The Masks

"The Masks"
The Twilight Zone episode

Episode no.	Season 5 Episode 25
Directed by	Ida Lupino
Written by	Rod Serling
Featured music	Stock from A Thing About Machines
Production code	2601
Original air date	March 20, 1964
Guest appearance(s)
Robert Keith Milton Selzer Virginia Gregg Brooke Hayward Alan Sues Willis Bouchey Bill Walker Maidie Norman
Episode chronology

"The Masks" is episode 145 of the American television series The Twilight Zone. It originally aired on March 20, 1964 on CBS.

Opening narration

“

Mr. Jason Foster, a tired ancient who on this particular Mardi Gras evening will leave the Earth. But before departing, he has some things to do, some services to perform, some debts to pay—and some justice to mete out. This is New Orleans, Mardi Gras time. It is also the Twilight Zone.

”

Plot

A very wealthy old man named Jason Foster, who is dying, has just been visited by Dr. Sam Thorne on the night of Mardi Gras. Cranky and candid, Jason is not cheered by a visit from his daughter Emily Harper and her family—husband Wilfred Harper, son Wilfred Harper Jr., and daughter Paula. All four have various, terrible traits.

Emily is a cowardly, self-centered hypochondriac who whines and complains about the most trivial things.
Wilfred, a successful businessman, is introverted and greedy, thinking of everything in monetary terms.
Paula is extremely vain, constantly checking her appearance in the mirror. In fact, she is looking in one when she greets her grandfather.
Wilfred Jr., meanwhile, is an oafish, sadistic bully who enjoys causing pain and suffering to other people and animals.

Moreover, it is clear that they are only there in order to claim Jason's fortune once he dies. Jason is not shy about his opinions of his family and openly insults each of them. In an act of apology, he says he has a special Mardi Gras party planned for the group that night.

After dinner, the family gathers in Jason's study where he offers them special one-of-a-kind masks. These masks, which he said are "crafted by an old Cajun", are very ugly creations. Jason informs his daughter, son-in-law and grandchildren that a Mardi Gras custom is to wear masks that are the exact opposite of a person's true personality. Thereupon, he says sarcastically that these masks are just that. Jason offers the mask of a sniveling coward to Emily, a miserable miser to Wilfred, a twisted buffoon to Wilfred Jr., and a self-obsessed narcissist to Paula. He himself dons a skull claiming that the opposite of life is death. The family is reluctant to wear the ugly masks—until Jason quotes his demands as a proviso from his will, unless all four of them don the masks and leave them on until midnight, all they will receive from his vast estate is train fare home to Boston. The foursome comply in spite of their disgust.

As the hours tick by, all four beg to be allowed to take off the masks...claiming that they are worse than uncomfortable, they are unbearable. Yet their pleas are wasted on Jason who delivers his final tirade to his family as he dies. He explains that even "without [their] masks, [they are] caricatures!" He then dies. The foursome rejoices in the fact that they are now rich, until they remove their disguises and find to their horror that their faces have conformed to the hideous shapes of the masks. When Jason's mask is removed, it appears as if nothing has changed, but his face is actually the expression of death itself—calm, peaceful, and serene. As Dr. Sam Thorne observes "This must be death. No horror, no fear...nothing but peace." As the episode ends, the butler Jeffrey (Bill Walker) looks upon the relatives' ugly faces.

Closing narration

“

Mardi Gras incident, the dramatis personae being four people who came to celebrate and in a sense let themselves go. This they did with a vengeance. They now wear the faces of all that was inside them—and they'll wear them for the rest of their lives, said lives now to be spent in the shadow. Tonight's tale of men, the macabre and masks, on the Twilight Zone.

”

Cast

Robert Keith as Jason Foster
Milton Selzer as Wilfred Harper
Virginia Gregg as Emily Harper
Brooke Hayward as Paula Harper
Alan Sues as Wilfred Harper Jr.
Willis Bouchey as Dr. Samuel Thorne
Bill Walker as Jeffrey The Butler
Maidie Norman as Maid
Rod Serling as Host / Narrator – Himself

Episode notes

"The Masks" was directed by Ida Lupino, who had starred in the first-season episode "The Sixteen-Millimeter Shrine". She was the only person in the history of the original Twilight Zone to have acted in one episode and directed another. She was also the only woman to direct a Twilight Zone episode.

References

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

External links

"The Masks" at the Internet Movie Database
"The Masks" at TV.com

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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