Twilight Zone – Ring-A-Ding Girl

★★★★★ December 27, 1963 Season 5 Episode 13

If you want to see where we are…HERE is a list of the episodes.

The Ring-A-Ding Girl is in the top ten of my favorite episodes. Maggie McNamara plays Bunny Blake and the character just sparkles. Bunny Blake is a little self-centered but likable. She is what you would think some stars of the 50s and 60s would have been like. It was written by Earl Hamner Jr…. the Waltons creator. He went on to write eight Twilight Zones. Some of his episodes are classics. 

Bunny visits her sister in Howardville. The Founders Day picnic is the same day but Bunny has other ideas. You can see something is bothering her so she goes down to the TV station. She announces that she wants to do a one-woman play at the High School Gym. Everyone is upset because they think she is so full of herself that she is wanting people to come to see her and not go to the Founders Day picnic. Is she just full of herself because she is a big star? She has her reasons, and we find out at the end.

I cannot reccomend this one enough. It has a very original story. 

IMDB Trivia

Bunny says to her sister Hildy, “Remember when we used to lie in bed on rainy nights and call to each other when we were kids?” This detail was inspired by the writer Earl Hamner Jr. and his seven younger siblings calling out to each other every night when they were children. It later served as the inspiration for the Walton children bidding each other goodnight at the end of every episode of The Waltons (1972), which was created by Hamner.

The headline of Bud’s newspaper, the Daily Bulletin Sports, reads “Jockey Banned from All U.S. Tracks.” This newspaper was a prop created for the earlier episode The Twilight Zone: The Last Night of a Jockey (1963).

The house set was previously used in The Twilight Zone: Living Doll (1963).

This show was written by Rod Serling and Earl Hamner Jr. 

Rod Serling’s Opening Narration: 

Introduction to Bunny Blake. Occupation: film actress. Residence: Hollywood, California, or anywhere in the world that cameras happen to be grinding. Bunny Blake is a public figure; what she wears, eats, thinks, says is news. But underneath the glamour, the makeup, the publicity, the buildup, the costuming, is a flesh-and-blood person, a beautiful girl about to take a long and bizarre journey into The Twilight Zone.

Summary

Actress Bunny Blake receives an invitation from her sister, to return home. She arrives on the same day as the town’s annual picnic, and feels a sense of dread. She doesn’t get much cooperation and takes matters into her own hands.

Rod Serling’s Closing Narration:

We are all travelers. The trip starts in a place called birth, and ends in that lonely town called death. And that’s the end of the journey, unless you happen to exist for a few hours, like Bunny Blake, in the misty regions of the Twilight Zone.

CAST

Rod Serling … Narrator / Self – Host (uncredited)
Maggie McNamara … Barbara “Bunny” Blake
Mary Munday … Hildy Powell
David Macklin … Bud Powell
Betty Lou Gerson … Cici
Vic Perrin … State Trooper (Jim)
George Mitchell … Dr. Floyd
Bing Russell … Ben Braden
Hank Patterson … Mr. Gentry
Bill Hickman … Pilot