By Chris Benedict

With Don Rickles playing a supporting role, it should come as little surprise that “Mr. Dingle the Strong” is one of the sillier Twilight Zone episodes. Free from the show’s usual dark irony or overt sentimentality, this light-hearted morality play regarding abuse of power takes place, as Rod Serling introduces us to the setting and its inhabitants, in “that uniquely American institution known as the neighborhood bar.”

Anthony O’Toole is the proprietor, a man “who waters his drinks like geraniums but stands four-square for peace and quiet and booths for ladies.” Engaged in lively conversation opposite O’Toole are bookie Joseph J. Callahan whose idea of meaningful conversation is any “dialogue between a catcher and a pitcher and with more than one man on base” and Rickles’ character, an unnamed angry everyman “who ever dropped money on a horse race or prizefight or a floating crap game and who took out his frustration and insolvency on any fellow barstool companion within arm’s and fist’s reach.” The butt of his jokes and brunt of his attacks always seems to be hapless vacuum cleaner salesman Luther Dingle, “a consummate loser in almost everything,” explains Serling, “but is a good listener and has a prominent jaw.”

Burgess Meredith follows up his unforgettable performance as doomed bookworm Henry Bemis in “Time Enough at Last” by playing Dingle in the second of what would be four Twilight Zone appearances. Tinkering with one of his faulty vacuums, Luther is cheerfully oblivious to the argument between Callahan and Rickles over a disputed play in the previous night’s Dodgers/Pirates game which threatens to become physical at any moment. “His father still owes my father from the second Dempsey/Tunney fight,” complains the bookie to O’Toole when the barkeep tries to diffuse the situation. “Because it was a bum call,” Rickles retorts. The type who is happy to clutch at low-hanging fruit, Rickles’ character bum rushes poor Dingle to seek his opinion on the infamous “long count”, of which Luther has none. Dingle does, however, follow baseball and is goaded into choosing sides between Rickles and the bookie which earns him a punch that sends him flying over the bar. O’Toole chastises Rickles for having done the same thing last week and the week before that.

Just then, a mechanized two-headed Martian rolls across the hardwood floor from out of nowhere as the camera follows its progress, stopping at Rod Serling who is seated at a table with a cigarette and a mug of beer, sympathizing with Luther Dingle as someone who has “missed even the caboose of life’s gravy train.” The Martians’ assessment of Dingle is a bit more harsh. While one describes him unkindly as a “coward” and “sub-physical type”, the other deems him a worthy recipient of their experimental infusion of abnormal strength, rendering Dingle 300 times as powerful as the average human.

Dingle wisely decides to leave after being floored once more by Rickles following a not-so-friendly discussion about their favorite Phillies player and astonishes everyone, himself included, when he effortlessly tears the bar’s front door off its hinges. While on his sales rounds, he is accosted by two neighborhood bullies one of whom knocks Luther’s hat off his head with a football which Dingle proceeds to throw well over the tree tops and church steeple, through an open kitchen window and closed door of a distant home. He hails a taxi and pulls the door handle free then lifts the car onto two wheels, settling for a rest on a park bench to contemplate this very bizarre set of circumstances. Speaking with a young woman rocking her baby in its carriage, Dingle decides to impress her with his newfound brawn and lifts the bench off the ground with the now hysterical housewife still seated on it. A newspaper photographer situated conveniently nearby rushes over to snap a shot of Luther hoisting a bronze statue over his head one-handed, an image of which appears in the next morning’s early edition accompanying a caption hailing Dingle as a “20th Century Samson”.

A TV news crew sets up shop at the bar to broadcast Dingle’s feats of strength much to the glee of O’Toole who is raking in cash hand over fist, faster than he can count it. Looking on with disapproval as Dingle smashes a table in two, uproots a stool with a single finger, and spins Rickles through the air like a child would a stuffed doll, the Martians regret their decision to bestow such power to a man who chooses to use it to engage in parlor tricks and petty exhibition. Eager to set out on their next itinerary consisting of stops on three planets-one of which is occupied only by women-they revoke their gift just as Luther attempts to raise the entire bar by a ceiling beam.

Before the extraterrestrial visitors take their leave, they encounter fellow travelers in the form of two diminutive Venusians who are looking for one viable candidate to award intelligence greater than 500 human beings. Who better, the Martians suggest, than Luther Dingle? A poor soul and lost cause born, by Rod Serling’s reasoning, “with one foot in his mouth and the other in the Twilight Zone.”

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