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The Fever
A reluctant Vegas vacationer (Everett Sloane) can’t stop playing after his first slot-machine pull is a winner. Flora: Vivi Janiss. Publicity Agent: William Kendis. Drunk: Art Lewis. Script by Rod Serling., Everett Sloane, who previously starred in Rod Serling’s award-winning TV play Patterns, was reunited with Serling for this January 29, 1960, Twilight Zone installment. Having won an all-expense-paid trip to Las Vegas, parsimonious Franklin Gibbs (Everett Sloane) refuses to enter into the spirit of things by gambling. Alas, Franklin is not strong enough to resist the lure of a strange-looking slot machine — and thus begins Franklin’s slow but inevitable descent into poverty and madness, as his wife Flora (Vivia Janiss) looks on in helpless horror. This may well have been the first TV program in which a slot machine ever “spoke.”
