A Stop at Willoughby

This entry very much reflects the button-down collar of the 1950's when success was identified with rising in the corporate world. I suspect Serling was reaching deep within himself with recollections of an uncluttered childhood as contrasted with the pressure of TV advertising surrounding a successful writer-executive.

Daly both looks and acts the junior executive part perfectly. And I like the traveling train as a metaphor for time passage. In a sense, Williams must depart the real world train to find the contentment he seeks. One thing to note – a 30-minute time frame doesn't leave much leeway for character development of supporting players, so Williams' "push, push" boss and grasping wife become shorthand caricatures for the pressures he faces. Nonetheless, it's a particularly poignant entry, deftly handled, with what I suspect is near universal appeal.

Of all of the episodes from The Twilight Zone it is this one that seems to stick in my mind most - alongside the episode entitled (I think) 'Terror at 10,000ft'.

Why 'A Stopover at Willoughby' should have such an effect on me I can not really say, but there is something about the idea of a place which you have never actually visited yet you know every street, building, shop, person, even the dogs on the streets that appeals to something deep within - maybe a psychological yearning for a place were you are eternally safe and free from worries. I have often had dreams like that and I guess that is what this episode taps into deeply, as do the very best of the rest of this amazing series.

The other thing that has stayed with me after watching this episode - which was some many moons ago! - is the train conductor saying "Willoughby, this is Willoughby...Willoughby, this is Willoughby..." When I am travelling on a bus (and, occasionally, the train) and it is idling at some stop somewhere I find myself saying these words in my head - now there are not many programmes that have the power to last that long in the brain!

James Daly plays a tired and unhappy businessman named Gart Williams who is stuck in a job he hates, working for an obnoxious man he despises. His wife is decent but equally unsatisfied, and obviously regrets marrying him. Gart takes a train to and from work each day, and becomes obsessed with an idyllic town named Willoughby that he has vivid dreams about, and becomes convinced actually exists, and that he is now determined to get too for good... Classic episode much like earlier 'Walking Distance' is even better, with a most believable performance by Daly as a man who yearns for a simpler life that fate denied him, and will risk all to attain. Will resonate more with older viewers for obvious reasons.

Our protagonist in this Twilight Zone story is James Daly a forty something advertising executive who is really under the pressure from his boss Howard Smith. As Smith is fond of saying it's a 'push push push' business they're in and no room for failure.

On the home front wife Patricia Donahue is tired of being married as she sees it to a failure.

But on that commuter train to their little Eisenhower era palace in Connecticut Daly is suddenly on this 1880s era train coming into a town called Willoughby which he can't recall. It looks like the kind of small town Booth Tarkington might written about with a slower pace of life. Looks ideal.

Daly really makes this episode work with his performance as an every man type character. This could really have worked as a feature film and I could have seen Jack Lemmon in the lead. And Howard Smith is great as the tyrannical boss who loves being a tyrant.

I could just feel for this guy. The fifties ad agency where everyone is expected to spend every waking hour working, trying to come up with some insipid slogan or campaign. The bosses yell, the wives demand, the pressure builds. I have to say that this episode makes me tired. That poor man, doing something for which he is not cut out. And the wife, who in the fifties would have expected to be treated to everything in life. Her price: Marrying him. Anyway, somewhere exists this dreamland, this Willoughby, where things are calm and gentle and there is a band playing. Where stress is not a part of the picture. And we can see that this is still something we long for. But where is it? And why is it always summer. Well, if you're a Twilight Zone fan, you know where Willoughby is.