.jpg "Buster (sans trousers) with Stanley Adams (left) and James Flavin")
"Once Upon a Time" (1961)
Cast: Buster Keaton, Stanley Adams, James Flavin, Jesse White, Gil Lamb
Director: Norman Z. McLeod
Writers: Richard Matheson, Rod Serling
BW-25 minutes
Thirty-seven years after filming Sherlock, Jr., Buster Keaton paid a visit to The Twilight Zone. He plays a curmudgeonly individual, Woodrow Mulligan by name, dissatisfied with the era he’s living in, the year 1890. A store sign says (heavens to Betsy!) that steak is 17 cents a pound, a newspaper headline announces the government has only an 85 million dollar surplus, and street traffic is allowed to proceed at an insane 8 miles per hour, causing Woodrow to wind up in a horse trough.
But quite by accident Woodrow discovers a way to escape this purgatory. Series host Rod Serling’s setup is unusually terse (for him):
"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."
As luck would have it, Woodrow works for an inventor, and his latest invention, again as luck would have it, is a Time Helmet. And guess who, as luck would have it, activates the helmet and it’s off to 1961.
This first segment of the show is done silent film-style, with title cards and undercranked camera action. When Woodrow arrives in the future, however, blaring sounds of heavy traffic greet him.
It isn’t long before Woodrow encounters Rollo (Stanley Adams), a guy who is definitely on the make. When he finally realizes that Woodrow and the Time Helmet are for real, Rollo (also "a rather dour critic of his times") makes plans of his own, plans which involve the helmet—but not Woodrow.
The final segment of the show takes us back to 1890 and the silent era. As the story winds down, we see a biter get bit—"the best-laid plans" and all that.
In his closing remarks, Rod Serling sums it up:
"’To each his own’—so goes another old phrase to which Mr. Woodrow Mulligan would heartily subscribe, for he has learned, definitely the hard way, that there is much wisdom in a third old phrase which goes as follows: ‘Stay in your own backyard.’ To which it might be added, ‘and if possible, assist others to stay in theirs’—via, of course, The Twilight Zone."
All in all, "Once Upon a Time" is a lot of fun.
—Mike Gray
What an excellent find, Mike! I will definitely seek out this episode and watch it.
It sounds as if Serling saw the episode as sending a message about human nature, that regardless of one’s circumstances, people will sill manifest certain recognizable types.
It also sounds as if he is suggesting that while technological progress is of course good, everything has its tradeoffs. That’s a lesson that many Americans today could profit from learning. We have always been a nation both of strivers and complainers.