The Dummy

"The Dummy"
The Twilight Zone episode
Episode no.	Season 3 Episode 33
Directed by	Abner Biberman
Written by	Rod Serling (Based on an unpublished story by Lee Polk.)
Featured music	Stock
Production code	4826
Original air date	May 4, 1962
Guest appearance(s)
Cliff Robertson: Jerry Etherson/Voice of Willie/Voice of Goofy Goggles Frank Sutton: Frank George Murdock: Willie (as ventriloquist) John Harmon: Georgie Sandra Warner : Noreen Rudy Dolan: The M.C. Ralph Manza: Doorman Bethelynn Grey: Chorus Girl Edy Williams: Chorus Girl
Episode chronology

"The Dummy" is episode 98 of the American television anthology series The Twilight Zone starring Cliff Robertson as a ventriloquist. It is not to be confused with a similar episode Caesar and Me, in which Jackie Cooper plays a ventriloquist.

Opening narration

“

You're watching a ventriloquist named Jerry Etherson, a voice-thrower par excellence. His alter ego, sitting atop his lap, is a brash stick of kindling with the sobriquet 'Willy.' In a moment, Mr. Etherson and his knotty-pine partner will be booked in one of the out-of-the-way bistros, that small, dark, intimate place known as the Twilight Zone.

”

Plot

The episode opens with ventriloquist Jerry Etherson (Cliff Robertson) and his dummy Willie in the middle of one of his acts, somewhere in New York City. After the act, Jerry goes back to his dressing room and begins to drink from a liquor bottle he'd hidden in a drawer. His agent, Frank, comes in and is upset that Jerry has resumed drinking. Jerry tells Frank that Willie is alive and frequently talks to him. When Jerry tells the agent that he is at the mercy of the dummy, Frank does not believe Jerry and thinks he might need psychiatric help.

Jerry decides that he is going to perform with a different dummy, "Goofy Goggles", for his next act (and all future acts) and locks Willie in a trunk. After the second act, which is not as successful as the ones with Willie, his agent tells him that he is quitting, but Jerry says he is leaving to go to Kansas City and try to get away from Willie. Frank 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 the back door to the theater, he hears faint whispers of Willie's voice. Jerry 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 drink, but does it nervously and eccentrically, thereby causing the woman to become frightened and run away.

As soon as she leaves, Jerry hears Willie's voice again and runs back into the theater. He goes into the dark dressing room, opens the trunk and throws the dummy on the floor, brutally smashing it. But when he turns on the light, he realizes that he destroyed the Goofy Goggles dummy that he was going to use in his future acts. He can't understand how he could have been mistaken. He sees Willie sitting on the couch, talking to him and laughing at him. 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. Realizing the truth, Jerry lowers his head as Willie cackles crazily.

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 who walked out. As the camera rotates to the front, it is revealed that the man is actually Willie, and he is holding a dummy that looks just like Jerry.

Closing narration

“

What's known in the parlance of the times as the old switcheroo, from boss to blockhead in a few uneasy lessons. And if you're given to nightclubbing on occasion, check this act. It's called Willy and Jerry, and they generally are booked into some of the clubs along the 'Gray Night Way' known as the Twilight Zone.

”

Production notes

Abner Biberman also directed "Number Twelve Looks Just Like You".

The dummy used in this episode to portray "Willie" was originally created in the 1940s by puppetmaker Revello Petee. The same dummy was used later, in the 1964 Twilight Zone episode, "Caesar and Me". The actual original dummy which was used in both episodes had been housed in a private collection in Connecticut since the late 1970s, but now resides in David Copperfield's International Museum and Library of the Conjuring Arts in Las Vegas, NV, along with the Cliff Robertson dummy effigy which appears at the end of this episode. Both puppets were subject to a careful, preservative renovation by American artist and puppet restoration expert Alan Semok.

A figure of Willie can be seen at Disney's Hollywood Studios in the dark corner of a barred off exhibit to the side of one of the elevator exits of the Twilight Zone Tower of Terror ride.

References

DeVoe, Bill. (2008). Trivia from The Twilight Zone. Albany, GA: Bear Manor Media. ISBN 978-1-59393-136-0
Grams, Martin. (2008). The Twilight Zone: Unlocking the Door to a Television Classic. Churchville, MD: OTR Publishing. ISBN 978-0-9703310-9-0

External links

"The Dummy" at the Internet Movie Database
"The Dummy" at TV.com

The Twilight Zone (1959) episodes

Season 1	"Where Is Everybody?" "One for the Angels" "Mr. Denton on Doomsday" "The Sixteen-Millimeter Shrine" "Walking Distance" "Escape Clause" "The Lonely" "Time Enough at Last" "Perchance to Dream" "Judgment Night" "And When the Sky Was Opened" "What You Need" "The Four of Us Are Dying" "Third from the Sun" "I Shot an Arrow into the Air" "The Hitch-Hiker" "The Fever" "The Last Flight" "The Purple Testament" "Elegy" "Mirror Image" "The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street" "A World of Difference" "Long Live Walter Jameson" "People Are Alike All Over" "Execution" "The Big Tall Wish" "A Nice Place to Visit" "Nightmare as a Child" "A Stop at Willoughby" "The Chaser" "A Passage for Trumpet" "Mr. Bevis" "The After Hours" "The Mighty Casey" "A World of His Own"

Season 2	"King Nine Will Not Return" "The Man in the Bottle" "Nervous Man in a Four Dollar Room" "A Thing About Machines" "The Howling Man" "The Eye of the Beholder" "Nick of Time" "The Lateness of the Hour" "The Trouble with Templeton" "A Most Unusual Camera" "The Night of the Meek" "Dust" "Back There" "The Whole Truth" "The Invaders" "A Penny for Your Thoughts" "Twenty Two" "The Odyssey of Flight 33" "Mr. Dingle, the Strong" "Static" "The Prime Mover" "Long Distance Call" "A Hundred Yards Over the Rim" "The Rip Van Winkle Caper" "The Silence" "Shadow Play" "The Mind and the Matter" "Will the Real Martian Please Stand Up?" "The Obsolete Man"

Season 3	"Two" "The Arrival" "The Shelter" "The Passersby" "A Game of Pool" "The Mirror" "The Grave" "It's a Good Life" "Deaths-Head Revisited" "The Midnight Sun" "Still Valley" "The Jungle" "Once Upon a Time" "Five Characters in Search of an Exit" "A Quality of Mercy" "Nothing in the Dark" "One More Pallbearer" "Dead Man's Shoes" "The Hunt" "Showdown with Rance McGrew" "Kick the Can" "A Piano in the House" "The Last Rites of Jeff Myrtlebank" "To Serve Man" "The Fugitive" "Little Girl Lost" "Person or Persons Unknown" "The Little People" "Four O'Clock" "Hocus-Pocus and Frisby" "The Trade-Ins" "The Gift" "The Dummy" "Young Man's Fancy" "I Sing the Body Electric" "Cavender Is Coming" "The Changing of the Guard"

Season 4	"In His Image" "The Thirty-Fathom Grave" "Valley of the Shadow" "He's Alive" "Mute" "Death Ship" "Jess-Belle" "Miniature" "Printer's Devil" "No Time Like the Past" "The Parallel" "I Dream of Genie" "The New Exhibit" "Of Late I Think of Cliffordville" "The Incredible World of Horace Ford" "On Thursday We Leave for Home" "Passage on the Lady Anne" "The Bard"

Season 5	"In Praise of Pip" "Steel" "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet" "A Kind of a Stopwatch" "The Last Night of a Jockey" "Living Doll" "The Old Man in the Cave" "Uncle Simon" "Probe 7, Over and Out" "The 7th Is Made Up of Phantoms" "A Short Drink from a Certain Fountain" "Ninety Years Without Slumbering" "Ring-a-Ding Girl" "You Drive" "The Long Morrow" "The Self-Improvement of Salvadore Ross" "Number 12 Looks Just Like You" "Black Leather Jackets" "Night Call" "From Agnes—With Love" "Spur of the Moment" "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" "Queen of the Nile" "What's in the Box" "The Masks" "I Am the Night—Color Me Black" "Sounds and Silences" "Caesar and Me" "The Jeopardy Room" "Stopover in a Quiet Town" "The Encounter" "Mr. Garrity and the Graves" "The Brain Center at Whipple's" "Come Wander with Me" "The Fear" "The Bewitchin' Pool"

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