Speaker 1: You unlock this door with the key of imagination. Beyond
Speaker 1: it is another dimension, a dimension of sound, a dimension
Speaker 1: of sight, a dimension of mind. You're moving into a
Speaker 1: land of both shadow and substance, of things and ideas.
Speaker 1: You've just crossed over into the Twilight Zone.
Speaker 2: As we draw closer to the end of our journey
Speaker 2: through the Fifth Dimension, each episode feels like another reminder
Speaker 2: that even the longest roads eventually run out. One hundred
Speaker 2: and forty three stories, and somehow it's still feels like
Speaker 2: we only just stepped across the threshold, and here on
Speaker 2: the outskirts of the Twilight Zone, I find myself wondering
Speaker 2: is this an experience meant to end where rod Sailing
Speaker 2: left it? Or is it something that wants to keep
Speaker 2: going even after the final episode fades out? A question
Speaker 2: about endings, a question about carrying on and tonight, that
Speaker 2: question sits at the heart of our story. Because we
Speaker 2: meet Jordan Herrick, a journalist, walking into a house filled
Speaker 2: with Egyptian relics and the scent of something ancient. We're
Speaker 2: stepping into a tale about longevity, about the moment life
Speaker 2: stretches beyond its natural borders, and as he approaches the
Speaker 2: swimming pool where his interviewee is emerging. An elderly woman
Speaker 2: rushes towards her and a warning that feels less like
Speaker 2: scolding and more like dread thought.
Speaker 3: I told you to stay in your room. I'm not
Speaker 3: going to stand by. And what should happen this time?
Speaker 4: You will because I say you.
Speaker 2: Tonight we ask the question what is the cost of
Speaker 2: living past a point where life should end? And in
Speaker 2: a universe built on balance, what must be traded to
Speaker 2: stay young forever? But we'll also touch upon how the
Speaker 2: story you're about to hear echoed a tragic truth behind
Speaker 2: the camera. So as Jordan Herrick steps into the twilight zone,
Speaker 2: so the way, except we know something that he doesn't.
Speaker 2: He's about to meet the Queen of the Nile.
Speaker 1: Jordan Herrick, syndicated columbers to whose work appears in more
Speaker 1: than one hundred news page by nature of cynic disbeliever,
Speaker 1: Caught for the moment by a lovely vision. He knows
Speaker 1: the vision he's seen is no dream. She is Pamela Morris,
Speaker 1: renowned movie star whose name is a household word and
Speaker 1: whose face is non millions. But mister Herrick does Matt
Speaker 1: now is that he has also just looked into the
Speaker 1: face of The Twilight.
Speaker 2: Zone, first broadcast on March sixth, nineteen sixty four, written
Speaker 2: by Charles Beaumont and Jerry Sol and directed by John Brown.
Speaker 2: Now usually I mention the writer fas, but tonight I'm
Speaker 2: going to begin with the director for reasons that will
Speaker 2: soon become clear. Tonight we say goodbye to one of
Speaker 2: the Twilight Zone's true architects of atmosphere, John Bram, a
Speaker 2: man who came back for every season of The Twilight Zone.
Speaker 2: His work on the series wasn't just prolific, it was
Speaker 2: consistently quite strong. When Bram was behind the camera, you
Speaker 2: could feel it. So before we move on, it's only
Speaker 2: right to give him a proper send off, a final
Speaker 2: role corps of the worlds that he shaped in the
Speaker 2: fifth Dimension. So if you'll indulge me, here's the full
Speaker 2: roster of John Bram's episodes. In season one, Time Enough
Speaker 2: at Last Judgment Night, the four of Us are Dying,
Speaker 2: Mirror Image and a Nice Place to Visit in season two,
Speaker 2: Mister Dingle, the Strong and shadow Play. In season three,
Speaker 2: Person or Person's Unknown, young Man's Fancy, Season four, The
Speaker 2: New Exhibit, and season five You Drive, and Now Queen
Speaker 2: of the Nile. By the time that John Bram arrived
Speaker 2: at The Twilight Zone, he had already carved out a
Speaker 2: reputation for moody expressionist thrillers. The Lodger, Hangover Square films
Speaker 2: with the shadows were almost as important as the people,
Speaker 2: and television became his home. In the nineteen fifties and sixties.
Speaker 2: He directed well over one hundred episodes across the era's
Speaker 2: great suspense anthologies Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Thriller and of course
Speaker 2: The Twilight Zone. And he had a great gift for atmosphere,
Speaker 2: the tilted angles, the heavy blacks, the sense that something
Speaker 2: just out of frame was breathing. But after that astonishing run,
Speaker 2: the work did began to slow down, and his final feature,
Speaker 2: Hot Rods to Hell, came out in nineteen sixty seven,
Speaker 2: and after a few more television assignments, he quietly stepped
Speaker 2: away from the industry. No memoirs, no rediscovery, no festival retrospectives.
Speaker 2: He simply retired, and he spent his final years in Malibu,
Speaker 2: living a life far quieter than the feverish worlds he
Speaker 2: once conjured on screen For a man who had brought
Speaker 2: such worlds to life. It was a gentle exit, a
Speaker 2: fade out, rather than a final twist. Yet his legacy
Speaker 2: is anything but quiet. He helped to define the look
Speaker 2: of televised suspense and then slipped away into the California Son.
Speaker 2: So John Brown, for your contributions to the Twilight Zone,
Speaker 2: we salute you. Now at this point I would have
Speaker 2: normally already spoken about our episode writer, but I want
Speaker 2: to backtrack for a moment to Rod Sailing's opening narration,
Speaker 2: because by this point in the series, the Rod Sailing
Speaker 2: that I love, the one who steps into the scene
Speaker 2: and interacts with the world and feels like a mysterious
Speaker 2: presence inside the fiction is mostly a memory. And if
Speaker 2: you're new to the show, what I mean is this,
Speaker 2: In those first three seasons, Sailing didn't just inter pu episodes,
Speaker 2: he inhabited them. He's the man quietly reading the newspaper
Speaker 2: in the Potomac Club in back there. He's the silhouette
Speaker 2: drifting into frame in eye of the beholder. And these
Speaker 2: moments are part of what makes Rod Sailing such an
Speaker 2: enigma on screen. Narrators wins unusual at the time, Alfred
Speaker 2: Hitchcock did it every week. But Hitchcock was always Hitchcock, rye, sardonic,
Speaker 2: a little buffoonish. He was a host. But Rod's sailing
Speaker 2: was something else entirely. And in his book Sailing, a
Speaker 2: Journey into the Twilight Zone with TV's Face, visionary writer
Speaker 2: Alan Seppenwall quotes well Tom Elliott, and Tom says, I
Speaker 2: always wonder how much was intentional by him creating himself
Speaker 2: as this figure where you don't know if he's a
Speaker 2: god or a guide or some kind of magical person.
Speaker 2: Hearing Queen of the Nile. Though, we get a different
Speaker 2: kind of sailing moment, which I suppose is iconic in
Speaker 2: its own way, the whip panther sailing standing against the backdrop,
Speaker 2: designed to mimic the scene that we've just watched. And
Speaker 2: in Unlocking the Door to a Television Classic, Martin Graham's
Speaker 2: Junior shed some light on how this particular bit of
Speaker 2: stagecraft came together, and Martin Graham's Junior writes, since Sailing
Speaker 2: could not be on the set for each episode as
Speaker 2: they were being produced, many of his on screen narrations
Speaker 2: were done in batches, with the camera panning to a
Speaker 2: stop as he delivered his lines. In the editing room,
Speaker 2: the film editor would put the two films together, giving
Speaker 2: a seamless appearance that the camera simply spun round to
Speaker 2: the other end of the room, where Sailing supposedly had
Speaker 2: been standing during the entire scene. So back in our story,
Speaker 2: after Pamela Morris drives off from here tip in the pool,
Speaker 2: a pool that you may recognize from several other episodes
Speaker 2: of the Twilight Zone, Jordan Herrick begins to question her
Speaker 2: miss marks.
Speaker 4: Uh, just how old are you? I must say, mister Herrick,
Speaker 4: You are a very direct man. You're not offended. Why
Speaker 4: should I be?
Speaker 5: I have my producers, directors, you have your editors, and
Speaker 5: they're all very demanding people. Besides, a woman in my
Speaker 5: position can't afford to have any secrets.
Speaker 4: Well, I'm certainly relieved to hear that. I was afraid
Speaker 4: you'd be offended. You have nothing to be afraid of you. Yeah,
Speaker 4: that's better.
Speaker 5: Now, why don't you tell me how old you think
Speaker 5: I am?
Speaker 4: Oh? No, that's hardly fair. Oh dude, come on now,
Speaker 4: well you're very beautiful. That wasn't the question. You don't
Speaker 4: look any older now than you did in that painting
Speaker 4: over there.
Speaker 2: The mystery of Pamela Morris' age is what drives this story,
Speaker 2: and she deflects the question by saying how young she
Speaker 2: was in a particular picture, that she's been in the
Speaker 2: business a long time, and this echoes the career of
Speaker 2: the woman who played her. Anne Blythe was thirty six
Speaker 2: at the time of making the episode, and she is
Speaker 2: one of the last luminous links to Hollywood's Golden Age.
Speaker 2: A performer who could move from operatic soprano to film
Speaker 2: nouar menace without even breaking stride, and with her unmistakable
Speaker 2: blue eyes and her voice trained for the concert hall,
Speaker 2: she grew into one of the most versatile talents of
Speaker 2: the nineteen forties and fifties. She was born Anne Marie
Speaker 2: Blythe on August sixteenth, nineteen twenty eight, in Mount Cisco,
Speaker 2: New York, and raised in New York City by her
Speaker 2: mother after her parents divorced, But her talents began to
Speaker 2: block from early. By nine, she was performing with the
Speaker 2: San Carlo Opera Company, and not long after that she
Speaker 2: was a regular voice on radio. Broadway came calling in
Speaker 2: nineteen forty one when she was cast in Watch on
Speaker 2: the Rhyme, a performance that caught the attention of Hollywood
Speaker 2: talent scouts, which then brought her to Universal Pictures. When
Speaker 2: Michael Caters used her for Mildred Pearce in nineteen forty five,
Speaker 2: Blythe was just sixteen years old, yet she delivered one
Speaker 2: of the great villainous turns of the era as Vida Piers,
Speaker 2: the poisonous social climbing daughter who makes Joan Crawford's life
Speaker 2: awaking nightmare, and the role earned her an Academy Award
Speaker 2: nomination and proved she was far more than just a
Speaker 2: pretty face now. Unfortunately, a serious back injury sidelined her
Speaker 2: for a time, but she retained with remarkable rain through
Speaker 2: the late forties and fifties. She moved effortlessly between genres
Speaker 2: dark dramas like Another Part of the Forest, heartfelt domestic
Speaker 2: stories like Our Very Own, and the Grand MGM musicals,
Speaker 2: where her operatic training finally took center stage. Rose Marie
Speaker 2: the Student Prince Kismet. Her final major film, The Helen
Speaker 2: Morgan Story in nineteen fifty seven, paired her with Paul
Speaker 2: Newman in a tragic biographical drama that showed just how
Speaker 2: deep her dramatic instinct tried. But as the studio system faded,
Speaker 2: she shifted gracefully into television and theater, and that's when
Speaker 2: she enters the Twilight Zone. And it's a role that
Speaker 2: plays perfectly to her strengths elegance, poise, but just a
Speaker 2: hint of something dangerous beneath the surface off screen. Blythe
Speaker 2: chose a quieter, steadier life than many of their contemporaries.
Speaker 2: She married doctor James McNulty in nineteen fifty three, raised
Speaker 2: five children, and they stayed together until he passed more
Speaker 2: than fifty years later. Now, unfortunately, when I began work
Speaker 2: on this episode and was still with us, but during
Speaker 2: that time we've lost Anne at the age of ninety eight.
Speaker 2: But before she died, she was the earliest surviving Academy
Speaker 2: Award nominee, and although she had long retired from acting,
Speaker 2: she was also one of the last surviving performers from
Speaker 2: the Golden Age of Hollywood. So and blithe, thank you
Speaker 2: for being gone, Queen of the Nile Raper.
Speaker 1: You must feel very proud have a daughter as famous
Speaker 1: as Paula Mars.
Speaker 4: Mather never did wholly approve of my career.
Speaker 3: Believe me, mister Herrick, I had a little choice in
Speaker 3: the meadow.
Speaker 4: She thinks I'm too headstrong, dedicated. It's the work you
Speaker 4: still are well?
Speaker 6: She always as beautiful as she is right now, all
Speaker 6: this a mother's loyalty.
Speaker 4: As a matter of fact, mister Herrick, it is.
Speaker 1: The truth as from the mother I learned the real
Speaker 1: age of the daughter.
Speaker 4: Isn't it relative? And besides, didn't I promise to reveal
Speaker 4: old to you, mister Herrick.
Speaker 5: Mister Herrick, mother, would you mind seeing if Charlotte has
Speaker 5: things under control in the kitchen?
Speaker 4: Please don't met her missus draper goodbye, mister Herrick, forgive her.
Speaker 4: She's getting old.
Speaker 2: Does a moment early on when Pamela introduces her mother
Speaker 2: to Jordan, and it's one of those deceptively small scenes
Speaker 2: that tells you far more than the script is willing
Speaker 2: to say out loud. There's an unmistakable friction between them,
Speaker 2: attention that see. Yaelovski, who plays Pamela's mother, plays with haunted,
Speaker 2: brittle fragility, as if every word costs her something, and
Speaker 2: Anne Blythe meets that energy with poised in patience, the
Speaker 2: smile of someone who's been managing this situation for far
Speaker 2: too long. And what makes this scene so effective is
Speaker 2: at this point we genuinely don't know where the danger
Speaker 2: is coming from. Is Pamela hide and something, is the
Speaker 2: mother unwell or is the mother the only person in
Speaker 2: the room who actually understands the stakes. The episode lets
Speaker 2: that uncertainty breathe. It doesn't rush to explain, It lets
Speaker 2: the unease settle in the corners of the frame, and
Speaker 2: the staging is perfect, love Sky hovering just a little
Speaker 2: too close, her eyes never leaving Pamela, Pamela's tone shifting
Speaker 2: ever so slightly when she speaks to her, and it's
Speaker 2: a beautifully calibrated moment of creeping dread where the audience
Speaker 2: can feel that something is wrong, but the shape of
Speaker 2: that wrongness hasn't revealed itself yet. And it's one of
Speaker 2: the highlights of this episode for me, because it's the
Speaker 2: first time we sensed the story's true gravity, not in
Speaker 2: the glamour, not in the mythology, but in this strained,
Speaker 2: unsettling relationship between two women bound together by something far darker.
Speaker 2: So why don't we meet the lady who played Pamela's mother.
Speaker 2: Celia Luvsky was born Cecilia Josephina Luvsky in Vienna in
Speaker 2: eighteen ninety seven, the daughter of a Czech opera composer
Speaker 2: and cellist, and she trained at the Austrian Royal Academy
Speaker 2: of Arts and Music and began a career on the
Speaker 2: European stage, moving in avant garde circles in Vienna and Berlin,
Speaker 2: before history and politics pushed her life in a different
Speaker 2: direction and it path crossed with a young actor named
Speaker 2: Peter Lourie, and she became a crucial figure in his
Speaker 2: early career, helping to connect him with director Fritz Lang,
Speaker 2: an introduction that led to m and launched Laurie to
Speaker 2: international fame, and she followed him through exile from Nazi
Speaker 2: Germany to Paris, London, and eventually Hollywood, where they married
Speaker 2: during the production of Hitchcock's The Man Who Knew Too
Speaker 2: Much in nineteen thirty four, though they later divorced. Both
Speaker 2: of their careers were now fairly rooted in the New
Speaker 2: World and in Hollywood. Lovsky reinvented herself as a character
Speaker 2: actress with her distinctive accent, sharp features, and regal bearing,
Speaker 2: and she became a go to presence for roles that
Speaker 2: required age, authority or an air of old world mystery
Speaker 2: across more than forty films and a couple of one
Speaker 2: hundred television appearances. She played aristocrats, matriarchs, mystics, and women
Speaker 2: who seemed to carry centuries in their eyes. And though
Speaker 2: she's only in this episode briefly, she gives her performance
Speaker 2: a real wait. Her fear feels real and lived in
Speaker 2: her knowledge ancient, and her scenes add a tragic mystery
Speaker 2: to the episode's glamour and horror. But perhaps her most
Speaker 2: iconic role arrived a few years later in Star Trek
Speaker 2: in nineteen sixty seven, she appeared as to Power in
Speaker 2: the episode A Mock Time, the Vulcan matriarch who presides
Speaker 2: over Spock's marriage ritual, and it's one of the foundational
Speaker 2: depictions of Vulcan culture in Star Trek, and Luvsky's performance
Speaker 2: is a huge part of why it works. And Lusky
Speaker 2: continued to work steadily into the nineteen seventies, often cast
Speaker 2: as women whose faces seemed to remember another century, and
Speaker 2: she made one of our last major impressions in Soilent
Speaker 2: Green in nineteen seventy three, and Celia died in Los
Speaker 2: Angeles in nineteen seventy nine at the age of eighty two,
Speaker 2: so during their interactions so far, Pamela and Jordan's tone
Speaker 2: may be light and flirtatious, but Jordan is still a journalist,
Speaker 2: a journalist who is looking for answers. So while he
Speaker 2: isn't exactly grilling Pamela, he is gently digging away at
Speaker 2: the mystery of her age.
Speaker 1: Well, you are thirty eight, How could you possibly have
Speaker 1: started a movie.
Speaker 2: Made in nineteen thirty five?
Speaker 4: You know, I can't believe that Jordan Herrick being taken
Speaker 4: in by the printed word, Tony, do you always believe
Speaker 4: everything you read? The movie was Trail's West, Darling. It
Speaker 4: couldn't have been me.
Speaker 5: That would have been ten years old, don't you see?
Speaker 5: It's an old mistake. I've run across as before.
Speaker 1: According to our files, your coastar on that picture was
Speaker 1: John Bradley.
Speaker 4: You were in love with him, ever even met him?
Speaker 4: Your files are never and it does happen, you know,
Speaker 4: nineteen thirty five. You know, I don't think i'd even
Speaker 4: seen a movie yet. We were poor.
Speaker 5: We lived in Ioware. My father's business was failing. I
Speaker 5: wasn't until nineteen forty that I set out for Hollywood.
Speaker 5: Starstruck Girl in my teens, following the Trail blazed by
Speaker 5: so many other hopefuls.
Speaker 4: I was lucky, you must have been.
Speaker 2: So we start to see Pamela laying out the fair
Speaker 2: threads of air trap, not overtly, not aggressively, but with
Speaker 2: a kind of elegant subtlety. She's planting the little pieces
Speaker 2: of bait for Jordan to pick up. And Anne Blyge
Speaker 2: plays this beautifully, because what blitherers doing here is acting
Speaker 2: someone who is acting. Pamela isn't simply being charming, she
Speaker 2: is performing charm. She isn't being vulnerable, She's performing vulnerability.
Speaker 2: Every gesture, every softened glance, every shift in tone is
Speaker 2: part of a carefully engineered persona designed to draw Jordan closer.
Speaker 2: Sometimes she leans into flirtation, but sometimes she lets a
Speaker 2: hint of fragility slip, and sometimes she plays the enigmatic
Speaker 2: starlet who just needs a little understanding, and a blythe
Speaker 2: calibrates all of this with precision. You can see the
Speaker 2: gears turning behind her eyes, even as Jordan can't, and
Speaker 2: it's one of those moments where the audience is allowed
Speaker 2: to feel the seduction before they fully understand the danger.
Speaker 2: A performance within a performance, and one of the reasons
Speaker 2: why this part of the episode still works so well,
Speaker 2: but by the time she plans a kiss on Jordan's lips,
Speaker 2: we're starting to get the idea that this may be
Speaker 2: the kiss of death, and when he is accosted by
Speaker 2: Pamela's mother, the mystery deepens further.
Speaker 4: You must never see her again.
Speaker 3: Why not?
Speaker 4: She's older than you think. Yes, she told me how
Speaker 4: old she was.
Speaker 3: Yes, I know.
Speaker 5: Thirty eight.
Speaker 4: Well isn't that true?
Speaker 3: Mister Herricue wouldn't believe me if I told you how
Speaker 3: old I think she is?
Speaker 4: Do you think?
Speaker 5: Don't you know?
Speaker 4: No? Not really, But you're her mother.
Speaker 6: No, I'm not her mother, I'm her daughter.
Speaker 2: So this revelation that Viola is actually Pamela's daughter does
Speaker 2: nothing to deter Jordan from returning later for his date
Speaker 2: as Pamela. After all, what is the most likely that
Speaker 2: Pamela does somehow low younger than her mother, or that
Speaker 2: Viola is old and losing her mind, which, of course
Speaker 2: is the narrative that Pamela tries to push. But while
Speaker 2: Jordan goes to get ready for his date, let's meet
Speaker 2: the man who played them, Lee Phillips, who was born
Speaker 2: Leon Friedman in New York in nineteen twenty seven is
Speaker 2: one of those familiar faces from mid century television who
Speaker 2: quietly became something even more influential behind the camera. For
Speaker 2: Twilight Zone fans, he has the distinction of appearing in
Speaker 2: two very different episodes. He appeared in Passage on the
Speaker 2: Lady Ann in season four, and now he returns in
Speaker 2: Queen of the Nile and Phillips began his career as
Speaker 2: an actor fast on Broadway and then in Hollywood. His
Speaker 2: most notable film role came opposite Lana Tayner in Peyton Place,
Speaker 2: and he went on to appear in films such as
Speaker 2: Middle of the Night, as well as television staples including
Speaker 2: The Fugitive, The Outer Limits, Route sixty six, Perry Mason,
Speaker 2: Wagon Train, and Combat. But by the mid nineteen sixties,
Speaker 2: Phillips began moving away from acting and into directing, and
Speaker 2: that became the longer, more defining chapter of his career.
Speaker 2: He directed episodes of Peyton Place and The Dick Van
Speaker 2: Dyke Show, and he later worked across television movies, mini series, mysteries, dramas,
Speaker 2: and comedies. So while many viewers remember him as an actor,
Speaker 2: the industry came to know him as a dependable and
Speaker 2: versatile director, someone who could move comfortably between the Internet,
Speaker 2: character drama and larger network productions, and he continued directing
Speaker 2: into the nineteen nineties, and he died in nineteen ninety
Speaker 2: nine at the age of seventy two. Now, during Jordan's
Speaker 2: date with Pamela that evening, he tells her what mother,
Speaker 2: or as we now suspect, her daughter, said to him.
Speaker 2: Pamela responds with the ease of someone who has told
Speaker 2: this story many times before, spinning a tale about the
Speaker 2: old woman never been quite right since Pamela's father died,
Speaker 2: and it works because it plays on a cruelly believable
Speaker 2: assumption that an elderly woman's warning can be dismissed as confusion.
Speaker 2: And in a situation this fantastical, it is far easier
Speaker 2: to believe Viola is losing her grip than to believe
Speaker 2: that Pamela Morris is somehow outliving her own child. But
Speaker 2: Jordan's no pushover. He may be drawn in by Pamela,
Speaker 2: but he is still a journalist, and a good journalist
Speaker 2: follows the loose thread, so he puts in a call
Speaker 2: to his editor, Listen.
Speaker 1: I wanted to do something for me get out the
Speaker 1: file on a picture called Queen of the Nile. Which one?
Speaker 4: What do you mean which one?
Speaker 7: You're a little young for this. They made two of them,
Speaker 7: the first one silent. I think, oh, nineteen twenty, maybe
Speaker 7: a little later.
Speaker 4: Oh, I get them both.
Speaker 1: I'll hang on a right.
Speaker 7: Hey you there?
Speaker 4: Yeah? Uh.
Speaker 7: What was the name of the girl who starred in
Speaker 7: the original Constance Taylor? Anyway, she started most of it.
Speaker 7: There was some kind of an accident during the last
Speaker 7: day of shooting, cave in in a tomb in Egypt somewhere.
Speaker 4: I never found her, never found her.
Speaker 7: Oh, it was the end of a very promising career.
Speaker 7: As a matter of fact, I met Constance Taylor when
Speaker 7: I was about your age. She was an extraordinary woman.
Speaker 7: How do you mean extraordinary? Well, she was ageless. She'd
Speaker 7: been reigning beauty in the days of the floor Dora girls.
Speaker 7: That was a little before your time, Georgie. She was
Speaker 7: real Femvee Todd. She'd been married half a dozen times.
Speaker 7: For the accident in Egypt.
Speaker 4: This sounds like Pamela Mars, the same, same.
Speaker 7: History, very much the same. As matter of fact, Yeah,
Speaker 7: you got a picture of this tailor girl?
Speaker 4: Yeah? All right, Compare it to a picture of.
Speaker 2: Pamela Morris, and there it is. Pamela Morris has been
Speaker 2: reinventing herself every few years, faking her own death and
Speaker 2: then reappearing as a fresh new star. And it's an
Speaker 2: elegant little system until she gets careless because starring in
Speaker 2: two versions of Queen of the Nile may have been
Speaker 2: one resurrection too many. Now, if we go looking for
Speaker 2: real world parallels to Queen of the Nile, stories of
Speaker 2: people claiming to be younger than they are, or or
Speaker 2: stretching their lives beyond what seems possible, those stories are
Speaker 2: out there. Human beings have always been obsessed with cheating time,
Speaker 2: and history is full of people who have tried to
Speaker 2: live forever, or at least pretend that they have now.
Speaker 2: Over in the After Hours Club, one of the members,
Speaker 2: Tom Phillips, made me aware of the story of Mele Oberon.
Speaker 2: So thank you, Tom, because if you're looking for a
Speaker 2: real world analog to Pamela Morris, a glamorous actress whose
Speaker 2: public identity was a carefully maintained illusion, you don't have
Speaker 2: to look to myth, legend or ancient Egypt. You only
Speaker 2: have to look to Hollywood in the nineteen thirties and
Speaker 2: forties and a woman named mel Oberon, and her life
Speaker 2: is one of the most striking examples of a performer
Speaker 2: who lived inside a fiction of age, identity, and origin.
Speaker 2: Born in Bombay in nineteen eleven to a mother of
Speaker 2: mixed Sri Lankan and Marie heritage, she grew up in
Speaker 2: a world where the truth of her background would have
Speaker 2: barred her from the very career she dreamed of, so
Speaker 2: when she arrived in England and later Hollywood, the studios
Speaker 2: built her a new biography, one that erased her heritage,
Speaker 2: rewrote her childhood, and shaved years off her age. She
Speaker 2: became mele Oberon, Tasmanian born aristocrat, a woman with a
Speaker 2: conveniently vague past and a perfectly marketable complexion. Her real
Speaker 2: mother was publicly recast as her maid, her birthplace was
Speaker 2: relocated thousands of miles away, and her age was quietly
Speaker 2: adjusted to keep her eternally young, and she maintained this
Speaker 2: illusion for decades. Even later in life, she denied her
Speaker 2: true heritage, and denied her true birthplace, and denied the
Speaker 2: age that would have placed her well beyond the engineer
Speaker 2: roles that she continued to play. Photographers were instructed to
Speaker 2: avoid certain angles because of scarring from a childhood accident.
Speaker 2: Publicists were told never to mention her early years. Her
Speaker 2: entire persona was a kind of Hollywood immortality, not eternal life,
Speaker 2: but eternal youth. And it wasn't until after her death
Speaker 2: in nineteen seventy nine that the truth fully emerged and
Speaker 2: the carefully constructed mythology finally dissolved. So thank you Tom
Speaker 2: for that piece of trivia.
Speaker 6: Well it's all true, mister Herrick, it's away true, but
Speaker 6: don't show it to it leave here at once, he says. Fellah, yes, yes, please,
Speaker 6: mister Herrick. You don't know how it is. She had
Speaker 6: many different names.
Speaker 4: But she herself hasn't changed in forty years. Forty years.
Speaker 6: At least seventy years, the total sum of my life.
Speaker 4: Can you imagine what it was like to see it all, this.
Speaker 3: So fresh and beautiful, while my merrored image grew see
Speaker 3: it and yellow with age.
Speaker 4: How old is she really? She's age less now.
Speaker 2: The Scarab beetle was one of the most powerful symbols
Speaker 2: in ancient Egypt. To the Egyptians, this small creature wasn't
Speaker 2: just an insect. It was a living emblem of creation
Speaker 2: and rebirth. They watched the dung beetle roll its sphere
Speaker 2: across the sand burier, and later saw young beetles emerge
Speaker 2: as if from nowhere. It looked like life being created
Speaker 2: out of nothing, and that simple observation became a metaphor
Speaker 2: for the rising Sun. The god Kepri, who renewed the
Speaker 2: world each morning, was often depicted as a scarab, pushing
Speaker 2: the sun across the sky, just as the beetle pushed
Speaker 2: its ball across the earth, And when you look at
Speaker 2: Queen of the Nile, the symbolism becomes almost too perfect.
Speaker 2: The scarab was a sacred emblem of balance, of death
Speaker 2: giving way to life, of the sun, dying each night
Speaker 2: and rising again each morning, and Pamela Morris embodied a
Speaker 2: twisted version of that cycle, a life renewed not through
Speaker 2: divine order, but through predation, a rebath that comes at
Speaker 2: the cost of others. The Egyptians saw the scarab as
Speaker 2: a reminder that creation and renewal were part of the
Speaker 2: universe's rhythm, but Pamela represents what happens when someone tries
Speaker 2: to break that rhythm and claim eternity. For themselves. My friends,
Speaker 2: we are almost at the conclusion of our episode, but
Speaker 2: tonight we have to say goodbye to one of the
Speaker 2: Twilight Zone's true shining lights, the great Charles Beaumont. Now,
Speaker 2: while the episode is credited to Beaumont, Mark Zickrey spoke
Speaker 2: to Jerry Saul in The Twilight Zone Companion, who explains
Speaker 2: what did happen, and he says he was in bad
Speaker 2: shape at this time. It was I who suggested it.
Speaker 2: I had a scarabring many years ago. I knew that
Speaker 2: the scarab was the symbol of fertility and immortality in
Speaker 2: Egyptian times. So I said, Chuck, let's have this woman
Speaker 2: where this scarab ring it gives her immortality. After about
Speaker 2: half an hour we had the story worked out. I
Speaker 2: just went home and did it, sent it in and
Speaker 2: they shot it exactly the way I wrote it. And
Speaker 2: Martin Graham's junior also chimes in in unlocking the door
Speaker 2: to a television classic. He says, while Charles Beaumont is
Speaker 2: credited on the screen for writing the teleplay every word,
Speaker 2: that the script was composed by Jerry Saul. Beaumont was
Speaker 2: very ill by this time, and Saul insisted on leaving
Speaker 2: his name off the script, so Beaumont and later his
Speaker 2: widow would receive the residuals so wonderful gesture by Jerry Saul.
Speaker 2: But if you've been with us throughout Charles Beaumont's work,
Speaker 2: you'll know that the shadow of his illness has been
Speaker 2: with us for some time, an ever present specter, slowly
Speaker 2: dimming one of the Twilight Zone's brightest minds. And while
Speaker 2: Queen of the Now carries his name, the truth is
Speaker 2: we've been losing Boumon, piece by piece, story by story.
Speaker 2: He may have sparked the idea with Jerry Saul, but
Speaker 2: by this point we have to acknowledge that the script,
Speaker 2: the craft, the structure, the execution is really souls. But
Speaker 2: even so, we can't let Charles Beaumont slip away from
Speaker 2: these airwaves without pausing to say something far more important.
Speaker 2: Thank you, Thank you Charles for the never ending dream
Speaker 2: where the amusement parks, screaming never stops, and the catgirl
Speaker 2: waits for a heart to finally quit beating, For the
Speaker 2: silent eternity of three astronauts touching down on an Earth
Speaker 2: that isn't Earth, where the people are frozen like marble
Speaker 2: statues trapped in a permanent, beautiful grave yard of their
Speaker 2: own desires. You gave us the history professor who never ages,
Speaker 2: carrying the dust of three thousand years in his eyes,
Speaker 2: proving that living forever is just another way to die.
Speaker 2: You gave us the small time hood who thought he'd
Speaker 2: made a big girl's roulette wheels a perfect winning streak,
Speaker 2: only to realize that a heaven where you get everything
Speaker 2: you want is actually hell. The man on death throat,
Speaker 2: trapped in a recurring nightmare, screaming to the jury that
Speaker 2: they're just figments of his imagination. The drifter stepping into
Speaker 2: dead gangster's shoes and stepping directly to his fatal destiny.
Speaker 2: Charles Beaumont saw the future. He saw the corporate machine
Speaker 2: trying to pace the same face on everyone. When he
Speaker 2: warned us in number twelve, looks just like Hugh, the
Speaker 2: beauty is the trap and the conformity is the knife.
Speaker 2: He gave us Talkie Tina whispering from the dark stairs.
Speaker 2: My name is Talkie Tina, and you better be nice
Speaker 2: to me. They called him the magic Man, and it
Speaker 2: wasn't just a nickname. But the fire ben too hot,
Speaker 2: and the clock ran too fast. But the light never
Speaker 2: went out, and the star didn't dim. It exploded, and
Speaker 2: it lit up twenty two corners of the fifth dimension,
Speaker 2: and those shadows remain on our screens to this day.
Speaker 2: Charles Beaumont, thank you for being our magic man.
Speaker 4: Don't you think it's time we had it? In that
Speaker 4: honest talk?
Speaker 1: What is it?
Speaker 4: You want money? No, just the truth, and you shall
Speaker 4: have it.
Speaker 2: Jordan finally confronts Pamela, and in that moment she's painted
Speaker 2: into a corner, the glamour slips, the facade cracks, and
Speaker 2: she can no longer deny the evidence he's uncovered, and
Speaker 2: her response is as smooth as it is chilling, with
Speaker 2: the same effortless charm she used to draw him in.
Speaker 2: She slips a sedative into his drink, guiding him gently
Speaker 2: towards helplessness, and once he's weakened, the performance ends. Pamela
Speaker 2: retrieves the scarab, that ancient emblem of rebait and renewal,
Speaker 2: and places it on Jordan's chest, and what follows next
Speaker 2: is probably the episode's most unsettling image. The scarab begins
Speaker 2: its work draining his vitality until the man who walked
Speaker 2: into her home full of curiosity and confidence, is reduced
Speaker 2: to a lifeless husk. It's the moment that the truth
Speaker 2: of Pamela Morris is finally laid bare and the cost
Speaker 2: of her attache or beauty becomes horrifyingly clear. So all
Speaker 2: that's left for us to do is to conduct the
Speaker 2: post morton. I've had quite a journey with Queen of
Speaker 2: the Nile. I think that three principal performances are strong
Speaker 2: and taken on their own. They're probably the episode's greatest asset.
Speaker 2: But the sad irony is that this episode, written by
Speaker 2: Jerry Saul after a brief conversation with Charles Beaumont, yet
Speaker 2: credited to Beaumont, feels like the shadow of something Beaumont
Speaker 2: himself wrote in Fall. Long Live Walter Jamison. Long Live
Speaker 2: Walter Jamison is Beaumont at full power in twenty two minutes.
Speaker 2: It gives us a tragedy in which every character is
Speaker 2: wounded by Jamison's immortality. Jamison himself is half enthralled by
Speaker 2: eternal life and half imprisoned within it, unable to surrender
Speaker 2: what has alreadyllowed him out. The father of his latest
Speaker 2: bride is confronted with the terror of age in his
Speaker 2: own reflection, while the bride herself watches the man she
Speaker 2: loves collapse into dust, struck down by a former wife
Speaker 2: left embittered by time. That is real pathos in all
Speaker 2: of that, something Queen of the Nile never quite finds.
Speaker 2: Pamela Morris, by contrast, seems to want immortality simply because
Speaker 2: she wants it. She drains the life from her victims
Speaker 2: in order to remain young, But the episode never really
Speaker 2: let us understand what that immortality means to her beyond
Speaker 2: her appetite for it. She functions less as a tragic
Speaker 2: figure than as a straightforward predator. Perhaps that's fine, sometimes
Speaker 2: a monster can simply be a monster, or perhaps that
Speaker 2: is the point. The cost of her immortality has been
Speaker 2: her humanity. She simply doesn't care, But making her a
Speaker 2: female actress in an industry obsessed with youth feels like
Speaker 2: an obvious target that is missed. Beaumont had already explored beauty, conformity,
Speaker 2: and image in Number twelve Looks Just Like You, So
Speaker 2: those themes were already alive in the culture, and this
Speaker 2: would have been a good place to revisit them. But
Speaker 2: they don't, and as a result, the episode ends up
Speaker 2: feeling like Jordan's corpse after the Scarab has fed on it, drained,
Speaker 2: with only the shape left behind. Now, no one is
Speaker 2: especially to blame for that. Beaumont's contribution was unfortunately minimal,
Speaker 2: and as we've previously mentioned, Jerry Salta in the script
Speaker 2: around quickly and then generously allowed Beaumont to receive the
Speaker 2: credit so that his family could benefit. And there's so
Speaker 2: much decency in that gesture that it becomes difficult to
Speaker 2: be too harsh on the finished episode. And I think
Speaker 2: as I've watched it again and again to prepare for this,
Speaker 2: some of the perceived floors have melted away. Sometimes a
Speaker 2: story can just be a story. There's no responsibility there
Speaker 2: to always have that subtext. And taken on those terms,
Speaker 2: it's a decent enough watch and one that I came
Speaker 2: to quite like. But I suppose the saddest part of
Speaker 2: it for me is it's not the final Charles Beaumont
Speaker 2: credit that I would have wished for. But there is
Speaker 2: a strange consolation in that this isn't the sounds of
Speaker 2: a great talent fading. It's just an echo cast by circumstance,
Speaker 2: and perhaps that is its strange value set beside the
Speaker 2: work Beaumont truly made his own. It reminds us how
Speaker 2: brightly he could burn. If this episode is a dim Twilight,
Speaker 2: it only throws his real brilliance into sharper relief, like
Speaker 2: the last light on the horizon, proving how glorious the
Speaker 2: now vanished so on once was you.
Speaker 4: Must be mister Jetson.
Speaker 1: Yes, I call the other day.
Speaker 4: And I told you to come out when you could.
Speaker 4: Did you think I forget?
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 4: We love coffee in the living room.
Speaker 1: Everybody knows Pamela Morris, the beautiful and eternally young movie star,
Speaker 1: or does she have another name, even more famous, an
Speaker 1: Egyptian name from centuries past. It's best not to be
Speaker 1: too curious, as you wind up like Jordan Herrick, a
Speaker 1: pile of dust and all clothing discarded in the endless
Speaker 1: eternity of the Twilight Zone.
Speaker 2: So there we go. Queen of the Nile another episode
Speaker 2: of our list. I think we might only have thirteen
Speaker 2: to go after this. I'm not too sure, but if
Speaker 2: you want to get your thoughts about Queen of the
Speaker 2: Nile onto the next podcast, then maybe send me some thoughts.
Speaker 2: By the fifth of August to Tom at the twilight
Speaker 2: Zone podcast dot com and I will put your thoughts
Speaker 2: onto the show. So if you head my catch up
Speaker 2: episode last time, you know that I'm headed to Binghamton
Speaker 2: in August where I will be delivering an episode of
Speaker 2: the twilight Zone podcast live looking at the episode the
Speaker 2: Masks and that will be on stage there. So if
Speaker 2: you're going to Binghamton, make sure you seek me out
Speaker 2: because I would love to meet you and I really
Speaker 2: can't wait. So if you want to get your tickets,
Speaker 2: go to Rodsailing dot com and tell them that the
Speaker 2: twilight Zone Podcast sent you. Okay, so that's enough for me.
Speaker 2: Let's go over to rod Sailing to find out what's
Speaker 2: coming up next.
Speaker 1: And now, mister Serling, next time art we do a
Speaker 1: little biting of the hand that feeds and we tell
Speaker 1: you a delightfully and that has to do with television.
Speaker 1: Not normal television, mind you, but a wacky tale about
Speaker 1: a TV set that predicts the future. It's written by
Speaker 1: Martin Glosmith and stars three eminently talented people who make
Speaker 1: their first visit to the Zone, John Bondeo, William Demmerz
Speaker 1: and Sterling Holloway. And then Twilights next time, what's in
Speaker 1: the box