The Four of Us Are Dying

"**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
Teleplay by	Rod Serling
Based on	"All of Us Are Dying"; by George Clayton Johnson
Featured music	Jerry Goldsmith
Production code	173-3618
Original air date	January 1, 1960
Guest appearances
	Harry Townes as Arch Hammer; Ross Martin as Johnny Foster; Phillip Pine as Virgil Sterig; Don Gordon as Andy Marshak; Peter Brocco as Mr. Marshak; Milton Frome as Detective; Beverly Garland as Maggie;
Episode chronology
← Previous; "What You Need"	Next →; "Third from the Sun"
	The Twilight Zone (1959 TV series, season 1)
	List of episodes

"The Four of Us Are Dying" is the thirteenth episode of the American television anthology series The Twilight Zone. It originally aired on CBS on January 1, 1960. The episode was based on the original short story by George Clayton Johnson, "All of Us Are Dying", which had not been published at the time. The story subsequently appeared in the October 1961 issue of Rogue.

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

Arch Hammer is a con man who can change his face to look like anyone he chooses. He walks into a nightclub, where he impersonates deceased trumpeter Johnny Foster to steal Foster's grieving girlfriend Maggie, a sultry songstress.

Next, while impersonating murdered gangster Virgil Sterig, Hammer pays a visit to Mr. Pennell, to extort money; Pennell is the man who had Sterig killed. Pennell sends his men after Hammer.

Trying to escape down an alley, Hammer sees a poster of boxer Andy Marshak, and changes his face to the fighter's. Pennell's men are fooled. Thinking he is in the clear, he runs into Marshak's father 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 reels off the reasons why he hates Andy and his punk behavior, Hammer pushes the old man out of the way and returns to his hotel room. A detective comes by to pick him up for questioning; together, they leave for the police station. As they enter the hotel's revolving door, Hammer again assumes the boxer's appearance. The detective rushes back into the building to find Hammer.

Marshak's father is standing on the street, with a gun on Hammer. The con man tries to demonstrate that he is not who the old man thinks he is, but before he can concentrate and change his face, Mr. Marshak shoots him. As Hammer lies dying, his face shifts from one person to another until he dies wearing his own face.

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.

Style

This episode is notable for its heightened, theatrical lighting, blocking and set design. While most episodes are presented in a very theatrical manner (with limited locations, heightened dialogue and theatrical blocking) not many episodes present themselves as if the action took place on a stage. This theatricality is especially present in its use of harsh shadows and in the neon-signage that hangs above the set to represent Manhattan. One very clear example of this would be when Arch Hammer exits the jazz bar where a bold lighting change indicates that he has put Maggie and the events at the club out of his mind and now seeks his next target. The cinematography is also unusually elaborate and quite cinematic. Extreme, low, wide canted angles drift languidly folly Arch through the streets, symbolising how sleazy and careless his world is. POV shots zipping down from one elevator button to another. A birds-eye view watches him scramble out of an elevator. The camera swirls in smooth reverence around Maggie as she sings her lament. The jazz score is incessant and adds a distinct, coherent rhythm to the episode.

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.^{[citation needed]}

External links

"The Four of Us Are Dying" 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"