Of Late I Think of Cliffordville

"Of Late I Think of Cliffordville"
The Twilight Zone episode
Julie Newmar as Miss Devlin
Episode no.	Season 4 Episode 116
Directed by	David Lowell Rich
Written by	Rod Serling (From the short story "Blind Alley" by Malcolm Jameson.)
Production code	4867
Original air date	April 11, 1963
Guest stars
Albert Salmi: William Feathersmith Julie Newmar: Miss Devlin John Anderson: Deidrich Wright King: Hecate Raymond Gibbons: Guy Harmon Clark: John Hugh Sanders: Cronk
Episode chronology
← Previous "The New Exhibit" Next → "The Incredible World of Horace Ford"
List of Twilight Zone episodes

"Of Late I Think of Cliffordville" is an episode of the American television anthology series The Twilight Zone.

Synopsis

William J. Feathersmith, the 75-year-old president of a large corporation, is a self-centered, sadistic boor, always talking of his youth. He is bored with success. Feathersmith talks with the janitor, Mr. Hecate, who comes from the same town, Cliffordville, Indiana. Both Feathersmith and Hecate have been working in the same building for 34 years. Feathersmith dreams of returning to Cliffordville and starting life anew.

He meets the Devil, appearing as "Miss Devlin," in a travel agency in his own building, on the 13th floor. Excited by the implications, Feathersmith offers to sell his soul for the chance to start life over. Unfortunately, Miss Devlin informs him that, because of all the evil deeds he has committed over the course of his life, he's irrevocably bound for Hell, meaning that "she" technically already owns his soul. Unfazed by the implications of this, Miss Devlin proposes that Feathersmith make a monetary payment in the form of almost all his liquidated worth, leaving him with a little over $1,400. Feathersmith agrees, and is soon transported by train to Cliffordville in the year 1910, looking thirty years old.

Back in 1910 Cliffordville, he uses $1,400 to buy 1,400 acres of land which he knows to contain deposits of oil. He forgets, however, that high-power drills to access the oil have not been invented yet. Feathersmith tries to woo the daughter of a rich landowner but is startled that rather than being the beauty he remembers, she's actually quite homely. He tries to "invent" a self-starter for automobiles but doesn't know how to design one. Eventually, Feathersmith realizes that the Devil did not regress his physical age; he is still 75, and merely appears to be thirty, meaning that he will die before he is able to capitalize on his purchase. Feathersmith accuses Miss Devlin of cheating him by altering the past but she retorts that this is all as it was, he just chose to remember it differently. She needles him on how he's lived off the work of others and is unable to create anything himself.

Miss Devlin gives him one chance to go back to the future by boarding another train, but the price of the ticket is $40. Despite having no money left, Feathersmith agrees, selling the deed to his land to a young man in Cliffordville to afford the fare. Feathersmith is transported back to the future, where he discovers that the young man to whom he sold the land is Mr. Hecate. Because of Feathersmith's actions, Hecate is now the president of the corporation, and Feathersmith is his janitor.

Series continuity

• While Satan is often seen in Twilight Zone episodes, this is the only time in the series that Lucifer is depicted as a woman.
• In the scene with where Feathersmith negotiates his way out of Cliffordville, the crates in the alley marked "This End Up" were used as shipping crates for the wax figures in the immediately previous Twilight Zone episode, The New Exhibit.

References

• DeVoe, Bill. (2008). Trivia from The Twilight Zone. Albany, GA: Bear Manor Media. ISBN 978-1593931360
• Grams, Martin. (2008). The Twilight Zone: Unlocking the Door to a Television Classic. Churchville, MD: OTR Publishing. ISBN 978-0970331090

External links

• "Of Late I Think of Cliffordville" at the Internet Movie Database