A Short Drink from a Certain Fountain

"**A Short Drink from a Certain Fountain**"
"A Short Drink from a Certain Fountain"
The Twilight Zone episode
Episode no.	Season 5; Episode 11
Directed by	Bernard Girard
Story by	Lou Holtz
Teleplay by	Rod Serling
Featured music	Stock
Production code	2614
Original air date	December 13, 1963
Guest appearances
	Patrick O'Neal: Harmon Gordon ; Ruta Lee: Flora Gordon ; Walter Brooke: Dr. Raymond Gordon
Episode chronology
← Previous; "The 7th Is Made Up of Phantoms"	Next →; "Ninety Years Without Slumbering"
	The Twilight Zone (1959 TV series) (season 5)
	List of episodes

Last updated September 11, 2024

"A Short Drink from a Certain Fountain" is an episode of the American television anthology series The Twilight Zone . In this episode, a scientist gives his brother an experimental youth serum in order to save his marriage to a much younger woman. The episode's title refers to the mythical Fountain of Youth.

Opening narration

Picture of an aging man who leads his life, as Thoreau said, 'in quiet desperation.' Because Harmon Gordon is enslaved by a love affair with a wife forty years his junior. Because of this, he runs when he should walk. He surrenders when simple pride dictates a stand. He pines away for the lost morning of his life when he should be enjoying the evening. In short, Mr. Harmon Gordon seeks a fountain of youth, and who's to say he won't find it? This happens to be the Twilight Zone.

Plot

Harmon Gordon, a wealthy old man married to a much younger woman named Flora, is exhausted by his wife's youthful and selfish lifestyle. Seeking to keep up the pace, he asks his scientist brother Raymond to inject him with an experimental youth serum. Raymond firmly refuses at first, saying that the serum has had mixed results with laboratory animals and will not be ready for human trials without decades of refinement. Moreover, he abhors Flora for her callous treatment of his brother and is not enthusiastic about any step to strengthen their marriage. When Harmon suggests he will commit suicide rather than lose Flora, Raymond reluctantly agrees to administer the serum.

Per his instructions, Harmon rests after taking the serum. He later wakens to find himself a young man, to Flora's surprised delight. Before Harmon can enjoy his new youth however, the regression continues until he eventually becomes a toddler hours later. Flora tries to leave, but Raymond insists she must stay and raise the infant Harmon or be cut off from Harmon's fortune, threatening legal action against her should she disobey. Finding a stroke of poetic justice in what has happened, Raymond points out that by the time Harmon has regained adulthood, his position with Flora will be reversed, with her being old.

Closing narration

It happens to be a fact: as one gets older, one does get wiser. If you don't believe it, ask Flora. Ask her any day of the ensuing weeks of her life, as she takes notes during the coming years and realizes that the worm has turned: youth has taken over. It's simply the way the calendar crumbles...in the Twilight Zone.

Production

Initially, the Raymond Gordon character was to be a typical family physician. Disturbed by the character's willingness to experiment on a fellow human (Harmon, his brother), CBS asked that his occupation be changed to that of a research scientist. Serling complied.^[1]

The opening narration uses an allusion to the respected poet Henry Thoreau, a poet, essayist, and philosopher who spoke extensively on aging, maturity, and romantic themes—all of which feature extensively in the narrative.

This episode (because of a lawsuit filed by someone claiming they had the idea for the story first) was not included in the Twilight Zone syndication package until 1984. When this and other long unseen episodes became available (including "Miniature"), a series of short introductions were shot featuring commentary from the cast and crew of the original episodes. In the segment with Patrick O'Neal for this episode, O'Neal remarked on how accurately the show's makeup effects artists had aged him, as he now very closely resembled his older appearance in this episode. O'Neal was only eight years older than Ruta Lee, who played the much younger Flora.

Related Research Articles

"Walking Distance" is episode five of the American television series The Twilight Zone. It originally aired on October 30, 1959. The episode was listed as the ninth best episode in the history of The Twilight Zone by Time magazine.

"Judgment Night" is the tenth episode of the American television anthology series The Twilight Zone. In this episode, a passenger aboard a British cargo liner has no memory of how he came aboard, and is tormented by unexpected clues to his true identity and a sense that the ship is headed toward impending doom.

"The Fever" is the seventeenth episode of the American television anthology series The Twilight Zone. It originally aired on January 29, 1960, on CBS. The complete, original text for this story was run in the debut issue of Harvey Kurtzman’s Help!, cover dated August, 1960.

"Mirror Image" is the twenty-first episode of the American television anthology series The Twilight Zone. It originally aired on February 26, 1960, on CBS.

"The Chaser" is episode 31 of the American television anthology series The Twilight Zone.

"A Passage for Trumpet" is episode 32 of the American television series The Twilight Zone.

"Eye of the Beholder" is episode 42 of the American television anthology series The Twilight Zone. It originally aired on November 11, 1960, on CBS.

"The Whole Truth" is episode 50 of the American television anthology series The Twilight Zone. It originally aired on January 20, 1961 on CBS. It was one of the six episodes of the second season which was shot on videotape in a short-lived experiment aimed to cut costs.

"Static" is episode 56 of the American television anthology series The Twilight Zone. It originally aired on March 10, 1961 on CBS. It was one of the six episodes of the second season which was shot on videotape in a short-lived experiment aimed to cut costs.

"Will the Real Martian Please Stand Up?" is episode 64 of the American television anthology series The Twilight Zone. It originally aired on May 26, 1961 on CBS.

"The Passersby" is the 69th episode of the American television anthology series The Twilight Zone. It was written by series creator and showrunner Rod Serling.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Examination Day</span> 6th episode of the 1st season of The Twilight Zone

"Examination Day" is the first segment of the sixth episode of the first season of the television series The Twilight Zone. The segment is based on the short story "Examination Day" by Henry Slesar. The story was first published in Playboy.

"The Self-Improvement of Salvadore Ross" is an episode of the American television anthology series The Twilight Zone. In this episode, a man finds he has the ability to trade anything, even personal traits and conditions, with whoever agrees to the swap.

"Of Late I Think of Cliffordville" is episode 116 of the American television anthology series The Twilight Zone. It originally aired on April 11, 1963, on CBS. In this episode, an elderly business tycoon buys the opportunity to enjoy amassing his fortune a second time.

"The Trade-Ins" is episode 96 of the American television anthology series The Twilight Zone.

"Cavender Is Coming" is episode 101 of the American television anthology series The Twilight Zone. It originally aired on May 25, 1962 on CBS.

"In His Image" is an episode of the American television anthology series The Twilight Zone aired on January 3, 1963. This was the first episode of the fourth season. Each episode was expanded to an hour from "In His Image" until "The Bard". The fourth season is the only season of The Twilight Zone to have each episode one hour long. In this episode, a man finds his hometown is suddenly inconsistent with his memories of it and begins experiencing irrational urges to commit murder, two mysteries which together lead him to an unpleasant discovery about his identity.

"Spur of the Moment" is episode 141 of the American television anthology series The Twilight Zone. In this episode, a young woman is set upon by a mysterious and terrifying woman dressed in black just hours before her engagement. Alternating between scenes set 25 years apart, the episode explores themes of regret and the danger of yielding to passion.

Patrick Wisdom O'Neal was an American actor and restaurateur.

The Nutty Professor is a fictional character portrayed by Jerry Lewis in The Nutty Professor and its respective sequel, and by Eddie Murphy in the 1996 version and its 2000 sequel Nutty Professor II: The Klumps. Julius F. Kelp is an awkward and shy but intelligent and lively chemistry professor. Sherman Klump is a jolly, kind-hearted science teacher at Welman College. Murphy also played the rest of Klump's family in the sequel. Lewis was not fond of Murphy's characters, due to excessive fart jokes in the films.

References

↑ Hal Erikson, "Censorship: Another Dimension Behind the Twilight Zone", published in the October 1985 edition of The Twilight Zone Magazine

Sources

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
Zicree, Marc Scott: The Twilight Zone Companion. Sillman-James Press, 1982 (second edition)

External links

"A Short Drink from a Certain Fountain" at IMDb

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.

[1] Hal Erikson, "Censorship: Another Dimension Behind the Twilight Zone", published in the October 1985 edition of The Twilight Zone Magazine

[1]

v t e 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"