It's a Small World

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It's probably hard for 21st–century viewers to imagine Robert Duvall playing a timid character, but that is exactly what he did in the episode of Twilight Zone that premiered on this night in 1963, "Miniature."

It was still early in Duvall's career. He had made his movie debut the year before in "To Kill a Mockingbird," and he had made guest appearances on TV series for a few years. Duvall hadn't really been typecast yet, I suppose, unless it was as odd characters, and his character in "Miniature" certainly was odd.

He lived with a domineering mother, and he had just lost his job. I'm sure you know the type — thoroughly bewildered by the world around him, a misfit. You've probably seen such a person in movies and on TV shows hundreds of times and encountered them in your daily life on countless occasions. Perhaps you are such a person.

I would call Duvall's character zombielike, but he didn't fit the zombie image that we have today. Zombies weren't really new in 1963 — they had existed in literature for a long time — but they were sort of new to the screen, both large and small. At least, they were still evolving, but they probably didn't achieve the form we know today until "Night of the Living Dead" was released a few years later.

Duvall's character didn't stagger around in a kind of daze, but he might as well have. He was totally lacking in emotion no matter what happened. He lost his job; his boss told him that he didn't fit in. No response, which proved his boss' point. He was never unpleasant; he was always polite, but he showed no signs of being an ordinary guy. He never smiled or interacted with his co–workers. He was a square peg in a round hole.

He came home to his mother and her smothering ways. Again no response. He was never unpleasant to her, either. In fact, he showed no emotion of any kind.

Such a person usually has someone who tries to help in some way. In Duvall's case it was his sister (Barbara Barrie). She wanted to help him find a nice girl and get married — and move out of his mother's house. But he stayed where he was.

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That didn't mean he didn't crave an escape — and he found a suitably unlikely one in the Twilight Zone.

Actually, it was in a museum he frequented, not in search of permanent escape so much as temporary solitude. There he found a dollhouse with the tiny figure of a woman (Claire Griswold) seated behind a piano. The figure seemed to be moving, and music could be heard.

But a guard assured him that the figure couldn't possibly have moved. It was carved out of wood.

He returned to the museum the next day and made a beeline for the dollhouse. But everything was changed. The woman was no longer seated behind the piano. She was upstairs, preparing for an evening out with a male figure. Duvall watched the scene play out as the two went out the door and disappeared from view.

Duvall kept returning to the museum and even began talking to the figure. She never responded to him, but he kept talking. And he observed.

His family became suspicious, and his sister followed him one day to see what he was doing. She found him at the dollhouse. When she got him away from the museum, she persuaded him to go on a blind date, but it didn't work out.

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The museum guard was willing to overlook Duvall's idiosyncratic behavior, but then one day Duvall saw the male figure being abusive to the female figure, and he shattered the glass that separated him from the dollhouse. That was too much, and Duvall was taken in for medical treatment. His psychiatrist (William Windom, who also made his movie debut in "To Kill a Mockingbird"), tried to convince him that he had been having hallucinations, but Duvall insisted that wasn't true.

Eventually, though, Duvall's character concluded that the way to be released would be to give the psychiatrist what he wanted so he did what he had to do to convince the doctor that he was cured.

But what Duvall wanted was to go back to the museum, which he did at his first opportunity.

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He hid in the museum until it closed, then he came out from hiding and went straight to the dollhouse.

By that time, his family had figured out what was going on, and they went to the museum with the psychiatrist in search of Duvall. But they never found him.

The guard did, but he didn't say anything — because he saw Duvall in the dollhouse with the female he had tried to defend, and he knew no one would believe him.

It was perhaps the most moving episode in Twilight Zone's five–season run — and a great example of Duvall's remarkable acting range.

No Way Out

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The Major (William Windom): Hey, wait a minute. Wait a minute. Who are you? What are you doing here? Is there a circus around here somewhere?

The Clown (Murray Matheson): A circus? (laughs) Yeah. Yeah, there must be a circus. A clown, a circus. An officer, a war. That's logic, isn't it? But it doesn't figure at all. Not at all.

The Major: Why not?

The Clown: Because there is no circus, and there is no war.

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When I was about 15, my brother (who must have been about 12 at the time) was in a play at the college where my father was a religion professor.

It was called "Six Characters in Search of an Author," and it had a couple of children's parts — which the director filled with faculty children. My brother was one of those children. It wasn't a demanding role. He had no lines and only limited action. Mostly he was required to sit on stage — come to think of it, I suppose asking a 12–year–old to sit quietly on stage for a couple of hours is pretty demanding. I don't remember if the girl had any lines.

I saw the play several times, mostly on the campus but once when the play was chosen as a finalist in a national collegiate competition, and I accompanied my mother and brother to Fort Worth, Texas, which was where the competition was being held. My grandmother lived in Dallas, and she went with us to the competition.

The episode of the Twilight Zone that first aired on this night in 1961 drew the inspiration for its title — "Five Characters in Search of an Exit" — from the title of that play, but it bore no other similarity.

Nevertheless I always think of that play when I see that episode, and I remember that competition well. Each college brought its costumes and sets and performed the plays at the competition. I had seen my brother's play several times, as I say, and I almost knew the script by heart. The cast did a good job at the competition, but I found it more interesting to see the plays I hadn't seen before. There was a play each morning, a play each afternoon and a play each evening.

I remember the feeling of seeing people in the audience whom I had watched perform on stage earlier that day or perhaps the day before. Everyone who wasn't performing was in the audience. I guess they all wanted to check out their competition.

My memory is that the competition went on for about three or four days. Then a winner was announced. My brother's play didn't win, but my mother and grandmother sure kicked up a fuss over how good the play had been (it was) and how proud they were of my brother. I was, too.

But I digress.

The Twilight Zone episode starred William Windom. He had no name in the episode. He was only known as The Major.

(Actually, that was something else the Twilight Zone episode borrowed from the play. The characters in the play had no names, either. They were known by what they were, not who they were.)

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The Major awoke from a kind of sleep to find himself in some kind of cylindrical room with four companions — a clown, a hobo, a ballerina and a bagpipe player. He did not know who he was or how he got there, but he was determined to escape his confinement; the others, having been there longer, were more resigned to the fact that there was no way out. At least, they had not found one.

The fact that none could remember a time before they found themselves in the cylindrical room bothered them very much. So did the fact that they did not know who they were. Most of us would probably find that troubling as well.

"Perhaps we're the unloved," the Ballerina (Susan Harrison) mused.

They had also grown accustomed to an occasional loud clanging sound that tended to knock them from their feet.

Nevertheless the Major kept trying to find a way out, but he was finally forced to conclude that there was no way out.

And that led him to the conclusion that the five were in hell.

That didn't prevent him from continuing his quest for a way out. He hit upon the idea that they should form a human tower with the person at the top trying to climb over and out of the cylinder. That sounded plausible to the others so they formed such a tower — and it seemed they were about to succeed when that loud clanging sound was heard, and the human tower collapsed.

But they had been so close, and the major was more determined than ever. He fashioned a hook out of pieces of clothing and his sword, then the group re–formed the tower with the major at the top. His plan seemed to work. With the hook, he got to the rim of the cylinder and then tumbled off.

At that point, the viewer could see what had been happening outside the cylinder. A young girl picked up a doll dressed like a major. It was in a snow bank next to a barrel, part of a Christmas toy collection drive for a girls' orphanage.

That clanging sound had been the sound of a bell used by the woman who was overseeing the collection barrel. The girl told her a doll had fallen in the snow. The woman told the girl to put it in the barrel with the rest of the dolls.

Then they lamented how slow the drive had been.

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Twilight Zone always did things its way.

And its Christmas episode from this night 55 years ago is a prime example.

By the time I saw it, Twilight Zone was in syndication, and I guess I had seen enough episodes to figure out the ending before I saw it.

But that didn't change the fact that I thought — and still do — that it was one of the most creative Christmas TV episodes I have ever seen. The viewer didn't even know it was a Christmas episode until the final minutes.

Goodbye, William Windom

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" 'To hell with the handkerchief,' said Walter Mitty scornfully. He took one last drag on his cigarette and snapped it away. Then, with that faint, fleeting smile playing about his lips, he faced the firing squad; erect and motionless, proud and disdainful, Walter Mitty the Undefeated, inscrutable to the last."

James Thurber
The Secret Life of Walter Mitty

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Yesterday, when the world was mourning the death of Phyllis Diller, word got out that William Windom had died a few days before.

And that reminded me — as glimpses of Windom in other TV shows and movies always did — of a TV series that only lasted a single season, if that.

My World and Welcome To It.

My mother was a big fan of the show and never missed an episode, which seems ironic to me, considering that my mother resisted my family's purchase of our first TV as long as she could.

But, when I was in elementary school, we got our first one, a black–and–white portable. And not long after that, NBC premiered a sitcom based on the works of James Thurber — My World and Welcome To It.

Mom was an admirer of Thurber's work, as many people were. And Windom didn't actually play Thurber — just a character who was based on him.

Closely based on Thurber.

The show took its title from a collection of Thurber's short stories, and I often thought of the series' plot lines years later when I read Thurber's short story, "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty" (which, I later discovered, was originally published in The New Yorker and later included in the collection of short stories published under the title, "My World — and Welcome To It").

Windom played a definitely Mitty–like character, frequently descending into daydreams and fantasies. The show used what I assumed were many of Thurber's original cartoons in what was a rare blend of animation and live action on commercial TV in the 1960s.

I was just a kid at the time, and that blend really appealed to me. I had seen Mom watching the show, and I began watching it with her. It wasn't long before I got hooked.

Unfortunately, as I say, the viewers of that time never really warmed up to the premise, and that was too bad.

The Emmy Awards recognized the show, naming it the Outstanding Comedy Series in 1970. Windom was honored with an Emmy Award for his work as the lead actor in a comedy series.

The series was canceled after one season, but Windom continued his portrayal of Thurber in a one–man show.

He went on to do other things, of course. Today, I suppose most people remember the decade he spent on Murder, She Wrote, or, perhaps, his appearance in the movie version of "To Kill a Mockingbird" half a century ago.

But I always think of My World and Welcome To It.