PLAYHOUSE 90
PLAYHOUSE 90
CBS
“The Comedian”
February 14, 1957, 90 min.
Produced by Martin Manulis; directed by John Frankenheimer
Screenplay by Rod Serling; based on a story by Ernest Lehman
Cast: Mickey Rooney; Mel Torme; Kim Hunter; Edmond O’Brien; Whit Bissell; King Donovan; Constance Ford; Eddie Ryder; H. M. Wynant
Synopsis: Comedian Sammy Hogarth is a five-foot, three-inch human hurricane who leaves devastation wherever he goes. His writers hate him, his director hates him, and his milquetoast brother, Lester, has been riding Sammy’s coattails for most of his life and taking the brunt of his abuse. Sammy is obsessively preparing for the most important performance of his career—the first ninety-minute live comedy show in television history. With only four days before showtime, Sammy and his entire crew agree: the show stinks. Sammy tears apart his crew after good rehearsals; at a time like this, his wrath is virtually biblical. The only part of the show that works is his old reliable: the monologue. As usual, it’s filled with sure-fire material that gets its laughs at Lester’s expense.
Lester’s wife, Julie, is tired of watching her husband accept his brother’s abuse and gives him an ultimatum: get Sammy to drop the monologue or she’s leaving. Lester is not built for confrontation and would never dream of trying to convince Sammy to drop the strongest part of his show until a fortuitous bit of information drops into his lap: Al Preston, Sammy’s head writer, desperate for better material, has plagiarized two skits from a young writer, Davey Farber, who was killed during the war. Instead of confronting his brother, Lester presents Al with another ultimatum: get Sammy to drop the monologue or the information goes to a gossip columnist eager for an opportunity to destroy Sammy’s career.
Al tries to convince Sammy to drop the monologue but fails and is forced to tell him the truth. Sammy defuses the situation by notifying the press that he will be using two skits written by Farber, in tribute to the young man who died so heroically during the war. The show goes on, the monologue stays, and the stolen material has been spun to Sammy’s benefit—plus, it’s terrific. Before the closing act, Lester walks onstage and slaps his brother across the face on live television. Sammy turns even this in his favor, comically throwing Lester over his shoulder and carrying him offstage—and then pummeling him in the wings.
The show is a smash, and Sammy Hogarth is on his way to being the biggest comic on television. And Lester Hogarth stays right where he has always been, ready to spit-shine his brother’s shoes if asked. Julie Hogarth watches Sammy reassert his control over her husband, then walks away in sad resignation.
Notes: Barely three months after “Requiem for a Heavyweight,” Serling struck gold again with this adaptation of a short story by Ernest Lehman, which won the Emmy for Best Single Program of the year and Serling his third consecutive Emmy for Best Teleplay Writing.
“The Dark Side of the Earth”
September 19, 1957, 90 min.
Alternate titles/productions/publications:
1. Produced on BBC’s Television Playwright (United Kingdom), January 3, 1959 Produced by Martin Manulis; directed by Arthur Penn
Cast: Van Heflin; Kim Hunter; Earl Holliman; Dean Jagger; Jerry Paris; Ian Wolfe; Barry Atwater; Peter Votrian; Wright King; S. John Launer
Synopsis:
Good evening. Today, Playhouse 90 presents an original script by one of the most distinguished authors writing for television today. The author: Rod Serling, whose “Requiem for a Heavyweight” won five awards from the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences last season. Tonight’s play: “The Dark Side of the Earth,” the story inspired by one of the most significant and shocking events of our time.
Hungary, October 25, 1956.
Since the end of World War II, the Hungarian people have been ruled by a puppet government with strings pulled all the way from Moscow. After more than a decade of economic and social domination, the people have taken up arms against their oppressors. In response, Soviet tanks have rolled into Budapest to crush the rebellion.
Colonel Paul Sten is the ranking officer of the invading Soviet army. From his command post he surveys a city map and gives orders to slaughter hundreds of civilians as if they are merely pins to be removed from this map. Giving such orders does not please him, but he accepts that doing so is the price of war and the responsibility of command.
To his fellow soldiers, Colonel Sten is made of steel. He has a softness, however, when the subject is his son. Young Ivan Sten serves in a tank regiment, and his father does not know his whereabouts. Captain Volodney, Sten’s righthand man, does not understand the colonel’s worry about his son. Volodney is single-minded and utterly devoid of emotion. He has admired the colonel’s record as a soldier but is confused by Sten’s sentimentalities. When the colonel objects to the beating of a captured rebel, Chevak, Captain Volodney moves from confused to suspicious.
After Chevak and the other freedom fighters are led to a cell, a soldier brings Colonel Sten news that his son has been killed. Ivan Sten had been captured by the same group of freedom fighters and forced to march in front of them as a human shield, where Soviet troops inadvertently shot him. Colonel Sten had previously objected to beating one of these prisoners, but to learn more about his son’s death, he condones torture. Chevak is brought in for questioning. Every question that Chevak refuses to answer is followed by a boot or a fist. But no matter how severely he is beaten, he will not divulge any information about Ivan Sten’s death. He returns to his cell a broken man.
Behind bars with his fellow prisoners, Chevak privately evaluates the character of the men with whom he has been imprisoned. Though he withstood the interrogation, he fears that others, particularly a coward, Fabian, will tell the Soviets everything they wish to know. He has a hidden knife and plans to torture Fabian as a warning about what will happen to anyone who squeals. Before he can begin, however, Soviet soldiers burst into the room, accompanied by Rojas, a Hungarian traitor, and take Fabian for questioning.
Fabian begins cooperating with his captors even before he leaves the cell. Chevak lunges forward and buries the knife in Fabian’s back, killing him. In Fabian’s place, the Soviets then drag away a twelve-year-old boy, who is tortured until he reveals the truth about the colonel’s son: Ivan Sten was not captured by the rebels—he defected. He was not used as a human shield—he was leading the freedom fighters when he was shot. Rojas deliberately gives this information to Captain Volodney rather than to Colonel Sten, knowing that it will breed mistrust in the Soviet ranks.
The news of Ivan Sten’s treason travels quickly. General Kerch arrives from Moscow and tells Colonel Sten that his traitorous son will cost him his rank and his power, but his life will be spared if he signs a statement renouncing his son. The colonel refuses and is taken away, leaving Volodney in command. Rojas submits to Volodney’s authority and soon realizes that he is far more brutal than his predecessor.
In the courtyard outside, a priest gives the rebel prisoners their last rites. Nearby, Colonel Sten says a prayer of his own. He is driven away as a firing squad takes aim at the prisoners and an impassive Captain Volodney watches from a window above.
Trivia: During this production, Serling first met actor Earl Holliman, who went on to star in the Twilight Zone’s pilot, “Where Is Everybody?” Holliman recalled approaching Serling on the set and saying, “You know, this is missing a scene here. I think this young captain should say to this general, ‘I remember what you did in Stalingrad, sir, and Leningrad.’” According to Holliman, Serling “took out his pencil and started jotting the words down and [he] basically used those words. It was just amazing. I never got over that. I mean, usually somebody would say, ‘go screw yourself’ or ‘stick in your own field, you’re an actor, what do you know about …’ He was terrific. Terrific, I thought, with the lack of ego.”1
“Bomber’s Moon”
May 22, 1958, 90 min.
Alternate titles/productions/publications:
1. Early draft produced on Lux Video Theatre, January 26, 1953, as “The Inn of Eagles”
2. Produced as “Im Schatten des Krieges” (West Germany), January 10, 1963
Produced by Martin Manulis; directed by John Frankenheimer
Cast: Bob Cummings; Rip Torn; Hazel Court; Martin Balsam; Larry Gates; J. Pat O’Malley
Synopsis:
This is the story of that brief but jagged fragment of time known as War. It tells only of a moment in the history of violent moments. It tells of no victories and no defeats—but rather of the minute tragedies of a few who stand in the backwash of battle. For this reason, this story could be any time, any place, any war. It happens to take place in … England. April 1943.
Air force pilots take refuge in a pub, the Bomber’s Moon, after returning safely from a mission. They drink to their good fortune, talk poetry or philosophy with the would-be vicar who runs the place, and try not to dwell on those who did not make it back.
On this night, Colonel Culver’s primary concern is a pilot who failed to complete his mission. Lieutenant Harrison aborted his flight for the fourth time in less than a month, claiming equipment malfunctions. Culver privately accuses Harrison of cowardice. The lieutenant admits that he is afraid and describes being so nervous that he cannot sleep the night before a mission; he breaks out in a cold sweat the moment he climbs into the cockpit and begins to shake so badly that he fears he will crash his plane before he ever gets it off the ground. He begs for a temporary grounding. Culver is offended by Harrison’s “weakness” but reluctantly agrees to relieve him from his duties. For the next mission, Culver’s closest friend, Captain Joe Reardon, will take Harrison’s place.
The next time Colonel Culver enters the Bomber’s Moon, Captain Reardon is not by his side. Reardon’s plane has been shot down. Culver’s animosity toward Harrison intensifies, and the next time they meet, Culver suggests that the only honorable way for Harrison to make amends is to commit suicide. Culver volunteers Harrison for what is essentially a suicide mission: an unescorted, low-to-ground assault in the heart of enemy territory. Given no choice, Harrison accepts the mission. He and his crew do not survive.
Culver has a mental breakdown after realizing that his contempt for Harrison results from an inability to accept that the two men share the same fears and weaknesses, and the colonel charges himself with murdering Harrison and his crew. Discharged from the air force on psychiatric grounds, Culver will return to his home in Endicott, New York, to begin what will likely be a long recovery.
“The Velvet Alley”
January 22, 1959, 90 min.
Alternate titles/productions/publications:
1. Produced on BBC Sunday Night Theatre (United Kingdom), November 22, 1959
Produced by Herbert Brodkin; directed by Franklin Schaffner
Cast: Art Carney; Jack Klugman; Leslie Nielsen; Katherine Bard; Bonita Granville; George Voskovec; Alexander Scourby; David White; Micky Dolenz (as Mickey Braddock); Eddie Ryder; Martha Wentworth; Dyan Cannon; Burt Reynolds
Good evening. When all a struggling writer can point to is rejection slips and a typewriter that belongs to the finance company, the sale of a television script is a pretty important thing, and it can start a whole series of events, the end of which cannot be anticipated. Tonight, Playhouse 90 presents “The Velvet Alley,” a new television play by three-time Emmy winner Rod Serling.
Ernie Pandish is a forty-two-year-old freelance writer who has earned a total of $436.00 this year. Though his bank account is meager and he lives in a small, second-floor walk-up apartment, he has a support system that any writer would deem priceless: a wife who offers unconditional love, an old-fashioned father who provides nonjudgmental understanding of his chosen career despite not understanding it, even an eleven-year-old neighbor who seems to know just when to barge in to his apartment and give him an excuse to get away from the typewriter for a few minutes and laugh at his own work. Most important, Ernie has a saint for an agent. Max Salter has never even asked Ernie to sign a contract. Max believes in Ernie’s talent and has stuck with him despite his inability to consistently make sales, reminding Ernie that you can’t judge a writer by his checkbook. When Max says that Ernie’s latest script is “one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever read,” that opinion carries weight—enough weight to keep Ernie writing even as the rejection slips pile up. The script is a ninety-minute piece that Max has submitted to the biggest television show in Hollywood, Premiere Playhouse, which buys it. After a celebratory bottle of wine, Max and Ernie fly to Hollywood for the production.
The show is a phenomenal success. In their hotel room afterward, Ernie and Max giddily read the raves in the morning papers, dancing on the beds and tossing the pages in the air. Overnight, Ernie Pandish finds that he is in tremendous demand. The first overture comes from Eddie Kirkley, producer of Premiere Playhouse. Over a breakfast of Bloody Marys, Kirkley offers to pay Ernie ten thousand dollars per script for three scripts. But he’ll have to stay in Hollywood to write them—Kirkley insists that his writers be on hand for story conferences and rewrites. Max warns Ernie against taking the offer. Though Ernie offers assurances that his stay in Hollywood will be only temporary, Max knows better. “In 48 hours a man can auction off his soul, a good right arm and his sanity. You start a pattern, a precedent. You get hooked on it, just like it was dope.”
Ernie stays. And the pattern begins. Joined by his wife, Patty, Ernie now lives in a big house with a swimming pool and works what seems to be twenty-four hours a day. When he isn’t writing, he’s dragging Patty to Hollywood parties, where she usually ends up alone as Ernie plays the role of successful Hollywood writer—schmoozing, entertaining, and talking business. At one of these parties, Ernie finds himself behind closed doors, seated at a desk, and surrounded by a pack of agents, one of whom is perched on the corner of the desk and looking down at him like a vulture. They convince him that Max Salter is too small-time to keep up with his success. He needs new representation—a bigger agency to handle the bigger demands on his time. Ernie reluctantly agrees.
Betrayed and heartbroken, Max returns to New York, followed shortly by the neglected and disillusioned Patty. On the same night that Ernie wins an Emmy Award, he receives a telegram informing him that Max Salter, who “looked a hundred years old” when Ernie fired him, has died of a heart attack.
On a winter night, Ernie Pandish flies back to New York and finds that you truly can’t go home again. His father disowns him and smacks him across the face for how he treated his wife and for what he has become. Profoundly alone, Ernie Pandish stands outside his former home amid a steady snowfall, weeping for what success has cost him.
Notes: “The Velvet Alley” started life on October 19, 1955, when Rod Serling wrote to Blanche Gaines, his longtime agent, that he was about to sign a five-year contract to be represented by Ashley-Steiner, one of the biggest agencies in Hollywood. He found the letter “indescribably difficult to write” and told her, “If our relationship is damaged or strained by this, it will be a source of lasting and total regret to me because you must know by now that I regard you as one of the finest and most honorable women I have ever met. Further than this, I know exactly what I owe you in terms of thanks and gratitude and my decision should suggest nothing in the way of alteration of that feeling.”2 Three years later, he dramatized these feelings and this experience in “The Velvet Alley.”
Like Ernie Pandish and Max Salter, Serling and Gaines initially signed no formal contract with each other. Like the relationship between Pandish and Salter, Gaines carried Serling as a client for an extended period (at least two years) before she was able to start making any money from the arrangement. Like Ernie Pandish, Serling received ten thousand dollars per script for writing three scripts for the most prestigious series in television. And like Max Salter, Blanche Gaines was dismissed by her client shortly after his breakthrough success.
While watching the broadcast, Serling’s former agent could not miss the obvious parallels. During the show, Gaines called another client, author John Gay, and told him, “Not to spoil it for you, but I die at the end.”3
From all indications, Serling and Gaines handled their split amicably. Until August 1957, Gaines and Ashley-Steiner essentially shared Serling, with Gaines concentrating on his television properties in New York and Ashley-Steiner focusing on his feature film projects in Hollywood. And after that date, Serling’s contract called for Gaines to continue to receive 25 percent of all commissions accrued for the rest of his contract with Ashley-Steiner. “You may have sensed or even heard rumors that at least eight other agencies have made strong overtures to sign me up, promising all kinds of terms,” Serling wrote to Gaines. “I’m signing with Ashley-Steiner not only because I feel that at this stage of my career I need an organization like them, but because they were willing to grant you a reasonable amount of protection for their entire contractual period.”4
Robert Serling later said, “I always felt that ‘The Velvet Alley’ gave more insight into Rod’s personality than anything he ever wrote or anything he ever told to any of his friends.”5 Rod Serling acknowledged that “the externals of the play were definitely autobiographical—the pressures, the assault on values, the blandishments that run in competition to a man’s creativity. I left strips of flesh all over the studio with that one.” Even so, he insisted that the ways in which success affected Ernie Pandish bore no resemblance to his own experiences: “No, it’s not my story. I hope it’s not anyone’s story, really. But I know it could happen.”6
Trivia: After the broadcast, Serling attended a party where he first met Charles Beaumont, who became a major contributing writer on The Twilight Zone:
Chuck Beaumont, whom I didn’t even know, in a very tasteful way—nothing offensive in the way he did it—he said “Quite honestly, I must tell you to your face, it’s the worst piece of writing I’ve ever seen.” I didn’t rebel at this at all, but to this day I lay claim that Chuck is absolutely wrong. I think it’s a beautiful piece of work. That it’s an aged theme I can’t defend, but that it was a legitimate story, honestly told—this I will defend. Anyway, it put Chuck and me on a very good basis, because I feel now not only the right but the obligation to speak to Chuck honestly.7
“The Velvet Alley” earned Serling Look’s 1959 award for Best Television Writing.
“The Rank and File”
May 28, 1959, 90 min.
Alternate titles/productions/publications:
1. Produced on Armchair Theatre (United Kingdom), December 31, 1961
Produced by Herbert Brodkin; directed by Franklin Schaffner
Cast: Van Heflin; Luther Adler; Harry Townes; Charles Bronson; Cameron Prud’Homme; Carl Benton Reid; Bruce Gordon; Whitney Blake; Addison Richards; Wright King; Tom Palmer; Danny Richards Jr.
Synopsis: Into a chaotic Senate hearing room walks William Kilcoyne, business representative and president of the International Independent Brotherhood of Factory Workers. Flashbulbs pop as he is sworn in to give testimony. A young senator, Henders, begins the questioning, immediately aggressive, and asks Kilcoyne to describe how he rose to become the leader of a national labor union.
Flashback: Kilcoyne and the rest of his small local union have gone on strike for an increase in their forty-five-cents-per-hour wage. But after fifteen days without pay, the workers are on the verge of surrendering. When a truck full of scab workers breaks the picket line and drives through the factory gates, a drunken Bill Kilcoyne grabs the chain-link fence and yells at the guards on the other side. One of the guards calls him “rummy” and orders him to get his hands off the fence. Kilcoyne refuses. The guard smacks him across the knuckles with a nightstick. Kilcoyne still doesn’t release his grip—instead, he spits in the guard’s face. The guard retaliates viciously, smacking him repeatedly across both hands, but Kilcoyne still doesn’t let go until his hands are bloodied and all his fingers are broken.
Kilcoyne turns from the fence and demands that someone hand him his picket sign. He cradles it in his arms, his hands hanging limp. The union’s counsel, Irving Werner, who has been desperately trying to rally the rank and file to continue the strike, grabs Kilcoyne by the shoulders and shouts that the striking workers have found their president, a man with the guts to take a beating for what he believes in. The workers allow Werner more time to negotiate a deal with the factory’s owner, Harker.
Werner and Kilcoyne, his hands bandaged, meet with Harker and his representatives to discuss terms. Harker dismisses the union’s demands and agrees only to allow the workers to return at their current wage without penalty. Not only does he dismiss the union’s demands, he dismisses the union’s right to exist. He rejects the idea that his workers have the right to be treated as human beings. To him, they are nothing more than ungrateful scum.
“The only scum in this place wear hundred-buck suits,” Kilcoyne responds, controlling his temper. He speaks plainly and emotionally about trying to survive and feed a family on forty-five cents an hour. And with his broken hands as testaments to his sincerity, he guarantees Harker that no scab worker will ever again cross the picket line.
Harker understands this language. Kilcoyne and Werner walk out of his office and inform their brethren that they can return to work immediately—at fifty-three cents an hour.
Returning to the present, Senator Henders continues his vaguely accusatory questioning, asking Kilcoyne to describe his relationship with a man named Tony Russo. Kilcoyne, who has become significantly more well spoken over the years, says that he met with Russo once and convinced him to merge his local workers into the national union.
The scene again shifts to the past. In a bustling hotel room on the eve of an election, Kilcoyne and his co-workers/lieutenants, Andy Kovaric and Gabe Brewster, await news from the national union convention in Detroit. A telegram informs Kilcoyne that the national union is anxious to add the Lowery Tool and Die Company to the national rolls, and if Kilcoyne can deliver them, he will certainly be elected vice president. Standing in his way is Russo, a small-time mobster who holds de facto control of the local union. He has intimidated its workers into staying away from the polls.
Russo surprises Kilcoyne with an offer: Kilcoyne can have the votes if, in exchange, Russo can have complete and official control of the local. Kilcoyne, Kovaric, Brewster, and everyone else in the room knows what kind of a man Russo is, but the only one who will dare call him a thug is a boy, Charlie Hacker. When Charlie insults Russo, one of the mobster’s men slugs the boy in the stomach before tossing him out of the room. Kilcoyne makes the deal with the devil. Soon thereafter, Kilcoyne receives a stark reminder of the price he has just paid: Charlie Hacker, tossed from a moving car onto his hotel doorstep, his eyes and face horribly burned by acid.
When Kilcoyne meets with representatives of the national union (his former supporter, Irving Werner, among them), they are furious about the deal Kilcoyne has made. They would not have agreed to give away part of a reputable union to a man who would maim a young boy, and they demand that Kilcoyne withdraw his name from the ballot for national office.
Desperate, Kilcoyne uses whatever is at his disposal to survive. He asks the assembled board members why the union would be so sensitive about being associated with Russo when it has no problem with having a communist in its ranks. With feigned shock, they ask Kilcoyne to explain himself. He eyes Irving Werner.
Werner had long ago revealed that he had been a full-fledged member of the Communist Party for two years—two wasted years that he later greatly regretted. Kilcoyne has never before considered this information important. But now it gives him a weapon, and he uses it. The union president, displaying more concern for Werner than for even the union, refuses to risk disgracing his loyal employee and friend. Kilcoyne is allowed to remain on the ballot and wins the election.
At a party celebrating Kilcoyne’s victory, a disillusioned Andy Kovaric raises his voice—and his fists—in protest. He beats Tony Russo to the ground and admonishes his co-workers, “These two guys are gonna rob you blind and you’re holding a big celebration over it!” As he leaves, he has somewhat gentler and sadder words for his good friend, Gabe Brewster: “Everything costs. Everything has a tag. Selling out Werner, that kid losing his eyes … that’s too much to pay.”
Back in the present, Gabe Brewster testifies before the Senate committee about the day he broke from the union and from Bill Kilcoyne.
Flashback: Kilcoyne receives the distressing news that someone has broken into the union offices and stolen incriminating files. With Brewster as witness, Kilcoyne gives Russo the go-ahead to retrieve those files by any means necessary. Russo returns to Kilcoyne’s office with the stolen files and reports having shot the thief in the back and dumped his body in the river. He tosses a memento onto Kilcoyne’s desk—Andy Kovaric’s trademark fedora.
Before Kilcoyne can even fully process what has happened, Brewster bursts into the office to share the news that Kovaric’s body has been found floating in the river. Then he sees the hat on Kovaric’s desk. Kilcoyne threatens to frame Brewster for the crime and suggests that he disappear. Brewster takes this advice.
The Senate hearing resumes and, despite what had seemed incriminating testimony, Kilcoyne survives unscathed. After everyone else leaves, Irving Werner tells Kilcoyne, “One day, they are going to get you. You never cared about the union. All you ever cared about was Kilcoyne.”
“Kilcoyne is the union,” he responds, walking out of the room just as free as when he entered.
Notes: Van Heflin, who starred in the feature film version of Serling’s Patterns, had turned down at least ten television offers before agreeing to appear in “The Dark Side of the Earth.” He returned to Playhouse 90 here and turned in a truly masterful performance. “The Rank and File” is one of the underrated gems of the Serling catalog.
“The Rank and File” also provides another example of Serling’s willingness to paint a picture that would seem counter to his own political views. The idea that this play might encourage a negative image of labor unions, a sacred cow of the Democratic Party, did not deter Serling’s narrative in the least. His characters are complex, fully drawn people, not merely symbols. This approach to characterization landed Serling in the middle of yet another controversy after Playhouse 90 aired its final episode, “In the Presence of Mine Enemies.”
“In the Presence of Mine Enemies”
May 18, 1960, 90 min.
Alternate titles/productions/publications:
1. Working titles: “An Illusion of Darkness” and “Epitaph for a Walled City”
2. Remake produced, broadcast premiere on April 20, 1997
Produced by Peter Kortner; directed by Fielder Cook
Lieutenant Lott (Robert Redford) and Rachel Heller (Susan Kohner) in “In the Presence of Mine Enemies.”
Cast: Charles Laughton; Arthur Kennedy; Susan Kohner; Oskar Homolka; George Macready; Sam Jaffe; Robert Redford; Otto Waldis; Bernard Kates; Arline Sax; Celia Lovsky
Synopsis:
In an eastern European country between 1940 and 1943, the conquerors set aside an area of one hundred city blocks and surrounded it with an eight-foot wall. It was called a ghetto, and within its confines five hundred thousand human beings were ground into dust. The people in the story are fictional, but their torment and their tragedy is a matter of record. This is Warsaw.
In the Warsaw ghetto, Rabbi Adam Heller lives with his beautiful young daughter, Rachel; mourns his missing son, Paul; and preaches about the “sanctity of life” while Nazis ship his neighbors off for extermination at Treblinka. As some look for ways to hide and others prepare for armed revolt, he urges his neighbors to use their energy to pray. Soon, one of the rabbi’s own prayers is answered: Paul has escaped from a labor camp and returned. The rabbi’s joy is tempered, however, when he sees that Paul is now consumed by hatred not only for Nazis but for every German and every Pole, whom he blames for having sown the seeds of anti-Semitism long before the German invasion. Even their longtime family friend Josef Chinik is a target of Paul’s animosity. “I have a son who talks like a Nazi,” the rabbi despairs, pleading, “To put on the trappings of the conqueror, this is no salvation. When we stand in front of God, how will He distinguish?”
Anti-Semitism, Nazism, the Holocaust:
“All the Dachaus must remain standing. The Dachaus, the Belsens, the Buchenwalds, the Auschwitzes—all of them. They must remain standing because they are a monument to a moment in time when some men decided to turn the Earth into a graveyard. Into it they shoveled all of their reason, their logic, their knowledge, but worst of all, their conscience. And the moment we forget this, the moment we cease to be haunted by this remembrance, then we become the gravediggers. Something to dwell on and remember, not only in the Twilight Zone but wherever men walk God’s earth.”
—“Death’s-Head Revisited,” The Twilight Zone
Rod Serling stories dealing with anti-Semitism, Nazism, the Holocaust:
“Vertical Deep,” The Storm
“To Wake at Midnight,” Climax!
“The Fateful Pilgrimage,” Appointment with Adventure
“In the Presence of Mine Enemies,” Playhouse 90
“Deaths-Head Revisited,” The Twilight Zone
“He’s Alive,” The Twilight Zone
“Escape Route,” Night Gallery
“The Hate Syndrome,” Insight
The rabbi’s platitudes make no impression, and soon his son will have even more fuel for his hatred: a Nazi soldier, Sergeant Lott, abducts Rachel and delivers her to a Nazi captain to be raped. When Rachel returns after the assault, Paul leaves to take vengeance, killing a German soldier. Searching for the killer, the Nazis come to the Hellers’ tenement, where Chinik confesses to the crime, sacrificing himself for Paul. With Chinik’s body in the stairwell and a distraught mother begging Rabbi Heller to pray for her dead baby, the rabbi retreats from reality. “There is no winter out there, no snow, no night. There is not a dead infant in its mother’s arms, nor is the body of my friend Chinik lying on the stairs. There is … nothing.”
Three months later, Rachel is pregnant with the Nazi captain’s baby, armed revolt is inevitable, and Paul and his father are no closer to reconciling. While Paul is out preparing to fight, Sergeant Lott returns to the Heller apartment and begs forgiveness for his role in Rachel’s rape. “We are not all beasts,” he cries. “Some of us look for beauty. We respond to beauty. Some of us have not forgotten how to love.” He declares his love for Rachel and offers to help her escape before the slaughter begins. Paul returns and learns of this plan and reacts with predictable venom. He forces the rabbi to choose between his son, who is preparing to kill, and saving his daughter’s life. Rabbi Heller offers Lott his forgiveness, and Lott leaves with Rachel.
Paul Heller loads his rifle and leaves to join the revolt. “Faith is a weapon, too,” Rabbi Heller says. Holding his Torah in front of him, he follows his son out into the night.
By the end of the uprising of 1944 the ghetto had been destroyed. Out of five hundred thousand human beings, there were only a handful of survivors. A chapter in human misery had been written in indelible shame and committed to history. Warsaw and its ghetto cannot be forgotten nor can it be forgiven. All that mankind can ever do is point to the few moments of human nobility played out in the one hundred square city blocks … and offer them not as an explanation of the past—but as a reason for the future.
