He's Alive
Template:Infobox TTW season four Template:TTW episode details
Cast
| Role | Actor |
|---|---|
| Peter Vollmer | Dennis Hopper |
| Ernst Ganz | Ludwig Donath |
| Adolf Hitler | Curt Conway |
Synopsis
Template:Spoiler The leader of a small Nazi group, Peter Vollmer, is visited by Adolf Hitler and is taught how to enthrall a crowd. He is successful at first, but is later done in when the elderly Jewish man he lives with interrupts a speech and denounces him. Peter kills the Jewish man and is then arrested by the police for the crime.
Trivia
This episode reportedly produced more hate mail than any other installment of The Twilight Zone:
- “Within a week after the telecast, Serling and his staff received four thousand letters for which the designation “hate mail” was much too mild. Communications were received from the followers of the prominent anti-Semite Gerald L.K. Smith, from the disciples of faith-healer/politicizer Billy Jo Hargis, from such august concerns as “The White Citizen’s Councils” and “Christian Anti-Communism Schools.” Serling and company were addressed as “commie bastards” by some, while other literary wits characterized the Twilight Zone people as “kike lovers” and “nigger lovers.” An organization called “Geo Politics” offered the novel suggestion that “Jews should be put in gas ovens and niggers shipped back to Africa.” —Hal Erikson, excerpt from “All the Little Hitlers” published in the October 1986 edition of The Twilight Zone Magazine.
Despite this less then enthusiastic reception, Serling sought to bring his story to an even larger audience:
- “To Rod Serling, “He’s Alive!” was far more than just another sausage from the Twilight Zone grinder. He felt that the play was the best he had written for the 1962-63 series and had hopes for its development beyond the hour-long format. Distressed that producer Herbert Hirschman had edited the film to conform to time restrictions, eliminating a nightmarish sequence in which Dennis Hopper, suddenly terrified at the prospect of meeting Hitler face-to-face, runs through the deserted city streets only to be confronted by swastikas, Nazi propaganda posters, and copies of Mein Kampf on every street corner. Serling suggested that two versions of “He’s Alive” be prepared in the editing room. One, the shorter of the two, would be telecast; the other would be expanded into a theatrical feature film. (Serling had been developing a Twilight Zone motion picture since 1960, only to be thwarted by uninterested or skeptical producers at every turn.) To this end, Serling started writing additional scenes, expanding the characters of Dennis Hopper’s three followers (one of whom was played by Paul Mazursky, the future director of such films as Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice and Moscow on the Hudson) and adding, as a normal “sympathetic” protagonist, the character of a dedicated FBI man who is investigating Hopper’s fascist movement. Because Twilight Zone’s already conservative budget had been stretched to the breaking point, Hirschmann turned down Serling’s suggestions.” —additional excerpt from “All the Little Hitlers”
Themes
Similar themes are explored in “Deaths-Head Revisited” and “The Howling Man”.
Critical Response
Editorial published in the January 31, 1963 edition of The Indianapolis Star:
- Nobody can disagree with whatever scorn one wants to heap on Adolph Hitler...Yet we are a little puzzled as to the relevance of this production to contemporary events. Indeed, this attempt to establish relevance struck us as more than a little cockeyed...For example, the young Nazi...talked a great deal about anti-Communism. He also had a lot to say about “freedom.” That combination of sentiments, as it happens, has very little to do with authentic Nazism... But the combination of anti-Communism and freedom does fit one recognizable political grouping: Modern American Conservatism. In fact, the speech of the young Nazi, in its purely political aspects, sounded a great deal more like Barry Goldwater, a man of Jewish lineage, than it did like Hitler. The impression left by the program was that people who warn against Communism and people who talk about getting back our freedom are probably secret Nazis.
References
- Zicree, Marc Scott: The Twilight Zone Companion. Sillman-James Press, 1982 (second edition)