The After Hours

"**The After Hours**"
"The After Hours"
The Twilight Zone episode
	Publicity photo of (l-r) Anne Francis, James Millhollin and Francis' mannequin double
Episode no.	Season 1; Episode 34
Directed by	Douglas Heyes
Written by	Rod Serling
Featured music	Bernard Herrmann (from Where Is Everybody?)
Production code	173-3637
Original air date	June 10, 1960
Guest appearances
	Anne Francis as Marsha White; Elizabeth Allen as Saleswoman; James Millhollin as Mr. Armbruster; John Conwell as Elevator Man; Patrick Whyte as Mr. Sloan; Nancy Rennick as Ms. Keevers;
Episode chronology
← Previous; "Mr. Bevis"	Next →; "The Mighty Casey"
	The Twilight Zone (1959 TV series, season 1)
	List of episodes

"The After Hours" is episode thirty-four of the American television anthology series, The Twilight Zone. It originally aired on June 10, 1960, on CBS.

Opening narration[]

Express elevator to the ninth floor of a department store, carrying Miss Marsha White on a most prosaic, ordinary, run-of-the-mill errand.

The opening narration involves Marsha White riding an elevator to the ninth floor. Then the rest of the narration is heard.

Miss Marsha White on the ninth floor, specialties department, looking for a gold thimble. The odds are that she'll find it—but there are even better odds that she'll find something else, because this isn't just a department store. This happens to be The Twilight Zone.

Plot[]

Marsha White (Anne Francis), browsing for a gift for her mother in a department store, decides on a gold thimble. She's taken by the elevator man to the ninth floor, although the elevator's floor indicator only shows eight floors. She walks out onto the ninth floor and turns to complain to the elevator operator that there's nothing there, but the door closes abruptly, leaving her to ponder her situation. As she wanders around, confused, she's approached by a saleslady who guides her to the only item on the floor: the exact gold thimble that Marsha wants. During the sales transaction, she grows increasingly puzzled by the comments and actions of both the male elevator operator who transported her to the barren, seemingly deserted floor, and the aloof and clairvoyant female salesclerk behind the counter who addresses her by name and sells her the thimble. The sales lady asks Marsha if she's happy; Marsha responds that it's not the sales lady's business. The sales lady appears surprised and insulted, and Marsha leaves. As Marsha rides the elevator down, she notices that the thimble is scratched and dented; she's directed by the elevator operator to the Complaints Department on the third floor.

When she tries to convince Mr. Armbruster, the sales supervisor, and Mr. Sloan, the store manager, that she bought the item on the ninth floor, she's told that the store doesn't have a ninth floor. She has no evidence of the transaction as she paid cash, and has no receipt. Marsha believes she spots the salesclerk who sold her the thimble, and is shocked to discover that the woman is not a salesclerk at all; she's one of the department store's display mannequins. While resting in an office after the shock of her frightening discovery, Marsha finds herself accidentally locked inside the closed store (after hours). She attempts to find a way out and becomes alarmed by mysterious voices calling to her and by some subtle movements made by the supposedly lifeless mannequins around her. Moving about aimlessly, she topples the sailor mannequin, whom she recognizes as the somewhat frustrated elevator operator in earlier encounters.

Becoming hysterical, she flees backward to the now-open elevator, which again transports her to the unoccupied ninth floor. There she gradually realizes that the "ninth floor" is a storage area occupied by thinking, animated mannequins. With the mannequins' gentle encouragement, she eventually realizes that she herself is also a mannequin. Within their society, the mannequins take turns, one at a time, to live among humans for one month. Marsha had enjoyed her stay among "the outsiders" so much that she had forgotten her identity and has arrived back a day late. Now that she's returned, the next mannequin in line — the female salesclerk — departs the store to live among humans for 30 days. As the other mannequins bid farewell to the salesclerk, the sailor asks Marsha if she enjoyed her time among humans. Sweetly and sadly, she replies, "Ever so much fun... Ever so much fun." She and the sailor assume "mannequin" postures, and grow rigid.

The next day, Mr. Armbruster is making his energetic morning rounds on the sales floor and does a double-take upon passing the mannequin of Marsha White on display. The final shot moves in on her, and then her face, which fades into the stars as the closing narration begins.

Closing narration[]

Marsha White, in her normal and natural state, a wooden lady with a painted face who, one month out of the year, takes on the characteristics of someone as normal and as flesh and blood as you and I. But it makes you wonder, doesn't it, just how normal are we? Just who are the people we nod our hellos to as we pass on the street? A rather good question to ask . . . particularly in the Twilight Zone.

Production notes[]

The head of the mannequin double for Anne Francis was made from a cast of Francis's face done by noted make-up artist William J. Tuttle. Tuttle displayed the mannequin head in the 1968 MGM short film "The King of the Duplicators".^[1]

Remake[]

The episode was remade in 1986 for the first revival of The Twilight Zone. It starred Terry Farrell as Marsha Cole and Ann Wedgeworth as the Saleswoman. The plot is similar, but the emphasis is more on suspense. In addition, the Marsha in the remake is in denial of her identity and doesn't want to be a mannequin. She wants to be truly human, unlike the Marsha in the original, who simply forgot who she was and enjoyed feeling human for the month in which she lived among the outsiders.

Graphic novel[]

In 2008, the original episode was adapted as a graphic novel, Rod Serling's The Twilight Zone: The After Hours, written by Mark Kneece and illustrated by Rebekah Isaacs.^[2]

References[]

^ "The After Hours" at IMDb
^ Kneece, Mark and Serling, Rod (authors) and Isaacs, Rebekah (illustrator). Rod Serling's The Twilight Zone: The After Hours (2008), Walker Books. ISBN 0802797172

External links[]

"The After Hours" at IMDb

[1] "The After Hours" at IMDb

[2] Kneece, Mark and Serling, Rod (authors) and Isaacs, Rebekah (illustrator). Rod Serling's The Twilight Zone: The After Hours (2008), Walker Books. ISBN 0802797172

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v t 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" "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"