The Twilight Zone: Season 1, Episode Nine “Perchance To Dream”

Original Air Date: November 27, 1959
Writer: Charles Beaumont
Director: Robert Florey

“Twelve o’clock noon. An ordinary scene, an ordinary city. Lunchtime for thousands of ordinary people. To most of them, this hour will be a rest, a pleasant break in the day’s routine. To most, but not all. To Edward Hall, time is an enemy, and the hour to come is a matter of life and death.”
-Rod Serling

Was it all just a dream? In “Perchance To Dream” we meet Edward “Eddie” Hall (played by Richard Conte who famously played the elder Don Barzini in The Godfather), a psychiatric patient who is visiting his doctor, Dr. Eliot Rathmann (played by John Larch). During his appointment, Mr. Hall describes a series of recurring vivid dreams he is experiencing, and it seems that he is growing ever closer to a fateful conclusion. In his dreams, he is visited by a seductive temptress named Maya (played by Suzanne Lloyd) who maniacally laughs at him, apparently beckoning him to die. Every time he falls asleep, she is there waiting for him in his nightmares.

Three years ago, a woman was killed by a man hidden in the backseat of her car. This news story gets Eddie thinking: “Maybe somebody was hiding in the backseat of my car. Maybe one night driving over Laurel Canyon I’d look up in the rearview mirror and I’d somebody or something coming up out of the darkness…” His imagination leads him to believe there are a pair of menacing eyes peering at him from the backseat, leading him to veer off the road and crash his car. And the doctor told him he likely could not survive another crash (perhaps because he has a risky heart condition).

Edward tells Dr. Rathmann that he has often dreamed in episodic sequence since childhood. For example, in a recent dream, he was at a carnival when he was drawn into a sideshow attraction: Maya “The Cat Girl.” She dances seductively while eyeballing Edward and then laughs at him when he runs away in terror (these external carnival scenes were filmed at Pacific Ocean Park in Santa Monica, CA while the interiors were shot on MGM soundstages). She then confronts him and lures him into a frightening madhouse and later onto a roller coaster (despite his heart condition), all while cackling maniacally. She is seemingly trying to kill him. Edward believes that if he falls asleep again he will experience heart failure and die.

In a moment of panic, Edward Hall tries to leave the doctor’s office but he suddenly spots the office receptionist and she is shockingly a dead ringer for the horrifying woman “Maya” in his dreams. Mr. Hall dashes back into the doctor’s office and leaps out the high-rise window to his death.

The twist is that Edward Hall has been asleep this whole time. He initially fell asleep at the beginning of the episode and was then carried into Dr. Rathmann’s office where he promptly died. The whole misadventure with Maya was merely a phantasm, a strange product of an exasperated mind, but we are still left to wonder about the nature of Edward’s reality. The key to this episode lies in the fact that, regardless of truth versus untruth, Edward’s dreams nevertheless have significance. “For in that sleep of death, what dreams may come, when we have shuffled off this mortal coil…”

“They say a dream takes only a second or so, and yet in that second a man can live a lifetime. He can suffer and die, and who’s to say which is the greater reality: the one we know are the one in the dreams, between heaven, the sky, the earth . . . in the Twilight Zone.”
-Rod Serling

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My Thoughts on “Perchance to Dream”

Based on Charles Beaumont’s original short story of the same name (initially published in Playboy in 1958), “Perchance to Dream” obscures the line between dream and reality. The imagery of “Perchance to Dream” allows us to gain a uniquely disturbing perspective inside the mind of a man who is nervously poised on the edge of sanity. And the playful vacillation between sleep and wakefulness is well-crafted in this episode as is the unsettling sense of dread we experience through Edward Hall’s recurring nightmares of the same dangerous woman, an ancient siren tormenting, luring him to his death. Her blatant sexuality invites all manner of Freudian examinations of this episode. An insomniac with a dangerous heart condition, coupled with a firmly repressed sexual desire, is perhaps what leads to Edward’s fragile mental state.

However, I was befuddled by a few things in this episode. The most glaring internal issue is when Edward enters Dr. Rathmann’s office early in the episode and he walks straight past the secretary (Miss Thomas) staring right at her. Why in this moment does he not recognize her as Maya? Does she look different to him? Hasn’t he already met Maya in his nightmares? Why does he only run away in terror when he recognizes her at the end of the episode? The earlier scene rather cleverly only allows us to see the back of her head. At any rate, stories concluding with “…and then I woke up” tend to seem cliché, eliciting both groans and eye-rolls, but “Perchance To Dream” somehow manages to instill both fear and wonder, even if the whole episode is more or less a dream (or at least a hallucinatory nightmare).

In “Perchance to Dream,” George T. Clemens’s extraordinary cinematography stands out as we see towering skyscrapers, oblong carnival angles, and haunting scenes inside a funhouse reminiscent of the German Expressionist style of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920). These nightmarish scenes are coupled with Nathan Van Cleave’s thermin-infused eerie atmospheric score, and Charles Beaumont’s trademark wildly imaginative surrealist script (see below for a link to my review of Beaumont’s original short story). “Perchance to Dream” is not an episode I often revisit, but when I do it is well worth the time. It comes highly recommended, especially to devotees of early cinema who just might find this to be a fitting homage to the German Expressionist auteurs.

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Credits

• Director: Robert Florey
  • Robert Florey (1900-1979) was a French-American director, screenwriter, film journalist and actor. He directed a wide array of B-films throughout his Hollywood career, but he was perhaps best-known for directing the Marx Brothers first feature film The Cocoanuts (1929) as well as the Universal horror film Murders in the Rue Morgue (1932). He had previously departed as the original director of the classic 1931 Universal monster film Frankenstein, a film he initially envisioned as more of a German-Expressionist film. He also served as associate director to legendary Hollywood directors like Charlie Chaplin on Monsieur Verdoux (it was apparently a stormy partnership). Florey directed many episodes of popular television shows like Wagon Train, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, and The Outer Limits, as well as three episodes of The Twilight Zone (“Perchance to Dream,” “The Fever,” and “The Long Morrow“). Florey was married twice, did not have children, and died at the age of 78 in 1979.
• Written by: Charles Beaumont
• Music: Nathan Van Cleave
• Director of Photography: George T. Clemens
• Production Manager: Ralph W. Nelson
• Art Directors: George W. Davis and William Ferrari
• Film Editor: Joseph Gluck
• Assistant Director: Edward Denault
• Set Decorations: Henry Grace and Rudy Butler
• Sound: Franklin Milton and Jean Valentino
• Casting Director: Mildred Gusse
• Cast:
  • Richard Conte…..Edward Hall
    • Nicholas Peter “Richard” Conte (1910-1975) was known for his starring roles in films noir and crime dramas during the 1940s and 1950s, such as Call Northside 777, Cry of the City, House of Strangers, Whirlpool, The Blue Gardenia, and The Big Combo. He co-starred in three films opposite Frank Sinatra: the original Ocean’s 11, Tony Rome, and Lady in Cement and of course he famously portrayed Don Emilio Barzini, the mob boss rival to Vito Corleone in Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather (1972). He was a Catholic Eisenhower Republican. He and his wife adopted one son, Mark Comte, who later became a film editor. Richard Conte died of a massive heart attack in 1975 at the age of 65 (which is darkly ironic considering his character’s heart condition in “Perchance to Dream”).
  • John Larch…..Dr. Eliot Rathmann
    • John Larch (1914-2005) was the son of immigrants who emigrated to the U.S. from Russian-occupied Poland. He served in the U.S. military during World War II, an experience which deeply troubled him. He then became a radio, television, and film actor appearing in such television shows as Gunsmoke, Johnny Ringo, The Virginian, Bonanza, The Man From U.N.C.L.E., Hawaii Five-0, Mission Impossible, Rawhide, The Rifleman, and others. “Perchance to Dream” was the first of three Twilight Zone episodes he appeared in (the others were “Dust” and “It’s A Good Life“). He was married to fellow actress Vivi Janiss, they had no children. He also appeared in classic big-screen Westerns like How The West Was Won (1962) and Clint Eastwood’s 1971 classic Dirty Harry.
  • Suzanne Lloyd…..Maya The Cat Girl/Miss Thomas
    • Suzanne Lloyd (1932/1933-present) is a Canadian-American actress. She had a recurring role as Raquel Toledano in the classic Zorro television series. For this episode of The Twilight Zone, she later recalled practicing extensively in order to get her character’s maniacal laugh just right. She also appeared in shows like Gunsmoke, Bonanza, Perry Mason, Have Gun – Will Travel, and others. She retired from acting in 1974 and as far as I can tell, she is still alive as of the time of this writing.
  • Eddie Marr…..the sideshow/girlie barker (uncredited)
    • Eddie Marr (1900-1987) appeared in a variety of television shows such as Land of the Giants, The Bob Hope Show, The Munsters, The Addams Family, The Real McCoys, Dennis the Menace, Leave It To Beaver, Perry Mason, and others. He appeared in minor roles for two Twilight Zone episodes (“Perchance to Dream” and “Static“).
  • Ted Stanhope…..stranger on the street (uncredited)
    • Ted Stanhope (1902-1977) was a character actor who appeared in many television shows like The Rifleman, My Three Sons, Green Acres, Perry Mason, Rawhide, and others. He also appeared in films like Leave It to the Irish (1944) and Jungle Hell (1956). His character utters the first words of dialogue in the episode (aside from Rod Serling’s narration) in which he asks Richard Conte: “Hey mister, what’s the matter, you sick?” This was Stanhope’s only Twilight Zone episode.
  • Russell Trent….rifle range barker (uncredited)
    • Russell Trent (1902-1972) also appeared in shows like The Jack Benny Program, Rawhide, Perry Mason, The Lone Ranger, and other television shows. This was Trent’s only Twilight Zone episode.
  • Max Wagner…..roller coaster operator (uncredited)
    • Max Wagner (1901-1975) was born in Mexico, the son of a railroad conductor who was fatally wounded by rebels during the Mexican Revolution. His mother (a correspondent for the Christian Science Monitor) then brought him to Salinas, California, where he struck up a lifelong friendship with John Steinbeck. He served as a model for the boy in Steinbeck’s novel The Red Pony and he went on to appear in many of the films based on Steinbeck’s books. He worked in Hollywood before serving in the U.S. Army during World War II in North Africa. He later returned to acting, his most notable role was as Sgt. Rinaldi in the science fiction film Invaders from Mars (1953).

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The Twilight Zone Trivia:

• This was the first episode to air that was not written by Rod Serling. It was written by the great Charles Beaumont based on a short story of the same name he initially published in Playboy in 1958 and later added to his short story collection The Magic Man as well as his Penguin edition Perchance to Dream and other Short Stories (which was the volume that I read).
• Charles Beaumont’s title for this episode was derived from Shakespeare’s “To Be Or Not To Be” soliloquy in Hamlet. The very next line, “For in that sleep of death what dreams may come,” was later used by fellow The Twilight Zone writer Richard Matheson as the title of his novel What Dreams May Come, which was later adapted into a 1998 film.
• This episode was somewhat autobiographical as writer Charles Beaumont often experienced strong, vivid dreams.
• Charles Beaumont visited the set for filming of this episode and he later said “it was filmed exactly as written.” However, some notable differences in the original short story are: the protagonists name is Philip Hall not Edward Hall, he has been awake for 72 hours, not 87 hours, and the dream sequence where Eddie and Maya walk through the funhouse is absent in the short story. Also in the short story, there is a greater sense that Philip/Edward can imagine things into life (this is alluded to in the episode when Edward ponders if he can make a painting in Dr. Rathmann’s office come to life).
• Since director Robert Florey was initially slated to direct Frankenstein (1931), a dummy monster was brought onto the set of “Perchance to Dream” and placed as a gag inside the house of horrors but Buck Houghton was concerned about a potential legal issue with Universal Studios so the monster dummy was removed for the final cut.
• “Throughout the TV filming, Florey strove for quality. It might have been the most expensive MGM feature. He rooted out the meanings of certain lines, frequently surprising me with symbols and shadings I’d neither planned nor suspected. The set was truly impressionistic, recalling the days of Caligari and Liliom. The costumes were generally perfect. And in the starring role, Richard Conte gave a performance which displays both intensity and subtlety.” -Charles Beaumont in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, December 1959
• It has been speculated that this episode, and the short story which spawned it, served as Wes Craven’s inspiration for the Nightmare on Elm Street series, particularly since both Craven (who himself directed several episodes of the reboot Twilight Zone series during the 1980s) and Beaumont’s stories deal with common themes, such as a fear of nightmares that can literally kill you. Craven, however, insisted that his work was never inspired by Beaumont’s story.
• The opening skyscraper scene appears to have been taken from an earlier MGM classic The Crowd (1928).
• The mysterious dream-woman in this episode is named Maya, a name which comes from the Hindi word for supernatural powers by gods and demons to produce illusions.
• Edward says he drives along Laurel Canyon, confirming that he lives in the Los Angeles area.
• Dr. Rathmann’s office is located inside The Goodman Building. The interiors were filmed at MGM’s Stage 10 as were the scenes of the girlie show and the fortune teller’s window. The rest of the scenes, such as the roller coaster, the fun house, canyon road, and so on were filmed on Stage 9.
• As far as I can tell, the boat painting that Edward suggests can come to life in his mind is not a famous painting, but rather simply a studio prop.
• Dr. Rathmann says that Edward is a 35 year old man even though actor Richard Conte was 49 at the time of filming this episode.
• The roller coaster cars used in this episode were rented at a cost of $150.
• Signs on the carousel in the amusement park read “25¢” while the Fun House costs “50¢.” The bullseye game also costs “ten cents.”
• Suzanne Lloyd told an amusing story about a date with a gentleman (a “friend of a friend”) on the evening this episode was set to air. After they watched it together, he said, “I had no idea you were that kind of woman” and he obliged to cancel the date. She recounts other interesting anecdotes in the Blu-Ray special features of The Twilight Zone (I recommend giving it a listen).
• The circus scenes were shot in front of CBS on Beverly Boulevard while the external carnival scenes were filmed at Pacific Ocean Park in Santa Monica, CA. The rollercoaster was apparently known as the “Sea Serpent.”
• At the opening of the episode, a store called “Schiffs” can be viewed in the distance behind Richard Conte.
• Dr. Rathmann’s office is #1410.
• At the climax, Edward Hall jumps out the window of room 1410, though since most buildings do not have a 13th floor, he technically jumped from the 13th floor.
• Composer Nathan van Cleave composed two musical scores for this episode, but the first was scrapped for unknown reasons.
• Lastly, this is not a point of trivia per se, but I would curious to know if any fans out there happen to know details of the numerous extras who can be seen exiting and entering the office building at the start of the episode. Who were these people? The same goes for the monster-like carnival props in Edward’s dream as well as the props situated around Dr. Rathmann’s office. Were these all simply nondescript MGM props?

Click here to return to my survey of The Twilight Zone series.

Click here to read my review of Charles Beaumont’s original short story “Perchance to Dream.”