"Walking Distance," only the fifth episode of "The Twilight Zone" to be broadcast (the day before Halloween, 1959) is easily one of the finest of Rod Serling's contributions to the series. Although it lacks the surprise ending typical of later episodes, it's a personal favorite - precisely because it is more than just another "Twilight Zone" installment whose most memorable characteristic is a twist ending.
Martin Sloan (Gig Young), age 36, is "vice-president in charge of media" for an advertising agency. He pulls up at a rural-looking gas station in an expensive roadster and rudely honks for the attendant. After asking for some routine maintenance, and realizing that he is only about a mile and-a-half from "Homewood," where he grew up, he decides to hike there because it's just "walking distance."
Martin, so overwhelmed by the weight of his successful but high-pressure life, then somehow finds himself catapulted back to the summer of 1934 in Homewood when he was 11 - exactly 25 years before the time of the episode's broadcast. Like many of us, Martin has been longing for the halcyon days of his youth, when the only concerns were where to ride his bike or to play with his friends. That time looks simple and desirable to a man who needs to escape the treadmill of his adult life.
Martin Sloan's own father (in 1934) eventually has to break the news to the adult Martin that he can't remain in the past - that he'll have to try to escape from his oppressive job and adult life in another way - and in his own time period. Martin is not happy about it, but he accepts it.
Martin is, in so many ways, a surrogate for Serling himself. "Homewood" is clearly a stand-in for Binghamton, New York, the small city where Serling was born and raised. Like Sloan, by 1959 he had enjoyed financial rewards and the status of being a successful television writer, but he also undoubtedly felt pressured to produce scripts on a tight schedule. The character of Martin is 36; Serling himself was 35 when he wrote "Walking Distance." He even acknowledged that he was inspired to write the story because he was strolling across the backlot where Twilight Zone was filmed and was struck by its resemblance to the town where he was grew up.
Indeed, Martin is a character Serling seems to have known well. Similar characters appear several times in his oeuvre, beginning with a different "Sloan" - Andy Sloane, the aging executive relentlessly pounded by his boss in Serling's first great success, "Patterns, in 1955. (There was a different character more like Serling himself, Fred Staples, who has to watch Sloane being belittled by their mutual boss.) Martin Sloan also resembles Gart Williams, the executive who likewise seeks an escape from his crushing job in "A Stop at Willoughby," another first season Twilight Zone episode - only Williams wants to escape all the way back to a town in the nineteenth century.
And as Marc Scott Zicree pointed out in "The Twilight Zone Companion," "Walking Distance" is really the middle of a trilogy, along with "Patterns" (which made Serling nationally famous in 1955, when he was just 29) and one of his last great scripts, "They're Tearing Down Tim Riley's Bar," which he wrote in 1970 for "Night Gallery" (though it aired in January, 1971). The first story is about a young, ambitious man on his way up; "Walking Distance" deals with a successful man who nevertheless discovers that life at the top can be stressful and sometimes dispiriting; and the final story is about a man at the end of his career, now on the verge of being jettisoned by his employer and able to find solace only in the bar where he and his friends celebrated the end of World War II.
"Walking Distance" succeeds mainly because all of us, like Martin, at some point turn our minds to nostalgic moments in our own past. Homewood, in high summer 1934, certainly seems like such a place, at least as depicted here. The episode is unusual in that it actually has three snatches of narration by Serling: a brief introduction, and then a highly unusual second one after the act break: "A man can think a lot of thoughts and walk a lot of pavements between afternoon and night. And to a man like Martin Sloan, to whom memory has suddenly become reality, a resolve can come just as clearly and inexorably as stars in the summer night. Martin Sloan is now back in time. And his resolve is to put in a claim to the past."
And it is at that point that he tries to find his parents and to convince them that he is, somehow, their son now grown to adulthood. And this leads to his father's eventual gentle but firm rejection of the adult Martin, telling him that he must leave, and seek satisfaction in his own timeline.
The acting is top notch, especially Gig Young (who always seemed to convey a certain sadness) and Frank Overton as Robert Sloan, Martin's father - quietly authoritative with his deep voice and calm demeanor. If there is a problem, it was in casting of Irene Tedrow as Martin's mother. She was past 50 when the episode was filmed, and seems a tad elderly to be either Martin's mother or Robert's wife. (She was, in fact, more than a decade older than Overton.) But that's a minor quibble in such a finely crafted work.
Still, the best part of the episode is Serling's beautiful, poetic closing narration - full of longing and nostalgia, yet painfully wise, especially for someone just 35, noting that Martin was successful in most things, "but not in the one effort that all men try at some time in their lives - trying to go home again." And also that, "perhaps there'll be an occasion, maybe a summer night sometime, when he'll look up from what he's doing and listen to the distant music of a calliope, and hear the voices and the laughter of the people and the places of his past. And perhaps across his mind there'll flit a little errant wish, that a man might not have to become old, never outgrow the parks and the merry-go-rounds of his youth."
To "hear the voices and laughter of the people and places of his past" is actually an interesting bit of foreshadowing of "Tim Riley's Bar," when Randy Lane - the Serling surrogate in that tale - likewise envisions those people who, for him are all now also 25 year-old memories (in that case, of V-J Day, 1945). Still, perhaps the saddest thing to recall in seeing those episodes today (especially, of course, "Walking Distance"), is that Serling himself never did get "to become old," instead dying in 1975 at just age 50.
Martin Sloan (Gig Young), age 36, is "vice-president in charge of media" for an advertising agency. He pulls up at a rural-looking gas station in an expensive roadster and rudely honks for the attendant. After asking for some routine maintenance, and realizing that he is only about a mile and-a-half from "Homewood," where he grew up, he decides to hike there because it's just "walking distance."
Martin, so overwhelmed by the weight of his successful but high-pressure life, then somehow finds himself catapulted back to the summer of 1934 in Homewood when he was 11 - exactly 25 years before the time of the episode's broadcast. Like many of us, Martin has been longing for the halcyon days of his youth, when the only concerns were where to ride his bike or to play with his friends. That time looks simple and desirable to a man who needs to escape the treadmill of his adult life.
Martin Sloan's own father (in 1934) eventually has to break the news to the adult Martin that he can't remain in the past - that he'll have to try to escape from his oppressive job and adult life in another way - and in his own time period. Martin is not happy about it, but he accepts it.
Martin is, in so many ways, a surrogate for Serling himself. "Homewood" is clearly a stand-in for Binghamton, New York, the small city where Serling was born and raised. Like Sloan, by 1959 he had enjoyed financial rewards and the status of being a successful television writer, but he also undoubtedly felt pressured to produce scripts on a tight schedule. The character of Martin is 36; Serling himself was 35 when he wrote "Walking Distance." He even acknowledged that he was inspired to write the story because he was strolling across the backlot where Twilight Zone was filmed and was struck by its resemblance to the town where he was grew up.
Indeed, Martin is a character Serling seems to have known well. Similar characters appear several times in his oeuvre, beginning with a different "Sloan" - Andy Sloane, the aging executive relentlessly pounded by his boss in Serling's first great success, "Patterns, in 1955. (There was a different character more like Serling himself, Fred Staples, who has to watch Sloane being belittled by their mutual boss.) Martin Sloan also resembles Gart Williams, the executive who likewise seeks an escape from his crushing job in "A Stop at Willoughby," another first season Twilight Zone episode - only Williams wants to escape all the way back to a town in the nineteenth century.
And as Marc Scott Zicree pointed out in "The Twilight Zone Companion," "Walking Distance" is really the middle of a trilogy, along with "Patterns" (which made Serling nationally famous in 1955, when he was just 29) and one of his last great scripts, "They're Tearing Down Tim Riley's Bar," which he wrote in 1970 for "Night Gallery" (though it aired in January, 1971). The first story is about a young, ambitious man on his way up; "Walking Distance" deals with a successful man who nevertheless discovers that life at the top can be stressful and sometimes dispiriting; and the final story is about a man at the end of his career, now on the verge of being jettisoned by his employer and able to find solace only in the bar where he and his friends celebrated the end of World War II.
"Walking Distance" succeeds mainly because all of us, like Martin, at some point turn our minds to nostalgic moments in our own past. Homewood, in high summer 1934, certainly seems like such a place, at least as depicted here. The episode is unusual in that it actually has three snatches of narration by Serling: a brief introduction, and then a highly unusual second one after the act break: "A man can think a lot of thoughts and walk a lot of pavements between afternoon and night. And to a man like Martin Sloan, to whom memory has suddenly become reality, a resolve can come just as clearly and inexorably as stars in the summer night. Martin Sloan is now back in time. And his resolve is to put in a claim to the past."
And it is at that point that he tries to find his parents and to convince them that he is, somehow, their son now grown to adulthood. And this leads to his father's eventual gentle but firm rejection of the adult Martin, telling him that he must leave, and seek satisfaction in his own timeline.
The acting is top notch, especially Gig Young (who always seemed to convey a certain sadness) and Frank Overton as Robert Sloan, Martin's father - quietly authoritative with his deep voice and calm demeanor. If there is a problem, it was in casting of Irene Tedrow as Martin's mother. She was past 50 when the episode was filmed, and seems a tad elderly to be either Martin's mother or Robert's wife. (She was, in fact, more than a decade older than Overton.) But that's a minor quibble in such a finely crafted work.
Still, the best part of the episode is Serling's beautiful, poetic closing narration - full of longing and nostalgia, yet painfully wise, especially for someone just 35, noting that Martin was successful in most things, "but not in the one effort that all men try at some time in their lives - trying to go home again." And also that, "perhaps there'll be an occasion, maybe a summer night sometime, when he'll look up from what he's doing and listen to the distant music of a calliope, and hear the voices and the laughter of the people and the places of his past. And perhaps across his mind there'll flit a little errant wish, that a man might not have to become old, never outgrow the parks and the merry-go-rounds of his youth."
To "hear the voices and laughter of the people and places of his past" is actually an interesting bit of foreshadowing of "Tim Riley's Bar," when Randy Lane - the Serling surrogate in that tale - likewise envisions those people who, for him are all now also 25 year-old memories (in that case, of V-J Day, 1945). Still, perhaps the saddest thing to recall in seeing those episodes today (especially, of course, "Walking Distance"), is that Serling himself never did get "to become old," instead dying in 1975 at just age 50.