A Stop at Willoughby

"A Stop at Willoughby"
The Twilight Zone episode
James Daly in "A Stop at Willoughby"
Episode no.	Season 1 Episode 30
Directed by	Robert Parrish
Written by	Rod Serling
Featured music	Nathan Scott
Production code	173-3629
Original air date	May 6, 1960
Guest appearance(s)
James Daly as Gart Williams Howard Smith as Mr. Misrell Patricia Donahue as Jane Williams Jason Wingreen as Train conductor Mavis Neal Palmer as Helen James Maloney as 1888 Conductor Billy Booth as Short Boy Ryan Hayes as Engineer Butch Hengen as Tall Boy Max Slaten as Man on Wagon

"A Stop at Willoughby" is episode 30 of the American television anthology series The Twilight Zone. Rod Serling cited this as his favorite story from the first season of the series.

Opening narration

“

This is Gart Williams, age thirty-eight, a man protected by a suit of armor, all held together by one bolt. Just a moment ago, someone removed the bolt, and Mr. Williams' protection fell away from him and left him a naked target. He's been cannonaded this afternoon by all the enemies of his life. His insecurity has shelled him, his sensitivity has straddled him with humiliation, his deep-rooted disquiet about his own worth has zeroed in on him, landed on target, and blown him apart. Mr. Gart Williams, ad agency exec, who, in just a moment, will move into the Twilight Zone—in a desperate search for survival.

”

Plot

Gart Williams is a New York City advertising executive who has grown exasperated with his career. His overbearing boss, Oliver Misrell, angered by the loss of a major account, lectures him about this "push-push-push" business. Unable to sleep properly at home, he drifts off for a short nap on the train during his daily commute through the November snow.

He wakes to find the train stopped and his car now a 19th-century railway car, deserted except for himself. The sun is bright outside, and as he looks out the window, he discovers that the train is in a town called Willoughby and that it's July 1888. He learns that this is a "peaceful, restful place, where a man can slow down to a walk and live his life full measure." Being jerked back awake into the real world, he asks the conductor if he has ever heard of Willoughby, but the conductor replies, "Not on this run...no Willoughby on the line."

That night, he has another argument with his shrewish wife Jane. Selfish, cold and uncaring, she makes him see that he is only a money machine to her. He tells her about his dream and about Willoughby, only to have her ridicule him as being "born too late", declaring it her "miserable tragic error" to have married a man "whose big dream in life is to be Huckleberry Finn."

The next week, Williams again dozes off on the train and returns to Willoughby where everything is the same as before. As he is about to get off the train carrying his briefcase, the train begins to roll, returning him to the present. Williams promises himself to get off at Willoughby next time.

Experiencing a breakdown at work, he calls his wife, who abandons him in his time of need. On his way home, once again he falls asleep to find himself in Willoughby. This time, as the conductor warmly beckons him to the door, Williams intentionally leaves his briefcase on the train. Getting off the train, he is greeted by name by various inhabitants who welcome him while he tells them he's glad to be there and plans to stay and join their idyllic life.

The swinging pendulum of the station clock fades into the swinging lantern of a train engineer, standing over Williams' body. The modern-day conductor explains to another person that Williams "shouted something about Willoughby", just before jumping off the train and was killed instantly. Williams' body is loaded into a hearse. The back door of the hearse closes to reveal the name of the funeral home: Willoughby & Son.

Closing narration

“

Willoughby? Maybe it's wishful thinking nestled in a hidden part of a man's mind, or maybe it's the last stop in the vast design of things—or perhaps, for a man like Mr. Gart Williams, who climbed on a world that went by too fast, it's a place around the bend where he could jump off. Willoughby? Whatever it is, it comes with sunlight and serenity, and is a part of The Twilight Zone.

”

Production notes

The 2000 TV movie For All Time starring Mark Harmon was based on this episode.^[1]

The "Stamford" and the "Westport/Saugatuck" stops called out by the conductor in the episode exist in real life – Metro-North Railroad (at the time New Haven Railroad) stops in Fairfield County, Connecticut include Stamford, Connecticut and the Westport station serves the town of Westport, Connecticut where series creator Rod Serling once lived.

Gart Williams' home phone number of Capital 7-9899 is also a legitimate telephone exchange in Westport.

Willoughby, Ohio is the only town that has the name in all of The United States.

"Beautiful Dreamer", a popular song in Ohio at the time, can be heard being played by a band in the episode.

One of the last episodes of Thirtysomething is clearly an homage to this episode. It has the same title, and in it, Michael experiences a crisis similar to that of Williams, though it does not end tragically.

The character Willoughby in Richard Linklater's Everybody Wants Some!!, is a Twilight Zone fanatic and owns almost every episode on VHS. He pays homage to the episode as he is really 30 years old and skips from college to college under the false name of Willoughby so he can keep playing baseball and live the college lifestyle.

References

↑ Erickson, Hal. "For All Time (2000)". The New York Times. Retrieved 2008-12-28.

External links

"A Stop at Willoughby" at the Internet Movie Database
"A Stop at Willoughby" 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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