The Twilight Zone: Season 1, Episode Six “Escape Clause”

Original Air Date: November 6, 1959
Writer: Rod Serling
Director: Mitchell Leisen

“You’re about to meet a hypochondriac. Witness Mr. Walter Bedeker age forty-four. Afraid of the following: death, disease, other people, germs, draft, and everything else. He has one interest in life and that’s Walter Bedeker. One preoccupation, the life and well-being of Walter Bedeker. One abiding concern about society, that if Walter Bedeker should die how will it survive without him?”
-Rod Serling

“Escape Clause” concerns a Faustian bargain between a paranoid hypochondriac and an amusing modern incarnation of the devil named Mr. Cadwallader. In this case, our protagonist-hypochondriac trades his soul in order to overcome his fear of death, only to discover the vanity of living an immortal life. Walter Bedeker (played by David Wayne) is a fearful man who spends his days in bed, bossing around his wife, terrified of the prospect of contracting a disease. We first encounter the disagreeable Walter Bedeker as he yells at a doctor, calling him a “quack” for claiming Walter’s complaints are merely psychosomatic. Walter is a hypochondriac, believing even the slightest breeze through a window might kill him. When his wife leaves the room, a strange overweight man appears beside his bed named “Mr. Cadwallader,” or at least that is the name he goes by today (his name bears striking resemblance to a 7th century Welsh king). Mr. Cadwallader is the personification of the devil (played by Thomas Gomez).

Mr. Cadwallader offers Walter Bedeker the opportunity to become immortal in exchange for selling his soul. Walter, being a vain man, negotiates one condition in the agreement –that he not age like a “prune.” The devil laughs and agrees as they sign the compact. However, there is a catch to their little agreement. The one chance to nullify the deal is called the “escape clause” wherein Walter may end his own life by summoning the devil. Of course, Walter agrees as Cadwallader maniacally laughs.

Immediately, Walter’s life changes. He begins a series of escalating, dangerous activities to test his newfound immortality. He burns his hands on a heater, breaks open his window, throws himself in front of a train and so on. He begins collecting insurance checks for his many accidents in a fraud scheme, but he quickly grows bored of this, so he tells his wife he will throw himself off the roof of his apartment building. In terror, she follows him to the roof and instead it is she who falls down to the ground. Walter calmly returns to his room and calls the police, turning himself in for the crime of killing his wife, hoping they will sentence him to the electric chair. However, he appears entirely un-remorseful at his trial and, instead, he is punished with life imprisonment. Naturally, Walter is shocked and dismayed.

The prospect of spending an immortal life locked away in prison is too much for Walter to take, so he exercises his “escape clause.” Cadwallader then promptly appears and mercifully grants Walter a heart attack, killing him alone in his cell.

“There’s a saying, “Every man is put on Earth condemned to die, time and method of execution unknown.” Perhaps this is as it should be. Case in point: Walter Bedeker, lately deceased. A little man with such a yen to live. Beaten by the devil, by his own boredom, and by the scheme of things in this, the Twilight Zone.”
-Rod Serling

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My Thoughts on “Escape Clause”

The central theme of “Escape Clause” wrestles with the apparent meaninglessness of life for a person who suddenly loses his fear of dying. After making a faustian bargain, Walter Bedeker’s life becomes a monotonous, bore absent the threat of pain, suffering, and comeuppance. Ironically, at the start of this episode, Walter Bedeker desires to live solely in a sanitary room, secluded in his bed, safe from all the dangers of the world; but when he becomes immortal, he starts living inside an equally safe bubble, shielded from dangers and obstacles, even though he is exposed to every single danger known to man. “Escape Clause” suggests there is a certain degree of chaos and riskiness is essential to life itself, and Walter Bedeker has tragically learned this lesson all too late in life.

However, there is also a darker theme at play here. When Bedeker loses his fear of death, he immediately turns into a sociopath, delighting in suffering, scamming, and even killing his wife. The subtext is that the fear of death is the only thing keeping people ethical. Without it, people like Walter Bedeker become extraordinarily destructive. In a way, it reminds me of the “Ring of Gyges” mentioned in the writings of Herodotus and Plato. If given the assurance that we would face no consequences for our behavior, would we still act morally? “Escape Clause” offers a nice lesson with a troubling ethical conundrum, but this is not among my favorite episodes of The Twilight Zone. David Wayne and Thomas Gomez together deliver a delightful reciprocal performance as Walter Bedeker and Cadwallader respectively, but the episode’s tone all-too casually blends some bitterly dark themes with a whimsical, playful mood leading to a jarring sense of audience orientation, particularly as Walter Bedeker freely watches his wife die, feels no remorse for it, and even in the end faces no consequences. One could argue his deal with the devil was punishment enough, but is that really the case if he has his own “escape clause?”

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Credits:

• Director: Mitchell Leisen
  • Mitchell “Mitch” Leisen (1898-1972) had a lengthy career in Hollywood, starting out as a costume designer and an art director in the silent era. He was an uncredited worker on Cecil B. DeMille’s King of Kings (1927), and later made his directorial debut in 1933. He followed this up with numerous screwball comedies, romances, and costume melodramas. He later went independent in 1951, leaving a lucrative contract at Paramount, and he began directing television shows. Twilight Zone cinematographer George T. Clemens remembered Mitch Leisen as an old-school director who struggled to adjust to the new age of television (he first met Leisen when he was a costume designer for Cecil B. DeMille). Clemens boasted that he was instrumental in getting Leisen his directing job on The Twilight Zone. Ironically, Clemens recalled that Leisen often lived in the past, Leisen hired himself a chauffeur to drive him to the lot in his Rolls-Royce and insisting on having a lot pass and so on. He was said to be gay or possibly bisexual, having had a long-term relationship with a dancer, actor, and choreographer named Billy Daniel. Leisen died of heart disease in 1972 at the age of 74. He directed three episodes of The Twilight Zone: “The Sixteen Millimeter Shrine,” “Escape Clause,” and “People Are Alike All Over.”
• Written by: Rod Serling
• Music: Stock Music
• 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:
  • David Wayne…..Walter Bedeker
    • Born Wayne James McMeekan, David Wayne (1914-1995) was a native of Traverse City, Michigan. He served as an ambulance driver in Africa during World War II. He turned to acting after the war and appeared in a variety of movies like Adam’s Rib (1949), My Blue Heaven (1950), With a Song in My Heart (1952), How to Marry a Millionaire (1953), Hell and High Water (1954), The Tender Trap (1955), The Three Faces of Eve (1957), The Andromeda Strain (1971), The Front Page (1974), and others. He appeared in television shows like Wagon Train, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Dallas, Gunsmoke, Murder, She Wrote, and many others. He was the star of the sitcom Norby in which he played the vice president of a small-town bank. It was the first series ever shot in color. He also played the Mad Hatter in four episodes of Batman. Wayne was paid $5,000 for his performance in “Escape Clause.” This was his only episode of The Twilight Zone. During his career, he won an Emmy award and two Tony awards. He died of lung cancer in 1995 in Santa Monica at the age of 81. He had three children.
  • Thomas Gomez…..Mr. Cadwallader
    • Born Sabino Tomas Gomez Jr., Thomas Gomez (1905-1971) was known as a character actor who often portrayed corrupt politicians and criminals. He had guest roles in such series as Route 66, Dr. Kildare, Mr. Ed, Burke’s Law, The Virginian, It Takes a Thief, Bewitched, The Rifleman, and Gunsmoke. He appeared in two episodes of The Twilight Zone (“Escape Clause” and “Dust“). He was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance in Robert Montgomery’s Ride The Pink Horse (1947). He later appeared in the television remake of the story in Robert Montgomery Presents in 1950 which marked his official pivot to television. Notably, the final film he appeared in was Beneath the Planet of the Apes (1970) as the orangutan minister. He died in 1971 shortly after being injured in a car accident which left him in a coma for three weeks.
  • Virginia Christine…..Ethel Bedeker
    • Virginia Christine (1920-1996) was a film and television character actress, though she is often remembered as “Mrs. Olson” (or the “Folgers Coffee Woman”) for her appearances in a string of television commercials for Folgers Coffee during the 1960s and 1970s. Throughout her lengthy career she had small background roles in films like High Noon (1952), Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956), and Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner? (1967), as well as television shows like The Abbot and Costello Show, The Adventures of Superman, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Maverick, Rawhide, The Rifleman, Perry Mason, Gunsmoke, Wagon Train, The Virginian, Daniel Boone, and many others. Toward the end of her career she was a voice actor to the 1970s cartoon Scooby-Doo and Scrappy-Doo. She and her husband had two sons. She died of heart complications at her home in Brentwood, Los Angeles in July 1996.
  • Dick Wilson…..insurance man #1 (Jack)
    • Dick Wilson (1916-2007) was born in Lancashire, England to a vaudeville entertainer and a singer before the family moved to Canada. He served in the Royal Canadian Airforce in WWII (apparently, fighting in the Battle of Britain in 1940). He moved to the United States after the war and became an American citizen in 1954. He worked as a radio announcer and vaudeville dancer before relocating to Hollywood to act in television and films. He was a character actor who was perhaps best known for playing grocery store manager Mr. George Whipple in more than 500 Charmin bathroom tissue television commercials. He appeared in television shows like Wagon Train, Maverick, The Rifleman, The Virginian, Perry Mason, The Jack Benny Program, My Favorite Martian, The Munsters, The Monkees, The Carol Burnett Show, The Flying Nun, I Dream of Jeannie, The Bill Cosby Show, Hogan’s Heroes, Bewitched, The Magical World of Disney, and an episode of Rod Serling’s Western The Loner. He appeared in a total of two episodes of The Twilight Zone (“Escape Clause” and “Ninety Years Without Slumbering“). He and his wife had three children.
  • Joe Flynn…..insurance man #2 (Steve)
    • Joseph Anthony Flynn III (1924-1974) was born in Youngstown, Ohio and attended Notre Dame University. He began his entertainment career as a ventriloquist and a radio performer before turning to acting in television and films. During World War II, he served in the Army’s Special Services Branch (formerly the “Morale Branch”) entertaining the troops. After the war, he moved to Hollywood and got his master’s degree from USC. He was best known for playing Captain Wallace Binghamton in the 1960s ABC television comedy McHale’s Navy. He was also a frequent guest star on shows like Batman and several Walt Disney comedies (“The Magical World of Walt Disney”). He appeared in small parts in feature films like The Ten Commandments (1956) as well as television shows like The Thin Man, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Gunsmoke, The Real McCoys, Laredo, I Dream of Jeannie, in an episode of Rod Serling’s Night Gallery (“The Funeral”) Tragically on July 19, 1974, just after completing his voice-over work on the Disney animated movie The Rescuers (1977), Flynn died of a heart attack while in the swimming pool of his Beverly Hills home. Apparently, he had entered the pool with a cast on his broken leg and his body was later found at the bottom of the pool’s, weighted down by his cast. He was 49 years old.
  • Wendell Holmes…..Bedeker’s lawyer
    • Wendell Holmes (1914-1962) was a radio, television, Broadway, and film actor. He appeared in 40 radio dramas (including a celebrated Sherlock Holmes drama), 50 television episodes (including episodes of Leave It to Beaver, Perry Mason, Gunsmoke, Zorro, Playhouse 90, Bonanza, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, and others), as well as 10 feature films. He was married and divorced twice and died in Paris in 1962 as a result of what is believed to have been a heart attack.
  • Raymond Bailey…..Bedeker’s doctor
    • Raymond Thomas Bailey (1904-1980) initially struggled to make it in Hollywood, settling for jobs outside acting as a stockbroker, banker, and a seaman, even laborer on a Hawaiian pineapple plantation, before finally finding success as a television actor. He was best known for his role later in his career as the greedy banker Milburn Drysdale in the television series The Beverly Hillbillies. He also appeared in episodes of Tales of Tomorrow, The Real McCoys, Gunsmoke, The Rifleman, Playhouse 90, One Step Beyond, Perry Mason, Wagon Train, Have Gun – Will Travel, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Bonanza, My Three Sons, and many others. He had a small role as Scottie’s doctor in Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo (1958) and appeared in three episodes of The Twilight Zone (“Escape Clause,” “Back There,” “From Agnes – With Love“). He died in 1980 in Irvine, California of a heart attack. He and his wife did not have any children.
  • Nesdon Booth…..Prison Guard
    • Nesdon “Ned” Booth (1918-1964) appeared in over 100 films and television programs. He was known for his recurring role as Frank the bartender in the American western television series Cimarron City in addition to shows like Playhouse 90 and The Twilight Zone. He was the father of three children, including two who later joined the movie-making business: Nesdon Foye Booth and Dena Lynn Booth. In the credits for this episode, Booth’s name is misspelled as “Nesden Booth.” He died of a heart attack in 1964.
• Extras:
  • George Baxter…..Judge Cummings (uncredited)
    • George Baxter (1905-1976) was a French actor who appeared in a variety of film and television shows ranging from silent films to American Westerns. He made uncredited appearances in Dinner At Eight (1933) and The Ten Commandments (1956), and television shows like The Rough Riders, Maverick, The Aquanauts, and others. He died in 1976 in New York City.
  • Paul E. Burns…..Janitor (uncredited)
    • Paul E. Burns (1881-1967) appeared in numerous bit roles on television and in film, most notably in multiple episodes of the series Alfred Hitchcock Presents between 1956–1960. He had small uncredited roles in numerous films like A Star Is Born (1948) and The Greatest Man On Earth (1952) and television shows like The Adventures of Superman, The Thin Man, Perry Mason, Lassie, Wagon Train and several Magical World of Disney episodes, as well as many others. He died of a heart attack in Van Nuys, California in 1967.
  • Allan Lurie…..the Subway Guard (uncredited)
    • Allan Lurie (1923-2015) was born in Hamilton, Ohio primarily known as an American voice actor who most notably did voice work for the video game Metal Gear Solid. He appeared in television shows like Gunsmoke and later in various animated spin-off shows of The Pink Panther, Jonny Quest, Popeye, The Flintstones, The Smurfs, Scooby-Doo, Tom & Jerry and others. His son Peter Lurie is also a voice actor who has worked on many animated shows and video games.
  • Bob McCord…..Man in Subway (uncredited)
    • Robert “Bud” Leigh McCord III (1915-1980) appeared in a variety of television shows, particularly in small uncredited roles in Westerns, in addition to The Twilight Zone. His first role was an uncredited appearance as an office clerk in the 1947 movie The Shocking Miss Pilgrim, and his first credited role was in an episode of the 1956 television series Schlitz Playhouse. After a couple more uncredited roles and minor appearances, he joined The Twilight Zone in 1959 (he was presumably hired by Cayuga Productions). In fact, he set a record for most appearances on The Twilight Zone (75 times, mostly uncredited). He was also a stunt double on the show. He had a son named Robert IV (1938-2008) and a daughter named Penny. McCord died in 1980.
  • Arthur Tovey…..Subway Onlooker (uncredited)
    • Arthur Roland Tovey (1904-2000) was a World War II veteran who appeared in classic films like the Best Picture-winner Cimarron (1931) as well as the Universal Monster film The Mummy (1932). He was also a stand-in for actor Leslie Howard in Gone with the Wind (1939), and he later appeared in films like Miracle on 34th Street (1947), The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956), Some Liek It Hot (1959), North by Northwest (1959), Tora! Tora! Tora! (1970), The Sting (1973) and Back to the Future (1985). He also played a Vulcan civilian in Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979). On television, he appeared in shows like The Man from U.N.C.L.E., Have Gun – Will Travel, Wagon Train, Perry Mason, The Untouchables and My Three Sons. He made five uncredited episodes of The Twilight Zone (“Escape Clause,” “The Silence,” “Deaths-Head Revisited,” “Once Upon A Time,” and “Passage on the Lady Anne“).

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The Twilight Zone Trivia:

• There was a medieval Welsh king of Gwynedd (Wales) named Cadwaladr (also known as Cadwaladr ap Cadwallon) who lived in the 7th Century and was rumored to have certain supernatural powers used for dealing with the dead.
• The title of this episode is a reference to a legal term –a clause in a contract.
• The cast of this episode includes two actors who were best known for starring in their own long-running TV commercials: Virginia Christine (Mrs. Olson for Folgers Coffee) and Dick Wilson (Mr. Whipple for Charmin Bathroom Tissue).
• “Escape Clause” was one of the three episodes-in-production mentioned by Rod Serling in his 1959 promotional film that pitched the series to potential sponsors, the others being “The Lonely” and “Mr. Denton On Doomsday” (referred to then by its working title: “Death, Destry, and Mr. Dingle”).
• This episode was directed by Mitchell Leisen, who also was the director of the original Death Takes a Holiday (1934) film, which contains some thematic similarities to the Twilight Zone episode “One for the Angels.”
• There is apparently an inspection plate at Disney’s Tower of Terror ride at Walt Disney World Resorts that is signed by Cadwallader.
• Notably, even the devil, who typically resides in a very hot climate, comments on how warm Walter Bedeker keeps his room!
• Initially, there was a planned scene in this episode in which the janitor was to come into Mr. Bedeker’s room and comment on the heat, but this scene was cut. There were apparently a variety of other similar revisions to the script.
• When Walter Bedeker mocks his doctor and calls him a “quack,” he makes fun of his extensive educational background: “Four years pre-med, four years medical school, two years internship, two years residency.”
• Walter claims there are 8,900,000 germs in a cubic foot of air.
• Some signs in the background of this episode advertise Coney Island, the Viceroy Theater, and Gaby Desly’s “Revue of Revues.”
• Many of Rod Serling’s scripts for The Twilight Zone resemble his earlier radio scripts. In this case, he penned a similar story to “Escape Clause” about a man who is given immortality only to be sentenced to life in prison. It was featured on “Inner Sanctum Mystery,” a radio crime thriller that was broadcast from 1941-1952.
• The rooftop stage for this episode was also used in “The Big Tall Wish” as well as “A Passage for Trumpet” in addition to a 1958 episode of The Thin Man entitled “Plague of Pigeons.”

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

Click here to read my review of Rod Serling’s short story “Escape Clause.”