Twilight Zone, Episode 5: “Walking Distance”

"Walking Distance" (aired October 30, 1959)

New York advertising executive Martin Sloan pulls his sports car into a lonely gas station on the outskirts of a small town called Homewood. It happens to be Sloan’s hometown, a place he hasn’t visited in years. Needing a break from the fast-paced advertising world, he decides to take a walk into town while his car is being serviced. When he arrives, the phrase “Things haven’t changed much” takes on a whole new meaning.

“Walking Distance” is one of the handful of Twilight Zone stories that has stood the test of time for several reasons: Serling’s touching (but not sappy) script, Bernard Herrmann’s outstanding musical score, experiments in camera work and lighting, and a superb performance by Young.

Serling’s writing sometimes seemed a bit heavy-handed, sometimes a bit pedantic, but with “Walking Distance” he simply stood back and told a great story. You can’t go home again and even if you could, it wouldn’t work. It’s almost as if Serling is telling us there’s an order to the universe and you can’t tamper with it. It’s often sad, often regretful, but there it is; you can dwell on it or you can move forward.



This is the first episode where I actually noticed many of the weird tilted camera angles that would help define the series. In “Walking Distance” this technique (as well as the symbolic lighting) works perfectly, showing us a world that’s somehow out of kilter, one that needs restoration. Yet the technique is not overused.

There’s a scene of Gig Young in a drugstore having a soda that’s just about as good as TV got in the 1950s. He’s reflecting on his life, his youth, where he’s been and where he is now. He’s driven himself too hard in the advertising world and you can see it in his walk, his stature. But when the camera comes in for a close-up, you can see the lines on Young’s face, lines the character Martin Sloan shouldn’t have at age 36, but they’re there. (Young was actually near 46 at the time.) You can also see it in Young’s tired eyes. The drugstore soda fountain stood could almost be a barstool, a place where the weary pour out what’s left of their souls to anyone willing to listen.

Sadly, Young’s offscreen life was an extremely dark one. Although he won a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for the 1969 film They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?, alcoholism destroyed his later acting career. (Young took both his wife's and his own life in 1978.) I can never watch “Walking Distance” without wondering what Young’s life might have been if he could have really experienced what Martin Sloan experienced.