Of Late I Think of Cliffordville
Template:Infobox TTW season four Template:TTW episode details
Cast
- Feathersmith: Albert Salmi
- Ms Devlin: Julie Newmar
- Deidrich: John Anderson
- Hecate: Wright King
- Guy: Raymond Gibbons
- John: Harmon Clark
- Cronk: Hugh Sanders
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."
Synopsis
William J. Feathersmith, the president of a large corporation is bored with success. He talks with the janitor, Mr. Hecate, who comes from the same town he grew up in, Cliffordville. The president dreams of returning to Cliffordville and starting life anew.
He meets the devil (a Miss Devlin), in a travel agency, in his own building, on a floor the elevator stops at 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 various other things, his soul is already the devil's legal property. The president bargains his entire liquidated worth and ends up with $1412.14 and his own thirty-year-old looking body.
Back in Cliffordville, 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.
Ms. Devlin, feeling a pang of sympathy, gives him the chance to go back to the future (by train) as it would ensue from this past. To buy his ticket, he quickly sells the land to a boy who otherwise would be his janitor, in the future.
He boards the train and is whisked away into this new future, where he and the janitor have changed places. The new president, Mr. Hecate, speaks as Feathersmith did, repeating the scene which begins the episode.
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 ironry, delivered f.o.b. from the Twilight Zone."
Trivia
- 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.