The Incredible World of Horace Ford

"The Incredible World of Horace Ford"
	The Twilight Zone episode
	Pat Hingle and Nan Martin as Horace and Laura Ford
Episode no.	Season 4; Episode 15
Directed by	Abner Biberman
Written by	Reginald Rose
Production code	4854
Original air date	April 18, 1963
Guest appearance(s)
	Pat Hingle ; Nan Martin ; Ruth White ; Phillip Pine ; Vaughn Taylor ; Jerry Davis ; Billy Hughes ; Mary Carver ; Jim E. Titus

"The Incredible World of Horace Ford" is an episode in season four of the American television anthology series The Twilight Zone. In this episode, a toy designer fixated on his childhood days finds that he travels back to those times whenever he revisits his old neighborhood.

Opening narration

Mr. Horace Ford, who has a preoccupation with another time, a time of childhood, a time of growing up, a time of street games, stickball and hide-'n-go-seek. He has a reluctance to check out a mirror and see the nature of his image: proof positive that the time he dwells in has already passed him by. But in a moment or two he'll discover that mechanical toys and memories and daydreaming and wishful thinking and all manner of odd and special events can lead one into a special province, uncharted and unmapped, a country of both shadow and substance known as the Twilight Zone.

Plot

Horace Ford is a 38-year-old toy designer whose life is dominated by blissfully happy memories of his childhood. His colleagues, wife, and mother have all become increasingly frustrated with his obsession.

One day, he decides to revisit his childhood neighborhood. Ford discovers, to his amazement, that it has not changed. He recognizes the boys he played with in his childhood—who have not aged. Frightened, he returns to his apartment, but he visits his old neighborhood again on each of the next several nights. Each night the same scene plays out and he stays slightly longer, before returning to his apartment.

On his last visit, he hears his old friends complaining that he did not invite them to his birthday party. He tries to talk to them, and suddenly turns into a boy again. His friends bully and assault him, as Horace realizes that his childhood was not as pleasant as he would nostalgically recall. After his wife finds him, he "grows up"—returning to his own time period and age group with a new-found appreciation for life as an adult.

Closing narration

Exit Mr. and Mrs. Horace Ford, who have lived through a bizarre moment not to be calibrated on normal clocks or watches. Time has passed, to be sure, but it's the special time in the special place known as the Twilight Zone.

Themes

This episode revisits themes used in the series in the episodes "The Trouble with Templeton" (season 2) and "Walking Distance" (season 1)—namely, a person's propensity to romanticize and try to relive a past that may not have been at all as good as they like to remember it.

Production notes

Reginald Rose originally wrote "The Incredible World of Horace Ford" as a teleplay for Westinghouse Studio One, which originally aired live on June 13, 1955, starring Art Carney in the title role, with Leora Dana as Laura. The original ending was somewhat downbeat, and producer Herbert Hirschman asked Rose to create a slightly different (and happier) ending. Accordingly, the Twilight Zone version of the script is largely identical to the Studio One version, except that an epilogue has been added. In the Studio One version, the story ends at the Fords' apartment, with the audience invited to assume that Horace has been permanently transported back to his miserable past. In the Twilight Zone version, the story continues on: Laura leaves the apartment to find Horace, who magically transforms back into an adult and vows not to live in the past any longer.

Cast

Pat Hingle as Horace Maxwell Ford
Nan Martin as Laura Ford
Ruth White as Mrs. Ford
Phillip Pine as Leonard O'Brien
Vaughn Taylor as Mr. Judson
Jerry Davis as Hermie Brandt
Billy Hughes as Kid
Mary Carver as Betty O'Brien
Jim E. Titus as Horace as a boy

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

External links

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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"