Twilight Zone episode review — 5.13 — Ring-a-Ding Girl

Episode 5.13 “Ring-a-Ding Girl”
Original air date: December 27, 1963
Writer: Earl Hamner, Jr.
Director: Alan Crosland, Jr.

Rating: 6/10

Bunny Blake (Maggie McNamara) is a big time movie star that doesn’t make it home too often. She receives a ring from her hometown fan club, and when looking into its stone, she sees her mother asking her to come home.

She surprises her family in Virginia, planning to stop briefly before she goes to Rome to shoot a movie. The town is having a big get-together the day she arrives, and though she wants to see her friends in more intimate personal settings, the town refuses to reschedule.

She goes on a bit of an ego trip and schedules a one-woman show to be done at her old school at the same time as the picnic. This upsets a lot of people, and they think Hollywood has changed her.

Looking into her ring again, she sees the image of a plane, and some passengers including her manager. She eventually sees herself in the ring on the plane, and she goes outside in the rain. Her family cannot find her, as she’s disappeared. They hear of a plane crash on the radio, and find that she was one of the passengers killed. It turns out that the plane crashed into the park where the picnic would have been, but the people in her town were safe because they were at her school waiting to see her show.

It’s one of the stranger stories in the series, but I think it largely works. It’s no masterpiece, but I like the small town vs. Hollywood dynamic, and the twist ending is nice.