Ringside Report The Twilight Zone Review: Showdown With Rance McGrew

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By William Kozy

Of the three episodes that received zero votes in my survey asking “What is your favorite episode of the original Twilight Zone?”, this episode suffered the greatest injustice. Of those three episodes, it is perhaps predictable that two of them would be amongst Twilight Zone’s rare delving into comedy. The comedic episodes in general fared poorly. But this episode, “Showdown With Rance McGrew” despite some missteps, actually succeeds I think, thanks to the almost single-handed efforts of its star, Larry Blyden. Blyden was a highly skilled successful Broadway actor, winning multiple awards for the many comedies and musicals he appeared in. One simply can’t have that successful a theatre career without having terrific acting chops at one’s disposal. And when you watch this episode, it’s very clear to me that this guy is pulling off a tour de force that I would honestly put up there with the best lead actor performances in the whole pantheon of TZ episodes. It’s the same old story though, dramatic performances are in general more respected, but anyone who knows about acting, I mean REALLY knows about acting, can tell you that it’s the performer who can do comedy well that is truly the more skilled performer.

Watch this episode and marvel at the finely honed comedic touches Blyden brings to the role. And such a mixed bag of tricks too. Yes, some of it is broad when appropriately called upon, but he also does some very subtle hilarious things as well.

It’s a terrific premise for a TZ episode: what happens when a diva actor playing a masculine hero role in the pretend world of television suddenly finds himself in the actual dangerous world of the Old West? That’s gold right there. And you could go either way with it very easily—a dramatic high concept thriller, or comedy. In fact as Rod Serling tells it, “Fred Fox (a TV writer of westerns) had an interesting notion, which was quite serious, about a modern day cowpoke, not a television star, who found himself living in the past….But it struck me that it would be a terribly interesting concept to have a guy who plays the role of a Hollywood cowboy suddenly thrust into the maelstrom of reality in which he has to do all these acts of prowess against real people…”. I think Serling was right. It’s a grand idea, and one fueled I suppose by his own pondering over how an actor like John Wayne as he mentions, who made a career out of playing war heroes and western tough guys would have fared the Old West. Despite never seeing a lick of military service in his life Serling wondered how Wayne would have made out “if he ever had to lift up an M-1 and go through a bloody foxhole on attack sometime.” I wonder if this is something that stuck in Mr. Serling’s craw, having saw combat in real life, and then building a Hollywood career as a writer and watching the Rance McGrew’s of Hollywood pretend at what he actually experienced?

In any event, the episode begins with a nice bang, a real attention grabber of a shot, very nicely executed by cinematographer George T. Clemens. We overlook a small western town’s dirt road—the typical kind from countless oaters as stock music signals that danger abodes. The camera is high up and then glides smoothly downward as two cowboys emerge from a saloon and take a look down the road. “He ain’t here yet” one of them says. “He’ll be along” the other one counters, “He knows what’s waiting for him here.” It’s a fine sense of western cliché drama that doesn’t give away that we’re actually watching a parody.

The cowboy looks at his pocket watch, and mentions, “He knows he’s gonna get shot.” Was that pun intended?

“I think I hear him coming now” says the second cowboy, and the non-diegetic western music score, suddenly gives over to the diegetic music of jazz music blasting out of a car radio as way down the road we see a white convertible turn the corner and speed toward us! It’s a great idea for the start of an episode. What in the world is going on, we wonder.

Well, the car comes to a fast stop in front of the saloon and out comes Rance McGrew—that’s Blyden’s character’s name, and also the name of the character he’s playing in the show within the show. We learn this later when Rance cites one of the reasons he agreed to do the show was that they agreed to name the character after his real name.

So, he hops out of the car and is accosted by a frustrated TV director who berates him for being late to set. In true diva fashion, McGrew starts in on him, “Sy Sy Sy, you know how emotional scenes upset me before we shoot.” Immediately we get our first clue that the actor McGrew is actually a fish out of water as he nervously recoils at the whinny of the horse that is tied to the rail next to his car.

The two men enter the saloon, and we cut to a close-up of the white horse neighing a big toothy grin ala Mr. Ed.

The director reminds him what scene number they’re shooting, to which McGrew jabs at him, “Read it to me.” Sy reads the action to him, “Cover shot of three bad men at the bar. Rance McGrew enters, he walks to the bar, he glances sideways left and right.” McGrew then snaps at Sy, “Glances left and right, what do you think my head is? A swivel? Listen Sy, when a cowboy walks into a bar, he walks straight to the other end of the room, then he takes his drink and he looks at that. Then, he looks straight ahead. He doesn’t look left and right.” Sy, in resignation says, “All right, Rance, we’ll shoot it your way. Any way you want.” The reason I mention this exchange will come up in a moment. But I want to mention for a second something that struck me when I saw the credits for this episode. The actual director of the episode came up onscreen as Christian Nyby. Now, Nyby was the credited with directing perhaps my all-time favorite sci-fi/horror film, “The Thing From Another World” the 1950 classic based on the fantastic short novella “Who Goes There?” by John Campbell. Ostensibly directed by Nyby I should say, because many say that producer Howard Hawks had the bigger hand in that creative department due to the earmarks of Hawks’s directing style.

Of rapid overlapping dialogue. They say Hawks gave his longtime editor, Christian Nyby, the director credit partly as a way of thanking him for saving previous editors’ terrible job on “Red River.” Be that as it may, Nyby went on to director many hours of television afterward, but here’s the thing that caught my attention: I then saw this episode’s acting credits on screen and saw the name Robert Cornthwaite. “Cornthwaite, Cornthwaite…where have I heard that before?” Then it hit me. I looked up the credits for “The Thing” and there it was: he played the scientist Dr. Arthur Carrington who nearly undoes the heroes’ attempts to survive “One of the world’s greatest battles …fought and won today by the human race.” Cornthwaite looked like a scientist in his 50s or 60s in “The Thing” so how in the world could he look so much younger in this TZ episode filmed twelve years after “The Thing”? Once again, hats off to those make-up magicians who do so much to fool us viewers into thinking a performer’s success is due solely to their “gift.” But I think the best answer to that Hollywood riddle is that Hawks and Nyby co-directed. Can we settle for that? Cornthwaite himself in an interview said, “It sickens me, some of the things that have been said…Chris always deferred to Hawks, as well he should. Hawks was giving him the break, after all, though he had done much fine work for Hawks and had his confidence. . . Maybe because he did defer to him, people misinterpreted it.” True to form apparently, we learn on the DVD commentary, that Nyby directed Cornthwaite to play Sy as a funny version of Nyby himself.

As Sy calls for everyone to get ready we hear Serling begin his OPENING MONOLOGUE:

“Some one-hundred-odd years ago, a motley collection of tough moustaches galloped across the West and left behind a raft of legends and legerdemains, and it seems a reasonable conjecture that if there are any television sets up in cowboy heaven, and anyone of these rough-and-wooly nail-eaters could see with what careless abandon their names and exploits are bandied about, they’re very likely turning over in their graves – or worse, getting out of them. Which gives you a clue as to the proceedings that’ll begin in just a moment, when one Mr. Rance McGrew, a three-thousand-buck-a-week phony-baloney discovers that this week’s current edition of make-believe is being shot on location – and that location is The Twilight Zone.”

I love the crispness and purple prose of this Serling intro to the episode. I really think it’s one of the best written openers he wrote for the series. The alliteration, the word images, and the playful suspense he teases us with. Expertly scribed!

As McGrew tweaks his costume and gun holster, the props man tosses him his six-gun, which to his credit McGrew catches and does a fairly credible job of twirling. The cast and crew scramble away though, and you have to wonder, “Why would they do that? Surely there aren’t any real bullets in the movie gun?!” Well, the answer to that is humorously revealed when McGrew’s twirling ends up sending the gun flying into the mirror behind the bar, shattering it. It’s a nice way of showing us the history of how things go down on this western show, that this guy must be screwing up like that so often, that everyone knows by now they need to get out of his careless way as he attempts to show off.

The props guy taps Sy on the shoulder and holds out his hand awaiting Sy’s payment for a bet the two must have made, something along the line of would McGrew break the mirror, or how soon would it take him to break it. The actor portraying the props man is a bit hammy, even in so simple a moment as this one. Compared to Blyden’s expertise, this actor pales, and it may be one of the reasons viewers didn’t give this episode a fair shot. The same actor unfortunately displays this lack of finesse in other moments throughout.

Soon Sy calls “Action!” and they begin shooting the scene. McGrew walks up to the swinging saloon doors, and pauses. And what does he then do? At the 4:33 mark, Blyden pauses and does this fast glance left and right with his eyes rapidly shifting to and from with just the perfect amount of exaggeration. Exactly what he argued to Sy his character wouldn’t do. I actually like that the humor of this might have been missed by some viewers who forgot about McGrew’s arguing with Sy about it one scene beforehand. For those who do put it together it’s hilarious, and lets us know that we might just benefit by sitting up in our seats to pay close attention so we might catch other such subtle bits.

McGrew swaggers over to the bar and orders “rotgut whiskey” and the bartender slides a bottle down the bar to him. But the bottle slips past McGrew who apparently has the quickdraw reflexes of a slug. McGrew of course accuses the bartender of putting English on the bottle on purpose. They go for a second take and Blyden gives a funny finger wag and hard stare, warning the other actor. Next take, McGrew barely catches hold of the sliding bottle in time. He takes it and tries breaking the neck off on the bar in true badass style, so he can drink from the jagged bottle. McGrew breaks it (although not convincingly badass-like at all) and the camera tracks right, smooth as glass to reposition as McGrew turns around so his back is to the bar. He drinks from the bottle and it’s amusing how Blyden very gingerly deals with spitting out the broken pieces of prop bottle in his mouth. He takes up precious TV show screen time fishing out the shards from his mouth with his finger—you can imagine the TV show’s editors having to cut around these moments every episode!

“There’s something else I know that you don’t know, that you don’t know that I know that you know Jesse James.” It’s a funny mouthful that Blyden handles dexterously. But I wonder, did the writers of the show within the show know they wrote such a funny line? If so then….ah who cares, funny is funny.

We hear the assistant director calling out the instructions that Jesse James is approaching and will dismount and soon enter the saloon, to which the bartender pleads with McGrew, “Marshal, Marshal, please no killing in here!” To which McGrew responds, “Oh I ain’t aiming to kill him. Just going to maim him a little bit.” But you look at McGrew and Blyden strikes this relaxed pose as he leans back against the bar, a pose that McGrew the actor probably figured would look like the dead calm of a confident gunman, but what Blyden does is he has his fingers interlaced against his chest, and high up in a way that feels completely NOT like a tough guy’s repose. On the contrary it looks prissy. Most other actors probably wouldn’t have thought to conjure up such a subtle image, and that right there and in countless other moments of this episode point to what a masterful comic turn Blyden gives.

When the other characters tell McGrew, “Jesse ain’t gonna take kindly to that”, McGrew does a slow burn turn of the head to them with what is supposed to look like a steely-eyed stare of defiance, but in Blyden’s hands it looks so darned priggish, not quite the same thing. The actor is consistently using an incredible precision guiding his expressions and physical gestures to convey these aspects of the diva without making it completely unbelievable that he would ever be cast in such a role in the first place. That’s damned tricky.

On with the scene. The actor portraying Jesse James walks in, kicks over a chair and calls him out, “Marshal McGrew ain’t it?” Again, the expertly timed pregnant pause Blyden gives it as he straightens up and looks at Jesse before finally uttering a simple ”Yip” tickled the Hell out of me. And even that word “Yip” instead of “yep” is great—McGrew the actor after all is like an annoying little dog yipping about.

Jesse draws, but we hear a gun shot as Jesse’s gun flies out of his hand. Sy smiles with satisfaction, but then we also cut to a shot of the props man miming (or actually?) blowing smoke out of the barrel of a gun. It’s an ill-advised shot to cut to. It confuses the viewer, leading us to think, “Oh. Is that how it works? Does a prop guy shoot a gun from off camera? That seems ridiculously dangerous!” Either this episode actually depicted this as the way it’s done in Hollywood (it isn’t of course) or perhaps it was just simply a reaction shot of this goofy hammy props guy playing around blowing on the barrel of a gun, off-handedly pretending he shot it. It’s a moment that the film editors of this TZ episode could’ve handled better. It’s especially surprising that an expert editor such as Christian Nyby who directed this episode would have let happen in the final cut.
But then we cut to McGrew and he’s fumbling with his gun trying to pull it out of the holster. When he does, it goes flying away, and again breaks the mirror. This is followed by some small instances of not-great reaction shots unfortunately.

Next we get a wonderful montage of stunt fighting between McGrew and Jesse James. They engage in fisticuffs and it’s positively a riot every time McGrew stops in mid-stunt before getting hit and yells out “Stunt man!” whereby he steps out of the action and a stunt man steps in to resume the action. Blyden’s voice at time almost cracks with frightened desperation in calling out for the stunt man, and the coup de grace is the final stunt of the sequence when right before jumping off the bar, McGrew calls out “Stunt man!” and then climbs down off the bar so awkwardly and incompetently, practically hugging the other actor who aids him off the bar. And the icing on the cake, whether it was intended or an accident, Blyden’s foot knocks over a chair as he’s being guided away to safety.

In the next scene, Sy gives the overview for the cast and crew as they set up. “Jesse lies over there. Rance thinks that he’s unconscious. Jesse takes a gun up off the floor and fires at Rance’s back.”

To this, the actor playing Jesse jumps up off the floor protesting, “At his back?!…Now look Sy, I don’t want to fight you, but…but that’s not the way Jesse James used to operate. Everything I read about the guy, he fought pretty fair.” I’m not sure where they got their history from, and I’m a little confused as to whether Serling in writing this felt the same way, it’s just not clear. But there’s plenty to find and read about the viciousness of Jesse James and his cohorts including this from history.com: “He and his brother joined a gang led by William “Bloody Bill” Anderson and participated in a number of violent incidents, including a September 1864 raid on Centralia, Missouri. In that raid, at least 20 unarmed Union soldiers were forced from a train and executed by the guerillas, who then slaughtered more than 100 federal troops trying to hunt them down. The guerillas viciously mutilated many of their victims’ corpses.”

McGrew balks at the actor’s suggestion, and actually McGrew’s argument against it makes sense instead of being completely self-serving. And I’m fine with that. It rounds out the character a little bit, just as McGrew’s appreciative words of encouragement to the stuntman a few moments earlier also allow the episode to compose a character with perhaps a few more layers than a total cliché.

What I do object to though is the completely unrealistic and illogical action taken by this Jesse James portrayer in trying to rewrite the scene. The fact that he called out in surprise “At his back?!” makes no sense at all: did the actor NOT read the script? How could this have surprised him?

Of course, McGrew wins this showdown and gets his way. They resume the scene. McGrew takes a swig from his bottle and then the Twilight Zone strikes. The film crew disappears, and Jesse James disappears, and the whiskey is the real stuff, causing McGrew to sputter but as he turns around he sees that everything’s changed.

An old man rushes in to tell Marshal McGrew that Jesse’s coming and he’s gunning for him. McGrew of course chides the “cement head” telling him that Jesse James “already came in in scene 73”. But he can’t figure out where everyone went, so he charges toward the door to call his agent. But he stops short when an imposing figure of a man played by 6’1” Arch Johnson comes in from outside. The real Jesse James was between 5’10” and 6’, so they get close enough, but wow Larry Blyden must be real short. Looking at the two of them side by side, Blyden must be about 5’6”. Interestingly, Serling was also short. But that’s not all.

Check this out:

Both of their given names each had nineteen letters (Rodman Edward Serling / Ivan Lawrence Blieden). Both lived in New York. Both of their wives were named Carol. Both served in the military, and both worked in radio. Both were writers. Both were often game show panelists/players, and both were hosts of game shows. Both men supported and campaigned for candidates who would later become U.S. Presidents: Serling campaigned for Pat Brown who lost to Ronald Reagan in the 1966 California Governor’s race while Larry Blyden campaigned in Texas for George E. B. Reddy who lost to Lyndon Johnson for a seat in the Senate. They also died in the same month and year: June, 1975, while they were both 50-years-old or close to it (Blyden was 17 days away from turning 50).

This real Jesse James faces down the cowed McGrew and reveals who he is to which Blyden with another expertly times pregnant pause, calls out not very authoritatively, “cut.” With no response he calls out “cut” with growing urgency. And we do indeed cut to commercial.
When we return. McGrew is sitting at a table with his hat pulled down low over his face. Jesse asks him where the marshal is and Mcgrew points to another door. “Thataway.” But Jesse isn’t fooled and lifts him up out of the chair, exposing McGrew’s badge. McGrew calls out, “uh, where’s the fella that loaned me this vest?” Jesse starts telling McGrew what a phony he seems to be, and with each insult, I had to laugh at Blyden’s various reactions. Jesse insists they’re going to have a talk and walks him over to the bar. He slides a bottle to McGrew and in attempting to break off the neck against the bar, the whole bottle shatters into pieces. Jesse then offers him the materials to roll his own cigarette.

Well, I just don’t know about the casting of this actor Arch Johnson. He keeps calling McGrew a “marshmallow” but this actor is the one with the doughy face, not at all, the dark dead-eyed mustachioed real Jesse James. So I’m not sure why he was cast. Even his voice is a little too much on the aw shucks friendly side. The actor’s natural inclination is probably affability, which he tries fighting against in trying to sound ominous. But it doesn’t work, and I wonder if it’s because the production felt that if they did go with a full-on mean and dirty Jesse James, the comedy would be lost.

Jesse then relaxes in a chair and begins recounting all the various examples of derring do McGrew performed in various episodes, and Blyden does a great job with McGrew’s responses, mixing equal parts nervousness and pride “I got nominated for an Emmy on that one.” “I’ll bet you did” laughs Jesse. Jesse reveals that he and all the other legendary outlaws of the Old West have been watching McGrew triumph over them so they decided to have Jesse enter this plane of existence and confront McGrew: “We had a meeting up there, Me my brother Frank, the Dalton Boys…” Wait a second…”up there”? So these legendary vicious killers and bank robbers are in heaven? Exactly how awful do you have to be to go to Hell? Anyway, he continues…

“We see you week after week killing off this guy and that guy, capturing that bushwhacker and that rustler. But all the time winning. Man, you just don’t lose. You are the winningest fellow that ever come down the pike.” Hey, that reminds me of the other TZ episode that Blyden starred in : “A Nice Place to Visit”. In that one too he wins all the time without fail in his new surroundings. He wins literally all the time until he is completely bored with his new digs.
Back to this episode, Jesse tells him the plan. “Marshal, I’ll tell you what I’m going to do. I’m gonna be square with you, a lot squarer than you ever been with any of us. Face to face, and no…uh…what do you call them…stuntmen?” Wait a second again… so Jesse knows what an Emmy Award is, but he’s not so familiar with the term “stuntman”?

Jesse starts ushering McGrew out into the front of the saloon where he wants to have a showdown with McGrew. To get out of it, McGrew stammers, “No but that’s been done. That’s been done., That’s been done, didn’t you see Gunfight at Red Rock?”

Out in the street, Jesse instructs McGrew to come around from the corner of the building and Jesse will come from the other corner. Out of fairness he’ll even let McGrew make the first move. As McGrew trots down to his spot…hey wait…what’s that I see? Okay folks can you spot the boom pole shadow? It starts at exactly the 18:00 mark in the middle of Blyden’s trot as he says “Rush Rush Rush, That’s all anybody knows anymore…” you can see the shadow on the ground and it follows him until you can see it swing away when Blyden turns to head for the building.
On with the titular event. Jesse James comes walking out into the street calling out “Marshal!” The music is spot on dramatic. McGrew hides, poking his head out slightly. Jesse finally coaxes him out and McGrew comes out sheepishly. Jesse begins counting down til they draw as McGrew starts explaining how he never even really wanted to do the series. He keeps retreating: “I just did it because of the residuals! And the fact that they were going to let me use my own name as the character!”

Robert Cornthwaite in the interview had also cited that Nyby had a good sense of humor, which no doubt was evident in this scene as Rance is backing away from Jesse James, and at the 19:05 mark, we see the funeral parlor come into view revealing the funeral director’s name: C. Nyby.

Backed up against a hearse carriage, McGrew cries out, hoping against hope, “Stuntman! Stuntman?!”

He fumbles for his gun and then drops it on the ground. He bends to pick it up but Jesse has the drop on him and McGrew peers up to see the barrel of Jesse’s gun pointing at him, inches away from his face. “I figured” says Jesse, “This guy couldn’t outdraw a crayon.”

McGrew puts his hands together in supplication pleading for a break, “I’m too young to die.” He says he’ll do anything Jesse tells him to do.

“You say you got nominated for an Emmy?”

“Two” stutters McGrew, gesturing “two” with his fingers.

Jesse gets in a few more insults, and Blyden does some more amusing shtick with his hands clasped in pleading—with an extended index finger he gingerly prods the gun barrel away from his face a few times as Jesse keeps returning its deadly aim to his face.

Finally Jesse mulls over McGrew’s offer and tells him, that he’s going to stick around and “make sure that you have to play it careful from now on.” As he rolls a cigarette he tells McGrew, “We may be stiffs up there, but we’re sensitive.” And with that, he disappears.

Suddenly, McGrew is back in the bar, this time with the film crew intact. Obviously discombobulated, Sy walks over to him and asks if he’s all right. McGrew composes himself, and Sy reviews again what they’re about to shoot.

But then the props man calls out that someone is outside to see Rance, claiming to be is agent. Exasperated, Sy tells Rance to go and find out what he wants so that they can get back to shooting, so Rance heads out the saloon door.

Lo and behold, it’s Arch Johnson again, this time in a Hawaiian shirt and beret, standing next to Rance’s convertible with the top down. He’s playing Jesse James pretending to be Rance’s agent. “You said anything, and anything is the following: I’m going to stick around from picture to picture to make sure you don’t hurt no more feelings.” He proceeds to outline his new vision of how the scene should play out—that the Jesses James actor inside should knock McGrew through the window and make his getaway.

McGrew is aghast, but a very tough squeeze on his shoulder from Jesse reminds him of the possible consequences. The shoulder squeeze wasn’t really a good choice I think. Somehow it’s not as visually threatening. I would have even preferred Jesse point his finger like a gun at Rance’s face and utter a simple but firm “Bang.”

McGrew gives in and enters the set and offscreen we hear the director’s surprised opinion of Rance’s suggestion. But he gives in too. Next thing you know, as Jesse waits by the car, we see Rance crashing through the window, and crumbling in a heap by Jesse’s feet. That whole offscreen exchange that we don’t witness of Rance posing the idea to Sy was a weak way of filming it, but I suppose it helped condense time since the episode is nearing its time limit. In any event, Jesse starts explaining how next week’s episode should play out, and the episode after that and so on. And each time, the bad guys come out on top. Jesse starts up the car and the two men ride off into the distance. But in a car, not on horseback, an image befitting this new modern take on westerns.

Closing Monologue: 

The evolution of the so-called ‘adult’ western, and the metamorphosis of one Randy McGrew, formerly phony-baloney, now upright citizen with a preoccupation with all things involving tradition, truth, and cowpoke predecessors. It’s the way the cookie crumbles and the six-gun shoots – in The Twilight Zone.

I rate this episode a 7.

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