Showdown with Rance McGrew

"**Showdown with Rance McGrew**"
"Showdown with Rance McGrew"
The Twilight Zone episode
Episode no.	Season 3; Episode 20
Directed by	Christian Nyby
Written by	Rod Serling
Based on	an idea; by Frederic Louis Fox
Featured music	Stock
Production code	4812
Original air date	February 2, 1962
Guest appearances
	Larry Blyden: Rance McGrew ; Arch Johnson: Jesse James ; Robert Cornthwaite: Director ; Robert J. Stevenson: T.V. Bartender ; William McLean: Property Man ; Troy Melton: Cowboy #1 ; Jay Overholts: Cowboy #2
Episode chronology
← Previous; "The Hunt"	Next →; "Kick the Can"
	The Twilight Zone (1959 TV series) (season 3)
	List of episodes

"Showdown With Rance McGrew" is episode 85 of the American television anthology series The Twilight Zone.

Opening narration

Some one-hundred-odd years ago, a motley collection of tough mustaches galloped across the West and left behind a raft of legends and legerdemains, and it seems a reasonable conjecture that if there are any television sets up in cowboy heaven and any one of these rough-and-wooly nail-eaters could see with what careless abandon their names and exploits are being bandied about, they're very likely turning over in their graves—or worse, getting out of them. Which gives you a clue as to the proceedings that will begin in just a moment, when one Mr. Rance McGrew, a 3,000-buck-a-week phoney-baloney discovers that this week's current edition of make-believe is being shot on location—and that location is the Twilight Zone.

Plot

Actor Rance McGrew, who stars in a TV series as the fictional heroic marshal of the same name, arrives late to shoot the final scenes of an episode in which his character pursues Jesse James. According to the script, Rance turns away from a seemingly-beaten Jesse, who then tries to shoot him in the back. The actor playing the outlaw says fighting dishonorably is historically inaccurate and asks permission to shout at Rance before firing, but Rance argues that shouting out a warning to a gunman who has already proven himself to be a better fighter makes no sense.

Suddenly, Rance finds himself in a real Old West saloon, where he is confronted by the real Jesse, who says that he, Billy the Kid, and other famous outlaws are not pleased with the way that they are portrayed on Rance's show and consider him a fraud who makes his living off the reputations of true gunslingers before challenging him to a fast draw showdown. Realizing that he stands no chance against a real gunfighter, Rance tries to flee, but Jesse stops him. Amidst the showdown, Rance struggles to get his gun out of his holster before unintentionally flinging it into the air in a panic. His point made, Jesse points his own gun at Rance, who drops to his knees and pleads for the outlaw to spare him. Jesse accepts and disappears.

Rance soon finds himself back on the set, only to find that his agent is Jesse in Hollywood garb. Jesse insists that the episode be revised so that the actor playing him throws Rance out of a saloon window and escapes instead. To Jesse's satisfaction, the new scene is shot without trouble. As Jesse drives Rance back home, he goes over revisions to future episodes in which Rance fights Jesse's afterlife friends based on what they would really do instead of making Rance look good.

Closing narration

The evolution of the so-called 'adult' western, and the metamorphosis of one Rance McGrew, formerly phony-baloney, now upright citizen with a preoccupation with all things involving tradition, truth and cowpoke predecessors. It's the way the cookie crumbles and the six-gun shoots in the Twilight Zone.

Cast

Larry Blyden as Rance McGrew
Arch Johnson as Jesse James
Robert Cornthwaite as Director
Robert J. Stevenson as Bartender
William McLean as Property Man
Troy Melton as Cowboy #1
Jay Overholts as Cowboy #2

References

Amory, C. (1966, January 15–21). "Review: The Loner". TV Guide, p. 2
DeVoe, Bill. (2008). Trivia from The Twilight Zone. Albany, GA: Bear Manor Media. ISBN 978-1-59393-136-0
Grams, Martin. (2008). The Twilight Zone: Unlocking the Door to a Television Classic. Churchville, MD: OTR Publishing. ISBN 978-0-9703310-9-0

Sources

Zicree, Marc Scott. The Twilight Zone Companion, Bantam Books, 1982. ISBN 0-553-01416-1

External links

"Showdown with Rance McGrew" at IMDb

v t e The Twilight Zone (1959) episodes
Season 1	"Where Is Everybody?" "One for the Angels" "Mr. Denton on Doomsday" "The Sixteen-Millimeter Shrine" "Walking Distance" "Escape Clause" "The Lonely" "Time Enough at Last" "Perchance to Dream" "Judgment Night" "And When the Sky Was Opened" "What You Need" "The Four of Us Are Dying" "Third from the Sun" "I Shot an Arrow into the Air" "The Hitch-Hiker" "The Fever" "The Last Flight" "The Purple Testament" "Elegy" "Mirror Image" "The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street" "A World of Difference" "Long Live Walter Jameson" "People Are Alike All Over" "Execution" "The Big Tall Wish" "A Nice Place to Visit" "Nightmare as a Child" "A Stop at Willoughby" "The Chaser" "A Passage for Trumpet" "Mr. Bevis" "The After Hours" "The Mighty Casey" "A World of His Own"
Season 2	"King Nine Will Not Return" "The Man in the Bottle" "Nervous Man in a Four Dollar Room" "A Thing About Machines" "The Howling Man" "Eye of the Beholder" "Nick of Time" "The Lateness of the Hour" "The Trouble with Templeton" "A Most Unusual Camera" "The Night of the Meek" "Dust" "Back There" "The Whole Truth" "The Invaders" "A Penny for Your Thoughts" "Twenty Two" "The Odyssey of Flight 33" "Mr. Dingle, the Strong" "Static" "The Prime Mover" "Long Distance Call" "A Hundred Yards Over the Rim" "The Rip Van Winkle Caper" "The Silence" "Shadow Play" "The Mind and the Matter" "Will the Real Martian Please Stand Up?" "The Obsolete Man"
Season 3	"Two" "The Arrival" "The Shelter" "The Passersby" "A Game of Pool" "The Mirror" "The Grave" "It's a Good Life" "Deaths-Head Revisited" "The Midnight Sun" "Still Valley" "The Jungle" "Once Upon a Time" "Five Characters in Search of an Exit" "A Quality of Mercy" "Nothing in the Dark" "One More Pallbearer" "Dead Man's Shoes" "The Hunt" "Showdown with Rance McGrew" "Kick the Can" "A Piano in the House" "The Last Rites of Jeff Myrtlebank" "To Serve Man" "The Fugitive" "Little Girl Lost" "Person or Persons Unknown" "The Little People" "Four O'Clock" "Hocus-Pocus and Frisby" "The Trade-Ins" "The Gift" "The Dummy" "Young Man's Fancy" "I Sing the Body Electric" "Cavender Is Coming" "The Changing of the Guard"
Season 4	"In His Image" "The Thirty-Fathom Grave" "Valley of the Shadow" "He's Alive" "Mute" "Death Ship" "Jess-Belle" "Miniature" "Printer's Devil" "No Time Like the Past" "The Parallel" "I Dream of Genie" "The New Exhibit" "Of Late I Think of Cliffordville" "The Incredible World of Horace Ford" "On Thursday We Leave for Home" "Passage on the Lady Anne" "The Bard"
Season 5	"In Praise of Pip" "Steel" "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet" "A Kind of a Stopwatch" "The Last Night of a Jockey" "Living Doll" "The Old Man in the Cave" "Uncle Simon" "Probe 7, Over and Out" "The 7th Is Made Up of Phantoms" "A Short Drink from a Certain Fountain" "Ninety Years Without Slumbering" "Ring-a-Ding Girl" "You Drive" "The Long Morrow" "The Self-Improvement of Salvadore Ross" "Number 12 Looks Just Like You" "Black Leather Jackets" "Night Call" "From Agnes—With Love" "Spur of the Moment" "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" "Queen of the Nile" "What's in the Box" "The Masks" "I Am the Night—Color Me Black" "Sounds and Silences" "Caesar and Me" "The Jeopardy Room" "Stopover in a Quiet Town" "The Encounter" "Mr. Garrity and the Graves" "The Brain Center at Whipple's" "Come Wander with Me" "The Fear" "The Bewitchin' Pool"