Way Out — Season 1, Episode 7: False Face
Drama, Sci-Fi & Fantasy • 25 min • 1 season, 14 episodes • ★ 7.0/10
Episode synopsis
Handsome actor Michael Drake has been cast as Quasimodo in a production of ""The Hunchback of Notre Dame."" Drake goes slumming, and at a flophouse picks up a bum with an ugly face; Drake offers him $50 to come to his dressing room, so Drake can copy his ugly face via make-up. Once he has no further need of the bum, Drake dismisses him. Drake is also rude to his costar and girlfriend, Rita Singer. The play is a hit, but there's a problem: after the show, the make-up won't come off! Drake tells Rita, but since he has been so mean to her lately, she just laughs at his problem. Drake desperately retraces his steps, until he finds the bum. The bum now has Drake's handsome face. Drake offers any amount of money to switch faces with him again, but he's too late-- the bum is dead. Drake is now stuck with a Quasimodo-like face for the rest of his life.
About Way Out
Way Out was a 1961 fantasy and science fiction television anthology series hosted by writer Roald Dahl. The macabre 25-minute shows were introduced by Dahl's dry delivery of a brief introductory monologue, sometimes explaining a method of murdering a spouse without getting caught. The taped series began because CBS suddenly needed a replacement for a Jackie Gleason talk show that network executives were about to cancel, and producer David Susskind contacted Dahl to help mount a show quickly. The series was paired by the network with the similar The Twilight Zone for Friday evening broadcasts, running from March through July 1961 at 9:30 p.m. Eastern time, under the primary sponsorship of Liggett & Myers. Writers included Philip H. Reisman, Jr. and Sumner Locke Elliott. The premiere episode, "William and Mary", adapted from a Roald Dahl short story, told of a wife getting revenge on her husband. In "Dissolve to Black", an actress cast as a murder victim at a television studio goes through a rehearsal, but the drama merges with reality as she finds herself trapped on the show's near-deserted set. Other dramas offered startling imagery: a snake slithering up a carpeted staircase inside a suburban home, a disembodied brain in a jar, a headless woman strapped to an electric chair, with a light bulb in place of her head and half of a man's face erased.