The Twilight Zone: Season 1, Episode Eight “Time Enough At Last”

Original Air Date: November 20, 1959
Writer: Rod Serling, based on a short story by Lynn Venable
Director: John Brahm

“That’s not fair. That’s not fair at all. There was time now. There was—was all the time I needed…! It’s not fair! It’s not fair!”

As the first episode that was not wholly conceived by Rod Serling, “Time Enough At Last” was based on a short story of the same name by American writer Lynn Venable. The story was initially released and published in If Magazine in 1953, the same year that Ray Bradbury published his magnum opus Fahrenheit 451. Bradbury later submitted several scripts for The Twilight Zone however the only episode he is credited with writing is “I Sing the Body Electric” in Season 3 (though he privately accused Rod Serling of plagiarism several times without merit).

“Witness Mr. Henry Bemis, a charter member in the fraternity of dreamers. A bookish little man whose passion is the printed page, but who is conspired against by a bank president and a wife and a world full of tongue-cluckers and the unrelenting hands of a clock. But in just a moment, Mr. Bemis will enter a world without bank presidents or wives or clocks or anything else. He’ll have a world all to himself… without anyone.“
-Rod Serling

Henry Bemis is a mousy, clumsy, geek who is obsessed with reading books like the works of Charles Dickens, but tragically he has been prevented from doing so. He wears large, thick spectacles and is employed at a bank which forbids him from reading David Copperfield even while isolated below ground in the vault during his lunch break. When he comes home, his shrew of a wife also prohibits him from reading –everything including newspapers are forbidden in his house. She marks up a book of poetry just so Henry cannot read a single line. For me, these scenes of Henry struggling to find time to read brought to light a tension many of us feel between work and play, business and leisure –the struggle to find time and space for reading literature in our increasingly distracted modern world. Personally, I remember bringing a copy of Great Expectations to one of my first jobs working as a cashier, much like Henry Bemis.

At any rate, the next day at work Henry goes back down to the vault to read a newspaper. A headline reads: “H-Bomb Capable of Total Destruction.” Suddenly, a massive explosion shakes the entire building, knocking Henry unconscious and spilling open his book (he was reading A History of the Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus by Washington Irving). When Henry awakens, he climbs out of the rubble only to discover that the world has been entirely destroyed in a nuclear holocaust.

“Seconds, minutes, hours. They crawl by on hands and knees for Mr. Henry Bemis, who looks for a spark in the ashes of a dead world. A telephone connected to nothingness. A neighborhood bar, a movie, a baseball diamond, a hardware store, the mailbox of what was once his house and is now a rubble. They lie at his feet as battered monuments to what was, but is no more. Mr. Henry Bemis on an eight-hour tour of a graveyard.“
-Rod Serling

As he contemplates suicide, Henry notices that the public library is still partially standing in the distance. It is filled with books, all of which have been spared destruction. Somehow the books have survived! Suddenly, this apocalyptic nightmare has become a dreamworld for a reader like Henry –he is now the last man on earth, granted nothing but time and space to finally read; he is alone but not lonely. Immediately, he begins carefully piling books into organized sections, developing literary plans for years to come. But as he bends down to pick up his first book, his glasses suddenly fall and shatter on the ground, rendering him virtually blind and unable to read. He cries out:

“That’s not fair. That’s not fair at all. There was time now. There was—was all the time I needed…! It’s not fair! It’s not fair!”

The concluding narration to this episode quotes the famous Scottish poet, Robert Burns and his poem “To A Mouse” (“The best-laid schemes o’ mice an’ men / Gang aft agley” translated as – ‘Often go awry’).

“The best laid plans of mice and men… and Henry Bemis… the small man in the glasses who wanted nothing but time. Henry Bemis, now just a part of a smashed landscape, just a piece of the rubble, just a fragment of what man has deeded to himself. Mr. Henry Bemis… in the Twilight Zone.”
-Rod Serling

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My Thoughts on “Time Enough At Last”

“Time Enough At Last” is a parody of modern life in many respects. It shows us the futility of the drive for productivity, our culture’s rampant anti-intellectualism, and the hopeless struggle for curious people to find quietude and space to read books. In this episode, we enter into the pitiable life of Henry Bemis (played by the great Hollywood actor, Burgess Meredith, whose popularity only skyrocketed following the release of this episode). His performance is one of the most iconic in the whole series.

In addition to exploring themes of leisure intellectualism, “Time Enough At Last” is also a dystopian story about what it could be like to survive total nuclear destruction. Today, as the global stockpile of nuclear weapons grows ever larger, this threat remains ever-present. But Henry Bemis is a simple man, a quiet reader who harms no one. His one hope is to recover the freedom and peace of mind for books. His character is at best a leech on society. His circumstances are tragic, and his struggle quixotic, but finally he is finally given a chance to read, but only as the last man on earth. For him, the total destruction of civilization is a relief and a deliverance. And, with this in mind, Henry is not exactly an admirable character. Pitiable? Perhaps. But if you find yourself celebrating the obliteration of all mankind just so you can pursue your chosen vanity projects, there is surely something important you have missed about being human. And in the end, Henry’s one basic necessity is taken from him: his reading glasses. His desire to dwell exclusively among the company of books has in fact demonstrated a deep need for civilization.

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Credits:

• Director: John Brahm
  • Hans “John” Brahm (1893-1982) was born in Hamburg, Germany, the son of an actor. He fled Nazi Germany during the rise of Adolf Hitler and relocated to London before coming to the United States. He directed his first film in 1936, a remake of D.W. Griffith’s Broken Blossoms and later directed a remake of Alfred Hitchcock’s The Lodger in 1942. Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, Brahm directed numerous television films and series, such as Alfred Hitchcock Presents and The Man From U.N.C.L.E. He holds the distinction for directing more Twilight Zone episodes than any other director, a total of twelve episodes, including five in the first season alone. He was married three times and had two children.
• Written by: Rod Serling (based on the short story of the same name by Lynn Venable, originally published in the January 1953 issue of If: Worlds of Science Fiction)
• Music: Leith Stevens
• Director of Photography: George T. Clemens
• Production Manager: Ralph W. Nelson
• Art Directors: George W. Davis and William Ferrari
• Film Editor: Bill Mosher
• Assistant Director: Edward Denault
• Set Decorations: Henry Grace and Rudy Butler
• Sound: Franklin Milton and Jean Valentino
• Casting Director: Mildred Gusse
• Cast:
  • Burgess Meredith…..Henry Bemis
    • Oliver Burgess Meredith (1907-1997) led an incredible career in Hollywood. He was a lifetime member of the Actors Studio, a winner of a Primetime Emmy Award, and was the first male actor to win the Saturn Award for Best Supporting Actor twice, in addition to two Academy Award nominations. He gave critically acclaimed performances as Mio Romagna in Winterset (1936), George Milton in Of Mice and Men (1939), and Ernie Pyle in The Story of G.I. Joe (1945). He starred in four episodes of The Twilight Zone (“Time Enough At Last,” “Mr. Dingle, the Strong,” “The Obsolete Man,” and “Printer’s Devil“) and regularly appeared as The Penguin in the 1960s TV series Batman. He later appeared in two episodes of Rod Serling’s Night Gallery (“The Little Black Bag” and “Finnegan’s Flight”) and had an uncredited role as the narrater in The Twilight Zone: The Movie (1983). In addition to acting, he enlisted in the U.S. Air Force during World War II. He was married four times, had two children, struggled with a form of bipolar disorder, and was a lifelong supporter of the Democratic Party.
  • Jacqueline deWit…..Helen Bemis
    • Jacqueline deWit (1912-1998) appeared in over two dozen films including Alfred Hitchcock’s Spellbound, The Snake Pit, The Damned Don’t Cry!, Tea and Sympathy, All That Heaven Allows and Harper. She appeared in television shows like Wagon Train, The Lineup, The Monkees, and most notably, The Twilight Zone.
  • Vaughn Taylor…..Mr. Carsville
    • Vaughn Taylor (1911-1983) was known for his roles in many anthology series, including Kraft Television Theatre and Robert Montgomery Presents, as well as shows like Perry Mason, Gunsmoke, and Bonanza. He appeared in two episodes of the ABC science fiction series The Outer Limits and several episodes of The Twilight Zone. He also appeared in classic films like Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958) and Psycho (1960).
  • Lela Bliss…..woman in the bank (“Mrs. Chester”)
    • Lela Bliss (1896-1980) was an actress whose career extended from the silent to the color era, beginning with the film Pretty Mrs. Smith (1915) and to Miracle on 34th Street (1947) and Pepe (1960). She and her husband ran the Bliss-Hayden School of Acting at 254 South Robertson Boulevard in Beverly Hills, where students included Veronica Lake, Mamie Van Doren and Betty White. She had one child and died at the age of 84 in 1980.
  • Robert Haines…..Bank Customer (uncredited)

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The Twilight Zone Trivia:

• This episode was awarded a Director’s Guild Award (the only episode in the first season of The Twilight Zone to receive the prize).
• Of the 92 episodes written by Rod Serling, this was his personal favorite.
• One of Rod Serling’s initial scripts submitted to William Dozier of CBS West Coast programming was entitled “The Bomb Fell on Thursday,” an episode with a similar, apocalyptic theme. He drafted another similar synopsis entitled “The Survivors.”
• After reading Lynn Venable’s short story “Time Enough At Last” (originally published in the January 1953 issue of If: Worlds of Science Fiction), Rod Serling commissioned Alden Schwimmer of Ashley-Steiner to seek the rights to the short story. He learned that the story had been sold to Quinn Publishing Company of Kingston, New York under an agent named Forrest Ackerman. Serling then acquired the rights to the story for $500. Once the acquisition was approved, Mr. Ackerman sent several more stories to Serling for consideration in The Twilight Zone but Serling rejected them all.
• Rod Serling greatly expanded Lynn Venable’s original story and even rewrote almost all of the dialogue.
• As of the time of this writing, Lynn Venable is still alive (as far as I can tell). She was born in 1927. “Time Enough At Last” is her only show business credit.
• In the close-up shots, Burgess Meredith was wearing extremely magnified glasses. In fact, he could not see out of them at all. But in the wide-angle shots, he was given a pair with clear lenses to see through. He also wore a fake mustache in this episode. Many of these fascinating details were revealed in an interview Marc Scott Zicree conducted with Burgess Meredith. I highly recommend picking up a copy of Marc Scott Zicree’s Twilight Zone Companion.
• Following the episode, Burgess Meredith gained popularity almost on par with Rod Serling. This was the first of four appearances by Burgess Meredith in The Twilight Zone.
• To give Burgess Meredith a book-wormish appearance he wore a fake moustache and thick glasses with double frames. There were two separate prop glasses used on set.
• To capture the explosion effect, George T. Clemens had the entire set built on springs so that both the camera and the set would shake at the same time.
• George T. Clemens used an innovative blue filter to bring out the clouds on the post-nuclear set. The enormous flight steps were part of an MGM backlot. The set appears in several later Twilight Zone episodes.
• This is one of four episodes to include mid-episode narration by Rod Serling.
• The peculiar way Henry’s wife yells his name is apparently an homage to “The Aldrich Family” radio program (1939-1953) in which the mother of teenager Henry Aldrich would shout “Hen-ry-y-y-y! Hen-ry Al-drich!” at the start of each episode and he would respond with a breaking adolescent voice, “Com-ing, Mother!” The program was later adapted to film, television, and comic books.
• The long library steps were also filmed in the episode “A Nice Place To Visit” and used in the MGM film The Time Machine (1960).
• I noticed that Henry’s pocket watch and the giant clock on the ground at the end of the episode are both frozen in time at approximately 12:25 pm. Henry initially headed down into the vault at 12 noon.
• As far as I can tell, the other bank teller stationed beside Henry is named S. Friend (I could not make out the words on the other bank teller’s sign).
• The newspaper Henry reads is “The Daily Chronicle” Vol. XIII, No. 49. At the top, the header reads “Strong Opposition to Proposed Tax Legislation.” The headline reads “H-Bomb Capable of Total Destruction” with a sub-header “Noted Atomic Scientist Reveals Possibilities of H-Bomb.” Other sub-headlines in the paper read: “Gem Thieves Strike in London Fog,” “Limited Farm Bill Favored,” “Mercury New X-Ray Source, Two Scientists Report,” “Savant Dead in Plane,” “U.S. Envoy Calls on Premier,” “Returns Auto, Admits Slaying,” “Families Rescued,” “Plenty of man Power,” “Americans Warned Out.”
• One of the broken signs on the ground after the nuclear explosion reads “Smith’s Grocery.” Another reads “Sporting Goods.” The number on a cash register reads “40.01.”
• The closing scenes feature forced perspective shots with miniatures of the burned out cityscape.
• Two wrecked cars were rented for this episode (costing Cayuga $35) and various special effects (smoke, mist, ashes) were also used, costing Cayuga $500.

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