A Short Drink from a Certain Fountain

"A Short Drink From a Certain Fountain"
The Twilight Zone episode
Episode no. Season 5
Episode 131
Directed by Bernard Girard
Written by Rod Serling
(From an idea by Lou Holtz)
Featured music Stock
Production code 2614
Original air date December 13, 1963
Guest actors

Patrick O'Neal: Harmon Gordon
Ruta Lee: Flora Gordon
Walter Brooke: Dr. Raymond Gordon
uncredited child: Harmon Gordon as child

"A Short Drink From a Certain Fountain" is an episode of the American television anthology series The Twilight Zone.

Plot

A wealthy old man married to a younger woman is exhausted by his wife's youthful lifestyle. Seeking to keep up the pace, he asks his scientist brother to inject him with an experimental youth serum (if he doesn't, he claims he'll find out which one of them "reaches the pavement first"). Reluctantly, his brother agrees. The serum works wonders; the old man grows younger by the hour. Unfortunately, it does not stop when he hopes, and the regression continues until he is a toddler. His wife tries to leave him, but his clever brother forces the wife, whom he abhors, to stay and raise him, else she will be cut off from his fortune—and she will receive nothing else. He will take legal action against her and battle her to the death. Now she is stuck. Forever. He reminds her, "As he grows older, you'll be growing...old." And he caustically predicts that when his brother does grow old enough, another woman is sure to take him away from her. "It's not fair, Raymond," she shudders to her brother-in-law. "Everything...is on his side!" "Well, you see, Flora?", Raymond Gordon responds somewhat sarcastically. "As you get older...see how wise you get?"

Production

Initially, the Raymond Gordon character was to be a typical family physician. Disturbed by the character's willingness to experiment on a fellow human (Harmon, his brother), CBS asked that his occupation be changed to that of a research scientist. Serling complied.[1]

This episode (because of a lawsuit filed by someone claiming they had the idea for the story first) was not included in the Twilight Zone syndication package until 1984. When this and other long unseen episodes became available, a series of short introductions were shot featuring commentary from the cast and crew of the original episodes.

In the segment with Patrick O'Neal for this episode, O'Neal remarked on how accurately the show's makeup effects artists had aged him, as he now very closely resembled his older appearance in this episode. O'Neal was actually only eight years older than Lee.

References

  1. ↑ Hal Erikson, "Censorship: Another Dimension Behind the Twilight Zone", published in the October 1985 edition of The Twilight Zone Magazine

External links

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