The Bewitchin' Pool

"The Bewitchin' Pool"
The Twilight Zone episode
Episode no.	Season 5 Episode 36
Directed by	Joseph M. Newman
Written by	Earl Hamner Jr.
Production code	2619
Original air date	June 19, 1964
Guest appearance(s)
Mary Badham as Sport Sharewood June Foray as Sport Sharewood (voice, outdoor scenes) Kim Hector as Witt Dee Hartford as Gloria Sharewood Jeffrey Byron as Jeb Sharewood Georgia Simmons as Aunt T Tod Andrews as Gil Sharewood
Episode chronology

"The Bewitchin' Pool" is the 156th and last episode of the American anthology television series The Twilight Zone. It originally aired on June 19, 1964 on CBS.

Opening narration

“

A swimming pool not unlike any other pool, a structure built of tile and cement and money, a backyard toy for the affluent, wet entertainment for the well-to-do. But to Jeb and Sport Sharewood, this pool holds mysteries not dreamed of by the building contractor, not guaranteed in any sales brochure. For this pool has a secret exit that leads to a never-neverland, a place designed for junior citizens who need a long voyage away from reality, into the bottomless regions of the Twilight Zone.

”

Plot

Sport Sharewood (Mary Badham) and her younger brother Jeb (Jeffrey Byron) live in a large, expensive house, but their parents are both cold, insensitive and self-centered.

While Sport and Jeb are sitting beside their swimming pool, Whitt (Kim Hector), a young boy in a Huckleberry Finn straw hat pops up from the deep end of their pool and invites them to follow him. The children follow him by diving underwater only to come back up in a swimming hole bordering a rustic, simple homestead. An assortment of children are playing in the yard of the house. In contrast to their lavish home of neglect and insults, they are welcomed and loved from the moment they arrive at this humble children's paradise. There is only one adult there. "Aunt T." (Georgia Simmons) is a kind and patient elderly woman who loves children; she explains that she has many children there who came from parents who did not deserve them.

When Sport and Jeb decide to go home, for fear that their parents will be worried, they learn that their parents have decided to divorce and hadn't even missed them while they were gone. When the parents tell the children the news, they demand that they decide which parent they will live with, and berate them for their hesitation. The children have an epiphany that neither parent truly loves them. Ignoring their parents' shouts, Sport and Jeb race back to the pool and dive in. When, after a few moments, the children do not reemerge, their father jumps in to rescue them, but discovers that they have disappeared. He and their mother shout their children's names in despair.

Sport and Jeb are now happily living with Aunt T., whose love is unconditional and everlasting.

Sport hears the increasingly distant and remorseful voice of her mother, but—after a moment of regret—ignores her, and focuses on her new life.

Rod Serling, in his closing narration, asks the audience to consider how "real" an unhappy child's world of escape might become as the final shot shows children playing in Aunt T's yard.

Closing narration

“

A brief epilogue for concerned parents. Of course, there isn't any such place as the gingerbread house of Aunt T, and we grownups know there's no door at the bottom of a swimming pool that leads to a secret place. But who can say how real the fantasy world of lonely children can become? For Jeb and Sport Sharewood, the need for love turned fantasy into reality; they found a secret place—in the Twilight Zone.

”

Cast

Mary Badham as Sport Sharewood
June Foray as Sport Sharewood (voice in outdoor scenes only)
Jeffrey Byron (as Tim Stafford) as Jeb Sharewood
Kim Hector as Whitt
Georgia Simmons as Aunt T
Dee Hartford as Mrs. Gloria Sharewood
Tod Andrews as Mr. Gil Sharewood

Episode notes

This was the final episode of the original Twilight Zone series to be broadcast, though not the last to be filmed. The last episode filmed was "Come Wander With Me", while, according to Marc Scott Zicree's "The Twilight Zone Companion", the reediting of An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge (including the addition of new footage of Serling) was the last episode "produced" before cancellation. The last episode broadcast during the original run – as a repeat – was "The Jeopardy Room".

Numerous production problems delayed the premiere of this episode, which was originally scheduled for March 20, 1964. Most noticeably, back-lot noise rendered much of the outdoor dialogue unusable – only the indoor scenes with Aunt T were considered audible. The entire cast (except Aunt T) consequently re-dubbed their outdoor dialogue in September 1963, but Mary Badham's voice was still deemed not right.^[1] Unfortunately, by the time this decision had been made, Badham had returned to her home in Alabama, and the cost of flying her back to LA to re-record her lines yet again was ruled to be too expensive. Eventually, voice actress June Foray, best known as the voice of Rocky the Flying Squirrel in the Bullwinkle cartoons, dubbed Sport Sharewood's lines for all the scenes that take place outdoors (and sounding very much like Rocky). In the finished episode, the change in Sport's voice is noticeable when she moves indoors, and Badham's own deeper voice and more authentic accent are heard in place of Foray's overdubbed voice characterization. Foray also dubbed the voice of actor Jan Handzlik in the season one episode "The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street".^[1]

Another production peculiarity is that "The Bewitchin' Pool'" is the only episode of The Twilight Zone to open with a teaser scene that is repeated in its entirety later in the episode. This opening teaser scene (which is well over two minutes in length) was not included in Earl Hamner's original episode script; it appears to have been included to lengthen the episode after some other footage was dropped. Note that actor Harold Gould is listed in some sources as a cast member for this episode, but does not appear in any capacity in the finished production. (In one account, Gould is given credit for having played a radio announcer, but there is no radio announcer in the actual completed episode.)^[1]

Other re-used footage in the episode includes an identical 10-second shot of Sport and Jeb swimming up to the foot of a tree on two occasions; Sport and Jeb's mother twice telling them in the space of a minute "Darn you loudmouth kids" – using exactly the same footage of her dialogue, as well as of the kids' reaction; and the first and final shots of various children playing in front of Aunt T's house.

Earl Hamner, Jr., got the idea for The Bewitchin' Pool while living in the San Fernando Valley region of California and witnessing an alarming divorce rate and the effect it had on children. The episode was one of the first shows on television to really address the problem of divorce and bad parenting, and in part it represents wish fulfillment or escapism for children in such situations.^[1] There seems to be a parallel between the names "Sport" and "Jeb" and the "Scout" and "Jem" characters in To Kill a Mockingbird, especially considering that the same child actress played Scout and Sport.

References

1 2 3 4 Presnell, Don; McGee, Marty (2008). A Critical History of Television's The Twilight Zone, 1959-1964. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland. p. 194. ISBN 978-0-7864-3886-0.

Bibliography

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
Presnell, Don and Marty McGee. (2008). A Critical History of Television’s The Twilight Zone, 1959–1964. Jefferson, NC: McFarland. ISBN 978-0-7864-3886-0

External links

Wikiquote has quotations related to: The Bewitchin' Pool

"The Bewitchin' Pool" at the Internet Movie Database
"The Bewitchin' Pool" at TV.com

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" "The 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"

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