The Twilight Zone (TV Series)

The Shelter (1961)

Jack Albertson: Jerry Harlowe

Photos 

Quotes 

• Jerry Harlowe : Hey that's a great idea, block party, anything to get back to normal, huh?

  Dr. Bill Stockton : Normal? I don't know. I don't know what normal is. I thought I did once. I don't anymore.

  Jerry Harlowe : I told you we'd pay for the damages, Bill.

  Dr. Bill Stockton : Damages? I wonder. I wonder if anyone of us has any idea what those damages really are. Maybe one of them is finding out what we're really like when we're normal; the kind of people we are just underneath the skin. I mean all of us: a bunch of naked wild animals, who put such a price on staying alive that they'd claw their neighbors to death just for the privilege. We were spared a bomb tonight, but I wonder if we weren't destroyed even without it.

• Dr. Bill Stockton : You better get on home and get into your shelter... eh, your basement, and I'd board up the windows if I were you.

  Jerry Harlowe : Bill, we don't have any cellar, remember? The advantages of modern architecture, we have the only modern house on the block. We get everything at your beck and call, everything at your fingertips, even got an electric launderer right off the back room. All the wonders of modern science taken into account except that thing that's heading here right now.

• Man : Why don't we get some kind of battering ram?

  Frank Henderson : Yeah, we could go over to Bennett Avenue, Phil Cline has some heavy pipe in his basement, I've seen it.

  Man : No, no, that would bring him into the act too, and who cares about saving him? No, if we do that, we'll let all those people know we have a shelter on our street. We'll have a whole mob to contend with, with a whole bunch of strangers.

  Mrs. Henderson : Sure, and what right have they got to come over here? This isn't their street, this isn't *their* shelter.

  Jerry Harlowe : Ohhhh, this is *our* shelter, and on the next street that's another country. Patronize home industries, you idiots, you fools, you're insane, all of you.

• Marty Weiss : ...Jerry, you've known him longer than any of us. Tell him to pick out one family. We'll draw lots, or -- or something.

  Frank Henderson : *One family*. Meaning *yours*, huh, Marty?

  Marty Weiss : Why not? I've got a 3-month-old baby!

  Mrs. Henderson : What's that got to do with anything? Is your baby any more precious than one of my kids?

  Marty Weiss : I never said that! Look, if you're going to argue about who deserves to live and who doesn't...

  Frank Henderson : You shut your mouth, Weiss...! That's how it is when the foreigners come over here: pushy and grabby semi-Americans, crowding us out of our own country! Tainting our *bloodlines*!

  Marty Weiss : Why, you garbage-spitting...!

  [He and Frank attack each other, but Jerry breaks them up] 

  Jerry Harlowe : Keep that up, and we won't even need a bomb; we can slaughter each other!