Thomas Gomez / Sebastian Cabot / Burgess Meredith / Julie Newmar
I've always thought it was interesting that these personifications of the devil in The Twilight Zone are all portrayed as some kind of salesperson.
In Escape Clause (s1,ep5), the devil Cadwallader uses classic salesman tactics while bartering for our victim Mr. Bedecker's soul. Bedecker asks what he is asked to give up in this bargain, Cadwallader stresses the insignificance of this item, yet does not reveal what he wants in return. He then immediately goes into selling immortality to Bedecker, stressing that it would not be difficult to allow him to live hundreds or thousands of years. When Bedecker pressures him to reveal what he wants in return, Cadwallader skirts around directly telling him "I want your soul" until Bedecker presses more. Cadwallader allows Bedecker to create his own terms for their agreement, like remaining physically ageless, in order to make him feel like he is in charge of this deal. The objective of getting a sale, of course, is to make the customer think they are getting a better deal out of it than you.
In A Nice Place to Visit (s1,ep28), the devil, or more likely demon of some kind, Mr. Pip, is more of a servant or guide than a salesman directly selling something. This is due to our main character, Mr. Valentine, already being damned to hell. Mr. Pip has no need to convince Valentine to enter some shady deal, his motivations are simply to toy with Valentine as long as he can.
In Printer's Devil (s4,ep9), the devil Mr. Smith is more of a freelancer, a salesman of his own service. When Mr. Smith talks our victim Doug down from the bridge he was poised to jump from, it is only out of his own desire for carnage, and eventually, to harvest Doug's soul. Assuming that in this world suicide is a sin damning the perpetrator to hell anyways, Mr. Smith only talks him out of it knowing that he will be able to cause the death of many others by (temporarily) saving an individual. It's like the trolley problem, in which Mr. Smith pulls the lever to run over multiple innocents, then somehow reverses the trolley to back over the individual who thought he was safe initially.
In Of Late I Think of Cliffordville (s4,e14), the devil, aptly named Ms. Devlin, is a travel agent, promising our victim Mr. Feathersmith a satisfying trip back to 'the good ol' days'. Similarly to Escape Clause, Ms. Devlin describes Mr. Feathersmith's problem to him to make him feel understood and provides a solution, yet he is still skeptical of the deal. She hears out his terms and concerns, yet does not mention any other pitfalls that could occur. In this case, though, Mr. Feathersmith has already soul his soul, so Ms. Devlin takes the object that has replaced it: money. An interesting little theory is to assume that Mr. Feathersmith is already in hell from the beginning of his return to Cliffordville, and his time there is his own form of torture.
I would love input on this! As someone who learned some of these sales tactics in school, I think it's facinating that four out of the five episodes of The Twilight Zone feature the devil as a salesperson.
