The Twilight Zone: Season 1, Episode Thirty-One “The Chaser”

Original Air Date: May 13, 1960
Writer: John Henry Collier/Robert Presnell, Jr.
Director: Douglas Heyes

“Mr. Roger Shackelforth. Age: youthful twenties. Occupation: being in love. Not just in love, but madly, passionately, illogically, miserably, all-consumingly in love – with a young woman named Leila, who has a vague recollection of his face and even less than a passing interest. In a moment, you’ll see a switch, because Mr. Roger Shackelforth, the young gentleman so much in love, will take a short, but very meaningful journey into the Twilight Zone.”
-Rod Serling

“The Chaser” recycles a well-worn popular cliche: “be careful what you wish for.” It is a charming little drama but admittedly it is not an example of The Twilight Zone’s best. A young man named Roger Shackelforth (played by Emmy and Grammy Award winner George Grizzard) is obsessively stalking a woman named Leila (pronounced “Lee-la,” played by Patricia Barry). We first meet Roger hogging a public payphone desperately trying to speak with Leila while she ignores him on the other end of the line. A large and impatient man cuts to the front of the line and gives Roger a card instructing him to pay a visit to a certain man who can help solve all his romantic troubles.

Roger heeds the man’s advice and visits the residence of A. Daemon (note: “Daemon” is an old spelling of “demon”). It is a strange home with a massive library –one of the best scenes in the episode occurs when the walls separate and we first meet the cantankerous yet professorial A. Daemon (played by television Western actor John McIntire). Daemon reluctantly sells a love potion to Roger which warns of grave results. Roger then brings the potion to Leila. She initially refuses to let Roger into her home, but he begs her to have just one drink with him and she finally relents as his wish is granted. Roger slips the potion into her drink and moments later she falls madly in love with him. In fact, she is wholly obsessed with him.

Six months later, Roger and Leila are married and by now he cannot stand her smothering affections. He revisits the home of Professor A. Daemon only to discover that there is no antidote to the love potion, only a “glove cleaner” which is actually a poison intended to kill its victim. Roger reluctantly buys it and he nearly goes through with the deed (killing Leila) until she shares some news –she is pregnant. In shock, Roger drops the poisonous drink on the floor. He tells himself he never could have gone through with it anyway. Outside on the veranda we see a brief clip of A. Daemon slyly smoking. He puffs a smoke ring into air shaped like a heart and then he vanishes. Whimsical music plays as we have just witnessed a fairly silly dark comedy in The Twilight Zone.

“Mr. Roger Shackelforth, who has discovered at this late date that love can be as sticky as a vat of molasses, as unpalatable as a hunk of spoiled yeast, and as all-consuming as a six-alarm fire in a bamboo and canvas tent. Case history of a lover boy, who should never have entered the Twilight Zone.”
-Rod Serling

---

My Thoughts on “The Chaser”

The saving grace of this episode is the wily, entrancing performance of John McIntire and his eccentric portrayal of Professor A. Daemon. He offers a terrific performance, certainly memorable in the series, even if this episode is not among the greatest by any stretch. Only a handful of comedy Twilight Zone managed to succeed.

---

Credits:

• Director: Douglas Heyes
• Written by: Robert Presnell, Jr. based on the short story “Duet for Two Actors” by John Henry Collier originally published in the December 28, 1940 issue of The New Yorker (Robert Presnell, Jr. first dramatized the story in Billy Rose’s Playbill Theater in 1951)
• Music: Stock Music
• Director of Photography: George T. Clemens
• Production Manager: Ralph W. Nelson
• Art Directors: George W. Davis and Merrill Pye
• Film Editor: Bill Mosher
• Assistant Director: Don Klune
• Set Decorations: Henry Grace and Keogh Gleason
• Sound: Franklin Milton and Philip Mitchell
• Starring:
  • George Grizzard…..Roger Shackleforth
    • George Cooper Grizzard Jr. (1928-2007) won an Emmy Award for his supporting role in 1979’s The Oldest Living Graduate. He was in many stage productions, played a United States Senator in the film Advise and Consent (1962), appeared in shows like Hawaii Five-O, Rawhide, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, The Cosby Show, Murder, She Wrote, and two episodes of The Twilight Zone (“The Chaser,” and “In His Image”). The last film he appeared in was Clint Eastwood’s Flags Of Our Fathers (2006). Grizzard died in Manhattan in 2007 at the age of 79 due to complications from lung cancer. He was survived by his partner William Tynan.
  • John McIntire…..Professor A. Daemon (a play on “a demon”)
    • John Herrick McIntire (1907-1991) was an American character actor who appeared in 65 theatrical films and many television series, known for his roles on Wagon Train, Bonanza, and The Virginian. He married actress Jeanette Nolan (who appeared in another love-potion-themed Twilight Zone episode, “Jess-Belle“) and they had two children, both of whom also became actors. McIntire died from emphysema and lung cancer in Pasadena on January 30, 1991, at the age of 83. His son Tim McIntire had predeceased him in 1986.
  • Patricia Barry…..Leila
    • Patricia Allen White, Patricia Barry (1922-2016) won a Rita Hayworth look-alike contest in 1944. The resulting publicity led to Barry signing a contract with Warner Bros. She appeared in many television shows like Playhouse 90, The Third Man, Sugarfoot, Maverick, The Rifleman, Rawhide, Gunsmoke, My Three Sons, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Perry Mason, CBS Playhouse, Columbo, Charlie’s Angels, and others. She also appeared in the film Twilight Zone: The Movie (1983). She was married for 48 years to producer and writer Philip Barry, Jr., until his death in 1998. They had two daughters who later made a documentary of their mother. Patricia Barry died in 2016 of natural causes at her home in Los Angeles, California at the age of 93.
  • J. Pat O’Malley…..Homburg
    • James Rudolph O’Malley (1904-1985) was known for appearances on the Broadway stage in Ten Little Indians (1944) and Alfred Hitchcock’s Dial M for Murder (1954). He appeared in four episodes of The Twilight Zone (“The Chaser,” “The Fugitive,” “Mr. Garrity and the Graves,” and “The Self-Improvement of Salvatore Ross“). He also performed many voice roles with Disney such as the Cockney costermonger in the “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious” sequence in Mary Poppins (1964), he served as Dick Van Dyke’s dialect coach for the film, he also played Cyril Proudbottom in The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad (1949); and the role of Colonel Hathi and the vulture Buzzie in The Jungle Book (1967). His voice can be heard in Alice in Wonderland (1951), in which he performs all the character voices in “The Walrus and the Carpenter” segment (excluding Alice), such as Tweedledum and Tweedledee, the Walrus, the Carpenter, and Mother Oyster. O’Malley and his wife had two children. He died of cardiovascular disease at his home in San Juan Capistrano in 1985, at the age of 80.
  • Marjorie Bennett…..old woman
    • Marjorie Bennett (1896-1982) began her acting career in the silent era before transitioning to talkies with appearances in classic films like Charlie Chaplin’s Monsieur Verdoux (1947), Abbott and Costello Meet the Killer, Boris Karloff (1949), and Charlie Chaplin’s Limelight (1952). She appeared in television shows like Four Star Playhouse, I Love Lucy, Schlitz Playhouse of Stars, Mission: Impossible, and three Twilight Zone episodes (“The Chaser,” “Kick the Can,” and “No Time Like the Past“).
  • Barbara Perry…..blonde woman
  • Duane Grey…..bartender
  • Rusty Westcott…..tall man

---

The Twilight Zone Trivia:

• Director Douglas Heyes was selected to direct this episode by Frank Cooper Associates (which represented both Heyes and Bare) after Richard L. Bare had suffered a plane crash (see my review of “The Purple Testament” for reference).
• This was the only episode of the first season of The Twilight Zone not written by either Rod Serling, Charles Beaumont, or Richard Matheson.
• “The Chaser” was based on a script by Robert Presnell, Jr. which was, itself, based on a John Collier short story. The Presnell script dates back nearly a decade before The Twilight Zone episode as “Duet for Two Actors” which debuted on February 20, 1951 for The Billy Rose Show (a.k.a. “Billy Rose’s Playbill Theater”). For its production on The Twilight Zone, the story rights were purchased from the original author John Collier for $2,000.
• This is the only episode of The Twilight Zone written by Robert Presnell, Jr.
• Collier’s original story used different names (Roger was Alan) and A. Daemon is not named, though it is heavily implied he is the devil.
• Another Collier short story “Evening Primrose” served as the inspiration to Rod Serling’s “The After Hours.”
• Part of the agreement in acquiring Robert Presnell’s story was that Rod Serling would share other Presnell scripts with producers. He sent “Fare Thee Well” to television producer Fred Coe.
• A. Daemon’s flat is #22.
• This episode apparently reuses the same jazz stock music composed by Russ Garcia that was previously featured “The Fever.”
• At first, A. Daemon thinks Roger has come for glove-cleaner.
• A. Daemon sells ointments, salves, powders, sovereign remedies, nectars, lotus blossoms, toxins, tonics, anti-toxins, decoctions, concoctions, and potions.
• John McIntire, who played Professor A. Daemon, was given top billing above George Gizzard in the closing credits.
• Roger briefly refers to the Great Chinese Famine of 1959-1961 which was estimated to have killed tens of millions of Chinese people.
• Leila’s telephone number, repeatedly dialed by Roger in the opening scene of this episode, is 323-6263.
• Regarding his experience directing “The Chaser” Douglas Heyes was quoted as saying, “That was one of the great things about The Twilight Zone. I had total freedom. Sometimes I would think of an idea that would make the episode more Twilight Zone-y [but] that would require some expense. I remember one episode, ‘The Chaser’, in which I devised a huge bookcase that must have doubled the budget, but [Rod Serling and Buck Houghton] never blinked an eye. They just said, ‘Okay, great!’ I didn’t have to argue with anybody over the money—they’d argue about the money and let me have it! I knew that they were having problems with Jim Aubrey, but they kept them away from me. My responsibility was to get the job done.”
• In this episode, George Grizzard (who plays Roger Shackleforth) wears the same smoking jacket that was worn by Rod Taylor (who played H. George Wells) in the film The Time Machine (1960).
• Douglas Heyes described the construction of A. Daemon’s library as follows: “We built a very long, narrow set which was very high, with lots of bookcases… We didn’t put a back on these bookcases; instead we covered the backs with gauze and lit it from behind, so that the books stood out in relief against light –which is something they never do in a bookcase.”
• The title of this episode is a pun, with Roger serving as a “chaser” who is aggressively seeking after his romantic interest, and also the “chaser” is a drinking reference to the shot of potion Professor A. Daemon provides to Roger.

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