The Bewitchin' Pool

"The Bewitchin' Pool"
The Twilight Zone episode
Scene from "The Bewitchin' Pool"
Episode no.	Season 5 Episode 156
Directed by	Joseph M. Newman
Written by	Earl Hamner Jr.
Production code	2619
Original air date	June 19, 1964
Guest stars
Mary Badham: Jean Louise "Sport" Sharewood June Foray: Sport Sharewood (voice outdoors) Kim Hector: Whitt Dee Hartford: Gloria Sharewood Jeffrey Byron (as Tim Stafford): Jebediah "Jeb" Sharewood Georgia Simmons: Aunt T Tod Andrews: Gil Sharewood
Episode chronology
← Previous "The Fear" Next → —
List of Twilight Zone episodes

"The Bewitchin' Pool" is the final episode (in original broadcast order) of the American television series The Twilight Zone.

Contents 1 Synopsis 2 Episode notes 3 References 4 External links

Synopsis

Sport Sharewood and her brother Jeb live in a large, expensive house, but their mother is cold, insensitive and self-centered; their father is kinder, but still a distant and preoccupied businessman.

While sitting beside their pool, a young boy in a Huckleberry Finn straw hat pops up from the deep end of their pool and invites them to follow him. The children follow him by diving underwater only to come back up in a lake bordering a rustic, simple homestead. All around them are children swimming, fishing, and playing. In contrast to their lavish home of neglect and insults, they are welcomed and loved from the moment they arrive at this children's paradise. There is only one adult there named "Aunt T", a sweet and kind elderly woman who loves children; she explains she has many children there who came from parents who didn't deserve them.

When Sport and Jeb decide to go home, for fear that their parents will be worried, they learn that their parents have decided to divorce and hadn't even missed them while they were gone. When the parents tell the children the news, they give them the choice of either living with their mother or their father and berate them for not deciding quickly enough. The children have an epiphany that their parents do not genuinely love them and never will. Ignoring their parents' shouts, Sport and Jeb race back to the pool, dive in, disappear and escape back to Aunt T.

In the end the children are happily living with Aunt T whose love is unconditional. Sport hears the increasingly distant voices of her parents, but ignores them.

Episode notes

This was the final episode of the original Twilight Zone series to be broadcast, though not the last to be filmed. The last episode filmed was "Come Wander With Me", while, according to Marc Scott Zicree's "The Twilight Zone Companion", the reediting of An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge (including the addition of new footage of Serling) was the last episode "produced" before cancellation. The last episode broadcast during the original run — as a repeat — was "The Jeopardy Room".

Mary Badham's voice was deemed unintelligible in the outdoor scenes, so June Foray dubbed Sport Sharewood's lines. The change in Sport's voice is noticeable when she moves indoors and Mary's own deeper voice and more authentic accent are heard.

There apprear to be numerous references to the film adaptation of To Kill a Mockingbird in this episode; Mary Badham plays the character Jean Louise "Sport" Sharewood in this episode, (Badham played Jean Louise "Scout" Finch in the movie). Sport's brother's name (Jeb) could be seen as a play on Scout's older brother, Jem. Finally, Kim Hector, who plays Whitt and who teases Sport and Jeb when they first arrive at the children's paradise, played Scout's schoolyard nemesis, Cecil Jacobs, in the Mockingbird film.

The episode is also believed to be the basis for the B-52s song entitled "Private Idaho". That song uses portions of the Twilight Zone's theme song--and it also tells you to "Beware of the Pool" and "Don't Let the Chlorine in Your Eyes Blind You to the Awful Surprise that's waitin' for you at the bottom of the bottomless blue blue blue pool".

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

• "The Bewitchin' Pool" at the Internet Movie Database
• TV.com episode page

See *

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"