Twilight Zone: The Sixteen-Millimeter Shrine or The Tragedy of An Aging Woman

     When it comes to the human female species, there is no sadder spectacle than the march of time.  The aphorism "men age gracefully, women just get old" is, unfortunately, true.  Our society places a premium on youth or at least its appearance.  But only for women.  Men attract more beautiful women the older they get.  Their calling card is maturity and wealth and a certain perspective that dispenses with silliness and emits a level of sophistication that attracts younger women.  The successful older man who still plays the game has learned a lesson about how to be around other people:  act like you have been there before. Think Robert Mitchum or Humphrey Bogart.  But back to women.  Last night I watched episode 4 of season 1 of The Twilight Zone, The Sixteen-Millimeter Shrine.  Ida Lupino plays an aging actress who enjoyed huge success in her younger years.  A matinee idol you might call her.  She spends her days isolated in her mega mansion watching reels of her old movies.  She refuses to accept the rules of nature which, of course, are not kind to her.  She summons her sycophantic yes-man valet, played beautifully by Martin Balsam, to arrange a meeting with a studio head honcho so she can re-live her golden years via a new movie.  The tete a tete does not go well.  The mogul gives her a cold dose of reality and tells her that time has passed her by and she should face reality. This episode is loosely based on Sunset Boulevard with Gloria Swanson, William Holden, Eric Von Stroheim, and  Cecil B. DeMille as himself, but without the Holden angle. In the end, instead of having a corpse in the swimming pool, and in true Twilight Zone fashion, Lupino disappears from her seclusion, nowhere to be found.  But alas, Balsam looks at the movie screen in her hideaway room and there she is, an aged beauty queen and starlet, playing the lead role in one of her films 30 years ago.  Cue the Twilight Zone theme music.