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"The Self-Improvement of Salvadore Ross"

The Twilight Zone episode

Episode no.

Season 5
Episode 16

Directed by

Don Siegel

Teleplay by

Jerry McNeely

Based on

"The Self-Improvement of Salvadore Ross"
by Henry Slesar

Featured music

Stock

Production code

2612

Original air date

January 17, 1964

Guest appearances

Don Gordon: Salvadore Ross
Gail Kobe: Leah Maitland
Vaughn Taylor: Mr. Maitland
J. Pat O'Malley: Old Man
Douglass Dumbrille: Mr. Halpert
Douglas Lambert: Albert Rowe
Seymour Cassel: Jerry (uncredited)
Ted Jacques: Bartender (uncredited)
Kathleen O'Malley: Nurse (uncredited)

Episode chronology

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"The Long Morrow"

Next →
"Number 12 Looks Just Like You"

The Twilight Zone (1959 TV series) (season 5)

List of episodes

"The Self-Improvement of Salvadore Ross" is an episode of the American television anthology series The Twilight Zone. In this episode, a man finds he has the ability to trade anything, even personal traits and conditions, with whoever agrees to the swap.

Opening narration

Confidential personnel file on Salvadore Ross. Personality: a volatile mixture of fury and frustration. Distinguishing physical characteristic: a badly broken hand, which will require emergency treatment at the nearest hospital. Ambition: shows great determination towards self-improvement. Estimate of potential success: a sure bet for a listing in Who's Who in the Twilight Zone.

Plot

Salvadore Ross is a brash, insensitive, ambitious 26-year-old man who desires a lovely young social worker named Leah Maitland. Leah and Ross dated for a time, but she broke off the relationship because their personalities are incompatible. When Ross continues to bother her, Leah puts her foot down and finally ends things. He has been so loud that her father has come out to see if she is all right. After a curt exchange, they go inside and Ross slams his fist into the closed door, breaking his hand. This sends him to a local hospital, where he is forced to spend the evening. Ross' roommate is an elderly man with a respiratory infection. Ross sarcastically suggests that he would like to trade ailments with the old man, who jokingly accepts the trade and they go to sleep. Salvadore turns over quickly and hits his hand. He then realizes it no longer hurts and begins to unwrap it. As he unwraps it, he begins to cough. He gets out of the bed and checks the other man, whose hand has begun to hurt. The old man begs Ross to reverse this (at his age, the hand wouldn't heal properly), but Ross dismisses him.

Ross realizes he has a supernatural power to make trades with other people. In exchange for $1,000,000 and a penthouse apartment, Ross sells his youth to an elderly millionaire. As a result Ross is now very rich, but old. He offers a number of young men (beginning with a hotel bellboy) $1,000 for each year of their lives they trade to him. In short order, Ross is 26 again.

Ross is now young, rich, and (thanks to a trade with a college student) well-spoken, so he goes to Leah's apartment. Her father is there and unimpressed with the superficial change in Ross, knowing that he does not love Leah, but simply wishes to possess her. Leah comes home and, after she sees Salvadore has changed his ways some, agrees to go to dinner with him. However, by the end of the date she is again repulsed by Ross's personality. She wants a man who is as caring and compassionate as her father. Frustrated, Ross approaches Mr. Maitland, who is kind to him despite his disrespectful and condescending demeanor, but does not think he would be a good husband for his daughter. Ross offers him $100,000 to make him and Leah financially secure in exchange for something from Mr. Maitland. When the father asks what he has, Ross says, "Well, it's a little hard to explain..."

The next day, Ross has become warm, compassionate and has won Leah's heart. Ross meets with Mr. Maitland in private to apologize for his previous behavior and asks for his permission to marry Leah. Maitland refuses. Ross implores the older man to show compassion. Maitland coldly replies, "Compassion? Don't you remember? I sold that to you yesterday", and shoots Ross dead.

Closing narration

The Salvadore Ross program for self-improvement. The all-in-one, sure-fire success course that lets you lick the bully, learn the language, dance the tango and anything else you want to do. Or think you want to do. Money-back guarantee. Offer limited to...the Twilight Zone.

In other media

Henry Slesar adapted his story for an episode of the CBS Radio Mystery Theater, A Bargain in Blood, which was broadcast on June 10, 1974.^[1]^[2]

References

External links

The Twilight Zone (1959) episodes

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"