Jess-Belle

"**Jess-Belle**"
"Jess-Belle"
The Twilight Zone episode
	L-R: James Best, Laura Devon, and; Anne Francis in "Jess-Belle", an episode of The Twilight Zone (1963)
Episode no.	Season 4; Episode 7
Directed by	Buzz Kulik
Written by	Earl Hamner, Jr.
Featured music	Nathan Van Cleave
Production code	4855
Original air date	February 14, 1963
Guest appearances
	Anne Francis: Jess-Belle ; James Best: Billy-Ben Turner ; Laura Devon: Ellwyn Glover ; Jeanette Nolan: Granny Hart ; Virginia Gregg: Ossie ; Jon Lormer: Minister ; George Mitchell: Luther Glover ; Helen Kleeb: Mattie Glover ; Jim Boles: Obed Miller
	Anne Francis: Jess-Belle ; James Best: Billy-Ben Turner ; Laura Devon: Ellwyn Glover ; Jeanette Nolan: Granny Hart ; Virginia Gregg: Ossie ; Jon Lormer: Minister ; George Mitchell: Luther Glover ; Helen Kleeb: Mattie Glover ; Jim Boles: Obed Miller
Episode chronology
← Previous; "Death Ship"	Next →; "Miniature"
	The Twilight Zone (1959 TV series) (season 4)
	List of episodes

"Jess-Belle" is an episode of the American television science fiction and fantasy anthology series The Twilight Zone. In this episode, a young woman spurned by the man she loves becomes a witch in order to make him love her.

This is notable as the only episode of The Twilight Zone in the Rod Serling incarnation with no closing narration.

Opening narration[]

The Twilight Zone has existed in many lands in many times. It has its roots in history, in something that happened long, long ago and got told about and handed down from one generation of folk to the other. In the telling the story gets added to and embroidered on, so that what might have happened in the time of the Druids is told as if it took place yesterday in the Blue Ridge Mountains. Such stories are best told by an elderly grandfather on a cold winter's night by the fireside in the southern hills of the Twilight Zone.

Plot[]

Jess-Belle, determined that ex-boyfriend Billy-Ben Turner and his fiancée Ellwyn Glover not marry, enlists the aid of local witch Granny Hart, who lives on the edge of the town. Granny denies she is a witch and points to the help she has provided to townspeople in need. Jess-Belle points out that there were decidedly non-rosy complications in each case and Granny impatiently asks what Jess-Belle wants. Jess-Belle explains her desperate love for Billy-Ben and, still posing as a kindly old woman, Granny says she could provide a potion that will ensure Billy-Ben will only have eyes for Jess-Belle henceforth. There is a price, of course, but the witch does not explicitly spell it out. Jess-Belle nonetheless agrees to pay it without knowing the details and drinks the potion, which causes a strange but passing pain. Turns out that, for one thing, Jess-Belle will transform into a leopard from midnight until dawn, ensuring she can never spend a night with Billy-Ben. Jess-Belle also feels herself growing colder and more heartless with each transformation. The witch finally explains that Jess-Belle's soul has been extinguished (the pain she felt while drinking the potion), and she has been transformed into a witch herself. Horrified by her waning humanity, she considers running away from Billy-Ben. But his spellbound devotion to her remains unwavering, and she finds herself unable to give up her selfish desire. They arrange to be married. A hunting party, including Billy-Ben, come across the leopard and shoot it; it disappears in a cloud of smoke. Billy-Ben finds Jess-Belle's ring on the ground where the leopard had stood.

A year later, Billy-Ben marries Ellwyn. Jess-Belle reappears in various threatening forms. Billy-Ben learns from Granny, who initially asks for a lock of his hair which he declines but later accepts coins in payment, that to kill Jess-Belle, he must make a figure of her using clothing that she has worn and stab it through the heart with silver, which is toxic to witches. He returns home to find Ellwyn has been possessed by Jess-Belle. Jess-Belle then asks Billy-Ben to "dance in the moonlight", which he takes to mean she wants to kill him. He runs into the house and locks the door. He puts one of Jess-Belle's dresses on a mannequin and stabs it with one of her own silver hairpins, which Jess-Belle's mother had coincidentally gifted him. Jess-Belle appears in the dress, her eyes roll back, and she disappears. After this, Ellwyn does not remember anything that happened since the wedding, but claims, upon seeing a falling star that "it means a witch has died."

Closing narration[]

The episode did not feature a closing narration from Rod Serling. Instead, it ends with the folk song heard at the beginning:

Fair was Elly Glover,
Dark was Jess-Belle.
Both they loved the same man
And both they loved him well.

Production[]

This story, set in the Blue Ridge Mountains, was penned by Earl Hamner, Jr., who also wrote Spencer's Mountain and was the creator and narrator of The Waltons. He also wrote the Twilight Zone episode entitled The Hunt in season 3.^{[citation needed]}

Hamner told Twilight Zone historian Marc Zicree that this was his personal favorite of the eight Twilight Zone episodes he wrote. It was written at very short notice (at the request of producer Herbert Hirschmann) after another script scheduled for production fell through. After being approached by Hirschmann on a Friday, Hamner developed the story over the weekend and pitched it the following Monday. It was accepted, and Hamner then wrote an act each day, delivering the finished script on the following Friday. Hamner also recalled that there was no time for any revision because the episode had to be shot right away.

Hamner stated that Jess-Belle's original animal incarnation in the script was a tiger, but Herbert Hirschmann told him at the time that the tigers provided by animal trainers were too hard to work with - Hamner recalled Hirschmann phoning him and complaining, "I'm up to my ass in tigers and none of them can act!" - so it was changed to a leopard. The original intention was to have a black leopard (to match Jess-Belle's black hair) but none were available, so Hirschmann had to settle on a spotted leopard. Director Buzz Kulik (who also nominated this as one of his two favourite Twilight Zone episodes) recalled that the leopard also proved very difficult (partly because it had been drugged) and that despite the extensive precautions taken - including the construction of a camera cage - it proved extremely hard to get the leopard to do anything at all, and that it tended to fall asleep during shooting.

The episode also features Virginia Gregg, who featured in Spencer's Mountain; Helen Kleeb, who played the role of Miss Mamie Baldwin in The Waltons; and Jeanette Nolan, who played Rachel in The Hunt.

This is the only episode of the original series with no closing voiceover from Rod Serling, although he does provide an introduction as usual.

As with many other Twilight Zone episodes, there is a link to MGM's Forbidden Planet (1956); in this case it is the presence of the film's co-star Anne Francis (who also starred in The After Hours).

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[]

"Jess-Belle" at IMDb

hide v t The Twilight Zone (1959) episodes
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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"