In Praise of Pip

"**In Praise of Pip**"
"In Praise of Pip"
The Twilight Zone episode
	Jack Klugman as Max Phillips
Episode no.	Season 5; Episode 1
Directed by	Joseph M. Newman
Written by	Rod Serling
Featured music	Rene Garriguenc, conducted by Lud Gluskin
Production code	2607
Original air date	September 27, 1963
Guest appearances
	Jack Klugman: Max Phillips ; Connie Gilchrist: Mrs. Feeny ; Robert Diamond: Pvt. Pip ; Billy Mumy: Young Pip
Episode chronology
← Previous; "The Bard"	Next →; "Steel"
	The Twilight Zone (1959 TV series) (season 5)
	List of episodes

"In Praise of Pip" is an episode of the American television anthology series The Twilight Zone. In this episode, after learning that his soldier son has suffered a mortal wound in an early phase of the Vietnam War, a crooked bookie encounters a childhood version of his son.

This was the first episode of The Twilight Zone to be 25 minutes long since "The Changing of the Guard".

Opening narration

Submitted for your approval: one Max Phillips. A slightly-the-worse-for-wear maker of book, whose life has been as drab and undistinguished as a bundle of dirty clothes. And though it's very late in his day, he has an errant wish that the rest of his life might be sent out to a laundry, to come back shiny and clean. This to be a gift of love to a son named Pip. Mr. Max Phillips, Homo sapiens, who is soon to discover that man is not as wise as he thinks. Said lesson to be learned in the Twilight Zone.

Plot

In Vietnam, medics are examining Pip Phillips, a wounded soldier. The medical officer says Pip's case is hopeless and it is only a matter of time before he will die. In the United States, Pip's father Max, a bookie, suckers a young man named George Reynold into placing $300 on a bad bet. Reynold comes to him for help, saying that he made the bet on loaned money and will go to jail if he doesn't get it back. Max returns the $300, but his boss Mr. Moran notices the discrepancy in the books and summons both Max and Reynold to his office. As the young man is strong-armed into returning his bet, Max receives a telegram about Pip's condition. Max vocally rues the time he spent working as a bookie instead of being a father to his son, and returns the money to Reynold. He tells him to run and threatens Moran and his underling with a knife. The underling shoots Max but Max is still enraged by his son's fate and uses his knife to kill both men.

Wounded, he stumbles outside towards a closed amusement park and is surprised to see Pip at age 10. The two have some fun and redress Max's near-constant absence from his son's life, with Max teaching Pip how to shoot at a shooting gallery. Pip runs off into the house of mirrors, and Max follows. When Max finds him, Pip explains that he is dying and vanishes. Max prays to God and offers to trade his own life in exchange for Pip's. He collapses and dies on the midway.

Some months later, the adult Pip is seen at the park, now walking with the aid of a cane. Max's former landlady Mrs. Feeny is also there with her granddaughter and recalls Max's love for his son. Pip visits the shooting gallery, remembering the wonderful times he had as a child with his father and his father's advice to work the gun and not the jaw. He proclaims that his father was "[his] best buddy" as he begins to play the shooting game.

Closing narration

Very little comment here, save for this small aside: that the ties of flesh are deep and strong; that the capacity to love is a vital, rich, and all-consuming function of the human animal. And that you can find nobility and sacrifice and love wherever you may seek it out: down the block, in the heart or - in the Twilight Zone.

Cast

Jack Klugman as Max Phillips
Connie Gilchrist as Mrs. Feeny
Robert Diamond as Pvt. Pip
Billy Mumy: Young Pip

Uncredited (in order of appearance)

Ross Elliott: doctor in Vietnam
Gerald Gordon: lieutenant in Vietnam
Russell Horton: George Reynold
S. John Launer: Mr. Moran
Kreg Martin: Mr. Moran's enforcer
Stuart Nisbet: surgeon in Vietnam

Jack Klugman appeared in four episodes of the original series. In addition to this episode, he starred in "Death Ship", broadcast seven months earlier, in February, "A Game of Pool" (October 1961), and "A Passage for Trumpet" (May 1960). In addition to this episode, Billy Mumy appeared in two other episodes of the original series: 1961's "It's a Good Life" (November) and "Long Distance Call" (March). He also appeared (credited as Bill Mumy) in the "It's a Good Life" segment of Twilight Zone: The Movie (1983), and the second Twilight Zone revival episode "It's Still a Good Life" in 2003.

Among the six uncredited cast members with speaking roles, three appeared in other episodes. Ross Elliott did receive billing in the earlier Jack Klugman episode "Death Ship" although, same as in this episode, he had no scenes with Klugman. Russell Horton was also credited in third season's "The Changing of the Guard" (June 1962), playing one of the students. S. John Launer was in three season one episodes, receiving credit in "The Purple Testament" (February 1960), but remaining uncredited in "Third from the Sun" (January 1960), in which only his voice was heard. His earliest episode, in which he likewise received no credit, was "And When the Sky Was Opened" (December 1959).

Episode notes

The script is essentially a reworked version of the A-plot of “Next of Kin”, a one-hour script Serling wrote for Kraft Television Theatre and which aired on 8 April 1953. "In Praise of Pip" removes two other intertwined stories that were part of "Next of Kin", but the first two acts are otherwise almost identical down to the character names, the only change being that Max's son is named Tommy in "Next Of Kin", not Pip. (And the war, of course, is in Korea, not Vietnam.) Act III, with Max encountering young Pip in the amusement park, is unique to this telling of the story.

"In Praise of Pip" opens in Vietnam, with a wounded Pip being brought into a front-line mobile hospital. Rod Serling originally wanted the episode's opening to take place in Laos; it was CBS who asked for the change to Vietnam. As a result of the prominent use of Vietnam in the episode, "In Praise of Pip" is often incorrectly cited as the first American television drama to mention the growing Vietnam War, or the first to show a Vietnam veteran—both assertions, however, are false. Starting in March 1963, actor Glenn Corbett had become a regular on the CBS series Route 66, playing returned Vietnam soldier Lincoln Case. The Vietnam War and its effects on Linc were crucial plot points in several Route 66 episodes, including his debut, which was broadcast six months before this episode.

The episode was filmed on location at the Pacific Ocean Park in Santa Monica, California.

This was the first episode sponsored by American Tobacco (on alternate weeks), on behalf of Pall Mall cigarettes, who suggested that Serling and some of the guest stars and supporting players "light up" during the episodes. Unlike previous sponsor Liggett & Myers, American Tobacco did not have Serling plug their products at the end of the program.

References

Zicree, Marc Scott. The Twilight Zone Companion. Sillman-James Press, 1982 (second edition)
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

"In Praise of Pip" at IMDb

v t e 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"