The Twilight Zone Diaries, episode 4

The 16mm Shrine

originally aired: October 23, 1959
written by: Rod Serling
starring: Ida Lupino, Martin Balsam

"Picture of a woman looking at a picture. Movie grade of another time. A once-brilliant star that is no longer part of the sky. Eclipsed by the movement of earth and time. Barbara Jean Trenton, whose world is a projection room, whose dreams are made out of celluloid. Barbara Jean Trenton, struck down by hit and run years and lying on the unhappy pavement trying desperately to get the license number of fleeting fame."

classification: drama

story: An aging former movie queen escapes the horrors of old age by fleeing into the world of her own films.

my summary: Boy if this isn't what my life will someday be I don't know what is...! Great episode. How difficult it must be to get old and dried up when you are a movie star! How relevant to things today (britney, et.al). I wonder if Paris Hilton will sit around watching her old sex tapes when she's 60? Great lines with the "suit" at the studio..."You play a mother. But very vibrant, very much alive..." "COMAPRED TO WHAT? A CORPSE?!?!?!?!" Like a less creepy happier ending version of Sunset Boulevard. Very nice.

"To the wishes that come true, to the strange, mystic strengths of the human animal who can take a wishful dream and give it a dimension of its own. To Barbara Jean Trenton, movie queen of another era who has changed the blank tomb of an empty projection screen into another world, in The Twilight Zone."