I'm trying to remember a show I saw as a kid. Anyone know?

Cafe Society
1

I was a little kid at the time (elementary or middle school age), Twilight Zone and Outer Limits were both of the proper genre, both had been canceled years earlier, but were also both still in syndicated rerun status, and my father was a fan of both, so I saw most of them, anyway.

I thought it was a TZ episode, because I remember the quote from it as a Rod Serlingesque monologue, but reading an episode guide I googled that includes all of the monologues proved that idea wrong. Maybe OL? Apparently no to that one, too, but with less certainty. I remember it as a TZ/OL type story, but Google was no help, perhaps due to weak Google-Fu. Maybe Dopers can help.

Here’s what I remember:

Story:
Man commits murder. Somehow (I don’t remember the details) he either arranges for an innocent dupe to take the rap, or the cops latch onto the wrong guy. Dupe is arrested, convicted, and sentenced to death. The last two scenes immediately at the end (assuming I remember it correctly, which is a very big assumption) are:

  1. Dupe, about to be executed, gets permanently spared at the last minute by phonecall.
    Cut to 2) Guilty guy starts to cross street, gets hit and killed by car, clock tower in background starts ringing the dupe’s scheduled time of execution. Begin voiceover quote:

Quote as I remember, might be paraphrase, might be garbled:
“Every man is born under sentence of death. The only question: The time and means of execution.”

I, myself, have used that quote, as stated above, in philosophical arguments. I always attributed it to Rod Serling, and the Twilight Zone. Then I find out that I’m misattributing it, and can’t find whomever I should attribute it to. It nevertheless still remains true, but I’m pretty sure I didn’t invent that concept (I ain’t that original), so I want to attribute it properly. Does anyone remember, and can document, where it actually came from?

2

It would be tremendously helpful if you could provide us with what year it was when you saw this.

3

Long before you were born, [not pit, so insult left off the table] [insult]. As I said, sometime in the time that TZ/OL was in reruns. AKA roughly the late 60’s to early 70’s. Not later than 1979, but probably earlier than that. If I knew, I wouldn’t have needed to ask. [insult]!

4

Well TZ was in reruns right up into the 80’s–I watched it all the time–so it’s nice to get an approximate date. It sure sounds like a TZ tag line, no wonder you thought it was.

5

Both are still in reruns. This doesn’t help much. I’m not recalling the names, but there were several 60s-70s shows centered on supernatural themes, including Serling’s own Night Gallery.

6

That exact plot (assuming you’re remembering it correctly) isn’t from any TZ episode.

7

But the quote, or at least close to it, IS from TZ:

“There’s a saying, ‘Every man is put on Earth condemned to die, time and method of execution unknown.’ Perhaps this is as it should be. Case in point: Walter Bedeker, lately deceased, a little man with such a yen to live. Beaten by the Devil, by his own boredom, and by the scheme of things in this, the Twilight Zone.”

But the episode, Escape Clause, is nothing like what the OP describes.

Could just be a similar quote though.

8

Night Gallery. Didn’t think of that one. I’m looking for TV in the late 60s to late 70s “actually still being played on tv” era.
The “quote” is the important part.

9

Hmmmm…sometimes, John Newland, from One Step Beyond would make some comment, at the end of one of his stories, IIRC. Sounds fairly like his style, but, as pointed out, there were a lot of the supernatural ones back then.