User Reviews

They say as you get older you need less sleep. Whether that's anectodal or there's really something to it, I'm now down to six hours of sleep a night. I've been watching The Twilight Zone Definitive Edition in series order right up to this fifth season episode, and I would have been done by now if I didn't go to sleep every night. Now right there's a good enough argument to offer against having to sleep a third of your life away.

I remember catching Ed Wynn in a number of TV series back in the day and always enjoyed his sense of whimsy. His voice was a delight and it seems to me he would have nicely fit the bill for the new great grandson he decided to hang around for at the end of this show. You might say with this story's ending, the expected twist was turned on it's head when Wynn's character decided he had enough reason to stick around without worrying about an old grandfather clock winding down. Wasted energy you know.

Interestingly, Wynn appeared in the second episode of The Twilight Zone in an oddly similar role. In 'One For the Angels', his character is a carny style street peddler that attempts to thwart death with a final pitch that even the Grim Reaper found hard to contend with. Both of his death defying stories are part of Rod Serling's testament to the endurance of the human spirit, and Man's resolve to keep on ticking.

"Ninety Years Without Slumbering" is one of those Twilight Zone episodes that gets beyond the usual formula. When the episode begins, you think it'll be the case that, when the clock winds down, the old man's life will also "wind down" (cease).

But then we're thrown a curve ball!

Instead, we get an exposition on mental illness and obsession. And we get a nicer ending than what we might expect.

And there's nothing wrong with that.

Even though this episode was most likely filmed prior to John F. Kennedy's assassination, it aired almost one month to the day after that tragedy, and right before Christmas. Some people might see this episode as weak, but its timing was excellent.

On a more personal note, I was looking forward to meeting James Callahan at a Twilight Zone convention in 2007 in New Jersey. He ended up a no-show because he died within a couple days or so of the event.

Getting back to the episode, definitely one of the better episodes of the 1963-64 season!

Everybody seems to agree that the episode is worth seeing for Ed Wynn's great performance. What they don't seem to be appreciating is the wonderful twist ending. For five years the formula of nearly every Twilight Zone episode was that something supernatural happens and the lead character and/or others characters refuse to accept it. At the end, it is clear that the supernatural explanation is the correct one. It usually turns out the supernatural has interfered to right some natural wrong. Despite my love for "the Twilight Zone," I think it may have encouraged generations that followed to be skeptical of logic and rational explanations. This episode cleverly reverses the formula. We expect the supernatural explanation to be the correct one: the grandfather's life is linked to the grandfather clock. In fact the rational psychological explanation is the correct one. It is the supernatural which is delivering death immorally to the lovable old man. The natural and rational explanation of the psychiatrist allows him to defeat the evil of the supernatural. In a sense, this is an anti-Twilight Zone episode, turning the standard formula on its head. Besides being sweet, it is absolutely brilliant, in deconstructing the Twilight Zone's own mythology.

A 76-year-old man believes his fate is inexorably linked to a grandfather clock provided to him at birth. The clock and the man were, in essence, born at the same time. Ed Wynn stars as Sam, the grandfather of Carolyn Kearney (the pregnant wife of understanding and caring husband played by James Callahan), always tinkering and toiling with a grandfather clock. The married couple are concerned for Wynn, believing his obsession with the clock is a sign of senility or maybe something even worse. They want him to meet with a psychiatrist friend, and when he suggests that the clock should be removed so that he could no longer live and die at its beck and call in his troubled mind/psyche, Wynn does admit he believes once it stops he'll "stop". They want the clock gone, but can Wynn part with it? And even if he does part with it, if it goes dead does Wynn as well?

I agree with the general critical consensus that this episode is rather upended by the ending. I get the idea that sometimes we must turn loose of superstition and some sort of attachment to an object deemed crucial to everyday life. But when Wynn collapses as the clock stops, the show does kind of give up its ace in the hand, informing us that his life is linked to the ticking object. And seeing Wynn debating with this "spiritual self" that he later informs is just a figment of his imagination, accepting life instead of death, it turns the whole importance of the clock upside down...also Wynn's dedication to it over so long, just to "wise up" at the moment of possible death and emerge as if that whole past was just a mistake, just doesn't ring true. And that not ringing hollow damages the whole point of the episode. Can someone, especially a person who has hung on for 76 years to this belief, just defy what seems so real and authentic (Wynn collapsed, that did happen, and he only awakened after the clock started back up; the "false alarm") because he up and realizes superstition at the last possible moment?

Without the wonderful Wynn, I just don't think this episode would have much value whatsoever. I love the guy, I do, but the episode asks us to swallow a bill of goods I think is difficult.

One of the lighter episodes that has a warmer feel and a happy ending.

Sam has become convinced that the clock that started when he was born is connected to his own mortality. If the clock winds down he will die . He lives with his granddaughter Marnie who is expecting soon a her husband Doug . One of the nice change of pace couples who aren't mean, greedy or harsh. There might be some frustration with Sam's obsession but the tone isn't mean spirited. They convince him to see a psychiatrist who he confides his deepest fears about his connection to the clock and if it dies so will he. The psychiatrist suggests to Sam he sell the clock and try to break the obsession. A neighbor expresses interest in it and agrees to let Sam wind it twice a week . It of course is something of a compromise since his fear and obsession remains. When the neighbors next door go away on a two week vacation Sam panics he even tries to break in to wind it up but a passing cop helps him home ( he did break a window) but has some sympathy for the old gentleman. The clock winds down and Sam's spirit arrives to take him . Sam though makes the decision to stop believing it and live to see his great grandchild grow up . Telling his granddaughter the next morning when the clock died he was reborn .

A good story that shows how we can let little superstitious things have too much power over us but we can let it go.

I agree with the "An Underrated Gem" comments. A twist on the typical Twilight Zone story. Brought a tear to my eye.

Eccentric grandfather Sam Forstmann (Ed Wynn) lives with his grand-daughter Marnie (the lovely Carolyn Kearney) and her husband Doug (James. T. Callahan), who are concerned about the old man's obsession with his grandfather clock. Sam believes that when the clock stops ticking, his ticker will stop, and so spends much of his time ensuring that the timepiece is in tip-top condition and always wound. After a visit to a psychiatrist, Sam agrees to move the clock, and then give it to the people next door, just so long as he can continue to maintain it. However, when the neighbours go away for the weekend, Sam is unable to stop the clock from slowing down...

A gentle tale from The Twilight Zone, with a rather restrained performance from the usually zany Wynn, Ninety Years Without Slumbering shows how superstition or obsession can prevent a person from living life to the full (similar to Nick of Time, season 2, episode 7). Sam eventually comes to realise that his life (and death) is not controlled by the clock - despite what he was told by his father - and allows the mechanism to stop: he doesn't keel over as a result and is able to enjoy what time he has left with his family without any more worry. A touching ending, perhaps, but one cannot help but think about the 76 years that he wasted being bound to the clock.

Bernard Herrmann wrote the incidental score for this story but not the simple, haunting, melancholy children's song that underlines the theme -- "ninety years without slumbering, tick tock, tick tock, and the clock stopped, never to go again, when the old man died."

An old man (Ed Wynn) measures his life by the time of the grandfather clock that was given to him when he was born seventy-six years ago. When it stops ticking, so does he, or so he believes. The sentimental relationship between Wynn and the old clock is established at the outset. He cares for it lovingly, making sure he winds it every two days.

It's a neat idea, both sentimental and philosophical in its implications. What, after all, is the point of living when we know it's all going to end? Rage all you want against the dying of the light; it's still going to go out. That is -- the earth itself will be burned to a crisp in only five billion years! That's what's got me worried! But that seems to be as far as the writer, George Clayton Johnson, got before he plumb ran out of steam. The potential is all jettisoned.

Wynn is living with his pregnant granddaughter and her husband. They object to his belief in the clock because, well, it's kind of unusual. Why it worries them is never convincingly demonstrated. So they send him to a psychiatrist who advises him to get rid of the clock before he gets senile or something. But WHY should he get rid of the clock? It's a rather handsome antique and its deliberate measured ticks sooth and caress the ear. The gentle clicks of a large clock make your problems look small. Wynn is bothering nobody. Unless the married couple just want to get rid of Grandpa and make room for the new baby, but that possibility is brought up and dismissed.

So, okay, Wynn has two guys schlep the unwieldy piece downstairs from his bedroom to the hallway, where it winds up awkwardly blocking the view of a large painting whose view might as well be blocked. Now the couple bitch because the clock "sticks out like a sore thumb," as his granddaughter puts it. She reasons that "he's trying to compromise." But it makes no sense. How is Wynn's moving the clock from its distant location to a more conspicuous spot constitute a compromise? It doesn't.

And, if Wynn so loves the clock, then why is he so eager to give it to the neighbors next door? I don't know. You won't either, if you give it any thought.

The ending falls apart completely. The clock next door apparently stops. Wynn wakes up and has an argument with his spirit, who tells him it's time for him to go. He pooh-poohs the spirit as a lot of superstition. Then he perkily tells his granddaughter that he's given up his obsession with the clock and is going to look forward to a future with his new grandson, and never mind the past. Why this epiphany? I don't know.

It's odd but that tune about the old man and the clock is one of the first songs I recall from when I was a toddler. I remember being taught the words. We lived with my grandfather who was a Bavarian cabinet maker and there were cuckoos and grandfather clocks all around the house. One night, when Gramps had had too many beers, he opened one of the clocks and urinated into it. Is anyone actually reading this? If so, I apologize abjectly for that vulgar anecdote, and if I could take it back I would. However, grandfathers and their clocks and that children's song provided a warm natural backdrop to my personal development. Maybe that's one of the reasons I found this less than satisfying. If Johnson and Serling are going to fiddle around with my childhood memories, they'd better gild them than slap them together so recklessly, a couple of drunken bricoleurs.