Of Late I Think of Cliffordville

"Of Late I Think of Cliffordville"
	The Twilight Zone episode
	Julie Newmar as Miss Devlin and Albert Salmi as William Feathersmith
Episode no.	Season 4; Episode 14
Directed by	David Lowell Rich
Written by	Rod Serling
Based on	"Blind Alley"; by Malcolm Jameson
Production code	4867
Original air date	April 11, 1963
Guest appearance(s)
	Albert Salmi as William Feathersmith; Julie Newmar as Miss Devlin; John Anderson as Dietrich; Wright King as Mr. Hecate; Guy Raymond as Gibbons; John Harmon as Clark; Hugh Sanders as Cronk;

"Of Late I Think of Cliffordville" is episode 116 of the American television anthology series The Twilight Zone. It originally aired on April 11, 1963 on CBS. In this episode, an elderly, sadistic business tycoon buys the opportunity to enjoy amassing his fortune a second time.

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.

Plot

William J. Feathersmith, the 75-year-old president of a large corporation, is a sadistic man who has made his fortune by financially preying on others. One night, a drunken Feathersmith confesses to the janitor Mr. Hecate, that, having reached the height of success, he is left feeling empty and purposeless, and dreams of returning to his small hometown of Cliffordville, Indiana, to start life anew. Hecate says that Cliffordville happens to be his hometown as well.

Attempting to go home for the night, Feathersmith is instead taken by the elevator to the 13th floor, where he finds a travel agency that was not there the day before. Feathersmith quickly realizes that the agency's head, Miss Devlin, is the Devil. She offers to fulfill his wish to return to 1910 Cliffordville, agreeing to his terms that he will look the same as he did then, but retain all memories of his first life, in exchange for almost all his liquidated worth, leaving him with $1,412. Because he knows which investments have succeeded and which have failed in the last 50 years, Feathersmith agrees.

Back in 1910 Cliffordville, he uses $1,403 to buy 1,403 acres of land which he knows to contain deposits of oil. He forgets, however, that the drill needed to access oil so far beneath the ground will not be invented until 1937. Feathersmith tries to woo the daughter of a bank owner but is startled that, rather than being the charming girl he remembers, she chatters incessantly and insists on entertaining guests with her shrill singing. Many of the stocks he invests in drop. He tries to "invent" devices such as a self-starter for automobiles, but does not know how to design them. The townspeople ridicule this, which causes Feathersmith to suffer palpitations. He realizes that following the strict letter of his terms, Miss Devlin has made him appear 30, but he is still biologically 75. Miss Devlin appears. Feathersmith accuses her of altering the past, but she says that all is as it was; he just chose to remember it differently. She needles him that he has lived off the work of others and is unable to create anything himself.

He pleads with Miss Devlin to send him back to 1963, even after she warns him that his actions in 1910 have changed things, and it can no longer be the 1963 he knew. Feeling some measure of sympathy for him, she agrees to fulfill his wish for just $40. Having no money left, Feathersmith hastily sells the deed to his land to Mr. Hecate for the $40, and leaves 1910 Cliffordville in disgrace.

In an altered 1963, Mr. Hecate is now the president of the corporation, having founded it with his oil profits earned after 1937. A cold and extremely self-centered man, Hecate mocks Feathersmith for having been a janitor for 44 years, while the now-powerless Feathersmith can only stand there and take the ridicule, just as Hecate did in his place.

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 irony, delivered F.O.B. from the Twilight Zone.

Production

In the scene in which Feathersmith negotiates his way out of Cliffordville, there are several crates in the alley marked "This End Up", which were used as shipping crates for the wax figures in the previous episode, "The New Exhibit".

References

DeVoe, Bill. (2008). Trivia from The Twilight Zone. Albany, GA: Bear Manor Media. ISBN 978-1-59393-136-0
Grams, Martin. (2008). The Twilight Zone: Unlocking the Door to a Television Classic. Churchville, MD: OTR Publishing. ISBN 978-0-9703310-9-0

External links

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The 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" "Judgment 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" "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"