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

Last updated November 12, 2024

"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

When Marsha is in the elevator, we hear the first part of the 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.

After Marsha exits the elevator, the narration resumes:

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, browsing for a gift for her mother in a department store, decides on a gold thimble. A crowd of people are waiting for the elevator. She notices another elevator is empty. The male elevator operator advises her that thimbles are on the ninth floor. As the elevator rises, the floor indicator shows only eight floors. When Marsha walks out onto the dark, empty ninth floor, a saleswoman leads her to the only item on the floor: a gold thimble. Marsha is puzzled and unsettled by the behavior of the elevator operator and the saleswoman, who knows her name. The saleswoman asks Marsha if she is happy; Marsha responds that it is none of her business and storms off. As Marsha rides the elevator down, she notices the thimble is scratched and dented; the elevator operator directs her to the complaints department on the third floor.

She tells the sales supervisor and the store manager that she bought the item on the ninth floor. They do not believe her, telling her there is no ninth floor. She has no evidence of the transaction as she paid cash, and has no receipt. Marsha then thinks she sees the saleswoman, and is shocked to discover that the figure is actually a display mannequin. While resting in an office to recover from the shock, Marsha is accidentally locked inside the store after hours. Searching for a way out, she becomes alarmed by voices calling to her and by subtle movements made by the mannequins around her. Wandering the floor, she topples the sailor mannequin, whom she recognizes as the elevator operator.

She flees backward to the now-open elevator, which again takes her to the 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 accepts that she herself is also a mannequin. 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, she had forgotten her identity and has arrived back a day late. The next mannequin in line — the saleswoman — forgives Marsha for her tardiness and then departs the store to take her turn. As the other mannequins bid farewell to the saleswoman, the sailor asks Marsha if she enjoyed her time among humans; she sweetly and sadly says she did.

The next day, the sales supervisor makes his morning rounds on the sales floor and does a double-take upon passing the Marsha mannequin on display.

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. Marsha is in denial of her identity and wants to be truly human, unlike the Marsha in the original, who simply forgot who she was and accepted her return.

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]

Related Research Articles

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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

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
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[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 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"