The Twilight Zone (TV Series)

Time Enough at Last (1959)

Burgess Meredith: Henry Bemis

Photos 

Quotes 

• Rod Serling - Narrator : [Middle narration - While Bemis wanders through the ruins of the destroyed city]  Seconds, minutes, hours, they crawl by on hands and knees for Mr. Henry Bemis, who looks for a spark in the ashes of a dead world. A telephone connected to nothingness, a neighborhood bar, a movie, a baseball diamond, a hardware store, the mailbox that was once his house and now is rubble; they lie at his feet as battered monuments to what was but is no more.

  Henry Bemis : Helen! Helen! Where are you!

  Rod Serling - Narrator : Mr. Henry Bemis, on an eight hour tour of a graveyard.

• Henry Bemis : And the best thing, the very best thing of all, is there's time now... there's all the time I need and all the time I want. Time, time, time. There's time enough at last.

  [goes to pick up a book, but in doing so his glasses fall off and break. He slowly raises his glasses to his face, seeing they are completely broken] 

  Henry Bemis : That's not fair. That's not fair at all. There was time now. There was, was all the time I needed...

• Mr. Carsville : I remember last November you spent the better part of the days reading campaign buttons on customer's lapels. You'll recall, Mr. Bemis, the young woman who took considerable offense at this and tried to hit you with her umbrella.

  Henry Bemis : I remember that very well, Mr. Carsville. She never gave me a chance to tell her that I was only looking at who she was voting for.

• Henry Bemis : [noticing someone inked on his poetry pages, obscuring the text]  Helen... Who did this, Helen?

  Helen Bemis : Who do you think did it, Henry? You should thank me, really. A grown man who reads silly, ridiculous, nonsensical doggerel.

  Henry Bemis : This isn't doggerel! There's some very beautiful things here.

  Helen Bemis : I say it's doggerel. I also say it's a waste of time.

  [snatches the poetry book and rips out pages] 

  Henry Bemis : Helen! Helen! Don't do that! Helen, please don't do that! Why, Helen? Why do you do these things?

  Helen Bemis : Because I'm married to a fool!

• Mr. Carsville : You, Mr. Bemis, are a reader!

  Henry Bemis : A reader?

  Mr. Carsville : A reader! A reader of books, magazines, periodicals, newspapers! I see you constantly going downstairs into the vault during your lunch hour.

  [Bemis tries to sit down, but Carsville slams on the desk] 

  Mr. Carsville : An ultimatum, Mr. Bemis! You will henceforth devote time to your job and forget reading or you'll find yourself outdoors on a park bench reading from morning to night for want of having a job! Do I make myself perfectly clear?

  Henry Bemis : Oh, that's perfectly clear, sir, it's just that...

  Mr. Carsville : [interrupting]  "Just that" what, Bemis? Make it quick and get back to your cage!

  Henry Bemis : [sitting down]  It's just that my wife won't let me read at home. See, when I get home at night and try to pick up a newspaper, she yanks it out of my hand! And then after dinner, if I try to find a magazine, she hides them. Well, I got so desperate found myself trying to read the labels on the condiment bottles on the table. Now, she won't even let me use the ketchup.

  Mr. Carsville : [smiling]  Unasked, I give my reaction to this: your wife is an amazingly bright woman.

  [Bemis gives a thunderstruck look] 

• Henry Bemis : Mr Micawber, isn't that a wonderful name?