You Drive

"**You Drive**"
"You Drive"
The Twilight Zone episode
Episode no.	Season 5; Episode 15
Directed by	John Brahm
Written by	Earl Hamner Jr.
Featured music	Stock created by Jerry Goldsmith
Production code	2625
Original air date	January 3, 1964
Guest appearances
	Edward Andrews as Oliver Pope; Helen Westcott as Lilian Pope; Kevin Hagen as Pete Radcliff; Totty Ames as Muriel Hastings;
Episode chronology
← Previous; "Ring-a-Ding Girl"	Next →; "The Long Morrow"
	The Twilight Zone (1959 TV series) (season 5)
	List of episodes

Last updated April 06, 2024

"You Drive" is episode 134 of the American television anthology series The Twilight Zone . It originally aired on January 3, 1964, on CBS. In this episode, the perpetrator of a fatal hit-and-run is hounded by the car he committed the crime with. Earl Hamner Jr. reprised this story, as he had already used it in the 1954 TV series 'Justice'.

Opening narration

The narration begins with Oliver Pope driving.

Portrait of a nervous man: Oliver Pope by name, office manager by profession. A man beset by life's problems: his job, his salary, the competition to get ahead. Obviously, Mr. Pope's mind is not on his driving.

The narration continues after Pope commits the hit-and run:

Oliver Pope, businessman-turned-killer, on a rain-soaked street in the early evening of just another day during just another drive home from the office. The victim, a kid on a bicycle, lying injured, near death. But Mr. Pope hasn't time for the victim, his only concern is for himself. Oliver Pope, hit-and-run driver, just arrived at a crossroad in his life, and he's chosen the wrong turn. The hit occurred in the world he knows, but the run will lead him straight into—the Twilight Zone.

Plot

Oliver "Ollie" Pope is a nervous and distracted office manager. While driving home, he slams his 1956 Ford Fairlane Club Sedan into Timmy Danbers, a young boy delivering newspapers on his bicycle, mortally injuring him. Pope stops to offer aid, but changes his mind and hurries off to conceal his part in the accident. Danbers later dies of his injuries. His wife Lillian and his co-workers notice that he is becoming increasingly irritable. A co-worker named Pete Radcliff is inaccurately identified as the perpetrator by a witness and Pope does nothing to fix the error.

Before long, Pope's Fairlane seems to take on a mind of its own, rebelling against its owner. At first, when he is near the car, it honks its horn, flashes its lights, attempts to start on its own, drops its bumper, tries to close its hood on him, and repeats the radio newsflash of the boy's death in an attempt to get his attention. Then, while his wife is driving the Fairlane, it drives to the scene of the accident and stalls out, seemingly determined to get Pope to admit his guilt. He makes excuses to his wife and continues trying to cover up his crime.

Pope starts walking to work in an effort to avoid his car to lower the risk of being exposed to the authorities. One day, as he heads out into the rain, the Fairlane leaves the garage on its own and chases him relentlessly down the street. Pope falls, but the car stops just before running him down. The passenger door opens and Pope gets in. The Fairlane drives him to a police station, where Pope gets out and walks in to confess.

Closing narration

All persons attempting to conceal criminal acts involving their cars are hereby warned: check first to see that underneath that chrome there does not lie a conscience, especially if you're driving along a rain-soaked highway in the Twilight Zone.

Cast

Edward Andrews as Oliver Pope
Helen Westcott as Lillian Pope
Kevin Hagen as Pete Radcliff
Totty Ames as Muriel Hastings
Michael Gorfain as Timmy Danbers, newspaper boy
John Hanek as Policeman
Robert McCord as Passerby

Production notes

External shots (involving the car) of Pope's home and the park were filmed in a neighborhood in Culver City, California. The house that served as Pope's home still stands at 4183 Keystone Avenue (the address appears on an exterior shot in the episode) and the nearby park where the accident took place is the Dr. Paul Carlson Memorial Park. It is located a few blocks from the Sony Pictures (formerly MGM) lot. The scenes where Pope is chased by his car were filmed on Jasmine Avenue. The home at 4262 (as shown in the episode) has since been replaced. However, the adjoining yard that he runs through (and house) are still there and readily identifiable.

Edward Andrews refused to appear in the scene where Oliver Pope is almost run over by his car. His stand-in was actually "pinned" underneath the front tire.

When Mrs. Pope calls the tow truck operator from a phone booth, she says her car is at the intersection of 3rd and Park. When Mr. Pope hears the late news report from his car radio, the newscaster says the accident took place at 3rd and Elm.

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References

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

External links

"You Drive" at IMDb

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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"