The Twilight Zone: Season 1, Episode Twenty-Nine “Nightmare As A Child’

Original Air Date: April 29, 1960
Writer: Rod Serling
Director: Alvin Ganzer

“Month of November, hot chocolate, and a small cameo of a child’s face, imperfect only in its solemnity. And these are the improbable ingredients to a human emotion, an emotion, say, like—fear. But in a moment this woman, Helen Foley, will realize fear. She will understand what are the properties of terror. A little girl will lead her by the hand and walk with her into a nightmare.”
-Rod Serling

“Nightmare As A Child” delivers a shocking story of psychological repression and unbalanced mental health as one woman suddenly confronts her long-forgotten childhood trauma after she meets a shadowy figure from her past. Children’s schoolteacher Helen Foley (played by Janice Rule) arrives home to her apartment to find a little girl sitting outside on the stairwell. The girl goes by the name “Markie” (played by Terry Burnham). They talk over hot chocolate and Helen realizes that Markie knows a surprising level of detail about her life –such as the fact that Helen dislikes marshmallows and that she got burned once on her elbow. Earlier that day, Helen remembers that she spotted a man she vaguely recognized –and somehow Markie knows about this. Just then, there is a knock at the door and Markie runs in terror.

Helen greets the strange man who is named Peter Selden (played by Shepperd Strudwick), who used to work for Helen’s mother, handling her investments years earlier. Slowly, Helen is reminded of a traumatic childhood experience she had long-since repressed. She is shocked when Peter pulls out a picture of Helen as a child –and the photo clearly shows the little girl Markie. Peter then says “Markie” was Helen’s childhood nickname. Following this dramatic moment, we are treated to a beautifully blurred memory of Helen’s mother who was once attacked and killed in her bed. The flashback is narrated by Markie whose voice is nothing more than repressed memory of Helen as a child. Though the killer was never caught, as it turns out Peter turns out to be the culprit, he killed Helen’s mother many years ago –he was trying to cook the books for Helen’s mother’s investments but she threatened to report him so he killed her. Peter very nearly killed Markie, as well, but her screams over her mother were her salvation.

Returning to the present-day, Helen tries to flee from Peter but she is caught in a scuffle in the hallway that only ends when she heaves him down a flight of stairs killing him. Hours later the police investigate the crime scene while Helen walks past another girl on the stairwell singing a tune similar to the one Markie (“Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star”). Helen tells her she has a beautiful smile and tells her never to lose it.

“Miss Helen Foley, who has lived in night and who will wake up to morning. Miss Helen Foley, who took a dark spot from the tapestry of her life and rubbed it clean—then stepped back a few paces and got a good look at the Twilight Zone.”
-Rod Serling

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My Thoughts on “Nightmare as a Child”

Often in The Twilight Zone we are asked to sympathize with people and their inner struggles. Through clever cinematic editing, in “Nightmare As A Child” we experience Helen’s trauma as it unfolds on the screen. We learn her backstory along with her. In this way, we become part of her nightmare. “Nightmare as a Child” is a mesmerizing, haunting story about the ghosts of yesteryear that never fully leave the subconscious of a woman like Helen Foley. Janice Rule delivers a forceful performance as the elder Helen Foley, Shepperd Strudwick masterfully plays the predatory Peter Selden, and young Terry Burnham gives a wonderfully unsettling performance as little Markie, the girl from Helen Foley’s forgotten past. “Nightmare as a Child” is a real tour de force, another masterpiece from the first season of The Twilight Zone.

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Credits:

• Director: Alvin Ganzer
• Written by: Rod Serling
• Music: Jerry Goldsmith
• 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:
  • Janice Rule…..Helen Foley
    • Mary Janice Rule (1931-2003) was a versatile American actress and psychotherapist who earned her PhD from the Southern California Psychoanalytic Institute in the 1970s and 1980s while still acting. During her acting career, she somewhat famously turned down the role of Edie Doyle in On the Waterfront (1954) which was ultimately played by Eva Marie Saint. On television, she appeared in shows like Wagon Train and Have Gun – Will Travel, as well as anthologies like Goodyear Playhouse, Suspicion, Schlitz Playhouse, General Electric Theater, and Playhouse 90. Rule later remarked at how she preferred not to play recurring series characters in television shows, finding it both boring and formulaic, it also would have prevented her from seeing her family. She was married three times and had two children. She practiced psychoanalysis in New York and Los Angeles, and continued to act occasionally until her death from a cerebral hemorrhage in 2003 at the age of 72.
  • Terry Burnham…..Markie
    • Elizabeth Teresa “Terry” Burnham (1949-2013) was an American child actress. She is best known for her appearance in this episode of The Twilight Zone and her role as Lana Turner’s young daughter “Susie” in the film Imitation of Life (1959). She retired from acting in 1971. She died of a cardiac arrest in 2013 at the age of 64. With no surviving next of kin, her unclaimed cremated remains were stored at Los Angeles County Crematorium until of 2018 (which would have been her 69th birthday) when Burnham’s ashes were buried at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Long Beach, California.
  • Shepperd Strudwick…..Peter Selden
    • Shepperd Strudwick (1907-1983) was known for playing Adam Stanton, the idealistic doctor who kills Willie Stark in the classic film All the King’s Men (1949) and Father Jean Massieu in Joan of Arc (1948), which starred Ingrid Bergman as Joan. He appeared in television shows like Perry Mason, Wagon Train, and Have Gun – Will Travel. He was married four times and had one child. Strudwick died in New York City from cancer in 1983 at the age of 75.
  • Michael Fox…..Doctor
    • Born Myron Melvin Fox, Michael Fox (1921-1996) was a prolific character actor, known for his recurring physician roles in shows like Perry Mason. He appeared in the penultimate episode of Adventures of Superman as the ringleader of a criminal gang, as well as appearances in shows like Science Fiction Theatre, The Ford Television Theatre, The Rifleman, The Untouchables, The Dick Powell Show, Gunsmoke, Batman, Lost in Space, Mission: Impossible, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, and many others. He appeared in three Twilight Zone episodes (“Nightmare as a Child,” “Mr. Dingle, the Strong,” and “Sounds and Silences.” He married a fellow actress who was in a joint stage production with him (borrowing Dorothy Gish’s car for them to get married). He and his wife had two children; he died of pneumonia in 1996 at the age of 75.
  • Suzanne Cupito…..Little Girl (uncredited)
    • Suzanne Cupito, who later went by the stage name Morgan Brittany (1951-present) is an American actress who had her start as a child actor in a variety of television shows and films. She had an uncredited role during the birthday party scene of Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds (1963). She appeared in Gunsmoke, The Andy Griffith Show, and in a two-part episode of The Outer Limits (“The Inheritors”), among other classic shows. She appeared in three episodes of The Twilight Zone (“Nightmare as a Child,” “Valley of the Shadow,” and “Caesar and Me“). In her adult career, she has played Vivien Leigh in several productions and appeared in shows like Married… with Children, Sabrina the Teenage Witch, and Murder, She Wrote. She has since become a conservative political commentator. She is married to stuntman Jack Gill and has two children.
  • Joseph V. Perry…..Police Lieutenant
    • Joseph Victor Perry (1931-2000) was frequently cast a criminal or policeman in television shows. In addition to this episode of The Twilight Zone, he also appeared in Rod Serling’s Night Gallery episode “Midnight Never Ends.” His most famous recurring role came later in life as the pizza restaurant owner Nemo in the sitcom Everybody Loves Raymond. He died in 2000 at the age of 69.

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The Twilight Zone Trivia:

• Helen Foley was the name of a beloved English Literature and Drama teacher who taught Rod Serling at Binghamton Central High School. The main performance theater at Binghamton High School is named after her. Richard Matheson would later borrow this name for Kathleen Quinlan’s character when writing the script for Twilight Zone: the Movie (1983). The name was used in the “It’s a Good Life” directed by Joe Dante.
• Janice Rule was paid $2,000 for this episode. Terry Burnham was paid $400.
• Fans have speculated whether or not Serling may have been inspired by Truman Capote’s 1946 O. Henry Award-winning story “Miriam” when he wrote this episode.
• “Nightmare as a Child” is one of a handful of Twilight Zone episodes not to feature any fantasy/science fiction elements.
• The children’s song Markie sings is “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.”
• Immediately after Janice Rule had finished her shots for this episode, MGM rushed her into rehearsal for her starring role in the Buick-Electra Playhouse’s television adaptation of The Snows of Kilimanjaro.

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