The Dummy
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“The Dummy” is an episode of the American television anthology series The Twilight Zone.
[edit] Details
- Episode number: 98
- Season: 3
- Production code: 4826
- Original air date: May 4, 1962
- Writer: Rod Serling, based on an unwritten story by Lee Polk
- Director: Abner Biberman
- Producer: Buck Houghton
- Director of photography: George T. Clemens
- Music: Stock
[edit] Cast
- Jerry Etherson: Cliff Robertson
- Frank: Frank Sutton
- Willie (as ventriloquist): George Murdock
- Georgie: John Harmon
- Noreen: Sandra Warner
- M.C.: Rudy Dolan
- Voice of Willie: Cliff Robertson
- Doorkeeper: Ralph Manza
- Chorus Girl: Bethelynn Grey
- Chorus Girl: Edy Williams
[edit] Synopsis
The episode opens with Jerry Etherson, a ventriloquist, and his dummy Willie in the middle of one of his acts, somewhere in New York City. After the act he goes back to his dressing room and begins to drink from a liquor bottle he'd had hidden in a drawer. His agent comes in and is upset that he's drinking again. He tells his agent that Willie is alive and that he is at the mercy of the dummy. The agent doesn't believe him and thinks he might need psychiatric help. Jerry decides that he is going to perform with a different dummy for his next act (and all acts in the future) and locks Willie in a trunk. After the second act, his agent tells him that he's quitting, but Jerry says he's leaving to go to another city and try to get away from Willie. His agent tells him that it doesn't matter where he goes he'll still have this delusion if he doesn't deal with it here and now. While he's standing outside of the back door to the theater, he hears faint whispers of Willie's voice. He sees the dummy's shadow and continues to hear his voice until a coworker from the theater walks up and asks if anything is wrong. Jerry invites her to get a coffee, but does it nervously and eccentrically, thereby causing the woman to become frightened and run away. As soon as she leaves, he hears Willie's voice again. He runs back into the theater. He goes into the dark dressing room and opens the trunk and throws the dummy on the floor, smashing it. But when he turns on the light, he realizes that he smashed the fake dummy that he was going to use in his future acts. He can't understand how he could've been mistaken. He sees Willie sitting on the chair, laughing. Jerry asks how he can be real when he's made of wood and Willie tells him that it was he, Jerry, who made him alive. The scene cuts to a stage in Kansas City announcing that the next act will be "Jerry & Willie" and we see the beginning of the act from the back of the man that walked out. As the camera rotates to the front it is revealed that the man is actually Willie, and that he is holding a dummy that looks just like Jerry.
[edit] Trivia
Influenced by a 1945 British film entitled Dead of Night, in which Michael Redgrave played a ventriloquist convinced that his dummy was coming evilly to life. Further inspiration was taken from an episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents entitled The Glass Eye, in which Jessica Tandy plays a woman who falls for a handsome ventriloquist (played by Billy Barty), only to find that the ventriloquist is in fact the dummy, while the hideous dummy is the actual ventriloquist.
R.L. Stine's Goosebumps series features a saga of several books/stories (the first of which is entitled Night of the Living Dummy) with a similar premise.
Abner Biberman also directed "Number Twelve Looks Just Like You".
Burgess Meredith, who was the voice of Willie, was also in the 1978 movie Magic which was obviously inspired by "The Dummy".
This episode may have helped to inspire one of Nickelodeon's Jimmy Neutron episodes. Jimmy (a boy genius) does not think his dad is funny and takes his father's new hobby, a ventriloquist dummy, and installs a microchip to make the mind nearest to the dummy very funny. The dummy then wants to become 'a real boy' and tries to sap Hugh of his life energy.
