The Twilight Zone: Season 1, Episode Twenty-One “Mirror Image”

Original Air Date: February 26, 1960
Writer: Rod Serling
Director: John Brahm

“It’s just that all sorts of queer things have been happening to me, I’ve been seeing things…”

Who among us hasn’t ever wondered if we have an evil doppelgänger lurking somewhere out there? What person hasn’t experienced the strange sensation of deja vu? In “Mirror Image” a mischievous double counterpart plagues a young woman at a bus depot, apparently driving her insane. Rod Serling came up with the idea for this episode while at an airport. He saw a man who looked just like him wearing the same suit and carrying similar luggage. Serling imagined the man walking around with a face exactly like his own, as well. This notion of body doubles and evil twins can trace its roots back to classic works of Germanic/Gothic literature, and perhaps the most famous occurrence of such a story can be found in Edgar Allen Poe’s 1839 tale “William Wilson.”

“Millicent Barnes, age twenty-five, young woman waiting for a bus on a rainy November night. Not a very imaginative type is Miss Barnes, not given to undue anxiety or fears, or, for that matter, even the most temporal flights of fancy. Like most career women, she has a generic classification as a, quote, ‘girl with a head on her shoulders,’ end of quote. All of which is mentioned now because, in just a moment, the head on Miss Barnes’ shoulders will be put to a test. Circumstances will assault her sense of reality and a chain of nightmares will put her sanity on a block. Millicent Barnes, who, in one minute, will wonder if she’s going mad.”
-Rod Serling

Millicent Barnes (played by Vera Miles) is seated at a bus station in Ithaca, NY waiting for the next late arrival to Cortland. It is a stormy night and the Cortland bus is delayed. She asks the ticket agent about the schedule, but he curtly replies that she has already asked several times. She also notices a checked bag that is identical to her own, even down to the broken handle, sitting behind him. In complete bewilderment she asks for assistance from nearby passengers and quickly ducks into the bathroom. One of the most memorable scenes in the episode takes place while she is inside the bathroom. She looks into the mirror and is horrified to see herself quietly sitting on the bench inside the station behind her. Who is this woman? A sister? A twin? Or is Millicent Barnes going insane? This is the first moment she begins to realize that she is not alone (the mirror sequence also alludes to the title of the episode).

“I remember reading it somewhere. Each of us has a twin in this other world. Two parallel worlds that exist side by side after the two worlds converge comes into our world, and in order to survive, it has to take over, replace us, move us out so that it can live. I can’t explain it, but i know that’s what has happened.”

When the bus finally arrives, Millicent walks outside but she is terrified when she sees her doppelgänger already seated on the bus, calmly giving her a twisted smile through the bus window. Millicent flees in terror and passes out. Meanwhile, a young man from Binghamton named Paul (played by Martin Milner) takes care of her, but he soon calls for the police when he grows concerned for Millicent’s mental state, especially when starts talking about another plane of existence where everyone has a double. After she is eventually taken away by the authorities, Paul goes back into the bus depot to lie down. The ticket agent ominously tells him the whole station will be peaceful because it’s quiet “like a tomb” until morning. But when Paul gets up for a drink of water, he soon discovers that his own luggage is missing. He runs out the door chasing a man who looks suspiciously like him and turns out to be his own doppelgänger. His double calmly smiles playfully at Paul and runs away. The “mirror image” curse has now apparently fallen upon Paul.

“Obscure and metaphysical explanation to cover a phenomenon. Reasons dredged out of the shadows to explain away that which cannot be explained. Call it ‘parallel planes’ or just ‘insanity’. Whatever it is, you’ll find it in the Twilight Zone.”
-Rod Serling

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My Thoughts on “Mirror Image”

What an incredibly disturbing episode. The notion that we all have a counterpart –a doppelgänger– haunting our lives is a truly horrifying prospect. Perhaps it is horrifying precisely because it is ambiguous and inexplicable, and the concept threatens to erase the very firmness of our identity. Is Millicent’s double pure evil? Or just malicious? Or have we misread her entirely? She never speaks, but her twisted smile seems to say a great deal more than words.

In “Mirror Image,” Rod Serling borrows ancient folklore and places it in the drab, ordinary context of our modern world. Ours is a world of advanced machines, like public buses, yet Serling still finds a way to inject supernatural horror into our safe, predictable world. One wonders what other strange supernatural phenomena we might find at a shadowy bus station in the middle of the night. This is the true essence of The Twilight Zone, making the ordinary seem extraordinary.

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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 episodes of 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 (his first two marriages were to actresses who apparently cheated on him) and he had two children. He died in Malibu in 1982 at the age of 89.
• Written by: Rod Serling
• Music: Stock music from composers Jerry Goldsmith, Bernard Herrmann, Fred Steiner, Nathan Van Cleave
• 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 Budd S. Friend
• Sound: Franklin Milton and Jean Valentino
• Casting Director: Mildred Gusse
• Starring:
  • Vera Miles…..Millicent Barnes
    • Vera Miles (1930-present) appeared in the first episode of Hitchcock Presents “Revenge” in 1955 as well as later in two Hitchcock Hour episodes. She remained a favorite of Hitchcock’s and was set to star in his seminal film Vertigo (1958) but she got pregnant, much to Hitchcock’s chagrin, and so she was replaced with Kim Novak. However, Miles starred in Hitchcock’s terror classic Psycho (1960), and later Richard Franklin’s sequel Psycho II (1983) and she also appeared alongside Henry Fonda in Hitchcock’s The Wrong Man (1956), as well as in a couple John Ford movies alongside James Stewart in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962), and John Wayne in The Searchers (1956). She was born in Oklahoma and grew up in Kansas (later winning the 1948 Miss Kansas Competition). When she first came out to Hollywood, she was signed to Howard Hughes’s RKO Pictures and given a personal driver, Bob Miles. They quickly fell in love and got married, but Hughes was irate. He dropped Vera Miles as an RKO star and ordered that all his future drivers be homosexual from there on out. She was sold to 20th Century Fox but was dropped six months later. After divorcing her stuntman first husband, she married her Tarzan co-star Gordon Scott from Tarzan’s Hidden Jungle (1955) and they adopted a Korean War orphan together, but they divorced shortly thereafter. She then married actor Keith Larson (they had one son together) but after eleven years, Miles filed for divorce citing “extreme cruelty.” She married one more time and retired from acting, preferring a quiet life at that time, though she was eventually divorced from her fourth and final husband. In addition to her film appearances, Miles was featured in many popular television shows such as Gunsmoke, Wagon Train, Laramie, The Fugitive, Burke’s Law, The Eleventh Hour, The Man from U.N.C.L.E., Route 66, and Ironside among others. She appeared in one episode of The Outer Limits (“The Forms of Things Unknown”). She has been a longtime member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, has four children, and has not had an acting credit in a film or television show since 1995. Amazingly, she is still alive as of the time I write this review.
  • Martin Milner…..Paul Grinstead
    • Martin Milner (1931-2015) moved with his family to Los Angeles when he was a teenager. He had his first screen test with Warner Bros and after recovering from a bout of polio, he landed a minor role in the film Sands of Iwo Jima (1949) starring John Wayne. He got his first big break in 1947, at the age of 14, when he made his film debut in Life with Father starring William Powell. Milner studied theater at USC but dropped out to focus on his acting career. He also served a two-year stint in the U.S. Army in the early 1950s while stationed at Ford Ord. Throughout his career he appeared in many television shows like The Long Ranger, Wagon Train, Rawhide, Columbo, The Swiss Family Robinson, MacGyver, Murder, She Wrote, RoboCop: The Series, and others. He appeared in the Playhouse 90 episode “Judgment at Nuremberg,” which became controversial for its network censorship over the gas used in Nazi concentration camps versus gas used in home ovens (Rod Serling later lambasted the network for this episode and its egregious censorship). He went on to co-star as Todd Stiles in Route 66 before beginning his best remembered role as Officer Pete Malloy in in the police drama Adam-12 (which became a source of information for many young people to join law enforcement). According to audio commentary included with The Twilight Zone Blu-ray and DVDs, he initially turned down his role on Adam-12 to appear in a play he thought would be more successful, but the play ultimately flopped. He also appeared in films like The Long Gray Line (1955), Mister Roberts (1955), Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (1957), Sweet Smell of Success (1957), Marjorie Morningstar (1958), Valley of the Dolls (1967), and others. When he was 37 years old, he served as the visual inspiration for the original illustrations of the superhero Green Lantern. He and his wife, singer and actress Judith Bess Jones, had four children together. She passed away of leukemia in 2004 and Martin Milner died of heart failure in Carlsbad in 2015.
  • Joe Hamilton…..ticket agent
    • Joseph “Joe” Hamilton (1899-1965) began his career as a teenage vaudeville performer in 1915 and then served in the US Navy where he was a pharmacist’s second mate. After his military service, he became a draftsman in the Los Angeles area for the phone company, helping establish phone service, when his older brother, Mark Hamilton (a silent film actor), invited him to the set of the film The Light of Western Stars (1925) to watch filming. It was reportedly this moment that inspired Joe Hamilton to develop a deeper interest in acting. He appeared in a variety of shows like The Andy Griffith Show, Gunsmoke, and The Alfred Hitchcock Hour among others. But perhaps his most recognizable role was in a television commercial as Calvin, a handyman who cleaned his sinks with a heavily advertised cleaning product known as Ajax. He and his wife, Ruth, had two children. He died in Orange, California in 1965.
  • Naomi Stevens…..washroom attendant
    • Naomi Stevens (1925-2018) was an American character actress who began her career in vaudeville and radio before turning to television and film. A note online on IMDB remarks that she often played an “ethnic” mother, relative or neighbor, primarily with a comic touch. She appeared in films like The Valley of the Dolls (1967) and The Apartment (1960), as well as television shows like Have Gun-Will Travel, Perry Mason, and The Alfred Hitchcock Hour. She worked alongside Charlie Chaplin, directing young people at the Circle Theatre for four years. She and her husband, Robert, had one child. She died in Reseda, California, in 2018.
  • Terese Lyon…..old woman
    • Therese Lyon, credited in this episode as “Terese Lyon” (1887-1975) made uncredited appearances in films like The Late George Apley (1947), Monsieur Verdoux (1947), and The Music Man (1962). Apparently, in her role as housekeeper (named “Jeannette”) in Charlie Chaplin’s film “Monsieur Verdoux,” she arrived on set and noticed that the table settings were not appropriate and Chaplin paused production and encouraged her to instruct the set decorators so the table would be set correctly. She also appeared in television shows like Alfred Hitchcock Presents and Playhouse 90. She and her husband had no less than eight children together. She died in Los Angeles, California in 1975.
  • Ferris Taylor…..husband
    • Ferris Taylor (1888-1961) was born in Henrietta, Texas in 1888. He was a Hollywood extra who appeared in many films throughout the ’30s, ’40s, ad ’50s, such as Foreign Correspondent (1940) and Kidnapped (1948) among others. He also appeared in television shows like The Lone Ranger. This episode of The Twilight Zone (“Mirror Image”) was his final acting credit before he died the following year in 1961. He was married twice and had two children. He died in Hollywood of a heart attack.
  • Edwin Rand…..bus driver
    • Edwin Rand (1911-1993) was a Hollywood extra who appeared in a handful of Westerns primarily during the 1950s. This episode of The Twilight Zone (“Mirror Image”) was his final acting credit, per IMDB. He died in Palm Springs in 1993.
• Extras:
  • Bob McCord…..bus passenger (uncredited)
    • Robert “Bud” or “Bob” 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 eventually 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.
  • Luke Saucier…..bus passenger (uncredited)
    • Luke Saucier was an alligator wrestler and movie studio reptile handler. I was unable to find much information on him, but apparently he had a brief career as a stunt double and an extra from 1956-1966 (with only 4 acting credits listed on his IMDB page). He made two uncredited appearances on The Twilight Zone (“Elegy” and “Mirror Image“).
  • Tony Renando…..bus passenger (uncredited)
  • Max Cutler…..bus passenger (uncredited)
  • Grace Rickey…..bus passenger (uncredited)

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The Twilight Zone Trivia:

• In an interview for TV Guide, Rod Serling said he got the idea for “Mirror Image” from a publicity tour the previous fall in which he was sitting in a Cleveland, Ohio airport and noticed a person walking by carrying a bag similar to his own. From the back, the man carrying the bag also looked eerily similar, as well. Serling’s story apparently changed a bit over time but this was the general gist of it.
• “Mirror Image” was the final first season episode filmed before a brief respite for the crew in order to secure additional sponsors for the show.
• Rod Serling explored the idea of ‘different parallel planes of existence’ again in the Twilight Zone episode “The Parallel.”
• Keen observers will notice that in the opening scene of this episode, the LADIES room sign is deliberately blocked. “LA” is covered behind Millicent so that it reads “DIES” instead.
• Paul Grinstead mentions he is from Binghamton in this episode, another nod to Rod Serling’s hometown.
• The exact location of the bus station in this episode in not revealed, though it is likely somewhere in the Cortland, Binghamton, Syracuse region (perhaps Marathon or Ithaca). The cities mentioned in this episode (Cortland, Syracuse, Tully, and Binghamton) all lie along Hwy. 11 in central upstate New York (the region where Rod Serling was raised).
• This entire episode was filmed on Stage 25, the same stage that was used for Beechcroft’s office in “The Mind and the Matter.”
• At the beginning of this episode, the clock on the wall reads 2:05am. Later, it reads 2:30am. And, after Millicent misses the first bus due to ill health, we learn that the next bus to Cortland is not scheduled to arrive until 7am.
• Wanting to use similar impressive camera trickery of the kind employed in major motion pictures, producer Buck Houghton consulted with television art director Serve Krizman for suggestions on how to improve The Twilight Zone (Kritzman worked on television shows like Batman, Charlie’s Angels, and others). As examples, he used the episodes “The Fever” and “Mirror Image.” This little anecdote is recounted by Martin Grams, Jr. in his guidebook Unlocking the Door to a Television Classic.
• Pilot episode producer, William Self, initially worked with Vera Miles for a 1953 episode of Schlitz Playhouse of Stars entitled “The Soil.” Instead of doing an open casting call, he simply offered her a few hundred dollars for the part, and he was surprised to learn that her studio (RKO Pictures and then briefly 20th Century Fox) had just dropped her after only four films in Hollywood, especially since she came to Los Angeles after being crowned Miss Kansas. William Self later referred Vera Miles to Rod Serling for The Twilight Zone.
• Jordan Peele, a huge fan of Rod Serling, credited this Twilight Zone episode as the inspiration for his 2019 film entitled Us.

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