Mr. Henry Bemis, a charter member in a fraternity of dreamers whose passion is the printed page, conspired against by his boss, his wife and a world full of tongue cluckers in the unrelenting hands of a clock. (Rod Serling)
"Time Enough At Last," the 8th episode of Rod Serling's TV show, "The Twilight Zone" marvelously transformed writer Lynn Venable's short story from the 1953 magazine "If, Worlds Of Science Fiction" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_Enough_at_Last into a compelling tale of imagination, intrigue and frustration.
Acclaimed actor Burgess Meredith (1907-1997) portrayed Henry Bemis, the focal character in 1959s "Time Enough At Last" with aplomb. Bemis is an avid reader to say the least. His reading causes problems at his banking job and with his wife. His boss and his wife do everything they can to thwart his reading.
The minor mistakes at work and Bemis getting reminded by his boss that a voluptuous women complained about him because he was looking down at her chest, but Bemis was not being a typical male eyeing a beautifully breasted women, Bemis was simply trying to read her election button to see who she voted for.
Writers Venable and Serling cleverly conceived a way for Bemis to be the sole survivor of a nuclear holocaust with an abundance of food and water. At first Bemis is lonely, even suicidal until he discovers a vast collection of undamaged books from a rubbled city library. Bemis excitedly makes countless stacks of book as he prepares his days and years of which books he's going to read until he drops and breaks his prescription reading glasses. The end.
Izzy Schurr, aka Mark Schurr
