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| Maggie McNamara as Bunny Blake |
“Ring-a-Ding Girl”
Season Five, Episode 133
Original
Air Date: December 27, 1963
Cast:
Barbara
“Bunny” Blake: Maggie McNamara
Crew:
Writer:
Earl Hamner, Jr.
And Now, Mr. Serling:
“Next time we enlist the aid of a very talented scribe, Earl Hamner, Jr. He’s written a story called ‘Ring-a-Ding Girl,’ and in the milieu of fantasy this one is strictly a blue-ribbon entry. It stars Maggie McNamara, and it involves a movie actress, a publicity tour, a strange flight and airplane, and some occult occurrences designed to send shivers through you like a fast subway train. Next time out on The Twilight Zone, ‘Ring-a-Ding Girl.’”
Rod Serling’s Opening Narration:
“Introduction
to Bunny Blake. Occupation: film actress. Residence: Hollywood, California, or
anywhere in the world the cameras happen to be grinding. Bunny Blake is a
public figure. What she wears, eats, thinks, says is news. But underneath the
glamor, the makeup, the publicity, the build-up, the costuming, is a
flesh-and-blood person, a beautiful girl, about to take a long and bizarre
journey into The Twilight Zone.”
Summary:
Film
actress Bunny Blake is preparing to leave on an airplane flight when her assistant
delivers a small package. Enclosed is a gift from the Bunny Blake fan club
based in her hometown of Howardville. The gift is a ring set with a large, dark
stone. Bunny informs her assistant that they will pass directly over
Howardville during their flight. Bunny places the ring on her finger to admire it
when she suddenly sees a swirling mist appear in the dark stone. The mist parts
to reveal the face of Bunny’s sister, Hildy, who implores Bunny to come home.
The image fades away.
Sometime
later, Bunny arrives at her sister’s house, surprising Hildy and Hildy’s teenaged
son Bud. Bunny tells Hildy that the ring made her feel like coming home. Bunny
asks Hildy if everything is all right. Hildy reassures her and Bunny fears the
image in the ring was a hallucination. Hildy informs Bunny that the whole town
chipped in to buy her the ring, just as they had to send Bunny to Hollywood at
the beginning of her acting career.
Bunny can only stay in town for one day and Hildy informs her that she picked the perfect day, since it is the day of the Founder’s Day Picnic. Everyone in town will be in attendance. Bunny looks again at the stone on the ring. She again sees the swirling mist, which dissipates to reveal the face of Ben Braden, a local television personality and love interest from Bunny’s past. Ben implores Bunny to come home, that the town needs her, before fading away.
The
unnerving experience causes Bunny to faint. Dr. Floyd, an old family physician,
arrives to check on Bunny. Dr. Floyd tells her that she is overtired and needs
rest. Bunny knows that Dr. Floyd is involved in the Founder’s Day Picnic, and she
asks him to postpone the event for a day. When Dr. Floyd scoffs at this, Bunny
tells him that she has only one day in town and wants to visit friends. Dr.
Floyd tells her that she cannot expect the town to divert its plans based on
her whim. When Bunny insists it is not a whim, Dr. Floyd says that this may
work in Hollywood but not in Howardville.
Again,
Bunny is compelled to gaze into the stone on the ring. Revealed within the
swirling mist is the hard countenance of Cyrus Gentry, who tells Bunny that she
is nothing special but that she could be special if she helped the town. Bunny again
feels faint and rushes upstairs, leaving Dr. Floyd and Hildy perplexed. Dr.
Floyd gives Hildy a prescription for Bunny and departs.
Bunny
returns downstairs and claims nothing is wrong. She wants to go out and see her
old friends. Bunny enlists Bud as a companion. They leave in Bud’s convertible
roadster as a gathering thunderstorm ominously rumbles overhead. Bunny asks Bud
to take her to the high school so she can see Mr. Gentry.
Bunny implores Mr. Gentry to keep the doors to the school auditorium unlocked that afternoon. Gentry reminds Bunny that the doors remain unlocked. Bunny thanks him and tells him not to go to the Founder’s Day Picnic.
As
thunder rumbles overhead, Bunny walks over to the local television station.
Back at Hildy’s house, a phone call from a friend tells Hildy to turn on her
television. Hildy is shocked to see Bunny on the local network talking to Ben
Braden. Bunny informs viewers that she will be putting on a one-woman show in
the high school auditorium and wishes for all the town to be there. When Ben
points out the conflict with the Founder’s Day Picnic, Bunny tells viewers that
they have a choice of coming to see her or getting bitten by ants at the
picnic.
Hildy
is appalled that Bunny would place such a choice before the townspeople. She receives
phone calls from people who do not know what to do. Hildy scolds Bunny when
Bunny returns to the house, telling her that she comes off as a show-off and a
Hollywood big shot. Hildy also informs Bunny that she and Bud are going to the
Founder’s Day Picnic. When she sees how distressed Bunny is, however, Hildy
relents and tells Bunny that they will go to her show.
Bunny
gazes into the stone on the ring. She sees an airplane in the sky. She sees
herself and her assistant on board the airplane. The assistant sneers at the “flyspeck”
town of Howardville and tells Bunny she should not go back there.
Later, as Bunny, Hildy, and Bud are preparing to go to the high school for Bunny’s show, the storm finally breaks overhead, releasing a deluge of rain. Bunny looks again into the stone on the ring and sees an airplane captain informing passengers that the severe weather will make the flight very rough. Bunny again sees herself and her assistant on board the airplane. Bunny’s assistant asks Bunny if she is scared. Bunny tells her yes, isn’t everyone?
Hildy
and Bud rush to the front window when they hear sirens outside. They see the
flashing lights of emergency responders. Bunny, standing near the front door,
quietly says goodbye. Bunny walks outside into the rain as the telephone rings.
Bunny slowly fades away.
The
phone call is from a police trooper at the scene of an airplane crash in town.
The plane crashed into the picnic grounds. The trooper informs Hildy that Bunny
was a passenger on the plane and died in the crash. Hildy cannot believe it.
Bunny has been with her all afternoon. The trooper insists that Bunny is dead.
He has seen the body. Hildy turns around to find Bunny gone. She calls out
desperately but cannot find her sister anywhere inside or outside the house.
The radio reports on the airplane crash. A greater tragedy was averted by the fact that most townspeople were not at the picnic grounds but rather at the high school, waiting for Bunny’s show. Many lives were saved because of this. Hildy finds Bunny’s ring on the carpet. It is battered and broken.
Rod’s Serling’s Closing Narration:
“We
are all travelers. The trip starts in a place called Birth and ends in that
lonely town called Death. And that’s the end of the journey. Unless you happen
to exist for a few hours like Bunny Blake in the misty regions of The Twilight Zone.”
Commentary:
Filmed on the same recognizable living room set as “Living Doll” and “Ninety
Years Without Slumbering,” “Ring-a-Ding Girl” is the subtle tale of a
preternatural phenomenon known as “bilocation,” the condition of being in two places simultaneously. Although the study of this alleged ability is today the province of spiritualists,
it is also believed to have been a miracle performed by Christian holy figures.
Earl
Hamner, Jr. is less interested in the duality of Bunny Blake’s existence,
however, choosing instead to focus on Bunny’s relationships with the people in
her hometown, and on Bunny’s sacrifice to save those people. In this way, the
episode is more aligned with a type of supernatural fiction, the tale of the
portent or premonition of death. The
Guide to Supernatural Fiction lists several examples of this type of story,
under such headings as “Premonitions,” “Portents of Death,” and “Visions of
Person to Die,” dating to the eighteenth century. Richard Matheson’s later
fifth season episode, “Spur of the Moment,” though not dealing directly with
death, is in this vein, as is Rod Serling’s first season episode, “The Purple
Testament.” The episode “Ring-a-Ding Girl” most resembles, however, is Rod Serling’s
“Twenty-Two,” an episode based on a ghostly anecdote and centered around a
premonition and an airplane crash.
“Ring-a-Ding
Girl” may also remind viewers of previous episodes dealing with doubles or dual
existence in small towns, such as Rod Serling’s “Walking Distance” or Charles
Beaumont’s “In His Image.” Hamner’s lessened focus on the duality of Bunny’s existence,
however, may result in the episode playing too subtly or even mildly confusing
to some viewers. Bunny is not convincingly shown to be in both places at the
same time, nor is her passage to Howardville shown. Unlike the journeys of Martin
Sloan in “Walking Distance” or Alan Talbot in “In His Image,” Bunny simply
appears in Howardville. The episode also suffers from the pacing and atmosphere
of a television sitcom. The otherworldly atmosphere achieved in the
aforementioned episodes is not evident in “Ring-a-Ding Girl.”
The viewer may not
understand that Bunny is concurrently traveling aboard an airplane during her
time in Howardville. She is seen on the airplane in the misty depths of her
ring, which has only displayed hallucinatory visions of the townspeople. Bunny
is, however, solidly in Howardville, conversing with several people and
appearing on local television. In some ways, the episode plays like a ghost
story without a ghost. Besides a fainting spell, there is little indication
that Bunny’s existence in Howardville is in any way preternatural.
This
ambiguity is finally dispelled at the end of the episode when Bunny fades away
as news of her death in the airplane crash is relayed to Hildy. Yet, there is
the ambiguous final sequence when Hildy finds Bunny’s battered ring on the
living room carpet. The ring is presumably broken because it was on Bunny’s
finger during the airplane crash. Why, then, does the ring remain in Hildy’s
living room? The notion of how Bunny knew what tragedy to prevent and where
this tragedy would occur is also left unexplained.
At
some point, Bunny became aware that the airplane on which she traveled was
going to crash into the picnic grounds of her hometown, killing the townspeople
attending the Founder’s Day Picnic. This premonition was presumably interpreted
by Bunny from visions of the townspeople seen in her ring. During the flight, she
willed herself to Howardville in an act of bilocation to stage an event that drew
people away from the picnic grounds. This accomplished, Bunny faded from
existence in Howardville as she died in the airplane crash. Tony Albarella, in
his commentary on the episode in The Twilight Scripts of Earl Hamner, described
the ending as a “satisfying, offbeat conclusion,” that was also “somewhat
subtler than the usual Twilight Zone ‘twist’ ending.”
This ambiguity does not
detract from the viewer’s enjoyment of the episode, but it does display the
challenges of dramatizing a story in which the nature of the supernatural
element is hidden in service of a twist ending. This is perhaps why The Twilight Zone Companion dismissed
the episode as “much like the stone in the ring Bunny Blake receives:
interesting, but no gem.”
The original title of Earl Hamner’s script was “There Goes Bunny Blake,” but this was likely deemed too light in tone for the inherent tragedy of the episode. The script was first retitled “The Return of Hildy Blake” and then “The Return of Bunny Blake,” which was the episode’s working title throughout production. The title was changed to “Ring-a-Ding Girl” in post-production, inspired by two songs performed by Frank Sinatra, “I Won’t Dance,” a jazz standard recorded by Sinatra in 1957, which includes the lyric “Ring-a-ding-ding, you’re lovely,” and “Ring-a-Ding-Ding,” the title track on Sinatra’s 1961 album.
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| Charles Beaumont with Otto Preminger from Rod Serling's The Twilight Zone Magazine June, 1989 |
The title change was perhaps prompted by a similarity to the contemporary novel Bunny Lake is Missing (1957), written by Merriam Modell under the pseudonym Evelyn Piper. The novel was adapted into a film by director Otto Preminger in 1965. One of several notable writers hired by Preminger to adapt the novel to the screen was Charles Beaumont, who completed a script in 1959 that was ultimately unused. Incidentally, Preminger gave Maggie McNamara her first notable screen role in The Moon is Blue (1953), a film adaptation of a stage production McNamara previously performed in for eighteen months. McNamara’s performance in the film earned an Academy Award nomination, despite the controversy surrounding the film due to its open depiction of sexual relations.
Maggie McNamara (1928-1978) was born in New York City. Her desire to be a fashion designer led to a career in modelling while still a teenager. She was successful in this regard, being twice featured on the cover of LIFE magazine. The latter appearance reportedly led to David O. Selznick offering McNamara a film contract, which the young model turned down. McNamara soon began studying drama, however, and was on the New York stage by the age of twenty-three. She made an early television appearance on the suspense anthology series The Clock in 1950. Film work followed but was sporadic. By most accounts, McNamara was ill-suited for the public life of a film actress, living away from Hollywood and pushing back against the publicity demands of studios. Outside of The Moon is Blue, an appearance in Three Coins in the Fountain (1954) and a role in Preminger’s The Cardinal (1963) are the highlights of her film career. A year after her appearance on The Twilight Zone, McNamara appeared in the second season episode of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, “The Body in the Barn.” Her career declined sharply afterwards. By the late 1970s she was working as a typist and in her spare time writing a screenplay she hoped would be produced. Long suffering from depression, McNamara took her own life in 1978 with an intentional overdose of barbiturates. She was 49 years old. It was a sad end for a lovely and vibrant actress, and one which suggests disturbing parallels with the fate of Bunny Blake, as well as with the death of fellow Twilight Zone actress Inger Stevens, star of “The Hitch-Hiker,” an episode thematically related to “Ring-a-Ding Girl.”
Supporting McNamara in the episode is Mary Munday as Bunny’s sister Hildy. Munday (1926-1997) was born in Los Angeles. She landed small roles in B pictures before beginning a busy television career, mostly in crime dramas and westerns. She appeared on Science Fiction Theatre and in the “The Kiss-Off,” an episode of the sixth season of Alfred Hitchcock Presents. Munday also had a supporting role in the underrated psychological thriller Magic (1978), alongside Anthony Hopkins and Burgess Meredith.
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David Macklin (1941-2017), playing Bud in the episode, did not have fond memories of his time on the set. In an interview with Martin Grams, Jr., Macklin described his dislike of the script, the incompetence of the makeup department, and the apathetic treatment of the performers by director Alan Crosland, Jr. Macklin did enjoy working with McNamara and Munday, however, and admitted that he received more fan mail for The Twilight Zone than for anything else in his career.
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George Mitchell (1905-1972), playing Dr. Floyd, is likely a familiar face to regular viewers of the series. He appeared in three additional episodes, perhaps most memorably as the grumpy gas station owner who refuses service to Nan Adams (Inger Stevens) in “The Hitch-Hiker.” Mitchell also appeared in “Execution” and in Earl Hamner’s finest episode for the series, “Jess-Belle.” A prolific performer in many western programs, Mitchell also appeared on Lights Out, Suspense, Inner Sanctum, One Step Beyond, Thriller, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, and The Alfred Hitchcock Hour.
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Betty
Lou Gerson (1914-1999), playing Bunny’s assistant, is remembered as the voice
of Cruella de Vil in the 1961 Disney animated film One Hundred and One Dalmatians. Gerson also provided narration for
Disney’s Cinderella (1950) and had a
small role in The Fly (1958) opposite
Vincent Price.
Rounding out the cast are several familiar faces. Prolific character actor Hank Patterson (1888-1975), here playing the gruff Mr. Gentry, previously appeared on the series in “Kick the Can,” and appeared later in the fifth season in “Come Wander with Me.” Patterson had numerous small roles in B films and television westerns, including an episode of Rod Serling’s The Loner. Bing Russell (1926-2003), father of Kurt, who previously appeared on the series in “The Arrival,” portrays Ben Braden. Vic Perrin (1916-1989) appears briefly in the role of Jimmy, the police trooper. Perrin previously appeared on the series in “People Are Alike All Over.” A prolific television and voice actor, Perrin is remembered by science fiction viewers for providing the Control Voice on The Outer Limits. Notable stunt driver Bill Hickman (1921-1986) (Bullitt, The French Connection) appears in an uncredited role as the airplane pilot.
Although the episode is marred by ambiguity and uninspired direction, a moving performance by Maggie McNamara and an engaging script by Earl Hamner, Jr. lift the episode above the lower points of the uneven fifth season.
Grade: C
Next Time in the Vortex: We look at “You Drive,” another offering from writer Earl Hamner, Jr. Thanks for reading!
Acknowledgements: 
Maggie McNamara on
the cover of LIFE
March 29, 1948
(via Ebay)
the cover of LIFE
March 29, 1948
(via Ebay)
--The
Twilight Zone Scripts of Earl Hamner by
Earl Hamner and Tony Albarella (Cumberland House, 2003)
--The
Twilight Zone: Unlocking the Door to a Television Classic by Martin Grams, Jr. (OTR, 2008)
--A
Critical History of Television’s The Twilight Zone, 1959-1964 by Don Presnell and Marty McGee (McFarland & Co.,
1998)
--The
Twilight Zone Companion (3rd
ed.) by Marc Scott Zicree (Silman-James, 2018)
--The
Guide to Supernatural Fiction by E.F.
Bleiler (Kent State University Press, 1983)
--The
Work of Charles Beaumont: An Annotated Bibliography and Guide by William F. Nolan (Borgo Press, 1986)
--Review of Blu-ray edition of Bunny Lake is Missing by Glenn Erickson
(DVD Talk, November 24, 2014)
--The Internet Movie Database (imdb.com)
Notes: 
--Earl
Hamner, Jr. scripted eight episodes of the series, five of which were broadcast
during the fifth and final season.
--Alan
Crosland, Jr. directed three previous episodes of the series: “The Parallel,”
“The Old Man in the Cave,” and “The 7th Is Made Up of Phantoms.”
--George
Mitchell appeared in three additional episodes of the series: “The
Hitch-Hiker,” “Execution,” and “Jess-Belle.”
