Air date: April 10, 1964
Jonathan West (Jackie Cooper) is an unsuccessful Irish ventriloquist. He is perpetually broke, selling valuable keepsakes like his grandfather's watch to pawn brokers to get some money. At the boarding house where he lives, he is mercilessly taunted by a little girl named Susan (Morgan Brittany aka Suzanne Cupito), for failing to find a job. But unbeknownst to everyone, Jonathan's evil ventriloquist dummy, "Little Caesar", has a mind of his own and talks to him at will. Despite Jonathan's reassurances that they are on the verge of a big break, Caesar apathetically tells him that they've hit bottom.
When Jonathan and Caesar go to a nightclub for an audition, the performance is poorly received. The following day, Jonathan is unable to find employment because his lack of vocational experience and immigrant status; he may soon leave the boarding house because he is behind on his rent. Caesar berates Jonathan for being a hopeless "clod", but has a solution to his money woes: burglary. A reluctant Jonathan – directed by Caesar in his suitcase – breaks into a delicatessen and steals its money. Jonathan uses it to pay his rent, but Caesar, during a conversation overheard by Susan, pressures him into committing more burglaries.
Susan, now aware that Caesar can talk, sneaks into Jonathan's room in his absence to unsuccessfully speak with the dummy. Jonathan catches her coming out of the room and runs her off. Inside, Jonathan expresses a desire to flee, but Caesar cajoles him into carrying out the next burglary. The duo sneaks into the nightclub to break into the manager's office. However, they are caught by a night watchman after they steal money from the nightclub's safe. They manage to bluff their way past him by giving an impromptu routine.
When Jonathan and Caesar arrive home, Susan eavesdrops on their ensuing argument. The next morning over breakfast, Susan hears her aunt, Mrs. Cudahy, read about the nightclub theft from a newspaper. She calls the police to tip them off about Jonathan and Caesar. Two detectives arrive at the boarding house and interrogate Jonathan, who tries to make Caesar talk about his role in the crime. The dummy, however, remains silent. Mrs. Cudahy and the detectives stare at the one-sided exchange, thinking Jonathan mad. Jonathan now realizes that Caesar has abandoned him, and is willingly arrested.
After the detectives lead Jonathan out of the room, Caesar turns his head around and addresses Susan. He says that he likes her for her "hip attitude" and offers to help her run away to New York. Caesar assures Susan that Jonathan will now be gone "for a long, long time" and that the two of them are now "a team". Finally, Caesar suggests that Susan kill Mrs. Cudahy with poison darts.
Tropes and Me
- Anti-Villain: West is just a poor, kind man who trusted his dummy - at that point his only friend - too much.
- Bratty Half-Pint: Good Lord, Susan. She's absolutely vile to everyone and her aunt does absolutely nothing to correct her behavior.
- Cassandra Truth: Jonathan attempts to prove to his landlady Agnes Cudahy and the police that Caesar is alive and convinced him to rob both the delicatessen and the nightclub. However, Caesar refuses to speak in front of them and Jonathan, who is presumed to be insane, is arrested.
- Cruel Twist Ending: Ventriloquist Jonathan West's dummy, Caesar, has a mind of his own and persuades him to turn from their unsuccessful stage act to a life of crime. One such conversation is overheard by Susan, a little girl in the same boarding house as Jonathan who taunts him for his lack of professional success. After overhearing a second conversation, Susan tips off the police about Jonathan and Caesar's crime spree, and when Jonathan tries to get Caesar to confess, Caesar remains silent, leading the police to suspect Jonathan has lost his mind. He gives himself up and is led away, at which point Caesar turns his attention to recruiting Susan as a partner in crime.
- Demonic Dummy: Caesar is a ventriloquist's dummy who is secretly alive and has a criminal mind.
- Enfant Terrible: Susan is an evil little girl who takes delight in tormenting and insulting Jonathan at every opportunity. After she overhears him arguing with Caesar about robbing the nightclub, she reports him to the police. Susan does so out of sheer vindictiveness as opposed to it being the right thing to do. When Caesar speaks in front of her, she plans to keep it to herself even though it could prove that Jonathan is perfectly sane. It takes very little effort on Caesar's part to convince Susan to run away with him. It is even implied that she will kill her aunt Agnes Cudahy in order to escape her.
- Have a Gay Old Time: When the night watchman finds Jonathan and Caesar robbing the office, Caesar remarks "Who are you, the house dick?" At the time, "dick" was slang for a detective or cop, but it's since taken on an extremely different slang meaning.
- Ironic Echo: Caesar reassures the nervous Jonathan by saying that the two of them are a team. After leaving Jonathan in the lurch with the police, Caesar uses the same phrase about himself and Susan, which calls the benefits and permanency of the partnership into doubt.
- Karma Houdini: Caesar, being a dummy and "obviously" not capable of independence, gets away with the whole crime spree and sticks Jonathan with all the blame.
- Susan as well for her part in basically ruining Jonathan's life for kicks. She doesn't call the police because it's the right thing to do, only because it will hurt someone she irrationally hates, and receives absolutely no comeuppance for what she's done. However, it's implied by the ending she's just the latest in a long line of "owners" Caesar has been manipulating, so eventually she'll be cast aside once she's no longer useful to him.
- Kids Are Cruel: What did Jonathan do to make Susan hate him so much? Nothing really, or at least it isn't known or explained. Susan just hates him.
- Little Miss Snarker: Susan, along with Kids Are Cruel and Bratty Half-Pint.
- Not-So-Imaginary Friend: In this case, a Not-So-Imaginary Enemy. Caesar has a mind of his own and uses his influence over Jonathan to convince him to commit various robberies. He later abandons him by refusing to speak in front of others so that it appears that Jonathan is insane and entirely to blame for the crime spree.
- Pushover Parents: For some reason, Aunt Agnes lets her niece be around poison darts.
- Shout-Out:
- Caesar's name is a reference to Caesar Enrico "Rico" Bandello, the gangster titular character of Little Caesar. He also has a prominent scar on the right side of his face, as is the case with the Scarface (1932) title character Antonio "Tony" Camonte.
- Caesar tells Jonathan that robbing the nightclub will be a really big show, pronouncing "show" as "shew." This is a reference to Ed Sullivan's catchphrase and his distinctive pronunciation of "show" on his long-running variety show. Like The Twilight Zone, The Ed Sullivan Show aired on CBS.
- Troubling Unchildlike Behavior: Susan borders on being a full blown psychopath. Even at the beginning, she's shooting actual poison darts at people, something that could seriously hurt someone or even put out an eye, and she has almost no empathy. By the end, she delights in ruining a man's life by sending him to prison for many years and it's implied Caesar will convince her to kill her aunt.
- Rod Serling: Little girl and a wooden doll, a lethal dummy in the shape of a man. But everybody knows dummies can't talk – unless, of course, they learn their vocabulary in The Twilight Zone.
