Ring-a-Ding Girl

"Ring-a-Ding Girl"
The Twilight Zone episode
Episode no.	Season 5 Episode 13
Directed by	Alan Crosland, Jr.
Written by	Earl Hamner, Jr.
Featured music	stock
Production code	2623
Original air date	December 27, 1963
Guest appearance(s)
Maggie McNamara Mary Munday David Macklin Betty Lou Gerson Vic Perrin George Mitchell Bing Russell Hank Patterson
Episode chronology

"Ring-a-Ding Girl" is episode 133 of the American television anthology series The Twilight Zone. It originally aired on December 27, 1963 on CBS.

Plot

Bunny Blake is a movie star. Her hometown fan club sends her an enchanted ring, in which she sees the face of her sister from the small town in which she grew up. They implore her to come home.

Though she has been hired to make a movie in Rome, Bunny takes a plane from Los Angeles and arrives at her hometown, Howardsville, Virginia. Despite Bunny's fame, she tells her manager that her loyalty is still to her town since they all chipped in to help her go to Hollywood. She surprises her sister, Hildy, and Bud, her nephew, by this impromptu visit. After seeing a vision of an old friend, the town doctor, Bunny seems weak and the same doctor is called upon. He is also the annual founder's day picnic chairman/organizer, which happens to be on this very day. Bunny, rather brashly, requests that he postpone the entire event, but he declines.

Refusing to take a rest like what the doctor and her sister insist, Bunny asks Bud to accompany her to go to her old school to meet the keeper, who she asks to leave the school gates open. She then goes to the local TV station for an impromptu interview with another old friend who is now a TV host. In the interview, she arranges for a one-woman show in the high school gymnasium, convincing everyone to go to her show instead of the picnic. Both of these men appeared in visions in her crystal-ball-like ring, asking her to save them. She also sees images of a jetliner and its passengers, including her manager. All the while, she hears thunder outside and it starts to rain. Hildy accuses Bunny of "showing off" for announcing her one-woman show so suddenly, forcing the town to choose between seeing her or attending the annual founder's day picnic. Bunny insists the she loves the town and its people and she owes them something, using her show as a way of thanking them. After Hildy first insists that she and her son Bud are going to the picnic, Hildy has a change of heart and agrees to attend Bunny's show instead.

As Bunny, her sister, and nephew are about to leave for the performance, they hear sirens and rush to look out the living-room window. Bunny finally sees herself in the ring, on the jetliner. Bunny, who realizes that her mission is completed, thanks her slightly bewildered sister as a goodbye of sorts. A breaking news flash comes on over the radio, and while Bunny's sister and nephew are listening to the first reports of the crash, Bunny says a final goodbye, which the others do not hear, goes outside in the rain, and disappears.

Just then, an older police officer calls the house to inform Hildy that Bunny is among the deceased passengers on the plane. Hildy does not believe the officer, as Bunny was there moments before, but the radio news anchor confirms that Bunny was indeed on the plane, while stating that several townspeople claimed to have seen her that day. The anchorman notes that many of the townspeople were in the auditorium waiting to see Bunny's concert, thus their lives were saved, since they would have been at the picnic, on the grounds of which the jetliner crashed. "Until the mystery is unraveled," the newscaster adds, "Only one thing is certain: Bunny Blake is dead." The final scene shows Hildy finding Bunny's magic ring, which had fallen to the floor; now chipped and charred.

The episode ends with Rod Serling's narration: We are all travelers. The trip starts in a place called birth—and ends in that lonely town called death. And that's the end of the journey, unless you happen to exist for a few hours, like Bunny Blake, in the misty regions of the Twilight Zone.

Cast

Maggie McNamara as Barbara "Bunny" Blake
Mary Munday as Hildy Powell
David Macklin as Bud Powell
Betty Lou Gerson as Cici
Vic Perrin as State Trooper (Jim)
George Mitchell as Dr. Floyd
Bing Russell as Ben Braden
Hank Patterson as Mr. Gentry
Bill Hickman as Pilot

Notes

The front cover of the 1984 album Zontar Must Die! by the garage rock band the Wombats features a screenshot from this episode.^[1]^[2]

References

↑ ""Ring-a-Ding Girl" in Season 5 (1963-64) Forum".
↑ "The Wombats (2) – Zontar Must Die!". discogs.com.

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
Zicree, Marc Scott: The Twilight Zone Companion. Sillman-James Press, 1982 (second edition)

External links

"Ring-a-Ding Girl" at the Internet Movie Database
"Ring-a-Ding Girl" 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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