A sidewalk pitchman (the guy with the foldable suitcase\/table full of cheap junk) named Lou Bookman (Ed Wynn) is visited by Death.\u00a0 Not wanting to die he negotiates a delay until he can \u201cMake a Pitch for the Angels.\u201d\u00a0 Death agrees to this but once the agreement is made Bookman gloats that he\u2019ll stop making pitches forever.\u00a0 But the consequences involve the death in his place of a small child that Bookman knows.\u00a0 The little girl is struck by a truck and will die at midnight when Bookman was scheduled to die.\u00a0 Bookman awaits Death and delays him by distracting him with his most persuasive sales pitch and succeeds in saving the girl\u2019s life.\u00a0 And of course, that pitch was the \u201cOne for the Angels.\u201d\u00a0 And at that point Mr. Bookman is ready for his journey with Death who really isn\u2019t a bad guy.<\/p>\n
Wynn was a comic actor of the vaudeville era.\u00a0 My only other memory of him was a small part in the original Mary Poppins movie from the 1960s.\u00a0 The whole teleplay is highly sentimental and affected but it works.\u00a0 It\u2019s a gentle fantasy that tugs at the heartstrings and appeals to our sympathy for the little guy who also happens to be a nice guy. \u00a0For myself, being a rank sentimentalist, it appeals to my childhood view of how the world should be.\u00a0 So, it feels comfortably familiar.\u00a0 In other words, it\u2019s nostalgic escapism and sometimes that\u2019s exactly what I want.\u00a0 You have to decide for yourself if this type of story is acceptable entertainment for you.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A sidewalk pitchman (the guy with the foldable suitcase\/table full of cheap junk) named Lou Bookman (Ed Wynn) is visited by Death.\u00a0 Not wanting to<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[237,4,244,240,1661],"tags":[1665,1664,838],"class_list":["post-5811","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","category-sff","category-sff-tv-reviews","category-tv-reviews","category-twilight-zone","tag-ed-wynn","tag-one-for-the-angels","tag-twilight-zone"],"yoast_head":"\n