The Self-Improvement of Salvadore Ross

"The Self-Improvement of Salvadore Ross"
The Twilight Zone episode
Episode no.	Season 5 Episode 16
Directed by	Don Siegel
Written by	Jerry McNeely (based on the story by Henry Slesar)
Featured music	Stock
Production code	2612
Original air date	January 17, 1964
Guest appearance(s)
Don Gordon: Salvadore Ross Gail Kobe: Leah Maitland Vaughn Taylor: Mr. Maitland J. Pat O'Malley: Old Man Douglass Dumbrille: Mr. Halpert Douglas Lambert: Albert Grow Seymour Cassel: Jerry Ted Jacques: Bartender Kathleen O'Malley: Nurse
Episode chronology

"The Self-Improvement of Salvadore Ross" is an episode of the American television anthology series The Twilight Zone.

Plot

Salvadore Ross is a brash, insensitive, ambitious 26-year-old man who craves a lovely young social worker named Leah Maitland. Leah is attracted to Ross, but could never marry a man so lacking in compassion. Telling him that the relationship is finished, Leah slams her door in his face, and Ross slams his fist into the door, breaking his hand and necessitating a trip to the hospital. Ross' roommate is an elderly man with a respiratory infection. Ross sarcastically suggests that he'd like to trade ailments with the old man, who jokingly accepts the trade. The next morning, as if by magic, the old man has a broken hand, while Ross has a cold.

Ross comes to realize that he has a supernatural power to make magical trades with other people. In exchange for a large amount of cash and a penthouse apartment, Ross sells his youth to an elderly millionaire. As a result, Ross is now very rich but old. He finds an easy way to regain his youth: he offers a large number of young men (beginning with a hotel bellboy) a small amount of cash for just one year of their lives. The boys accept the money, thinking Ross is just crazy (and since none of them feels any different after aging just one year, none thinks anything has really happened). In short order, Ross is young again, and still rich.

With his new-found wealth, he attempts to win Leah's hand again, and again, she refuses. She wants a man with a heart, who is as generous and compassionate as her father. Frustrated, Ross approaches Mr. Maitland, who is kind to him despite his disrespectful and condescending demeanor, but does not think he would be a good husband for his daughter. Ross offers to make him and Leah financially secure for the rest of their lives. When the father skeptically asks how, Ross says hesitantly, "Well, it's a little hard to explain..."

Sometime later, we see that Ross has become a warm, compassionate fellow who has won Leah's heart. Ross, in consideration of Mr. Maitland's feelings, meets with him in private and asks his assent to the marriage, but Mr. Maitland refuses. He implores the older man, "Don't you have any compassion?" Maitland coldly replies, "I sold that to you yesterday", and shoots Ross dead.

References

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

External links

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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