The Twilight Zone Review: Last Night of a Jockey

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By William Kozy

“What’s your favorite episode of the original Twilight Zone series?” And here come all the episodes rounding the final turn…3,000 fans and writers responded to the poll…here they come down the stretch, and it’s “The Last Night of the Jockey!”…coming in a tie for 151st place after receiving just 2 votes.

The episode opens with that stock piece of TZ music that always reliably indicated a noirish scene of down-and-out deadbeats and ne’er-do-wells in some city somewhere. The camera pans across the floor where several sports pages lay scattered and headlining trouble for a horse jockey named Grady. Here’s a fun fact: As the camera moves past the prop newspaper called “The Daily Bulletin Sports”, look at the headline: “Jockey Banned from All U.S. Tracks” –you can see it at the 00:43 mark. Then go and call up the episode “Ring-A-Ding Girl” and fast forward to the 03:42 mark where a teenage boy sits in a chair reading the sports pages. Yep, it’s the EXACT same newspaper. The props department simply reused it for that episode. Okay, moving on…

The phone in this tiny apartment rings, and a sweaty, disheveled Mickey Rooney as Grady answers it. It’s one of the many sportswriters that have been writing about Grady getting suspended by the racing commission for cheating. After giving the journalist an earful, Grady goes over to the dresser to read yet another newspaper’s account of his misdeeds, which he ferociously denied being guilty of on the phone. Any question we may have had regarding his guilt/innocence is answered when he mutters into the mirror: “You stupid rotten chump. Just on account of a couple of fixes, huh? Big boys walk away with all the big dough. What do you walk away with, huh? A bagful of change.” I just wonder how this episode could have played out if we were left to wonder throughout if he was truly framed—if all the countless denials he seems to earnestly tell his alter ego served to better maintain an ambiguity. But instead, our moral compass has been fixed solid for us after less than three minutes. He is very hard on himself, yelling names at his face in the mirror: “You runt! You shrimp!” so there is at least some aspect of our sympathy for him left intact.

Serling’s opening monologue is another of his nifty ones, deftly written and incorporating plenty of horse racing metaphors. But again, it does spell out for us, that we can probably count on all the accusations being true.

Grady then hears a voice from somewhere in the room: “How goes the world Mr. Grady?” Rooney is great at not over-playing Grady’s reaction to this as he seeks the source of the taunting. The voice explains that it’s coming from inside Grady’s head. It further explains that it wishes it could get out of his head; it would be more comfortable instead of “being cooped up in that tiny little brain of yours.” More specifically the voice is Grady’s memory, his conscience. One nice aspect about Rooney’s performance is the voice work—to some, perhaps not as familiar with Rooney, they could easily assume the voice is from another actor, one with a smoother, more refined voice than Grady’s gravel-voiced intensity. Again, Rooney is at his best in these low key moments as we watch him trying to figure things out. It’s a tough assignment, the only episode with one performer. You could make a case for “The Invaders” but that one does have some voice work performed by other actors than Agnes Moorehead.

Finally we do see the alter ego, and it is Grady—a well-dressed version, hair combed, and we will only see him in reflections. He has asked Grady what he wants, and Grady wrestles mightily with that question. The cinematography by George T. Clemens could have done a better job of calculating how to shoot the shots of Grady in the mirror. In too many of these shots, it just doesn’t look as though he is looking at Grady in the room.

As alter-ego Grady recites the career-long list of infractions, Grady makes an excuse for each one, but it’s when we get to the last one: “lifetime suspension for race fixing, horse doping” I think Grady’s fate is sealed in our eyes. We could forgive him, and spare him from his twist ending if all he did was cheat bettors and a business that is already exploiting these beautiful horses in the first place. And that’s the best case scenario. But horse doping! That will remain unforgivable.

Grady makes a last ditch call to someone named Hencheck whom we assume from the phone conversation is one of the higher ups who have been running the scams that have used riders like Grady for their own ends. Grady wants what should rightfully be coming to him in this seedy world, but all he gets is a hang-up.

But now we get to the moment of truth. This Alter Ego Grady proposes a sort of devil’s bargain to Grady (although Grady doesn’t suspect the “devilish part), he asks Grady what he wants, and after all the teasing about him being a “half pint” etc. Grady thinks and exhorts in a Eureka moment, “I wanna be big! I wanna be big!”

Next we see Grady resting in bed as a storm thunders outside the window. The Alter Ego asks if he’s had a good rest and Grady turns on the night table lamp. Here again, Rooney does a great job dealing with the dawning realization of something odd afoot. Very subtly done reactions as the gears in his head turn. He looks down at his feet and there it is—his feet extend over the edge of the bed. He gets up and finds he’s much taller now. Judging from the scale of his body size to things like the door frame on this new set with newly built furniture and props, he must be 7 feet tall.

There’s some fun, creative dialogue between the two Gradys, as the real Grady celebrates this turnabout. We do get the feeling though that Alter Ego Grady is humoring him, especially when Grady calls a woman he knows to tell her the fantastic news, “I’m big! Understand that? I’m B-I-G. Big, big, big, big, big!” And then he says, “the Lakers will be scouting me any day now” and he laughs. As we expect, he becomes angry with her as she must’ve laughed or insulted him. “Hey!” he responds, “You don’t talk that way to me… I’ll slap your face off!”

Alter Ego Grady teases Grady over this humiliation, but Grady maintains his claim on being able to get whatever he wants. Just then the phone rings, and Grady is told that a lawyer will be calling from the racing commission. Grady then looks up and spots the Alter Ego’s image reflected in a racing plaque he once won. Creepy music slides in as Grady asks suspiciously, “Hey, tell me, who are you?”

“I’m the fate every man makes for himself. You generally find me down at the bottom of the barrel. I’m the strength dredged up in desperation. I’m the last gasp.” Grady is frustrated by this explanation that feels more like a riddle to him. He throws the plaque aside. The Alter Ego explains further, “In some cases, I’m something very good. In some cases, depending upon the person I’m representing.” He goes on to make fun of Grady’s aspiration, “To be big!” He has shamed Grady and we see that shame weigh on him. But Grady musters one last bit of fight in himself to argue back, claiming that no he does not come cheap and that he got his heart’s desire.

The phone rings. It’s Mr. Newman the lawyer who gives the good news that Grady will be reinstated. Grady is so thankful he almost cries. He gets up and pushes back on the Alter Ego bragging to him that he’s going to ride again! And he sits down to luxuriate in that notion. Then a lightning bolt flashes and thunder roars as the Alter Ego laughs. The camera pulls back and we see that Grady has grown even bigger now! His head almost touches the ceiling so he must be roughly 10 feet tall at least. He loses it as he realizes he’s too big to ride again, and he goes about thrashing the room in a very clumsily and amateurishly performed scene that is probably what turned fans off about this episode. It’s a bad idea to have a basically decent episode but then end it with a bad scene leaving an awful taste in one’s mouth. It’s as though they thought it would be awesome to depict a giant Mickey Rooney tossing furniture around, but it comes off rather childishly as he recites over and over “I’m too big! I can’t ride! I can’t wear my clothes!” It’s unintentionally comical.

But what’s actually worse about the writing of this episode is the logic building up to this climax. He was ALREADY too big to ride when he got the first size increase to 7 feet. And he and the episode seem to ignore this fact. When he gets that first phone from the guy saying a lawyer will call him later, he should have realized at that moment that he was in trouble, not later! As a matter of fact becoming 10 feet tall instead of 7 feet would actually guarantee that the Lakers would call him as he joked earlier! Can you imagine that?! 10 feet tall! He’d be unstoppable.

So I rate the episode a 3.9 as loses in a phony finish.

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