Short Story
"Button, Button" was first published in Playboy, June 1970, a short story written by Richard Matheson. The story was republished as part of a collection of Matheson's short stories.
In the original short story, the plot is resolved differently. Norma presses the button, and receives the money—after her husband dies in a train incident where Arthur is pushed onto the tracks (the money was the no-fault insurance settlement, which is $50,000 instead of the $200,000 in the Twilight Zone episode). A despondent Norma asks the stranger why her husband was the one who was killed. The stranger replies, "Did you really think you knew your husband?"
Matheson strongly disapproved of the Twilight Zone version, especially the new ending, and used his pseudonym Logan Swanson for the teleplay.
Read more about this topic: Button, Button (The Twilight Zone)
Famous quotes containing the words short and/or story:
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The Baron: That’s my motto, Kringelein. A short life and a gay one.”
—William A. Drake (1900–1965)
“Personal beauty is then first charming and itself, when it dissatisfies us with any end; when it becomes a story without an end; when it suggests gleams and visions, and not earthly satisfactions; when it makes the beholder feel his unworthiness; when he cannot feel his right to it, though he were Caesar; he cannot feel more right to it than to the firmament and the splendors of a sunset.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)