The Twilight Zone: Season 1, Episode Thirty “A Stop At Willoughby”

Original Air Date: May 6, 1960
Writer: Rod Serling
Director: Robert Parrish

“I’ve never seen such serenity…
the way people must have lived a hundred years ago.”

“This is Gart Williams, age thirty-eight, a man protected by a suit of armor all held together by one bolt. Just a moment ago, someone removed the bolt, and Mr. Williams’ protection fell away from him, and left him a naked target. He’s been cannonaded this afternoon by all the enemies of his life. His insecurity has shelled him, his sensitivity has straddled him with humiliation, his deep-rooted disquiet about his own worth has zeroed in on him, landed on target, and blown him apart. Mr. Gart Williams, ad agency exec, who in just a moment, will move into the Twilight Zone—in a desperate search for survival.”
-Rod Serling

Gart Williams (played by James Daly) is a New York advertising executive who has grown listless and exasperated with the burdens of his busy job. Every day his demanding boss, Oliver Misrell (played by Howard Smith) enforces a “push, push, push” work culture. One day, Gart seems especially on the verge of a breakdown when he loses a major account. He is lambasted by his boss for his apparent failure while the phone rings incessantly for him. Later on the train ride home he falls asleep by the window until he is suddenly awoken on a seemingly different train by a much older porter. The year is 1888 and things seem to move more slowly and freely. People are friendlier and life seems peaceful. Gart looks out the window as the train stops in a town called Willoughby –a place that appears carefree and idyllic. A horse-drawn carriage gently trots by while a well-dressed couple idly meander arm-in-arm past a bandstand in the park. However, before he can get off the train at Willoughby, Gart snaps back to reality.

Shaken by this glamorous vision, Gart heads home to his unhappy marriage. His shrew of a wife (played by Patricia Donahue) berates him for having a nervous breakdown at work and she chastises him for behaving like a child. A superficial lady, her primary focus is on money. The next day, Gart falls asleep again on the train and he has the same vision of Willoughby, but once again he is awoken before he can step off the train. He vows the next time he will stay in Willoughby for good. “Next time… I’m going to get off at Willoughby.” At work the following day, Gart is hounded by phone calls, his secretary, and his bos Mr. Misrell –to the point that he suffers another breakdown and smashes the window in his office bathroom. He phones home to his wife for help, but she apparently hangs up on him in disappointment. When he has another dream of Willoughby on the train, this time he steps off the train and happily walks toward a group of friendly 19th century Willoughby denizens who seem to know him well.

Meanwhile back in 1960 several men inspect Gart’s body as it sits lifeless in the snow. Apparently, he shouted something about Willoughby before stepping off the moving train to his death. A funeral home car arrives to whisk Gart’s body away. The name on the car reads: “Willoughby & Son Funeral Home.” The episode closes with a serene image of Gart walking toward the Willoughby bandstand, finding hope and peace at last, albeit in the phantasms of his own mind.

“Willoughby? Maybe it’s wishful thinking nestled in a hidden part of a man’s mind, or maybe it’s the last stop in the vast design of things—or perhaps, for a man like Mr. Gart Williams, who climbed on a world that went by too fast, it’s a place around the bend where he could jump off. Willoughby? Whatever it is, it comes with sunlight and serenity, and is a part of The Twilight Zone.”
-Rod Serling

---

My Thoughts on “A Stop At Willoughby”

Gart Williams might as well be anybody trapped in the urban rat race. By all accounts he is living the American Dream yet he finds himself deeply unsatisfied. He is a victim of the business cycle, a product of failed expectations, only in the end he succumbs to his own particular breed of escapism. “A Stop At Willoughby” is a sentimental yet melancholic episode about an imagined, romantic paradise that has gone by the wayside –Willoughby survives only as fantasy inside one man’s head. Rod Serling explores similar themes found in other classic episodes of The Twilight Zone like “Walking Distance” and scripts he wrote for other shows like “The Time Element.” However, whereas in “Walking Distance” (an episode Rod Serling ironically considered a failure), the lesson is hopeful and optimistic, in contrast “A Stop At Willoughby” offers a fatalistic romantic nostalgia that only ends in suicide. In the former, there is a lesson about perspective which is reframed as the cure for romantic nostalgia, in the latter a fantasy is indulged to the point of death. In both cases there are limits to the idea of ‘going back’ to some edenic golden age that lives in the past, both have their own dangers.

---

Credits:

• Director: Robert Parrish
• Written by: Rod Serling
• Music: Nathan Scott
• Director of Photography: George T. Clemens
• Production Manager: Ralph W. Nelson
• Art Directors: George W. Davis and Merrill Pye
• Film Editor: Joseph Gluck
• Assistant Director: Don Klune
• Set Decorations: Henry Grace and Keogh Gleason
• Sound: Franklin Milton and Philip Mitchell
• Starring:
  • James Daly…..Gart Williams
    • James Firman Daly (1918-1978) is perhaps best known for his role as Paul Lochner in the hospital drama series Medical Center. He served in three branches of the armed forces, including six months as an infantryman in the U.S. Army, two months as a cadet in the Army Air Corps, and more than four years in the Navy as an ensign during World War II. He appeared in television shows like Mission: Impossible, Walt Disney’s Wonderful World of Color, and he played Mr. Flint in the Star Trek episode “Requiem for Methuselah.” He appeared in the film Planet of the Apes (1968) and won an Emmy for his supporting role in Bird in a Cage) He was married for about two decades before divorcing his wife; he had four children. Daly served as the paid spokesman for Camel cigarettes for many years. He died of heart failure in 1978 at the age of 59.
  • Howard Smith…..Oliver Misrell
    • Howard Irving Smith (1893-1968) was a character actor with a 50-year career in the mediums of vaudeville, theatre, radio, films and television. He performed in Orson Welles’s Mercury Theater radio programs, including in his famous broadcast of “The War of the Worlds.” He served in the 77th Infantry Division in World War I. He appeared in shows like Perry Mason, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, and two Twilight Zone episodes (“A Stop at Willoughby” and “Cavender Is Coming”). He died in 1968 of a heart attack at the age of 74, his wife had predeceased him by about a decade.
  • Patricia Donahue…..Jane Williams
    • Patricia Donahue (1925-2012) was the daughter of a vaudeville performer and married to film producer Euan Lloyd. She appeared in shows like Goodyear Theater, The Thin Man, Perry Mason, General Electric Theater, Bonanza, Alfred Hitchcock Presents The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, in addition to The Twilight Zone. She died in 2012 at the age of 87.
  • Jason Wingreen…..Train conductor
    • Jason Wingreen (1920-2015) portrayed bartender Harry Snowden on the sitcom All in the Family, a role he reprised on the continuation series Archie Bunker’s Place. He was also the original voice of Star Wars character Boba Fett in The Empire Strikes Back (1980), though English actor Jeremy Bulloch physically portrayed the character During World War II, he served with the U.S. Army Air Force and was stationed in England and Germany. Following his return home, with the aid of the G.I. Bill, he studied acting at New York’s New School. He appeared in shows like Matlock, Mission: Impossible, The Outer Limits, Bonanza, The Man From U.N.C.L.E., Seinfeld, and three episodes of The Twilight Zone (“A Stop at Willoughby,” “The Midnight Sun,” and “The Bard”). He and his wife had one son. Wingreen died in 2015 at the age of 95.
  • Mavis Neal Palmer…..Helen, Gart’s secretary
  • James Maloney…..1888 Conductor
  • Billy Booth…..Boy #1 with fishing pole at Willoughby
    • William Allen Booth (1949-2006) was an American child actor best known for playing Dennis Mitchell’s best friend Tommy Anderson on the CBS sitcom Dennis the Menace. Aside from The Twilight Zone, he also appeared on shows like My Three Sons and The Andy Griffith Show. He died in 2006 of liver complications in San Luis Obispo, California.
  • Butch Hengen…..Boy #2 with fishing pole at Willoughby
  • Ryan Hayes…..Engineer
  • Max Slaten…..Man on Wagon

---

The Twilight Zone Trivia:

• Rod Serling apparently cited this episode as his favorite story from the first season of the series. Producer Buck Houghton went so far as to identify this episode as Rod Serling’s finest teleplay of the first season in a memo he drafted.
• “A Stop at Willoughby” was informed by Rod Serling’s own personal interactions with advertising executives and their demanding schedules. Much like Gart Williams, Rod Serling also moved his family from Ohio to Westport, Connecticut. Apparently, Serling was living in in Westport, Connecticut at the time he wrote this script and he regularly commuted on the train to and from New York City.
• The skyline backdrop used behind the corporate conference room later reappeared in “Mr. Bevis.”
• Rod Serling originally intended for “A Stop at Willoughby” to be the pilot episode of The Twilight Zone but scheduling conflicts caused Serling to shelve the script for a time. After the holiday season in 1959, he shortened the episode from 60 minutes to 30 minutes.
• James Daly was Serling’s first choice to play the lead role.
• There is a brief nod to Ray Bradbury in this episode when Gart Williams mentions a problem with “the Bradbury account” to his secretary over the speakerphone in his office. This scene actually features a minor blooper in which the speakerphone is in use though the phone is off the hook. This was brought to Serling’s attention by Barbara J. Compton of the New York Telephone Company in a letter.
• The character Gart Williams compares Willoughby to a Currier and Ives painting. Currier and Ives was a New York City-based printmaking business that operated from 1835 to 1907, a partnership of Nathaniel Currier and James Merritt Ives.
• Gart’s boss is named Mr. Misrell, whose last name might be a play on the word “miserable.”
• The time on the clock when Gart Williams finally gets off the train at Willoughby appears to be about 10 minutes to 10 o’clock.
• The train stations called out by the conductor on the 1960 train were real at the time of the filming, such as “Stamford” and “Westport & Saugatuck” which were stations on the New Haven Railroad. Today there is no station called Saugatuck anymore.
• Three of the songs played by the band in Willoughby –“Oh! Susanna,” “Camptown Races,” and “Beautiful Dreamer,” are by Stephen Foster. Another is “Listen to the Mockingbird” by Foster’s colleague Septimus Winner.
• The outdoor train station and town square sets used for Willoughby are the same ones used for the opening and closing scenes of John Ford’s The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962).
• Producer Buck Houghton noted in an interview with Marc Scott Zicree, author of The Twilight Zone Companion, that the Willoughby sets for the episode were reused from the MGM backlot constructed for the Judy Garland musical Meet Me in St. Louis (1944), as was the case in many other episodes.
• This episode was the first episode in the series to include the title in its opening narration.
• No one knows really how Serling came up with the name Willoughby. The two most likely cases are either Option #1: it was the name of a town in Ohio (Serling was familiar with the area from when he attended Antioch College and he likely commuted through Willoughby back when he was scripting teleplays for his literary agent, Blanche Gaines, from Ohio to New York City); or Option #2: it was the name of a street in Hollywood, Los Angeles located about a block north of Homewood Avenue (an allusion to the town of Homewood as featured in “Walking Distance“).

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

Click here to read my reflections on Rod Serling’s short story “A Stop at Willoughby.”