American Cinematographer - June 1988 - 42

very close to his father. He always used to say to
'I wish you had known your grandfather.' "
His brother Robert put a lucid perspective on
the show. "I think where Rod got the great love for the

was

me,

small town

in the Army, when he was overseas. It
dreaming of a white Christmas' syn¬
drome. Everything he had taken for granted as a child
had suddenly become preciously dear to him. He
thought he'd never see it again. This was true, too,
when he got into the hectic world of television. Yellow
Springs and Antioch [where he attended and taught
school] were the same kind of small village-ivory tower
existence, where everything was peaceful. The
[Homewood] thing ran through much of his writing."
Some of the shoot flowed directly off Serling's
typewriter. "I thought it would be terribly interesting
to see the mother and father through the screen door,"
he said, "because they were in a sense ethereal. So I
"
wrote, 'Shoot through the mother and father, almost as
t. if he were
seeing ghosts.' This was the writer suggest^ mg something to the director that was visual." Yet for
| all the story's passion, he griped about its illogic. "The
^° problem was, I was too smart for myself. 1 gave the
man such incredible trauma, and
yet suggested that as
2 of the moment he lives through this trauma, he will
g nonetheless function properly and in a totally rational
q way. And that's not possible."
The casting was right on the money. A more
^
convincing Martin Sloan than Gig Young is difficult to
own. He
hops on for the last time and is whisked back imagine, and we will dismiss the fact - for the sake of
this piece - that Young took his own life two decades
to the malt shop.
Gone is the bespectacled fountaineer, the
later. He portrays Sloan not as a wimp crying in his
beer
over a
candy bins, the bittersweet remnants of his youth.
squandered life, but rather as a lost soul
Rock & rollers dance to a 1959 juke box. "Get that
whose secret yearning to grab the brass ring again has
[limp] during the war?" asks the high school soda jerk. come to the fore. Young knew how to register a "think¬
"No," Martin winces. "Got it falling off a merry-going man's" despair; every close-up, every turn of his
round as a kid. Here. Kind of a freak thing..." "Oh,
head is letter perfect.
merry-go-round," the teenager beams. "Hey, / remem¬
Supporting players are credible and honest,
ber. They tore that down a few years ago. Condemned
right down to the smallest of bits. Byron Foulger, the
it."
familiar lab assistant/squeamish bank clerk of count¬
The details are vague now. Was Homewood
less B movies, made his Homewood fountaineer ex¬
Revisited a delusion, or did it happen? Did he really go
tremely warm and likable. Moonfaced Frank Overton
back in time, or was it all a fantasy hatched in his mind
(whom Robert Stevens had directed in Steve Mc¬
before he had even reached the town? He's not quite
Queen's first picture, Never Love a Stranger) invested
sure. He can't
the father role with more compassion and sincerity
get a bead on it.
"A little late, I guess." "Huh?" asks Martin.
than Serling had hoped for. The gooseflesh encounter
"A little late for you, I mean." "Yeah," he laments.
between Young and Overton in the blackness of the
"Very late for me."
night is so perfectly played out that most other TV
Sloan returns to his car, his limp painfully
father/son exchanges seem like sappy contrivances by
evident, and gazes at the Homewood road sign for the
comparison. Experiencing their interplay is like going
last time. With a wistful smile, he starts the engine. A
to church. Watch Overton's facial movements and eye
bit wiser, perhaps. A bit more down to earth. He
tremors as he tells Martin to go back, then wonder how
his performance - and especially Young's - could
departs forever in a cloud of dust.
The emotional impact of Rod Serling's "Walk¬
have been ignored for the Emmys of 1960.
"Actors responded to Rod," Buck Houghton
ing Distance" is as powerful today as it was in October
1959. To a certain extent, the story was autobiographi¬
attests. "I got actors who had never worked in the
cal. His longing to reconnect with his father, who (like
medium. I used to get 'Gee thanks, Buck, but I don't do
was

The soda fountain
hasn't
a

changed

was

the 'I'm

Serling) died prematurely of a heart attack, was in¬
tense. "Going back was something he really would

television.' Then they'd read Rod's stuff and say 'I've
got to do that! Lead me to it!' On account of that, we got

have liked to have done," Anne

performances that

American

Cinematographer

Serling affirmed. "He

June 1988

were

in their

very

best path.

American Cinematographer - June 1988

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