"Orson Welles speaking." "How'd you like to stay just as young as you are an not to grow a day older?" "For the next, two hundred years." "Oh, I'm not plugging some new miracle cosmetic." "The question is actually faced by the characters in our story, two men and a girl." "The eternal triangle, plus eternal youth equals a wacky little romance which we'll bring you, if we may, in just a few seconds." "I hope you enjoy it." "The Fountain of Youth." "Back in the twenties," "Dr. Humphrey Baxter was hailed as the discoverer of the scientific fountain of youth." "But we may start of with the girl in case, here she is" "As of course she's Caroline Coates, the world famous actress." "Actress is a word some of you may question for she was not strictly speaking an actress at all, Caroline was simply" "One of those creatures who stands for something greater than talent, greater than beauty and whose universe do we adore" "A privileged few, of course adored Caroline at close range and, if you excuse the expression, in the flesh." "One of these was Alan Brody, a tennis champion." "Here he is." "Science tells us that men of this time fall quickly and painless in and out of love." "Others, like Dr. Baxter, here he is again, a man born for one passion only at most two, a passion for their job and for one woman." "They never give up." "Men of this type frecuently devote themselves to science and if interested in certain function of the glands this often takes them to Vienna." "Wait a minute!" "We are getting a-head of our stills." "Before goign to Vienna" "Humphrey Baxter spent an evening in New York" "His friends the Morgans took him to the theater to see a show which was also, very indirectly concerned with the glands." "Humphrey leaned forward in his seat, the moment passed unnoticed because, everyone else in the theater also leaned forward." "You happen to know that girl?" "He asked his firend." "Why, Hupmhrey, they said" "How would people like us get to know anybody like Caroline Coates." "Humphrey realized that he'd need only two or three introductions to breach the gap between oneself and anyone anywhere in the world." "He asked everyone he knew stating his purpose very clearly, and sure enough, not long after that, there he was in fashionable Long Island." "Talking to Caroline Coates." "He found her amazingly ignorant of the man's important recent scientific research." "And you can imagine the effect of this gone to gosh young man lecturing of this popular idol of twenty three on the doctor's glands." "Caroline's smart friends were amused... and then amazed for she had fallen hand over heels in love" "Who are you calling dear?" "Letty Partridge" "Who?" "Hello, Letty?" "I want you to be the first to know, we are getting married." "Wonderful darling, who is it?" "Baxter, the gland man." "The grand man!" "Oh, gland." "Well, Caroline!" "How nice for you!" "I think I mentioned that the title of this crazy little odd story is, the fountain of youth." "Of course there are all sorts of fountains some are beautiful, some are purely mythological, some are silly foutains it was near a silly fountain that the mythological Narcissus was drowned." "It was his own reflection he fell for and he fell in." "Of course the silliest of all, is the fountain of youth." "Old Ponce de Leon thought that one was somewhere down in Florida, this was three centuries before the invention of Miami Beach." "He aged a lot looking for it, but he was only human." "Almost all of us wish we were just a little younger that we are." "Ladies, quite late in their seventies can be heard adressing each other "girls"." "Very rich old ladies even rich old gents of ?" "on monkey glands and a wisp of hope of turning the clock back or at least slowing it up a bit." "In this field, of course, was Humphrey specialized in." "By now, Humphrey really had to go back to Vienna." "To continue his research on this Bingleburg." "Bingle who?" "Asked Carolyn." " Burg, said Humphrey, Burg." "The Bingleburg, the greatest of all authorities on the duclos glands" "Oh, said Carolyn." "Oh?" "And how long are you going to be away with this, Bingleburg, sweetie?" "Three years." "Three years, on the other side of the ocean." "Yeah..." "I wish you'd, change your mind." "Darling, I'd like to get married now just as much as you would, but... but I simply can not walk out on a new show and leave everybody flat!" "Besides" "I know, you're in a smash hit and you love it." "I know you think I'm just greedy to have a fuzz made over me." "I never suggested such a thing." "But that's what you think." "And if you didn't you'd be crazy because I am just a little" "But I promise you darling, if I ever feel it getting a real hold on me." "And what do you think a real hold feels like?" "Like this?" "Humphrey's boat sailed and Caroline was more idolized than ever, everyone expected her to fall in love but" "first year passed, second year passed, third year wore on and Carolyn was still faithful and with two excelent reasons for this." "She was so extremely fond of Humphrey and she was so extremely fond of herself." "When the three years were over, Humphrey Baxter was on a boat and the boat was docking." "Now for weeks he had a picture in his mind of how she looked and since this was in the 1920's he costumed her in silver fox and violets." "On the landing dock he saw plenty of fur and flowers but no sign of Caroline." "Only two people were there to meet him, the Morgans." "Welcome home!" " said mister Morgan" "Where is she?" " asked Humphrey." "No answer." "Well, come on!" "Where is Caroline?" "Still no answer." "Was she sick?" "he said." "No" "Miss Coates wasn't sick, the truth was she'd fallen in love." "Humphrey closed his eyes." "He might have been asleep or dead." "Who is he?" "Well, it all, it all happened so quickly just a week or so ago." "Who is he?" "Allan Brody" "The tennis champion." "Yeah." "Na-na-national singles, eight times." "The last six years in succesion." "Yeah, last six years." "Oh, he's terrific." "A popular idol." "You mean like Carrie?" "He's a beautiful creature, Humprey." "He gives us people the same sort of thrill that Carrie does." "A true amazing couple" "Oh, you just have to wait 'till you see them together." "I can wait." "Humphrey was good at waiting." "But in New York it seldom is wise to wait too long for anything" "And he ran into the ideal couple very soon in a restaurant." "Look!" "Look!" "Here come the lovers!" "What lovers?" "THE lovers of course, who else?" "Carrie, darling!" "Oh my, Humphrey!" "Alan, you know I've got your back, yes?" "How do you do?" "Well, how do you think of him Humphrey?" "Oh, really Caroline, don't ask." "I think you're both charming." "Come on dear!" "Look at the camera!" "We've got to get a picture of you." "Come on, take it quick." "I hope we'd be...good friends." "After your honeymoon is over you must bring your... young man around and see me." "We'd love to!" "It won't be for two months at least." "I can wait." "And Humphrey did some more waiting." "Did a great deal of it." "Great deal of thinking, while he waited." "And then just before Allan and Caroline where due back from their honeymoon" "Humphrey called up a man named Morgan." "Morgan speaking" "This was his old friend Albert Morgan whose profession was to turn the cloudy mutterings of scientists into clear, downright and extremely thrilling articles for weekly magazines." "Sure, Humphrey." "But three months have go away." "When I was after some information about your experiments why, you clammed up on me" "What?" "You heard from Bingleburg?" "Yes, about some tests we started in Vienna just before I left." "This is news Albert." "Big news." "So if you'd like to hear about twenty carefuly chosen words." "Hold it!" "Hold it!" "I'll be right over!" "Quite remarkable what Morgan could do with twenty carefuly chosen words." "The news broke that keen eye endocrinologist Humphrey Baxter had finally succeded in isolating the VB-282" "VB-282" "Now as I understand it, that's the glandular secretion that controls, let me say that word again, controls, the aging of the tissue." "Girls, just imagine what that means!" "And now we shall go from the world of science to show business." "A little bird tells me that Caroline and Allan Brody are due back any day now." "The ideal couple very soon dopped around Humphrey's laboratory." "Darling!" "cried the bride" "You've become famous, what's all this about eternal youth?" "Hmphrey told her she could have no interest in that." "Why, you looked eighteen when I met you- he said." "And you were twenty three." "Now you're twenty six." "Twenty seven, twenty seven last week." "Don't she still looks eighteen- said Humphrey" "Well- said Brody" "I can't say I've noticed myself slowing up any but some of these youngsters from the west coast." "And he shook his head with the melancholy always induced in tennis players by the mention of the west coast." "You won't be young always of course." "But then you hardly wanna be." "Those, people you see around never seem to mature." "They belong to a particular frigid narcissistic type." "What kind of type?" "Narcissistic, from Narcissus." "It means they are in love with themselves." "They can't love anybody else so that's why they, never seem to get anny older." "Yes..." "Yes, but what about the stuff you discovered?" "Oh, that." "It's not tru then?" "I told you it was all a lot of hooey." "Listen." "I'm going to tell you something no one in the world must know about." "Do you understand that Brody?" "You can relly on me." "Very well" "Oh!" "A little kitten cat." "Isn't it sweet?" "But what's the kitten got to do with your experiment?" "The kitten had a birthday last week." "It was five years old." "Aaaaah!" "It's a dwarf or, or midget or something." "It's as normal as every kitten you saw in your life." "What will happen to it?" "Will it go on forever?" "Will it, will it go on a bang or crumble into dust or something?" "Almost surely heart failure." "But only after sixty years of glorious youth." "That's two hundred for a human being." "I went to Vienna exactly three years and four months ago." "So, you see the kitten part is Bingleburg's discovery." "But they said in the papers it was human beings." "I was helping him adapting two human beings." "And, you succeeded Mr. Baxter?" "Humphrey." "Alright, Humphrey, when will the stuff be ready?" "In thirty years or so." "It's a question of finding a new source for the extract." "To get this stuff we had to perform an extremely delictate operation." "Whic unfortunately is fatal to the animal we get it from." "So, you see it..." "What?" "Animal?" "It's quite a common one." "Man." "Urgh." "Another source would take years even test!" "That's why I swore you the secrecy." "Can you imagine the panic that would break up on this planet if people knew there was just some in existance?" "Being kept..." "There is some then." "For the privileged few...yes" "The extract was made three times." "Three?" "I took one." "A-and there were three to begin with?" "Well?" "What about the others?" "Bingleburg took anohter one of the three." "He's sixty eight and as ugly as a monkey." "And he'll stay sixty eight AND stay ugly." "For the next two hundred years." "Ugh." "Who did the third?" "I brought the third back to America with me Caroline." "Life, youth." "Two hundred years." "I must admint I nearly poured this away the day I landed." "Oh, Humphrey!" "Oh, but I don't feel that way now that I've met you both." "You're such a wonderful couple." "And I want you to stay that way." "That's why I'd like you to have this if you care for it." "Oh, Humphrey!" "Here you are." "For both of you." "My wedding present." "But you do solemnly swear never to say a word." "I do" "I do" "Sounds quite like the wedding service." "But of course it isn't." "We'll each take half." "A hundred years of peace." "Oh, oh!" "Wait a minute!" "Hold on." "I'm afraind I misled you." "Why?" "You mean we can't take half each?" "My dear, glands don't uderstand arithmetic." "A half change gland won't give you a half of anything." "No?" "No, Caroline, no." "You know, I remember when I first met you." "I told you what people were like when certain gland was deranged." "You mean those, awful freaks?" "Exactly." "There's just one dose in that little bottle." "It can be drunk in one gulp." "It dones't slide plainly but it's hardly unpleasant." "Keep it as a curiosity." "It, it isn't pretty." "It's a wedding present, at least it's unique." "Thank you Baxter." "Humphrey" "Well, thank you Humphrey." "Oh, it's too wonderful!" "Really Humphrey, you shouldn't." "Don't you think so?" "After thanking Humphrey very warmly again and again for his wedding present" "Caroline and Allan went home." "Where they set his interesting little bottle on the mantel piece." "Many along could get it." "Many along would look at each other." "You better take it now darling." "I do no such thing, Allan." "I want you to drink it." "Caroline, look at yourself in there, in that mirror." "I'm just being selfish." "I want you to be like that, forever." "Look at yourself Allan." "That's how you've got to be sweetie." "Always." "The next morning the bottle was still there." "Sweetie?" "Yes, love?" "It's impossible to say what there was in the tone of their voices that suggested that each one of them may've thought a bit about that bottle during the night." "Darling" "Now get this straight once and for all, you're going to take it and I'm not." "But try to think of your overhead smash!" "What's wrong with my overhead smash?" "Are you trying to tell me it's not holding up?" "I'ts wonderful how it holds up, everyone says so." "But you'd be against that awful boy from California in August, you know." "I can take over that pipsqueek without any monkey glands." "And I must say I'm rather surprised you think I can't!" "I don't think you can't!" "But... darling you are six years older than I am." "The men get then years at least, on a woman." "Not every woman." "Every woman." "I think you look offly distinguished with grey hair." "I can't imagine you with grey hair." "Oh, and I couldn't bare to see you get old and ugly." "I'd rather with me." "Oh no, honey!" "But you would still love me, even if I did get old, wouldn't you?" "Or would you?" "Caroline, you know I would." "I kno you wouldn't." "But I would you." "If that's what you think you better take it yourself." "Go on, let me get old." "Why would Humphrey never give us the right stuff!" "Let's pour it down the sink." "Are you crazy!" "The only bottle in the whole world?" "What Baxter said, a man died for what's in that bottle." "I guess he would be off, if he heard we've throwed it away." "After all...it's a wedding present." "So they left Humphrey's little bottle on the mantel piece." "which is an excelent place for a wedding present to be." "And the wonderful life of this wonderful couple went on." "Caroline became more and more excited in the beauty parlor and it was pathetic to see Allan hover in front of the mirror as if deciding, that was only a sun bleached hair on his temple, not a grey one." "She watched him, in the mirror." "And he saw her watching him." "What is it?" "Hm?" "What's the matter?" "I was just looking at you." "You're staring." "Oh my goodness!" "Most men if they found being gazed at would think they've died and gone to heaven." "You're not gazing at me with love, you're, you're examining me for enlarged pores and wrinkles and sagging tissues." "I've got a good mind and take this stuff and swallow it down." "Right now!" "Yes, it's just the sort of thing you'd do!" "Things went on like this until the last day of the tennis tournament." "When Dorian Cody the boy wonder from California who played into a standstill until they walked up and Cody put his hand on his shoulder, the hand of the victorious is a heavy load to carry." "That night, in spite of his aching weariness," "Brody lay awake long after Caroline was sound asleep." "He ghostly got up and crept, with infinite caution into the living room where, I'm sad to say, he drank the contents in Humphrey's bottle." "The scientist may better do something about the taste." "He found some cocktail beaters and added several drops to the water which he had already put in the vial." "Then he put it back on the mantel pice and over the mantel piece there was a mirror." "Allan took a long look in this mirror." "And he smiled." "Now it happens that in Caroline's play there was another part, supposedly her sister, and the actress playing this part walked out in a beat of temper." "A new girl had to be found in a hurry and the producer nominated the niece of a friend of his." "This new girl, was a smahs hit." "Caroline went home that night with the sound of this new applause ringing in her ears and found the place empty." "Now, the emptyness of one's own home at midnight, can seem like an injury and Caroline took it as an injury." "She looked at the largest of the framed photographs of Allan and felt somehow dissatisfied with his smile." "It's not mature, she thought." "And she looked in the mirror and tried and it wasn't easy a smile of her own and then she found even less satisfaction, I might as well face it." "said this matron of twenty seven" "I'm old." "She stood and watched her reflection, and in the stillness and silence of the apartment she could feel and almost hear the the remorsefully" "Moment after moment particles of skin wore away." "Hair folicules broke, splintered and decayed like the roots of dead trees." "All those little cubes and lines of red light chains in the inner organs were silted up like doomed rivers." "The glands, the all important glands, were choking and coughing and falling a..." "Aaaah!" "She thought the marriage, was falling apart and Allan, would be gone." "And life would be gone." "So she, drank the contents of the little bottle." "She was very calm as she went to the bathroom and refilled the little bottle with water and added a little quinine to give it, a bitter taste." "When Allan came home she overwhelmed him with tenderness feeling, of course, as if she'd betrayed him was going to desert him and go away and to endless spring time." "Where he could never follow her." "So, time, which was the cause of all this trouble went on and both" "Caroline and Allan, secured an imperishable youth." "Saw in the others, through a magnifying glass more and more of the hazening science of decay." "Allan began to feel that Caroline, at the very least should have provided herself with a younger sister." "And one night he dropped into the theater and dicovered that, in a matter of speaking, she'd done so." "All this time, Humphrey, being trained to await patiently the outcome of his scientific experiments, waite dpatiently." "And then Caroline came to him." "Humphrey." "Humphrey, I've left Allan." "This things happen." "It's your fault." "Oh?" "Well, maybe not yours exactly, but with that horrible stuff you gave us." "Oh, Humphrey." "I'm the lowest kindof hypocrite and traitor" "All of which means, I suppose, that you're the one who took the stuff." "What did he said when you told him?" "He doesn't know." "I filled the thing up with water and put some quinine in it." "Tell me..." "Why did you put quinine in it?" "To give it that bitter taste." "I see." "Well." "Oh, I tried so hard to love him more than ever and amke up for it but you just can't make up for a thing like that." "Besides..." "Guess?" "You can't help watching a person who's aging in front of your eyes!" "When you watch someone like that you notice all sort of things wrong with him." "It's all my fault, of course, because" "I just don't love him anymore." "Maybe I never did." "You've changed your mind about wanting to be young forever?" "Well?" "Don't you?" "Not if I can't ever love anyone again." "There's always yourself, of course." "That's mean, Humphrey." "Mean and cruel." "Even if it's true." "Well..." "It is lonely being like this." "But then that's the price we pay for our little immoratality." "You...and me." "And of course old Bingleburg." "We are animals of a new species." "There's us." "And the rest of the world." "Of course I, used to think we were like that for quite a different reason." "Oh, Humphrey!" "If we only..." "Perhaps, so unworthy." "I let you down and, now I've let him down." "The first was a mistake that can be fixed." "But not the second." "You mean letting him down?" "We can't put that right." "No, we can't live with that." "Oh, I think so." "You said, the stuff tasted bitter." "You're quite sure about that, I suppose." "No, oh no, it was very bitter." "You see... that has far reaching implications." "I used nothing but, ordinary salt in the water." "Orson Welles will be back in just a moment." "You've heard of a, tiger orchid and a man eating tiger, but have you ever heard of a man eating tiger orchid?" "No?" "Well, we are going to show you one on this program next week." "The kind ever expose this feature in something called" "Green Thoughts." "Which is a sort of...spook story with the seasoning of giggles." "I hope you enjoy it." "'Till then I remain as always, obediently yours."