The Four of Us Are Dying

"The Four of Us Are Dying"
The Twilight Zone episode
Episode no.	Season 1 Episode 13
Directed by	John Brahm
Written by	Rod Serling, adapted from "All of Us Are Dying", an unpublished story by George Clayton Johnson
Featured music	Jerry Goldsmith
Production code	173-3618
Original air date	January 1, 1960
Guest appearance(s)
Harry Townes as Arch Hammer Phillip Pine as Virgil Sterig Ross Martin as Johnny Foster Don Gordon as Andy Marshak Peter Brocco as Mr. Marshak Milton Frome as Detective Beverly Garland as Maggie
Episode chronology

"The Four of Us Are Dying" is episode 13 of the American television anthology series The Twilight Zone. It originally aired on CBS on January 1, 1960.

This is one of the few episodes of the series where Rod Serling does not mention the name of the show in the closing narration.

Opening narration

“

His name is Arch Hammer, he's 36 years old. He's been a salesman, a dispatcher, a truck driver, a con man, a bookie, and a part-time bartender. This is a cheap man, a nickel-and-dime man, with a cheapness that goes past the suit and the shirt; a cheapness of mind, a cheapness of taste, a tawdry little shine on the seat of his conscience, and a dark-room squint at a world whose sunlight has never gotten through to him. But Mr. Hammer has a talent, discovered at a very early age. This much he does have. He can make his face change. He can twitch a muscle, move a jaw, concentrate on the cast of his eyes, and he can change his face. He can change it into anything he wants. Mr. Archie Hammer, jack-of-all-trades, has just checked in at three-eighty a night, with two bags, some newspaper clippings, a most odd talent, and a master plan to destroy some lives.

”

Plot summary

Arch Hammer (Harry Townes) is a con man who can change his face to make it look like anyone he chooses.

He walks into a nightclub where he impersonates deceased trumpeter Johnny Foster (Ross Martin) to steal Foster's girlfriend Maggie (Beverly Garland), a sultry singer.

Hammer then pays a visit to Mr. Pennell (Bernard Fein) while impersonating murdered gangster Virgil Sterig (Phillip Pine) to extort money from Pennell, the man who had had Sterig killed. Pennell sends his men after Hammer.

Trying to escape down an alley, Hammer changes his face to one he sees on a poster of boxer Andy Marshak (Don Gordon). Thinking he is in the clear, he runs into Marshak's father (Peter Brocco) at a street newsstand, who mistakes him for the son who broke his mother's heart and "did dirt" to a sweet decent little girl who would've "cut off an arm" for him. As Mr. Marshak states how he hates him for his actions, Hammer pushes the old man out of the way and returns to his hotel room. A detective comes to the hotel to pick him up for questioning at the police station. In order to escape from the police officer in a revolving door, Hammer assumes Marshak's appearance again.

On the street, he again bumps into Marshak's father who pulls a gun on him. Hammer tries to show the old man he is not who he thinks he is. Before he can concentrate and change, Mr. Marshak shoots him. As Hammer lies dying, his face shifts from one person to another until he dies wearing his own face as Marshak's father is surprised at what he sees.

Closing narration

“

He was Arch Hammer, a cheap little man who just checked in. He was Johnny Foster, who played a trumpet and was loved beyond words. He was Virgil Sterig, with money in his pocket. He was Andy Marshak, who got some of his agony back on a sidewalk in front of a cheap hotel. Hammer, Foster, Sterig, Marshak—and all four of them were dying.

”

Production

"After the first half-dozen stories had been written, part of the hustle was getting an agent. Through those years I found several who would let me use their names, though few cared to sign a contract with me. One of these men, Jay Richards - at the time head of the television department of the Famous Artists Agency, long since absorbed by I.F.A. (International Famous Agency), and since embedded in I.C.M. (International Creative Management), which represents me now in television and movies - agreed to read something. I showed Jay 'All of Us Are Dying.' After reading it, he crossed out the title with a ballpoint pen and wrote in 'Rubberface!' Then he sent it to Rod Serling, who had a new series that season called The Twilight Zone." — George Clayton Johnson, writing in the August 1981 issue of The Twilight Zone Magazine

In 2005, "The Four of Us Are Dying" was produced for the stage by 4 Letter Entertainment.

In popular culture

"The Four of Us Are Dying" was the title of an instrumental on the 2008 album The Slip by industrial rock artist Nine Inch Nails.

"The Five of Us Are Dying" was an early iteration of My Chemical Romance's "Welcome to the Black Parade", which will be featured on the 2016 rerelease of the album.

External links

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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