The Twilight Zone: Season 2, Episode Three “Nervous Man in a Four Dollar Room”

Original Air Date: October 14, 1960
Writer: Rod Serling
Director: Douglas Heyes

“This is Mr. Jackie Rhoades, age thirty-four, and where some men leave a mark of their lives as a record of their fragmentary existence on Earth, this man leaves a blot, a dirty, discolored blemish to document a cheap and undistinguished sojourn amongst his betters. What you’re about to watch in this room is a strange mortal combat between a man and himself, for in just a moment, Mr. Jackie Rhoades, whose life has been given over to fighting adversaries, will find his most formidable opponent in a cheap hotel room that is in reality the outskirts of The Twilight Zone.”
-Rod Serling

Jackie Rhoades (played by Joe Mantell) is a nervous man who sits, fidgeting, in a warm, dirty hotel room. He is a two-bit low-level crook working for the mob. We find him held captive by a gangster named George (played by William D. Gordon) who has ordered Jackie to murder an old man who runs a bar on 38th street, between Lexington and Sixth, before 2am. George leaves, fully expecting Jackie to complete the job. But filled with inner turmoil, Jackie fumbles around in his room. He reaches for a match to light a cigarette but when he looks in the mirror, he is confronted with his own alter ego: a strong, confident version of himself who demands to be unleashed.

He reminds Jackie of his past as a runt working in street gangs. As a ten-year-old he stole his teacher’s locket whose catch had broken (after some “big kids” dared him to swipe it). A year later, the same “big kids” dared Jackie to break into a grocery store with them, and they got caught. He spent the next eleven months in reform school. Later, a parole officer tried to help him but he joined a gang instead. Six months later, he was in jail again. He is then reminded of a beautiful girl Janey Reardon who tried to clean him up, but he got caught on another job and spent two years in jail while Janey got married and moved away. Jackie sees how far his life has fallen.

Later when George returns to Jackie’s hotel room he is met by Jackie’s alter ego who firmly denies the call to murder. He beats up George and kicks him out of his apartment. He starts going by his proper name “John” instead of his nickname “Jackie.” This once weak man has now found his inner strength simply by taking a look in the mirror.

“Exit Mr. John Rhoades, formerly a reflection in a mirror, a fragment of someone else’s conscience, a wishful thinker made out of glass, but now made out of flesh, and on his way to join the company of men. Mr. John Rhoades, with one foot through the door and one foot out of the Twilight Zone.”
-Rod Serling

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My Thoughts on “Nervous Man in a Four Dollar Room”

Joe Mantell offers a stellar performance as the two-bit crook with a heart of gold, Jackie Rhoades. As a “closet” episode, the entirety of this story takes place inside his hotel room, most of it concerning a dialogue between Mantell and himself in a mirror. “Nervous Man in a Four Dollar Room” is a redemptive tale of a ne’er-do-well who manages to take control of his life again. This is a brilliantly simple character study in the context of a Rod Serling hard-boiled, film noir crime drama –it only seems to get better every time I watch it.

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Credits:

• Director: Douglas Heyes
• Written by: Rod Serling
• Music: Original Score by Jerry Goldsmith
• Associate Producer: Del Reisman
• Director of Photography: George T. Clemens
• Production Manager: Ralph W. Nelson
• Art Directors: George W. Davis and Phil Barber
• Film Editor: Bill Mosher
• Assistant Director: E. Darrell Hallenbeck
• Set Decorations: Henry Grace and H. Web Arrowsmith
• Sound: Franklin Milton and Charles Scheid
• Casting: Ethel Winant
• Starring:
  • Joe Mantell…..John “Jackie” Rhoades
    • Born Joseph Mantel (with a single “L”), Joe Mantell (1915-2010) was a Brooklynite who served in the U.S. Army in World War II. He appeared in shows like The Untouchables, The Man from U.N.C.L.E., Ironside, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, and two episodes of The Twilight Zone: “Nervous Man in a Four Dollar Room” and “Steel.” He appeared in a gas station scene of Alfred Hitchcock’s 1963 film The Birds and as Lawrence Walsh, associate of private eye Jake Gittes, In the 1974 film Chinatown –delivered the film’s famous last line, “Forget it, Jake, it’s Chinatown.” Mantell later reprised the character in the 1990 sequel The Two Jakes. He and his wife, Mary, had two daughters and a son. He retired from acting in 1990 and died in 2010 at the age of 94.
  • William D. Gordon…..George
    • William Douglas Gordon (1918-1991) was best known for his writing. He began his career in radio before serving in the infantry during World War II. He later appeared in television shows like Maverick, Rawhide, The Americans, and The Virginian and he worked as a script writer for shows like Alfred Hitchcock Presents, The Fugitive, Bonanza, Ironside, and others. In retirement, he wrote Civil War novels. Gordon died in 1991 in Thousand Oaks, California of lung cancer at the age of 73.

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The Twilight Zone Trivia:

• The Twilight Zone was not cast on the evening of October 21, 1960 because all three major networks carried the debate between Vice President Richard Nixon and Senator John F. Kennedy.
• All the mirrors in this episode were actually screens featuring previously recorded material shown during filming.
• This was, in actuality, the first produced episode of the second season but it was the third episode to air.
• This episode features a unique Rod Serling opening narration scene in which Serling can seen speaking in front of a backdrop set from the ceiling of Jackie’s cramped, four dollar flat.
• The episode was one of only four Twilight Zone episodes to exclusively use only two onscreen actors (aside from Rod Serling). The others are “Two,” “A Game of Pool,” and “The Encounter.”
• The Jackie Rhoades character is the first to deliver the famous lines “You talkin’ to me? You talkin’ to me?” while facing a mirror. Most people know these lines from the films Taxi Driver and Dirty Harry, but they first appeared in this episode of The Twilight Zone.
• As the title indicates, the hotel room Jackie is staying in costs $4 per night. His room number is 14.
• The music for this episode was composed by Jerry Goldsmith who, coincidentally, also wrote the score for the 1974 film Chinatown (1974), in which Joe Mantell played a major supporting role as the partner of Jack Nicholson’s character. Jerry Goldsmith’s music for this episode was used for one of the original promos for Lost In Space (1965-1968).
• Although Rod Serling mentions that Jackie is 34 years old, Joe Mantell in real life was 44 years old.
• This episode came in almost $9,000 under budget, much to the delight of Buck Houghton. At the time, CBS was requesting The Twilight Zone cut costs.
• Director Douglas Heyes later reflected, “‘Nervous Man’ was a challenge because I had always wanted to do a Prisoner of Zenda-type dual role with the same actor playing both parts… But instead of doing it with a split screen or over another actor’s shoulder the easy way, I wanted to do it the hard way –with rear projection. First we photographed every part of Joe Mantell’s performance that was in the mirror stuff, and then later he played against himself in rear projection. So when we were photographing the mirror stuff, we also had another actor playing our front who was making Joe’s moves, so that Joe in the mirror was actually looking in the direction where Joe the actor would be later, when I photographed it for the second time.”
• The crew used an aspiring director named Brian Hutton who played the other end of all the mirror scenes in this episode. Hutton later directed the film Where Eagles Dare (1968).
• In 1960, a viewer named Bob Shuford of Raleigh, North Carolina submitted a short story with some minor similarities to this story entitled “Behind The Glass” (at this point, viewers were frequently submitting script ideas to the show). However, his story was actually submitted after Serling had written the script and though he made a complaint, no lawsuit was ever filed over it. Likewise, Serling’s former agent, Blanche Gaines, had forwarded to him a couple teleplays with a few similarities to this story, including “The Two-Sided Triangle” by Tobias and Perkins.

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