Rod Serling: Witness a murder. The killer is Mr. William Feathersmith, a robber baron whose body composition is made up of a refrigeration plant covered by thick skin. In a moment, Mr. Feathersmith will proceed on his daily course of conquest and calumny with yet another business dealing. But this one will be one of those bizarre transactions that take place in an odd marketplace known as the Twilight Zone.
Air date: April 11, 1963
William J. Feathersmith (Albert Salmi), a 75-year-old business magnate who has amassed his vast fortune by engaging in numerous ruthless, unethical, and likely illegal techniques, finally succeeds in defeating his last rival, cementing himself, in his own eyes, as the king of the world. Feeling a lack of purpose and just being really bored with having everything he could ever want, Feathersmith desires to return to his hometown of Cliffordville, Indiana in 1910 and earn his fortune all over again. As he attempts to head home for the night, the elevator takes him up to the 13th floor, where a never-before-seen travel agency operated by "Miss Devlin" resides. Establishing herself to be the Devil, Miss Devlin (Julie Newmar) offers Feathersmith the chance to go back in time and rebuild his fortune from scratch. Since his soul is already going straight down, Miss Devlin insists that he pay for the trip back in time with all of his liquidated funds. Once he returns to the past, Feathersmith gradually realizes that his youth isn't how he remembered it.
Of Late I Think of Tropesville:
- Adaptation Name Change: In the short story "Blind Alley" by Malcolm Jameson, the protagonist's name is Jack Feathersmith. In the episode, his name is William J. Feathersmith.
- Ain't Too Proud to Beg: After spending a day going back to Cliffordville and experiencing one misfortune after another, Feathersmith begs Miss Devlin to take him back to the present.
- Ambiguously Evil: Miss Devlin, the Devil herself, who tricks Feathersmith into financial ruin. Regardless of that, he's an Asshole Victim who went into one of her deals with complete knowledge of what he was getting himself into. She doesn't do anything to hurt anybody else in the episode (even giving Hecate a massive leg up in the world), and genuinely despises Feathersmith as a person for being a "user" instead of a "bringer".
- An Aesop: As Rod Serling says in his closing narration, nice guys don’t always finish last
- Also, one has to know when to quit while they’re ahead.
- The past isn't always the happy place you remember it, and it's best to be content with the present.
- Be aware of your own limitations, and express gratitude for those who work with you.
- Don't fixate on your past failures when you've become plenty successful with them.
- Artistic License – History: When he arrives in 1910, Feathersmith sees a house flying yellow flags and asks what it means, to which he's told that the people inside have typhoid fever. Feathersmith starts to scoff and ask whether they've heard of inoculation, but catches himself and remembers that it hasn't been invented yet. In Real Life, reliable typhoid vaccines had been available since the late 1890s.
- Asshole Victim: William J. Feathersmith. The only thing he's any good at is bleeding the worth of people more skilled than him until they're dry, then tossing what's left of them aside to rot. Watching him go back in time to destroy himself and become a poor, powerless custodian is immensely satisfying to watch.
- Bald of Evil: As an old man, Feathersmith is bald and extremely immoral. However, he gets his hair back when Miss Devlin makes him look young again.
- Be Careful What You Wish For: On top of the world after bankrupting his last rival, Feathersmith wishes that he could go back to his hometown of Cliffordville and start all over again. He gets his wish, but comes to regret that the past was vastly different from how he remembered it.
- Bookends: The episode begins and ends with a corporate president raking his janitor over the coals, only with the roles reversed.
- Break the Haughty: Miss Devlin's act of sending Feathersmith back in time is to teach him that he isn't the top dog he thinks he is. Not only does his plan to go back to the past fail, but his newly-discovered ineptitude in areas of expertise other than business makes him a laughingstock.
- Brutal Honesty: In the beginning, Mr. Deidrich bluntly tells Feathersmith what a rotten person he is and that he greatly dislikes him.
- Butt-Monkey: Feathersmith is a ruthless and predatory business mogul, but thankfully, he ends up getting the short end of the stick again and again, ultimately becoming the janitor to Hecate, who now owns his company.
- Chessmaster: Miss Devlin personally tells Feathersmith that she doesn't want to take his soul, since it's condemned to go to Hell anyway. So why does she go through the whole charade? Because Feathersmith indirectly corrupts Hecate into becoming just as evil, enabling her to end up with two souls for the price of one.
- Creative Sterility: As Miss Devlin points out to him, Feathersmith excels at being a businessman, but he has absolutely zero skill as an engineer, as seen when he tries to create an oil drill before it's invented. He made his fortune by preying on other businesses and making money off their work, and he has the nerve to think himself as a self-made man.
- Corrupt Corporate Executive: William J. Feathersmith, to the point where Rod Serling himself calls him a "Robber Baron". To wit, he has mining, steel, electronics, lumber, railroads, mineral, and manufacturing businesses all over America.
- Deal with the Devil: Feathersmith offers to sell his soul in order to go back to Cliffordville, 1910 and rebuild his fortune from the ground up. Miss Devlin doesn't want his soul for sending him back, as he's done so many horrible things and is going to Hell anyway, so he has to pay Miss Devlin almost the near entirety of his net worth (over 36.8 million dollars; over a quarter billion today accounting for inflation), with only $1,412.14 remaining instead.
- Didn't Think This Through: Feathersmith's entire plan falls on this. He goes back to 1910 to rebuild his empire and starts off by buying an oil field, only to realize that it will be nearly 30 years before a drill that can get to it will be invented . He tries to make his fortune by creating a new device that he knows will be successful, but he can't invent anything because he has no technical knowledge of how such things are designed and built. Furthermore, he only asked Miss Devlin to make him look young; internally, he's still an old man, and will consequently be dead by the time the technology to reach the oil is invented, eliminating the possibility of just waiting it out until the land becomes valuable.
- Driven to Suicide: Feathersmith has a habit of doing this in the corporate world.
- Dutch Angle: Multiple angles are used during the sequence where Feathersmith unsuccessfully tries to convince the people of Cliffordville to invest in his ideas for new inventions, all of which are commonly available in 1963.
- Establishing Character Moment: The episode begins with Feathersmith sadistically destroying the life of his last business rival, Mr. Deidrich, and then laughing wickedly at his misfortune while he leaves.
- Even Evil Has Standards: Miss Devlin, Satan herself, ordinarily maintains a charming persona when dealing with Feathersmith. However, during her final rebuttal of Feathersmith and his faults, she slips into genuine anger while raking him over the coals.
- Evil Gloating: Feathersmith loves to gloat whenever he's conned or beaten someone. He does it to Mr. Deidrich in the beginning, when he bankrupts him and takes his company, as his secretaries comment that he does this every time he defeats a business rival. He tries it again after he buys several hundred acres of oil-laden land from Mr. Deidrech and the bank president, but it backfires. After gloating that he suckered them out of the land, Feathersmith realizes that oil drills haven’t been invented yet, so there’s no way for him to get to the oil and that his new land is practically worthless. Mr. Deidrich and the bank president then spout their own laughter at Feathersmith’s humiliation.
- Evil Laugh: Feathersmith lets out an absolutely vile one in the beginning, after ruining Mr. Deidrich.
- Evil Old Folks: Feathersmith is an exceptionally cruel old man, though he regains the appearance of a young man after making his deal with Miss Devlin.
- Exact Words:
- Feathersmith wanted to go back in time to when he first started out as a businessman, looking the same as he did back then. Miss Devlin makes him look young, but he still has the bones and internal organs of an old man, which he discovers after he begins suffering from palpitations.
- Before Feathersmith leaves for the past, Miss Devlin tells him that she hopes he gets everything he deserves, which he does.
- Explain, Explain... Oh, Crap!: Feathersmith is baffled to realize the owners of the land knew there's oil there and don't seem to care about selling it since "it's 6000 feet underground, meaning it might as well be on the moon."Feathersmith: What do you mean, it can't be taken out? You could drill down five miles if you needed to.Deidrich: Well, you could perhaps, but nobody else on this earth could. And at that, you'd better get up off that seat and start inventing some new kind of a drill.Feathersmith: Of course, I...I forgot. It was 1937 when they...
- Fat Bastard: Feathersmith is chubby as he is cruel.
- Fish out of Temporal Water: Played for karmic drama: Feathersmith knows what will be successful in the next half century, but because they're so readily available, and he only learned how to engage in predatory business practices, he never learned how they were invented in the first place. This causes the Cliffordville denizens to think he's just some loon and laugh him off.
- Foreshadowing: When Feathersmith discovers that the land he bought is virtually worthless in the past, he starts feeling nauseated. While it seems like he's only overwhelmed by the bad luck, one can interpret it as a hint he's still old on the inside, so the whiskey he drank earlier isn't agreeing with his aged organs.
- From Bad to Worse: Feathersmith goes through this, in a very well-deserved fashion. First, he blows nearly all of his money on land that turns out to be worthless for thirty years, then he learns that his knowledge of future inventions is useless without having any idea as to how they're built, and finally, he discovers that he's still an old man on the inside.
- Gender Flip: In the short story, Satan (most commonly called "His Nibs") assumes a male form with the conventional appearance of "the vermilion anthropoid modified by barbed tail, cloven hoofs, horns and a wonderful sardonic leer." In the episode, Satan appears to Feathersmith in the form of a young lady with horns named Miss Devlin.
- Hate Sink: Feathersmith is a greedy, heartless, and vile Smug Snake who has callously ruined hundreds if not thousands of lives without an ounce of remorse. He’s so vile that Miss Devlin, Satan herself, is utterly disgusted by his personality, not even wanting his soul because it's bound for Hell no matter what he does.
- Hoist by His Own Petard: The entire episode goes wrong for Feathersmith because he thinks he can outwit the Devil and have a good time building up his fortune faster. His lack of understanding of the past and the mistakes in his memory cause him to lose everything.
- Earlier, Feathersmith decides to use nearly all of the money he brought to the past for a "surefire" investment, buying up several hundred acres of land that he knows contain massive oil deposits that he recalls wasn’t discovered until 30 years later. As soon as the papers are signed, Feathersmith laughs and gloats to the former owners on how they just gave away millions of dollars worth of oil. However, they already knew about the oil, but they don't understand why Feathersmith is so sure he can get to it. Feathersmith then realizes/remembers that real reason the oil wasn’t recovered until thirty years later was actually because the drill that was able to reach it wasn’t invented until that time. Thus has wasted all his cash on land that is virtually worthless. The other two businessmen then laugh at him.
- Hot as Hell: Julie Newmar, who plays Femme Fatale and Literal Genie Miss Devlin.
- Hourglass Plot: The episode opens with Feathersmith talking to Hecate, the janitor of the top 3 floors of his building, about how he wishes to relive the excitement of his younger days. At the end, Hecate is now the CEO and Feathersmith is the janitor, even working there the same time Hecate was at the beginning and receiving the same gold watch for his 40th year with the company. As the icing on the cake, Hecate seems to have received Feathersmith's rotten and predatory attitude, all thanks to a bizarre coincidence during the episode.
- Additionally, Mr. Diedrich, the last man Feathersmith ruins before going back in time, is one of the two individuals from whom Feathersmith blows all his money on after purchasing worthless swampland, which kickstarts his spiral into ruin in the past.
- How the Mighty Have Fallen: In the beginning, Feathersmith is a very rich business tycoon who owns several companies. By the end, he’s reduced to a lowly janitor.
- Humiliation Conga: The second half of the episode is a long overdue one for Feathersmith. Every one of his half-baked get-rich-quick schemes fails, causing the people of Cliffordville to laugh at him over and over, and his first failed scheme costs him all his money. When he finally returns to the present, the changes in history caused by his actions have led him to switch places with his former janitor, who makes fun of Feathersmith and laughs at him.
- Jerkass: Feathersmith is a huge one. Even leaving his corrupt and unethical practices aside, he's needlessly rude to Hecate and nearly every other character in the story.
- Karmic Butt-Monkey: Feathersmith becomes one over and over again in the second half of the episode, losing everything and repeatedly getting humiliated and laughed at, but it’s also long-overdue karma for his lifetime of being a heartless jerk and getting rich off of other people’s hard work.
- Kick the Dog: Feathersmith really enjoys this trope, as seen in the opening scene, where he takes immense pleasure in financially destroying his rival, Mr. Deidrich, and taking his company.
- Literal Genie: One of the terms that Feathersmith negotiates is that he goes back in time looking exactly as he did as a young man. Miss Devlin fulfills the term, but she only makes him look young, while internally he's still a tired old man.
- Lonely at the Top: Subverted for Feathersmith. While he's a Grade-A Jerkass, there's a brief shot of him walking past his now empty secretaries’ desks and a long hallway leading to the elevator. As despicable as the man is, this shot reminds you how his comments on sacrificing his social life might have a ring of truth to them.
- Louis Cypher: Even before the horns came out, it was a given Miss Devlin was the Devil herself.
- Manipulative Bastard: As the episode opens, Feathersmith, instead of buying off his rival's company head on, goes for the rather dirty approach of buying the rival's bank note for a "loan on demand" and demands that the loan be paid on the spot rather than at his convenience.
- Meaningful Name: Mr. Hecate is named after Hecate, the Ancient Greek goddess of witchcraft and crossroads.
- Motor Mouth: The bank president’s daughter Joanna, who used to have a crush on Feathersmith, turns out to be extremely chatty.
- No Sympathy: Mr. Deidrich says that he has always known Feathersmith to be a cruel man with no heart, conscience, or compassion. Feathersmith is also shown to take sadistic pleasure in cheating people and ruining their lives.
- Nostalgia Filter: Feathersmith looks back on how Mr. Gibbons, the bank president of Cliffordville, had a daughter named Joanna he remembers as being "as pretty a slice of peach pie that ever went on a hay ride". Once he meets her in the past, he's stunned at how, in actuality, she's homely, overly-talkative, and has the worst singing voice he's ever heard.
- Older Than They Look: A literal case. Feathersmith's wish to be younger only affects his outward appearance. He still has the constitution of a man in his 70s, with all the health problems that come with it.
- Pet the Dog: After Feathersmith loses his money and his get-rich-quick schemes fail miserably, Miss Devlin takes pity on him and says that she’ll take him back to the present. Feathersmith is very grateful, thanking her and promising that he’ll never forget her kind deed.
- Pragmatic Adaptation: Of the Malcolm Jameson short story "Blind Alley". While the episode is fairly faithful to the plot, the story features Feathersmith encountering an entire building filled of demons during his deal-signing, something that would have required a full scale movie budget to depict.
- "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Devlin gets in a pretty nice one to Feathersmith on why his efforts to make something of himself in the past with his knowledge of the future miserably failed:Devlin: Your problem is that you leaped before you looked. You, Mr. Feathersmith, are a wheeler and a dealer. A financier, a pusher, a brain, a manipulator, a raider. Because you are a taker instead of a builder. A conniver instead of a designer. A user instead of a bringer.
- Sadist: Feathersmith. In the beginning, he invites his last business rival, Mr. Deidrich, into his office just to tell him to his face that he’s taking his company and bankrupting him. Then, when Deidrich leaves, he pages one of his secretaries over her intercom just so Deidrich can hear his evil laughter on his way out.
- Self-Made Man: Subverted with Feathersmith. While he says that he didn't have time to enjoy a decent and tranquil life in Cliffordville because he was working, it becomes clear that Feathersmith is a leech instead of a true hardworking man, having made all his money by preying on others.
- Self-Serving Memory: What really trips up Feathersmith is how he remembers the past being much better than it really was. It's shown when he's going to romance Joanna, the daughter of the bank president, only to find she's a homely chatterbox with an obnoxious attitude. He accuses Miss Devlin of changing things, but she fires back that everything is exactly what it was, and it's not her fault Feathersmith chose to remember it differently.
- Smug Snake: Feathersmith. The entire episode basically consists of him repeatedly finding out he's nowhere near as clever as he thinks he is.
- Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: After Feathersmith uses most of his money to buy several hundred acres of basically worthless land, when he tries to get presumably rich investors to help him start all kinds of "new inventions," they brush him off rather brusquely. Since he's talking about inventions that no one in 1910 has heard of, doesn't have the technical skill to say how they are made so others can replicate them, and his reputation as a failure likely being spread by the bankers, he can't raise anything and has to sell the land for forty dollars to get the train ride back to 1963.
- Swapped Roles: At the end of the episode, Feathersmith and Hecate have effectively switched places, with Hecate becoming the rich tycoon and Feathersmith becoming his janitor. They even seem to have switched personalities as well, with Hecate becoming cruel and sadistic like Feathersmith, and Feathersmith becoming meek and polite like Hecate originally was.
- Ungrateful Bastard: Mr. Deidrich hired Feathersmith in the past, giving him his start as a businessman and allowing him to become the rich man he is today, with Feathersmith outright telling Deidrich that he owes him a great deal. Feathersmith repays his generosity by bankrupting Deidrich and taking his company from underneath him. Subverted when he thanks Miss Devlin for allowing him to return to the present after his string of failures.
- Victory Is Boring: Once he's on top of the world and has nothing else to take from anyone, Feathersmith wants the chance to start from the beginning and conquer the world all over again.
- Villain Ball: At the start of the episode, Feathersmith already has everything he could ever want. His wanting to go back in time solely so he can win it all again ends up being his undoing.
- Villain Protagonist: Feathersmith is a heartless, greedy Corrupt Corporate Executive.
- What the Hell Is That Accent?: Feathersmith has a peculiar accent, made more prominent by his actor, Albert Salmi, Jr., using an old man voice on top of it.
- Worthless Treasure Twist: Feathersmith thinks that he's pulled off a brilliant coup buying a massive oil field before it can be tapped and developed. It's only after he makes the deal that Feathersmith realizes in 1910, there's no way to drill a mile underground to get to the oil. Thus, he just spent nearly all his cash buying what was basically several hundred acres of worthless land. However, if Feathersmith just realized that he could bide his time, eventually the technology to drill for it would be invented and he would still be wealthy from it. Though it does come back to being worthless when Feathersmith realizes he's still internally 75 years old and thus won't live long enough to be able to use the land.
Rod Serling: Mr. William J. Feathersmith, tycoon, who tried the track one more time and found it muddier than he remembered, proving with at least a degree of conclusiveness that nice guys don't always finish last, and some people should quit when they're ahead. Tonight's tale of iron men and irony, delivered F.O.B. from the Twilight Zone.
