" "Walking Distance" "Escape Clause" "The Lonely" "Time Enough at Last" "Perchance to Dream" "Judgement Night" "And When the Sky Was Opened" "What You Need" "The Four of Us Are Dying" "Third from the Sun" "I Shot an Arrow into the Air" "The Hitch-Hiker" "The Fever" "The Last Flight" "The Purple Testament" "Elegy" "Mirror Image" "The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street" "A World of Difference" "Long Live Walter Jameson" "People Are Alike All Over" "Execution" "The Big Tall Wish" "A Nice Place to Visit" "Nightmare as a Child" "A Stop at Willoughby" "The Chaser" "A Passage for Trumpet" "Mr. Bevis" "The After Hours" "The Mighty Casey" "A World of His Own"

Season 2	"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"

Season 3	"Two" "The Arrival" "The Shelter" "The Passersby" "A Game of Pool" "The Mirror" "The Grave" "It's a Good Life" "Deaths-Head Revisited" "The Midnight Sun" "Still Valley" "The Jungle" "Once Upon a Time" "Five Characters in Search of an Exit" "A Quality of Mercy" "Nothing in the Dark" "One More Pallbearer" "Dead Man's Shoes" "The Hunt" "Showdown with Rance McGrew" "Kick the Can" "A Piano in the House" "The Last Rites of Jeff Myrtlebank" "To Serve Man" "The Fugitive" "Little Girl Lost" "Person or Persons Unknown" "The Little People" "Four O'Clock" "Hocus-Pocus and Frisby" "The Trade-Ins" "The Gift" "The Dummy" "Young Man's Fancy" "I Sing the Body Electric" "Cavender Is Coming" "The Changing of the Guard"

Season 4	"In His Image" "The Thirty-Fathom Grave" "Valley of the Shadow" "He's Alive" "Mute" "Death Ship" "Jess-Belle" "Miniature" "Printer's Devil" "No Time Like the Past" "The Parallel" "I Dream of Genie" "The New Exhibit" "Of Late I Think of Cliffordville" "The Incredible World of Horace Ford" "On Thursday We Leave for Home" "Passage on the Lady Anne" "The Bard"

Season 5	"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"

Richard Matheson

Novels	I Am Legend (1954) • The Shrinking Man (1956) • A Stir of Echoes (1958) • The Beardless Warriors (1960) • Hell House (1971) • Bid Time Return (1975) • What Dreams May Come (1978)

Short stories	"Born of Man and Woman" (1950) • "Blood Son" (1951) • "Button, Button" (1970)

Screenplays	The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957) • House of Usher (1960) • "The Last Flight" (1960) • "Nick of Time" (1960) • "A World of Difference" (1960) • "A World of His Own" (1960) • Master of the World (1961) • The Pit and the Pendulum (1961) • "The Invaders" (1961) • "Once Upon a Time" (1961) • Night of the Eagle (1962) • Tales of Terror (1962) • "Little Girl Lost" (1962) • "Young Man's Fancy" (1962) • The Raven (1963) • "Death Ship" (1963) • "Mute" (1963) • "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet" (1963) • "Steel" (1963) • The Comedy of Terrors (1964) • The Last Man on Earth (1964) • "Night Call" (1964) • "Spur of the Moment" (1964) • Fanatic (1965) • The Young Warriors (1966) • "The Enemy Within" (1966) • The Devil Rides Out (1968) • De Sade (1969) • Duel (1971) • The Night Stalker (1972) • The Night Strangler (1973) • The Legend of Hell House (1973) • Dracula (1973) • The Morning After (1974) • Trilogy of Terror (1975) • The Martian Chronicles Mini-Series (1980) • Somewhere in Time (1980) • Jaws 3-D (1983) • Twilight Zone: The Movie (1983) • "Button, Button" (1986) • Loose Cannons (1990) • The Dreamer of Oz (1990) • Rod Serling's Lost Classics (1994) • Trilogy of Terror II (1996)

Adaptations by others	"And When the Sky Was Opened" (1959) • "Third from the Sun" (1960) • Cold Sweat (1970) • The Omega Man (1971) • The Incredible Shrinking Woman (1981) • What Dreams May Come (1998) • Stir of Echoes (1999) • "Dance of the Dead" (2005) • "My Ambition" (2006) • I Am Legend (2007) • I Am Omega (2007) • The Box (2009) • "The Splendid Source" (2010) • Real Steel (2011)

Once Upon a Time (The Twilight Zone)

Contents

Synopsis

Inspiration

References

External links