Season 1, Episode 4

Written by Rod Serling – Directed by Mitchell Leisen – Starring Ida Lupino, Martin Balsam

An aging actress in unable to accept that Hollywood has moved on without her.

This one leans into a more personal kind of emotion rather than something philosophical like death and fate. It’s less about paranoia or cosmic irony and more about ego, nostalgia, and the fear of becoming irrelevant.

Ida Lupino plays the faded star with a real old Hollywood feel to it. Her emotional swings in this one make me thing of Blanche DuBois from Streetcar Named Desire or Norma Desmond from Sunset Boulevard. She has intensity and this brittleness that makes you think she is going to shatter into a million pieces. She also feels like someone who has taken ownership of the prison they are being held in.

There’s also an undercurrent of commentary about Hollywood itself — how it builds people up, grinds them down, and then quietly replaces them. It’s not subtle, but it doesn’t need to be.

Tonally, this feels like the first episode of the series that brushes up against horror. There is real terror here in the reactions of some of the characters. The final act has an eerie, almost dreamlike quality. And it makes this one more tragic than clever. And it was interesting to see the series stretch into phycological territory rather than try to provide a twist ending.

Twilight Zone Verdict: Good