The Twilight Zone Was Robert Redford's Scariest Role ... Or Was It?
There are a whole lot of things that Robert Redford is famous for: acting, directing, co-founding the Sundance Film Festival, being incredibly handsome, even running Hydra from within the United States government ... the list goes on and on and on. He became a silver screen icon in classic films like "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid," "The Way We Were," "The Sting," "Three Days of the Condor," "The Natural," "Sneakers," and "Captain America: The Winter Soldier." He even won an Academy Award for directing the acclaimed 1980 drama "Ordinary People."
But in spite of all that there's one thing that Robert Redford is not famous for, and that's his tireless work in the horror genre. That's because, despite an acting career that spanned 60 years, he never really made any horror films. You'd have to go way back to 1962 to find Redford's last real brush with the supernatural, but it's well worth the journey. It's one of the best, creepiest, and most beautiful episodes of "The Twilight Zone," and in it, Robert Redford plays the most frightening thing in the universe.
Or does he ...?
The hearse whisperer
"Nothing in the Dark" is an episode from the third season of "The Twilight Zone," a classic horror anthology created by multiple Emmy Award-winning TV writer Rod Serling, who shot to stardom with his scripts for classic TV movies like "Patterns," "Requiem for a Heavyweight," and "The Comedian." It was an anthology series where every episode featured a new tale of the bizarre or supernatural, with episodes dedicated to terror, kindness, and everything in between ... just so long as it was weird and, usually, pretty ironic.
The episode stars Gladys Cooper — the co-star of classic films like "Rebecca, "The Song of Bernadette," and "My Fair Lady" — as Wanda, an elderly woman residing alone in a ramshackle tenement, who lives in absolute terror of going outside. When a young police officer is shot outside of her front door, she's forced to confront her fears or let him die, and after a fraught few minutes, she decides to bring the young man inside, where she tends to him and explains what she's so afraid of.
His name is "Mr. Death," and she's been able to see him all her life. He appears as different people, and when he touches you, you perish forever. And Wanda knows that if she never goes outside and meets anyone, he'll never be able to take her. But with the police officer in her house, and a demolition man (R.G. Armstrong) who wants to raze the building trying to bust down her door, she's left herself vulnerable for the first time in her life.
She's welcomed Mr. Death into her house. He was the police officer the whole time, and he's played by a young Robert Redford.
Mortuary people
"The Twilight Zone" was not Robert Redford's first acting gig by a country mile. He'd already been appearing in episodes of classic TV shows like "Perry Mason," "Alfred Hitchcock Presents," and "Dr. Kildare." So while watching "Nothing in the Dark" is very striking today, because through a modern lens he seems like a celebrity guest star, at the time he was just a young actor trying to make his big break. And according to the episode's director, Lamont Johnson, he actually got the part of Mr. Death because of his angelic good looks.
"He was very new," Johnson said in an interview in "The Twilight Zone Companion" by Marc Scott Zicree. He continued:
"I saw him on 'Playhouse 90' in a one-scene part with Charles Laughton [in Serling's "In the Presence of Mine Enemies"], and I thought he was amazing. I mean, I thought he was amazing-looking. I thought if you had somebody who had those kind of blazing eyes and that candor and that kind of American beauty about him, he'd be great for this cop as I was reading it."
Redford's boyish appearance makes him exactly the wrong choice to play the living embodiment of Death, but in this "Twilight Zone" episode, that's actually what makes him perfect. His matter-of-fact charms and his Captain America wholesomeness help sell the episode's important message; that Death only seems scary because it's unknown. If you get to know it, it can be a comfort.
A finished life
"Nothing in the Dark" ends with Mr. Death asking Wanda, "Am I really so bad? Am I really so frightening?" She's forced to consider that, really, he's not. While it's sad that she spent so much of her life in isolation and fear, when her time came it was peaceful for her, and — in the realm of "The Twilight Zone," at least — the start of a whole new journey. She leaves the house for the first time in many years, and Mr. Death takes her arm like they're going to a little party, and we watch them walk off together, smiling and chatting and content.
This episode may hit different buttons for different people, but for those of us who fear death — not just a specific mode of death, but death as a concept — it's an emotional rollercoaster. The terror is palpable, and while the final revelation that death doesn't have to be scary makes perfect sense logically, it's something that Wanda has to be convinced of, and the script by George Clayton Johnson (no relation to the episode's director, Lamont Johnson) guides her through the entire emotional and philosophical journey.
And while Robert Redford gave more complex performances later in his career, Mr. Death's simplicity isn't a defect in his acting ability. The episode argues that Mr. Death isn't full of nuance, it's a fact of life, and Redford's wholesome, direct approach to the performance suits the material beautifully. And since Redford isn't scary, neither is the most frightening thing in the universe. At least, not after the final moments of "Nothing in the Dark."