Caesar and Me

"Caesar and Me"
	The Twilight Zone episode
Episode no.	Season 5; Episode 28
Directed by	Robert Butler
Written by	Adele T. Strassfield
Featured music	Richard Shores
Production code	2636
Original air date	April 10, 1964
Guest appearance(s)
	Jackie Cooper; Suzanne Cupito (Morgan Brittany); Sarah Selby; Stafford Repp; Don Gazzaniga; Kenneth Konopka; Olan Soule;

"Caesar and Me" is episode 148 of the American television anthology series The Twilight Zone starring Jackie Cooper as a ventriloquist. It is not to be confused with a similar episode "The Dummy", starring Cliff Robertson as a ventriloquist.

Opening narration

Jonathan West, ventriloquist, a master of voice manipulation. A man, late of Ireland, with a talent for putting words into other peoples' mouths. In this case, the other person is a dummy, aptly named Caesar, a small splinter with large ideas, a wooden tyrant with a mind and a voice of his own, who is about to talk Jonathan West - into The Twilight Zone.

Plot

Jonathan West (Cooper) is an unsuccessful Irish ventriloquist. He is perpetually broke, selling valuable keepsakes like his grandfather's watch to pawnbrokers in exchange for petty cash. At the boarding house where he lives, he is mercilessly taunted by a little girl, Susan (billed as Susanne Cupito), for failing to find a job. But unbeknownst to everyone, Jonathan's evil ventriloquist dummy, "Little Caesar", has a mind of his own and talks to him at will. Despite Jonathan's reassurances that they are on the verge of a big break, Caesar apathetically tells him that they've hit bottom.

When Jonathan and Caesar go to a nightclub for an audition, the performance is poorly received. The following day, Jonathan is unable to find employment because of his lack of vocational experience and immigrant status; he may soon leave the boarding house because he is behind on his rent. Caesar berates Jonathan for being a hopeless "clod", but has a solution to his money woes: burglary. A reluctant Jonathan—directed by Caesar in his suitcase—breaks into a delicatessen and steals its money. Jonathan uses it to pay his rent, but Caesar, during a conversation overheard by Susan, pressures him into committing more burglaries.

Susan—now aware that Caesar can talk—sneaks into Jonathan's room in his absence to unsuccessfully speak with the dummy. Jonathan catches her coming out of the room and runs her off. Inside, Jonathan expresses a desire to flee, but Caesar cajoles him into carrying out the next burglary. The duo sneaks into the nightclub to break into the manager's office. However, they are caught by a night watchman after they steal money from the nightclub's safe. They manage to bluff their way past him by giving an impromptu routine.

When Jonathan and Caesar arrive home, Susan eavesdrops on their ensuing argument. The next morning over breakfast, Susan hears her aunt, Mrs. Cudahy, read about the nightclub theft from a newspaper. She calls the police to tip them off about Jonathan and Caesar. Two detectives arrive at the boarding house and interrogate Jonathan, who tries to make Caesar talk about his role in the crime. The dummy, however, remains silent. Mrs. Cudahy and the detectives stare at the one-sided exchange, thinking Jonathan mad. Jonathan now realizes that Caesar has abandoned him, and is willingly arrested.

After the detectives lead Jonathan out of the room, Caesar turns his head around and addresses Susan. He says that he likes her for her "hip attitude" and offers to help her run away to New York City. Caesar assures Susan that Jonathan will now be gone "for a long, long time" and that the two of them are now "a team." Finally, Caesar implies that Susan should kill Mrs. Cudahy with poison darts.

Closing narration

A little girl and a wooden doll. A lethal dummy in the shape of a man. But everybody knows dummies can't talk - unless, of course, they learn their vocabulary in The Twilight Zone.

Cast

Jackie Cooper as Jonathan West / voice of Caesar
Suzanne Cupito (Morgan Brittany) as Susan
Sarah Selby as Mrs. Cudahy
Stafford Repp as Pawnbroker
Don Gazzaniga as Detective
Kenneth Konopka as Mr. Miller
Sidney Marion as Watchman
Robert McCord as Man Watching Audition
Olan Soule as Mr. Smiles

Production notes

The writer of the episode, Adele Strassfield, was the secretary of William Froug, the producer of the second half of the final season of The Twilight Zone. According to Froug, they worked out this episode together. Strassfield is billed in the credits as "Adele T. Strassfield", not "A.T. Strassfield" as Zicree inexplicably avers in The Twilight Zone Companion; Serling also announced her as "Adele T. Strassfield" in a promotional announcement for the episode that aired the previous week. Strassfield is the only woman credited with writing an original teleplay for the original version of The Twilight Zone, though several women received credit for stories that were adapted for the show. She later wrote a first-season episode of Gilligan's Island with executive producer Froug's assistance.

The dummy used in this episode to portray "Caesar" was originally created in the 1940s by puppet maker Revello Petee. The same dummy was used one year earlier in the 1962 Twilight Zone episode, "The Dummy". A figure of the puppet can be seen at Disney's Hollywood Studios in the dark corner of a barred-off exhibit to the side of one of the elevator exits of the Twilight Zone Tower of Terror ride.

gollark: They're just not very good compared to x86.

gollark: We have RISC-V CPUs now.

gollark: Personally I use LXDE.

gollark: Apparently `/etc/motd` on here is just *empty*.

gollark: gang.

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

External links

"Caesar and Me" on IMDb
"Caesar and Me" at TV.com

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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"