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Fed up with the loud and incessant talking of fellow men's club member Jamie Tennyson (Liam Sullivan), pompous Col. Archie Taylor (Franchot Tone) decides to place a most unusual wager. With $500,000 at stake, Taylor bets that Tennyson cannot remain silent for a full year. Deeply in debt, Tennyson accepts the wager, and even permits himself to be placed in a glass cage in the club's basement, so that Taylor and the other members can monitor his silence. Though the story contains no science-fiction or fantasy trappings whatsover, the ironic ending is very much in keeping with the standards set by previous Twilight Zone episodes. First telecast April 28, 1961, "The Silence" was scripted by Rod Serling -- and though Serling denied it at the time, the story would seem to have been influenced by Anton Chekhov's "The Bet."