Rod Serling
The Original
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Rod Serling
- "It was almost like being in the Twilight Zone."
- Recent News Report
It's unusual that a television series from over half a century ago is still part of the American Collective Consciousness. Few remember shows like Captain David Grief (about a Jack London type adventurer), Our Man Higgins (about a proper English butler who finds himself working for a typical American family), Dusty's Trail (starring a post-Gilligan Bob Denver as a wagon master's assistant), The Hathaways (about a family who lives with chimpanzees), The Protectors (with Robert Vaughn trying to see if there is life after The Man from UNCLE), The Texas Wheelers (starring a pre-Buddy Holly Gary Busey and - get this - a pre-Luke Skywalker Mark Hamill), and even the reasonably popular Eleventh Hour (a show about psychiatrists).
But today you'll still find plenty of news stories that make a reference to The Twilight Zone. Allusions to being in The Twilight Zone even crop up regularly in day-to-day conversation. When a young resident of small town America decided to avoid traffic by using an alternate route away from the main street, he accidentally ended up circling around and returning to the place he started from. But since he didn't realize he had driven in a loop, he was perplexed when he apparently arrived at a downtown area that appeared out of nowhere and was identical to the town he left except the buildings on the north and south had been switched. When he later related the story he said "It was like I was in The Twilight Zone."
The Twilight Zone1 was first broadcast on October 2, 1959 with "Where is Everybody?" For almost the entire half-hour2 show, Earl Holliman was the only actor on the set. You'd think that one man wandering around a town with nobody there would be a sure bet to put the viewers to sleep. But the show received rave reviews and for the next five years The Twilight Zone was a staple of American prime time television.
Footnote
A controversial point in the series' title - and all titles with the initial word The - is whether the definite article is part of the official title. The definitive answer is it depends. If the article is important for the meaning and emphasis you should, and we must assert this applies to The Twilight Zone. We are, after all, not talking about "A Twilight Zone" or "Some Twilight Zone" but "THE Twilight Zone".
Footnote
The actual air time for the half-hour shows was 25 minutes with the other five minutes slotted for commercials. Today, of course, a - quote - "half-hour show" - unquote - may be closer to 15 minutes than 30 (19 seems fairly typical). But in the early days fewer commercials were needed as the price of production for television shows was surprisingly low.
Finding how television costs have changed over the decades takes some digging but you can find information from unexpected sources. At the end of 1950 A. E. Hotchner wrote to Ernest Hemingway about the economic breakdown for a one hour broadcast. Hotch provides Ernest with an itemized list of costs for a dramatization of one of Ernest's stories. The total cost was about $17,000 (Ernest's cut was $3000).
The big surprise is how low the salaries for the cast and crew were. The cost of paying all the actors was only $3000. The director was originally budgeted at $250 but Hotch upped this to $750. From the expenses of the Adventures of Superman (1952 - 1958) we know if you weren't the star you might get only $200 - $500 per episode and the total cost was $15,000 per episode. Costs were kept down by using stock sets and wardrobes and salary increases were kept down by signing long term contracts which also didn't provide residuals for the most of the actors. Of course, some shows cost more and some cost less. When Dr. Who started off in 1963 the budget was only about $6000 per episode.
But by the mid-1960's budgets for television were easily running $100,000 to $200,000 per-episode. This was even true for what are considered low budget productions like the original Star Trek (yes, Star Trek was a low budget show).
Today, of course, a single TV episode can cost $5,000,000, nor is it unusual for a big name star to get a million dollars per episode. So we can understand why the cost of commercials has risen orders of magnitude and why a one hour show in the 1960's might have had only 10 minutes of commercials while today a - quote - "one hour show" - unquote - might give you less than 40 minutes of actual plot. Sometimes you get even less. A recent cable television show had a two hour broadcast time. But when released in a DVD (sans commercials) it ran 55 minutes.
Because of the amazing shrinking television shows and the exponentially expanding commercials, few remember that cable television was originally touted as the new way for commercial-free viewing pleasure. Sign up for the service, pay a modest monthly fee, and hey, presto!, watch your favorite show with no commercials.
Sound familiar?
And indeed some viewers now worry that the new commercial-free streaming services will ultimately resort to having the viewers pay the monthly subscription and will start slipping in commercials. The financial analysts point out that revenue from commercials is so high that including commercials is inevitable.
Contributing to the show's success was the distinct opening. What may shock! shock! all but the true cognoscenti is that the original theme music was not the famous do-dee-do-dee do-dee-do-dee do-dee-do-dee do-dee-do-dee we all remember. This was used starting in the second season and was actually put together from stock sounds (the story is that the original composer, Marius Constant - who had a quite distinguished career - was not aware for years that his music was even being used). The original original music was scored by the well-known film composer Bernard Hermann who wrote more film music than you can shake a stick at. Bernard's theme was a low pitched spooky sounding music that was used in the first season opening and in later years at various places in the episodes and during the closing credits.
Then there was Rod narrating the introduction and closing. Rod's distinctive speaking style fit in perfectly as a voiceover for the opening teaser scene. You would see an ordinary person in an ordinary situation. But that, Rod would tell us, was about to change as the character would soon be transported to ...
In the first season, Rod would actually be a part of the opening scene. Then as the introduction winded up with Rod's narration, the shot would cut to Rod standing or sitting unobtrusively to the side. Later shows - due to shooting schedules, and as a way to keep costs down - would have Rod give his lines standing before a neutral gray background. We have to admit it. In The Twilight Zone spin-offs produced in later years, no narrator could do it as good as Rod.
And of course there was always the surprise ending. Sometimes things would turn out for the better. At other times - such as in "Time Enough to Last" with Burgess Meredith - not so much. There were also endings where if the character got the short end of the stick - as in "A Kind of a Stopwatch" - the audience figured he got what he deserved. For other stories, such as "Elegy" the ending can bode either good or bad depending on your point of view.
The Twilight Zone was an "anthology" series, an entertainment genre that was common in the 1950's and 1960's but has largely vanished. Each show was self-contained in plot and featured new characters. In some cases the actors were big stars, but at other times they were certainly capable but not that famous.
Bill and Leonard
Superstars
Of course some of the newcomers became superstars. William Shatner - Captain Kirk on the Original Star Trek series - appeared in two episodes, "Nick of Time" in 1960 and the famous "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet" in 1963. And yes, Leonard Nimoy (Mr. Spock) was in an episode, "A Quality of Mercy" in 1961, as were James Doohan (Chief Engineer Scotty) in "Valley of the Shadow" (1963) and George Takei (Helmsman Hikaru Sulu) in "The Encounter" (1964).
Today a list of the actors on The Twilight Zone includes a Who's-Who of 20th Century television. In the 156 episodes we saw shows with (and to skip this rather lengthy list click here) Penny Singleton, Jean Marsh, Robert Sterling, Stan Jones, Jimmy Garrett, Joanne Linville, Irene Hervey, Stuart Hall, Jack Perkins, Edward Andrews, Jo Ann Dixon, Edmund Glover, Patrick O'Moore, Byron Kane, Chet Brandenburg, John Anderson, Arthur Hunnicutt, Charles Lane, Pitt Herbert, Percy Helton, Frank Silvera, Irene Sale, Don Wilbanks, Beverly Garland, Judy Strangis, Lester Fletcher, Dodie Heath, Jacqueline deWit, Pippa Scott, Harry Swoger, Gregory Morton, Karen Norris, James Gonzalez, Gail Kobe, Terry Burnham, Warren Oates (later to play in The Wild Bunch and also one of he few actors to play John Dillinger who actually looked like John), Ted Jacques, Everett Sloane, Freda Jones, Bob Duggan, George Holmes, Pert Kelton, Lance Fuller, Dale Ishimoto, Robert Bray, Pat Close, Dee Carroll, Mona Houghton, Nancy Kulp (the prim and proper Miss Jane Hathaway of The Beverly Hillbillies), Wright King, Frank Wolff, Eddie Ryder, Mary LaRoche, James Millhollin, Charles Seel, Telly Savalas (Lieutenant Theodore Kojak among many other roles), Muriel Landers, Gordon Mitchell, John Clark, Stephen Talbot, Burt Metcalfe, Philippa Bevans, John Hoyt, Mercedes Shirley, Mack Williams, Bill Zuckert, George Bruggeman, Russell Johnson (The Professor on Gilligan's Island), William Shatner (Captain James Tiberius Kirk, of course!), Simon Scott, Eileen Ryan, Merritt Bohn, John Bose, Lennie Weinrib, Chuck Hicks, Howard Morris, Bill Walsh, Richard Haydn, Doris Packer, Vic Perrin, William Schallert (Patty Duke's father on The Patty Duke Show and the curmedgeonly Nilz Baris on the Star Trek episode The Trouble with Tribbles), John McIntire, Dan Terranova, Art Lewis, Bobs Watson, Phillip Pine, Jo Helton, Hazel Court (the errant wife of Dr. Erasmus Craven - Vincent Price - who takes up with the evil Dr. Scarabus - Boris Karloff - in The Raven), Ted Knight (famous for playing TV anchorman Ted Baxter in the Mary Tyler Moore Show and who also appeared using a comic-opera German accent as one of the bad guys in "The Night of the Falcon" in the Third Season of the Wild Wild West), June Foray (best known for supplying the vocals for Rocky the Squirrel on The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle and for Grandma, the sweet-spoken owner of Tweety Bird in the Warner Brothers cartoons), Stuart Holmes, Lori March, Fred Rapport, Jim Michael, Russell Horton, Bill Erwin, Larrian Gillespie, Lew Gallo, Carmen Mathews, Peter Hornsby, Tod Andrews, William Phipps, Mark Sunday, Ray Teal, Howard McNear, Ted Otis, Dennis Kerlee, Bella Bruck, Tracy Stratford, Doris Karnes, Don Gordon, John L. Sullivan, Carter Mullally Jr., Ted Stanhope, Frank Logan, Lillian O'Malley, Franchot Tone (Midshipman Roger Byam in the 1935 film rendering of the Mutiny on the Bounty with Clark Gable and Charles Laughton), Rudy Germane, Josip Elic, Harold "Red" Baker, Marsha Hunt, Sherry Granato, Andy Devine (hefty cowboy star with the unusual voice), Barbara Barrie (Barney Miller's wife in Barney Miller), Marjorie Bennett, Patrick Whyte, Alex Nicol, Ray Kellogg, Ruth Phillips, Jeffrey Byron, Frank Sutton (the long suffering drill instructor Sergeant Vince Carter on Gomer Pyle, USMC), John Craven, Pat Comiskey, Jenna McMahon, John Ward, Pinocchio Roy Wilson, Sue Randall, Paul Hartman, Milton Frome (character actor who appeared in many television shows and films including The Errand Boy, The St. Valentine Day's Massacre, and episodes of The Adventures of Superman), Lee Millar, Paul Nesbitt, Jerry Fujikawa, Moria Turner, Joe Mantell, Lisa Golm, Mary Badham, Ken Drake, George Petrie, Bill Mumy (later to play the son on Space Family Roobinson), David Fresco, Carol Byron, Joe Corey, Dana Dillaway, Albert Salmi, Stephen Soldi, Peter Humphreys, Katherine Squire, Ray Spiker, Scott Seaton, Guy Raymond, Harold Gould (Kid Twist in The Sting, an evil business tycoon in Mel Brooks's Silent Movie, the bad guy Victor Freemantle in "The Night of the Bubbling Death" on The Wild Wild West, Hans Hunter who hunts humans along in "Island of the Darned" on Get Smart, Professor Baxter, the father of Kitty, in The Big Bus as well as in many other TV shows and movies), Albert Carrier, Sarah Marshall, Gary Crosby (Bing's son), June Dayton, Jean Carson, Raymond Greenleaf, Bob Folkerson, George E. Stone, Jack Carson, Jay Hector, Richard Lupino (cousin of Ida Lupino), Denise Alexander, Shelley Berman (nightclub comedian who later turned to television), Henry Scott, Veronica Cartwright, Robert Burton, Roddy McDowall (appearing in many films and TV shows such as That Darn Cat!, Shock Treatment with Lauren Bacall, and The Poseidon Adventure with a multi-star cast and an inaccurate depiction of a tsunami, but perhaps best known for playing Cornelius in the original Planet of the Apes - the screenplay of which was co-written by Rod), Michael Chain, Marco Lopez, Jack Grinnage, Christine Burke, Jean Heremans, James Coburn (cinematic tough guy who appeared in The Great Escape and In Like Flint), Ron Foster, Troy Melton, Thomas Martin, Paul E. Burns, James Daly, Morgan Brittany, Jason Wingreen (voice of Boba Fett in the original Star Wars movie), Carl M. Leviness, Al Silvani, Leslie Bradley, Donald Losby, David Garcia, Bonnie Beecher, Dick Wilson, Dabbs Greer, Scotty Morrow, Stafford Repp, Val Avery, Joe Flynn (the harried Captain Binghamton on McHale's Navy), Simon Oakland (character actor in many movies such as Psycho and on television as Inspector Spooner on Toma, the long suffering General Thomas Moore trying to keep rein on Robert Conrad on Baa Baa Blacksheep and the wealthy Rudy Kosterman who hires Frank Sinatra in Tony Rome), Tony Rosa, Allen Zeidman, Ed Nelson, Peter Gabel (son of actors and panelists Martin Gabel and Arlene Francis on What's My Line), Edmund Vargas, Michael Constantine, Michael Fox, Nico Minardos, Wayne Heffley, Terry Becker, Olan Soule, Duane Grey, Mike Kellin, Agnes Moorehead (Samantha's mother, Endora, on Bewitched), Henry Lascoe, Paul Tripp, John Roy, Will Kuluva, Tex Holden, Jim E. Titus, Martine Bartlett, Claire Griswold, Sid Troy, Charles Horvath, Jon Lormer, Vladimir Sokoloff, Frank Watkins, Vincent Baggetta, John Brahm, Daniel Nunez, Paul Mazursky, John Hanek, Tom Lowell, Curt Conway, Frank Maxwell, Roy N. Sickner, Barbara Perry, Richard Kiel (Jaws in the James Bond films Moonraker and The Spy Who Loved Me and Voltaire, the assistant to Dr. Miguelito Loveless on The Wild Wild West), Clancy Cooper, Alan Sues, Ted Christy, Logan Field, Herbert Lytton, Helen Brown, John Larch, Richard Deacon (the bald and bespectacled producer Mel on The Dick Van Dyke Show and Semu, the High Priest of Klaris in Abbott and Costello Meets the Mummy), Harold Innocent, Robert Warwick, Ben Wright (long time actor appearing in radio, television, and films), Helen Kleeb, Edwin Rochelle, Richard LaMarr, Max Wagner, Chet Stratton, Buzz Martin, Jamie Forster, Don Spruance, Gregory McCabe, Harry Fleer, Bethelynn Grey, Ron Masak, Caryl Lincoln, Sydney Pollack, Tipp McClure, Eddie Barth, Joan Marshall, Dennis Weaver (college track star who played Deputy Chester Goode on Gunsmoke and Deputy Marshal Sam McCloud on McCloud), Pat Hingle, Robby the Robot (who first appeared in the science fiction film Forbidden Planet), Walter Burke, William H. O'Brien, Eva Pearson, Edwin Rand, Francis De Sales, Michael Jeffers, Keenan Wynn (known for playing lantern-jawed and gruff voiced tough guys and who was the son of genial comedian Ed Wynn), Buddy Ebsen (Jed Clampett on The Beverly Hillbillies and Barnaby Jones on Barnaby Jones), David Armstrong, Norman Burton, Charles Thompson, Frank Ferguson, Clark Allen, Rickey Kelman, Rae Sunshine Lee, Warren Stevens, Bob Hopkins, Ray Pourchot, Dan Duryea (well-known for portraying many bad guys including the worst train robber in history Al Jennings in Al Jennings of Oklahoma), Arthur Tovey, Lea Marmer, Gloria Pall, Richard Long, Sam Rawlins, George Murdock, Harry Jackson, Jimmy Lydon, James Best, Natalie Masters, Edson Stroll, Jack Albertson (co-star on Chico and the Man), Rodolfo Hoyos Jr., Ivan Dixon (Kinch on Hogan's Heroes), Chalky Williams, Laird Stuart, Thomas Gomez, Liam Sullivan, Arthur Peterson, Kevin O'Neal, Josephine Smith, John Burnside, August Angelo, Joseph Wiseman (Dr. No on the first James Bond film Dr. No.), Frank Overton, Josie Lloyd, Patrick Westwood, Robin Hughes, Andrea Darvi, King Calder, Thalmus Rasulala, Vivi Janiss, John Astin (Gomez on The Addams Family), Jackie Cooper (former child star of Our Gang and The Little Rascals and Perry White in the Superman movies), Bob Whitney, Therese Lyon, Gladys Cooper, Josephine Hutchinson, Michael Keep, Charles Aidman (substitute for Ross Martin in a number of episodes of The Wild Wild West), Lee Sabinson, Paul Gustine, Jonathan Bolt, Carol Eve Rossen, Vernon Gray, Jane Burgess, Joseph Sargent, John Albright, Barry Bernard, Philip Coolidge, Jacqueline Scott, Maggie McNamara, Kaaren Verne, Clegg Hoyt, George Mitchell, Jonathan Hole, Diana Hyland, Henry Beckman, Loring Smith, James Nolan, Jacque Shelton, Deirdre Owens, Milton Parsons, Walter Bacon, Ann Cameron, Susan Harrison, William Swan, Art Carney (famed comedian who played Ed Norton on The Honeymooners), Ted de Corsia, Buck Harrington, Éva Szörényi, Austin Green, Arch Johnson, William Windom (character actor of many television shows and movies), Bill McLean (thin on top character actor who appeared in may series, usually as different characters, including the TV repair man in "This Little TV Went to Market" on Sanford and Son and the hotel clerk in "The Night of the Murderous Spring" on The Wild Wild West), Orson Bean (frequent guest panelist on To Tell the Truth), Rex Holman, Nels P. Nelson, Frank Aletter, Anne Barton, Sidney Marion, Gig Young (Academy Award winning actor and co-star with David Niven and Charles Boyer on the TV series The Rogues), Conlan Carter, George Baxter, Ross Martin (Artemus Gordon on The Wild Wild West), Michael Gorfain, Kim Hamilton, Wayne Mallory, Clem Bevans, Cloris Leachman, Bob Crane (Colonel Robert Hogan on Hogan's Heroes), John Considine, Amzie Strickland, Barry Morse, Buddy Joe Hooker, Gil Lamb, Phyllis Kirk, Joanna Heyes, Peter Walker, Frieda Rentie, Don Rickles (famous stand-up insult comic), Robert Keith, James Whitmore (actor who played roles as varied as the John Howard Griffin character in Black Like Me, Will Rogers in Will Rogers, USA, and Harry Truman in Give 'Em Hell, Harry!), Wally Cox (bespectacled comedian in many TV shows and films including the radar operator in The Bedford Incident), Willis Bouchey, Vito Scotti, Helen Westcott, Bill Bixby (the father on The Courtship of Eddie's Father and the magician on The Magician), James Maloney, Bill Hickman, Bill Idelson, Barbara Baxley, Ken Kane, Leon Alton, Oliver McGowan, James Doohan (Scotty on the original Star Trek), Louis Cavalier, Mary McMahon, Wendell Holmes, Jeff Morrow, Denver Pyle, Barry Brooks, Charles Bronson (popular actor in films like Once Upon a Time in the West, The Great Escape, Death Wish, The Dirty Dozen, and the less than stellar The White Buffalo), Mavis Neal Palmer, John Conwell, Robert Locke Lorraine, Sam Balter, John Carradine (distinguished actor and father of David and Keith), Addison Myers, Ralph Moody, Kevin McCarthy, Fredd Wayne (the double-d is correct), James McCallion, Don Kelly, Larry Blyden, Charles Perry, Gage Clarke, Mariette Hartley, Larry Barton, Joseph Schildkraut, Martin Strader, Jack Klugman (Dr. Quincy on Quincy), Barney Phillips, Madge Kennedy, Dee Sharon, Jonathan Winters (comedian famous for his multiple roles and characters), Barnaby Hale, Jeanne Cooper, Dick Cherney, Byron Foulger, Molly Dodd, Paul Lambert, Shari Lee Bernath, Robert Boon, George Macready, Lisabeth Field, Paul Comi, George Grizzard, Lyn Guild, Jeff Morris, Kay Cousins Johnson, Mary Ellen Batten, Vera Miles (Lila Crane on Psycho), John McGiver (character actor famous for playing stuff shirts like Martin Turner on Mr.Hobbs Takes a Vacation), Colin Kenny, Don Ames, Robert Sorrells, Howard Smith, Slim Bergman, Peter Coe, Kermit Maynard, Kenneth Gibson, Phyllis Thaxter, John Lasell, John A. Alonzo, Douglas Spencer, Robert Stevenson, Joyce Van Patten, Jeanne Bates, Ron Stokes, Morgan Jones, Barbara Chrysler, H.M. Wynant, Robert Brubaker, Abraham Sofaer, Kenneth Haigh, Murray Hamilton, Evans Evans, Hank Patterson, Dian Van Patten, Doug McClure (heart throb actor and co-star of the TV Western The Virginian), Bartlett Robinson, Judee Morton, Burt Mustin, Shirley O'Hara, Dick Wessel, Howard Culver, Strother Martin (the Captain on Cool Hand Luke), Eve McVeagh, Larry Gates, John Alban, Jenny Maxwell, Don Durant, Jutta Parr, Michael Burns, David O. McCall, Irvin "Zabo" Koszewski, Albert Szabo, Ben Erway, Douglas Heyes, Ross Elliott, Billy Booth, Modoc the Elephant, Terence de Marney, Paul Bryar, Jennifer Bunker, Wesley Lau, Robert P. Lieb, Jack Perrin, Donna Douglas (Ellie Mae Clampett on The Beverly Hillbillies), Asa Maynor, Bob Hastings, Frankie Van, Mabel Forrest, Jack Raine, Paul Fix (Marshal Micah on The Rifleman), Shirley Ballard, Jacques Aubuchon, Bart Burns, Sally Kellerman (Hot Lips in the movie Mash), Ruth White, Robert F. Simon, Dick York (Darren, the husband of Samantha on Bewitched), Anne O'Neal, Tom Gilleran, Joe Maross, James Westerfield, Burt Conroy, Marge Redmond, Barbara Morrison, Peter Brocco, Leonard Strong, Rayford Barnes, Dana Andrews (big movie star in the Golden Age of Hollywood), Linden Chiles, Nick Cravat, Cyril Delevanti, Michael Conrad, Lee Kinsolving, Sherry Jackson, Ken DuMain, Suzy Parker, Byron Morrow, Maxine Cooper, Lomax Study, Frances Lara, Shawn Michaels, Richard Angarola, Douglas Bank, Robert Tafur, Kevin Hagen (Dr. Hiram Baker on the Little House on the Prairie and the conniving brother of Ed Asner in "The Night of the Amnesiac" on The Wild Wild West), Denise Lynn, Robert Karnes, Paul Newlan, Laura Devon, Jeanne Evans, James Gavin, Patricia Barry, Steve Forrest, Tudor Owen, James Wellman, Dexter Dupont, Dub Taylor (the father of Michael J. Pollard in Bonnie and Clyde and Wallie Sims, the fireman on Casey Jones starring Gilligan's Island Skipper, Alan Hale), Dan Tobin, Jeanne Baker, Jimmie Horan, Cliff Osmond, Ann Blyth, Bobby Diamond (Joey, the teenage owner of Fury on Fury), Bob Kelljan, Shepperd Strudwick, Val Ruffino, William Kendis, Virginia Christine, Harry Bartell (actor who appeared on many shows from the 1950's to the 1970's such as a Catholic priest on Dragnet, Professor Nielson in "The Night the Wizard Shook the Earth" on The Wild Wild West, and a Willie Mosconi type pool player who tries to teach Maxwell Smart how to be a pool hustler on "The Dead Spy Scrawls" episode of Get Smart which featured Leonard Nimoy as a shades wearing bad guy), Margarita Cordova, Ida Lupino (both as actor and director), Estelle Winwood, Russell Trent, Sebastian Cabot (elegant and bearded character actor who played the butler on Family Affair), Hal Taggart, Paul Baxley, Don Keefer, Patricia Breslin, William Fawcett (the elderly crotchety ranch hand on Fury), Ron Kipling, John Cadwalder, Donald Foster, George Ford, Peter Falk (the disheveled but able detective Lieutenant Columbo), Edgar Dearing, Margaret Field, Doris Kemper, Rudy Bowman, Tom Palmer, Kenner G. Kemp, John Pickard, Kevin Jones, Ralph Taeger, Alan Dexter, Dean Stockwell, Fred Kruger, Zamba the Lion (a real lion), Billy Beck, Sandra Lynne, Charles Carlson, Paul Power, Gerald Gordon, Stuart Nisbet, Carmen D'Antonio, Joe Evans, Steve Carruthers, William "Billy" Benedict, Jean Willes, John Pedrini, Mary Adams, Orville Sherman, Norman Sturgis, Jay Adler, Frank London, Arthur Batanides, William D. Gordon, Beverly Brown, Butch Hengen, Raymond Bailey, John Harmon, Joseph Hamilton (the grumpy editor of the Daily Planet on The Adventures of Superman starring George Reeves), Milton Selzer, Read Morgan, Sailor Vincent, Marc Towers, Ralph Manza, Georgia Simmons, Anne Francis (lady private eye Honey West on Honey West), Adam Williams, Rudy Dolan, Kreg Martin, James Turley, Jim Hutton, Ralph Votrian, Ian Wolfe, Florence Marly, Carl MacIntire, Juney Ellis, Ryan Hayes, John Cliff, Robert Redford (major star appearing in many films like The Sting), Susan Gordon, Renee Aubry, Robert Lansing, Lee Marvin (famous for tough guy roles including the unshaven motorcycle gang leader with the backward cap opposing Marlon Brandon in The Wild One), Shelley Fabares, Gene Roth, Tony Regan, Beverly Englander, Luther Adler, Diane Honodel, Ted O'Shea, Frank Mills, Ed Kemmer, Gertrude Flynn, Noah Keen, Martin Landau (disguise expert Rollin Hand in Mission Impossible), Jane Romeyn, Randy Boone, Allan Lurie, William Lanteau, Jan Handzlik, Charles Kuenstle, Angus Duncan, Frank Baker, Emily McLaughlin, Timmy Cletro, Ernest Truex, Barry Nelson (actor who first played James Bond albeit on television), Burt Reynolds (yes, the Burt Reynolds), John Kroger, John Fiedler, John Mitchum, Harry Townes, John Crawford, Dane Clark, Hans Moebus, David Opatoshu, Jill Ellis, Ward Wood, Pat O'Hara, Max Slaten, Leonard Bremen, Stanley Adams (Cyrano Jones on the Star Trek Episode "The Trouble with Tribbles"), Edgar Buchanan, Pat Crowley, Carleton Young, Theresa Testa, Joe Higgins, Brian Aherne, Kelton Garwood, Fred Clark, Sterling Holloway (character and voice actor in many Walt Disney animated features), Larry J. Blake, Alan Napier (Bruce Wayne's butler, Alfred, on Batman), Kenneth Konopka, Harold J. Stone, Carol Burnett (mobile faced comedian and star of The Carol Burnett Show, Guy Wilkerson, Paul Ravel, Arlene Martel, Roy Roberts, Leoda Richards, Richard Peel, Michael Montgomery, Thomas Nello, Jeanette Nolan, Debbie Joyce, Sarah Selby, Dee Hartford, Tim O'Connor, Joseph Ruskin, Donald Pleasence (mild mannered bald character actor who played Ernst Stavro Blofeld in the James Bond Film You Only Live Twice and the polite but nearsighted forger in The Great Escape), Henry Jones, Jim Boles, Alice Pearce, Dwight Townsend, Lew Brown, Jimmy Baird, William Mims, Robert Eaton, Cecil Kellaway, Moyna MacGill, Elizabeth Allen, Eumenio Blanco, Russell Custer, Larry Breitman, Paul Dubov, Titus Moede, Rod Taylor (actor in many films including The Time Machine), Patricia Smith, Joan Sudlow, Jack Kenny, Douglas Lambert, Oliver Cross, David Wayne, Ron Hagerthy, Felix Locher, Margie Liszt, Rory O'Brien, Ed Wynn (venerable comedian and father of gruff voiced actor Kennan Wynn), William O'Connell, S. John Launer, Michael Ford, Norma Shattue, Richard Conte, George Keymas, Jack Elam (wandering eyed actor most famous for bad guy roles in Westerns like Once Upon a Time in the West), Dewey Martin, Alex Ball, Gene Benton, Nancy Rennick, Than Wyenn, Suzanne Lloyd, Ed Haskett, Greg Morris (Barney Collier, the electronics genius on Mission Impossible), Jerry Davis, Tony Miller, Nan Martin, Billy E. Hughes, Gene Lyons, Henry Hunter, Roger Davis, Paul Genge, James Houghton, John Marley, Michael Forest, Murray Pollack, Dennis Hopper (Billy in the hippie-era movie Easy Rider among many other shows), Anthony D. Call, John Newton, George Boyce, Elizabeth Harrower, Betty Graeff, Colin Campbell, Lenore Shanewise, Richard Erdman, Barbara Stuart, Nancy Malone, Lili Darvas, Alice Frost, Russ Bender, Susan Crane, David Ahdar, George Chandler, Richard Basehart (Admiral Nelson on Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea and "Ismael" in Moby Dick), Nick Borgani, Robert Snyder, Norman Stevans, Mary Carver, Norma Connolly, Harry Raybould, Will J. White, Patrick Hector, William Demarest (Uncle Charley in My Three Songs), Pat O'Malley, Irene Dailey, Eleanor Audley, Florence MacMichael, Perk Lazelle, Geoffrey Horne, Johnny Eimen, Valley Keene, Diane Strom, Kate Murtagh, June McCall, Mike Morelli, J. Pat O'Malley, Cosmo Sardo, Mickey Rooney (small statured actor in many movies), Lee Van Cleef (western star of many a Spaghetti Westerns), David White, Sandy Kenyon, Susan Oliver, Totty Ames, Maurice Dallimore, Robert Duvall (extraordinarily prolific actor who could play almost any part), Rod Serling (the host, of couse), Robert Biheller, Robert Cornthwaite, Diane Sayer, James Flavin, Keith Britton, Tom Hatcher, Mitchell Rhein, Meg Wyllie, Sheldon Allman, Joan Chambers, Malcolm Atterbury, John Dehner (long time actor from radio to television), Nesdon Booth, Jerry Catron, Kendrick Huxham, Lurene Tuttle, Reid Hammond, John Zaremba, House Peters Jr., Marc Cavell, Ann Jillian, Earl Holliman (star of the first episode), Warren Powers, James Browning, Miranda Jones, Frank Richards, William Meader, Harp McGuire, Max Showalter, Constance Ford, Joe Phillips, Boyd Cabeen, Betty Lou Gerson, Don Gazzaniga, Franklyn Farnum, William Sargent, Jeffrey Sayre, Doris Singleton, Alphonso DuBois, Carole Conn, R.G. Armstrong, Richard Karlan, Jack Hyde, Jim Johnson, Warren Parker, Peggy Stewart, Jack Younger, Naomi Stevens, Jason Johnson, Sam Harris, Glen Walters, Chuck Fox, Wayne Tucker, Cedric Hardwicke, Barbara Nichols, Gene Coogan, Jack Mann, Ron Howard (Oppie on The Andy Griffith Show, Richie on Happy Days, plus doing a lot of other stuff), Robert Emhardt (hefty actor who often played stuffy insufferable villains), Lois Nettleton, Philip Abbott, Wilfrid Hyde-White, Rhoda Williams, Robert Cummings, Howard Wright, Jean Inness, Hal K. Dawson, John McLiam, Arte Johnson (veeeerrrrrry innnnteresting regular on Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In), Betty Garde, John Clarke, Bob Mitchell, Lela Bliss, Forrest Compton, Lenore Kingston, James Gregory (active character actor who portrayed General Grant on the pilot episode of The Wild Wild West and best known for playing Inspector Luger on Barney Miller), Sandra Gould, Antoinette Bower, Robert Foulk, Vickie Barnes, Horace McMahon, Joseph Bernard, Barry Atwater, Mark Tapscott, Danny Kulick, Peter Mark Richman, Douglass Dumbrille, Joseph Glick, Jay Overholts, Elizabeth Montgomery (Samantha on Bewitched), Leonard P. Geer, Friedrich von Ledebur, Derrik Lewis, Camille Franklin, Doug Heyes Jr., Phil Chambers, David Thursby, Bobby Gilbert, Patrick Waltz, John Archer, Michael Vandever, Robert McCord, Lloyd Bochner, Robert Hogan, John Holland, Robert Ball, Wolfe Barzell, Brad Brown, Ferris Taylor, Nora Marlowe, Nelson Olmsted, Celia Lovsky, Neville Brand, Nina Roman, Jack Ging, Anthony Ray, Carol Hill, Don Anderson, Ruta Lee, Virginia Gregg, Jerome Cowan, Wade Shannon, Robert Sampson, Darryl Richard, David Sheiner, Claudia Bryar, George Lindsey, Joseph Mell, Joe Haworth, Wallace Rooney, Bing Russell, Spec O'Donnell, Vaughn Taylor, Irene Tedrow (prim and proper looking lady who appeared with Jack Benny in the famous Your Bet Your Life sketch on The Jack Benny Show), Hayden Rorke, Garry Walberg, Dick Geary, Marcel Hillaire, Oscar Beregi Jr., Steve Cochran, Morris Drabin, Charles Herbert, James Franciscus, Leslie Barrett, Joe Ploski, Alexander Scourby, Mary Webster, Earle Hodgins, C. Lindsay Workman, Dan White, Cliff Robertson (who played a baritoned and Middle Western accented JFK on PT-109 and was Uncle Ben on Spiderman), Fay Roope, Sheridan Comerate, Edward Astran, Nan Peterson, Inger Stevens (the Farmer's Daughter on The Farmer's Daughter who to cater to the era's sensitivities regarding single women living unchaperoned in an house with a bachelor later became the Congressman's Wife), Alma Platt, Dorothy Adams, Edy Williams, Murray Matheson, Maidie Norman, Henry Corden, Howard Duff (Sam Spade on the radio and later starred in the litte remembered series Felony Squad and real life husband of Ida Lupino), Collin Wilcox Paxton, Walter Reed, Douglas Evans, Walter Brooke, Violet Cane, Tony Benson, Charles Tannen, Antony Carbone, Susan Cummings, Ron Nyman, Mickey Maga, Theodore Marcuse (bald pated actor who specialized in playing somewhat smarmy bad guys), William Keene, Hugh Sanders, Claude Akins (El Supremo on the Man From UNCLE episode "The Very Important Zombie Affair", Sheriff Lobo on B. J. and the Bear, and truck driver Sonny Pruitt in Movin' On), Ed Platt (The Chief on Get Smart), Gary Merrill, Joe Scott, Joe Bassett, Jonathan Harris (Dr. Zachary Smith, the "bad guy" on Lost in Space), Lee Sands, William Reynolds, Ned Glass, Herschel Graham, Pamela Austin, John Van Dreelen (the evil Marquis Philippe de La Mer who wants to create a new country under the oceans in "The Night of the Watery Death" on The Wild Wild West), Carolyn Kearney, Susan Dorn, Barry Truex, Kim Hector, Janice Rule, Joyce Jameson (Peter Lorre's wife in "The Black Cat" the second part of Tales of Terror, Vincent Price's shrill voiced aspiring opera singing wife in The Comedy of Terrors, and Jo-Jo Tyler, the dippy blonde in the "Dippy Blonde Affair" in the Man From Uncle), Richard Devon, Mike Lally, John Eldredge, Jeane Wood, Helen Wallace, Eugene Borden, Leonard Nimoy (Mr. Spock on Star Trek and singer of The Ballad of Bilbo Baggins), Bill Mullikin, Martin Balsam (the ill-fated detective in Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho and Colonel Cathcart in Catch-22), Julie Van Zandt, Julie Newmar (Tony winner who played the Catwoman on TV's Batman), Joseph V. Perry, Ezelle Poule, Jerry Fuller, William Burnside, Edgar Stehli, Paul Langton, Lee Philips, Michael Pataki, David Bond, Don Dubbins, Jesse White, George Takei (Sulu on the original Star Trek), Clark Ross, Tom Reese, Craig Curtis, Joan Blondell (early blonde bombshell of Gold Diggers fame), Dorothy Neumann, Mary Munday, Ken Lynch, Ludwig Donath, Trevor Bardette, Sara Taft, Mary Lee Martin, William Challee, Bernard Fein, Steven Perry, Charles Maxwell, Phil Arnold, John Close, Gregory Irvin, Dave Willock, Warren J. Kemmerling, Hardie Albright, Kathleen O'Malley, Howard Caine, Bernard Sell, Norbert Schiller, Rusty Wescoatt, Eddie Marr, Joan Hackett, Monty O'Grady, Patrick Macnee, Jack Ramstead, Mathew McCue, Donald Journeaux, Mark Miller, James Yagi, Bernie Hamilton, Larry Johns, Fritz Weaver, James T. Callahan, Leon Belasco, Brooke Hayward, Jack Stoney, Adrienne Marden, Sandra Warner, Phyllis Love, Christine White, Colleen O'Sullivan, Paul Bradley, Natalie Trundy, Sally Yarnell, Seymour Cassel, Bob Reeves, Robert Haines, Norman Leavitt, Theodore Bikel (both folk singer and an actor who auditioned for the role of the James Bond villain, Auric Goldfinger in the movie Goldfinger), Patrick O'Neal, Nehemiah Persoff (character actor in many shows including a rare comedy appearance as the Little Dictator in Gilligan's Island episode "The Little Dictator"), Maxine Stuart, Barton Heyman, Betty Harford, Leah Waggner, Ben Cooper, Dean Jagger, James Seay, Doro Merande, Louie Elias, Edward Binns, Connie Gilchrist, Elen Willard, William Edmonson, Frank Behrens, John Williams, Patricia Donahue, Sol Murgi, Buster Keaton (famous silent film comedian), Burgess Meredith (actor who appeared in many films and TV shows but is best known for his role as the Penguin the TV series Batman), Chester Hayes, Everett Glass, Fred Beir, Tammy Marihugh, Norman Papson, Robert Riordan, Russell Collins, James Broderick (the father in the TV show Family, the father in a play no one remembers, Ray in Alice's Restaurant, and the real life father of actor Mathew Broderick), Philip Ober, Bob Kline, Mary Gregory, Rusty Lane, Herbie Faye, David Macklin, Barbara English, Jennifer Howard, Armando Rodriguez, Jack Warden, Bill Walker, Mitzi McCall, Ray Galvin, Mary Jackson, Jack Weston, and Martin Milner (Tod Stiles on Route 66 and Officer Pete Malloy on Adam-12). (To return to the beginning of the list click here.)
Sometimes the younger bunch will see the more science-fictiony episodes and think the special effects are, well, "cheesy". This was, though, a time before computer animation and so the special effects required actual physical models. And since the budgets couldn't tolerate much in the way of higher technology the models looked, well, cheesy.
So in the absence of flashy effects, a good episode had to have a good plot. And Rod, who knew he couldn't write everything himself, hired some of the best writers available - not just of television and movie scripts - but who also wrote short stories. These included Charles Beaumont who wrote 22 episodes including the favorites like "Living Doll", "A Nice Place to Visit", "Long Distance Call", and "Elegy". Richard Matheson was also a frequent contributor and not only wrote "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet" (the episode where William Shatner played a freaked out airline passenger), "Steel" (featuring Lee Marvin as the manager to a robotic boxer and who takes the robot's place when it breaks down), and "And When the Sky Was Opened" (with Rod Taylor living in a displaced reality). Dick also wrote a number of screenplays for famous movies such as The Incredible Shrinking Man, The Pit and the Pendulum (with Vincent Price), and The Fall of the House of Usher (also with Vincent). He also wrote the novel, I Am Legend which served as the story for the Charlton Heston movie The Omega Man. Rod was well aware of the value of the other writer's contributions and when he won one of his six Emmy's he told the writers they could stop by later and they'd carve the award up.
Rodman Edward Serling was born on Christmas Day, 1924, in Syracuse, New York. When he was two they moved to Binghamton which was near the Pennsylvania/New York border. His family, although not flush, was fairly middle class for the time.
Growing up during the Great Depression, Rod listened to radio for entertainment and became interested in speaking and writing. He later credited his teacher, Helen Foley (who taught English, public speaking, drama and literature), with her encouragement which ultimately led to his career choice. For her part Helen thought Rod would end up as an actor since he was such a good speaker.
There was, though, soon to be a war on - World War II, that is. Graduating high school in 1942, Rod joined the army and became a paratrooper. Although small in stature - only 5'4"3 - he was good at sports and in the army took up boxing. After serving in the Pacific Theater he was mustered out of service in 1946.
Footnote
References to Rod's stature inevitably gives this number as his height. However, if he was in secondary school you'd think he'd gain at least an inch or so.
On the other hand photographs of Rod in group photos - and there aren't many - do show him maybe half a span shorter than the others. Even sitting down when hosting a game show he was noticeably shorter than the contestants. So if as the sources often say he placed lifts in his shoes, the lower height is very likely correct.
After Rod got out of the army, he enrolled at Ohio's Antioch College where he graduated in 1950. He had written for the campus radio and decided to try to make writing a career.
Although at the time radio stations and networks had staff writers, Rod soon realized he preferred freelancing. Fortunately this was the era when you could submit a story or screenplay to a magazine or television network and they might not just toss it aside. Rod sold his first story in 1950.
And thence came the boob tube.
The emergence of network television masks the fact that its appearance was a surprisingly long process. The first commercial television station was W3XK which began broadcasting July 2, 1928. But television sets were expensive, cumbersome, and in the years immediately after World War II, few families had them. Radio was still king of sedentary entertainment.
But in 1948, a rubber-faced comedian named Milton Berle began hosting a television comedy and variety show on NBC called the Texaco Star Theater. It was such a hit that the network offered Milton a $200,000-a-year contract for the next 30 years. But within a few years Uncle Miltie's ratings began to drop and the show was canceled.
Milton Berle
A Hit
Milton might have disappeared (temporarily) from the airwaves but television was here to stay. Rod saw that and in 1952 he and his family moved to New York City (they actually lived in Connecticut) where he found steady work.
In 1955 Rod wrote some scripts for a televison show called Patterns. It was a hit. Then in 1956 he wrote "Requiem for a Heavyweight" for the popular Playhouse 90 on CBS. The show won a Peabody Award, and Rod had emerged as a major writer.
Television producers now actively sought Rod out. In 1958, he wrote "The Time Element" for CBS. It had a quite Twilight Zoneesque plot and was so well received that the network asked Rod about doing a series of similar stories. For the first episode of The Twilight Zone Rod turned out "Where is Everybody?" and it was broadcast on October 2, 1959.
The Twilight Zone was a hit, and the series kept going for the next five years - a long run for early television. Even today there are episodes that are pinnacles of iconicity in television history.
Growing up in a Jewish family in the 1930's, Rod's sensitivity to prejudice and mass hysteria was reflected in his stories. So often the shows had a moral or lesson for the viewer. In "The Monsters are Due on Maple Street" a suggestion from a young boy to explain unusual occurrences turns the residents of a neighborhood violently against each other - and the ending hints at the way ignorance is a useful tool to manipulate a population. "The Shelter" tells the story of what turned out to be a baseless fear ended up bringing out the worst in supposedly decent people.
One of the most popular stories has been "To Serve Man". The title of the episode was taken from the name of a book given to the people on Earth by visitors from Outer Space. The strange visitors from another planet said they had come "to serve man". Unfortunately the contents were in the aliens' own language and it took time for the experts - in this case Susan Cummings - to decode it. To appreciate the joke (if you want to call it that), be sure to watch the episode.
Some of the stories admonish the viewer to be careful what you ask for since you may get it. "Escape Clause" tells how a man who wants to live forever regrets that his wish was fulfilled. Similarly "A Stop at Willoughby" is the story of how yearning for the "good old days" may not be so good.
Some stories blended the Twilight Zone philosophy with humor. In "A Nice Place to Visit" Larry Blyden plays Rocky Valentine, a two bit burglar who finds himself in a place where his every wish is granted. That was fine - at least it was until ...
Still, many of the stories have no overt moral and simply feature very ordinary people in apparently ordinary but in reality quite extraordinary circumstances. In "Stopover at a Small Town" we see a man and wife, hungover from hard partying, waking up in a most unusual town with no idea how they got there and wonder why there is apparently no way out. They soon learn the how and the why
Nikita Khrushchev
The Coldest of Cold Warriors
It's true that some of the episodes will seem a bit dated which is understandable when you remember Rod was writing at the height of the Cold War and with Nikita Khrushchev's "We will bury you!" taunt ringing loud in American ears. In "The Jeopardy Room" Martin Landau (best known as Rollin Hand, the disguise-meister on Mission Impossible) appears as a former Soviet officer whose defection to the West puts him under the gun - literally - of a KGB assassination squad. The only slight drawback to this episode is that you can figure out the ending about a second before it happens and Rod's closing narration is a bit preachy.
The Twilight Zone was produced in the days of sponsors and alternate sponsors and going overbudget was a definite no-no. As Whitney Ellsworth, the producer of The Adventures of Superman, said, if you have a budget of x dollars per show and you have two episodes that go over by y dollars, somewhere along the line you need to shoot an episode that costs x - 2y dollars. "Five Characters in Search of an Exit" is one of those x - 2y episodes. But it's still pretty good nonetheless.
Sometimes Rod did go overbudget but through no fault of his own. "The Mighty Casey" is also an example of how Rod had to fight with the network executives to keep the quality of the shows high. Veteran actor Paul Douglas played a baseball manager of a perennially last place team that ends up in first place. To counter his basement standings, he surreptitiously hires a robot pitcher. It's a good enough story but Rod was concerned about hiring Paul, who had a reputation for being a boozer. But Paul's agent assured him that Paul was off the sauce.
So when Paul showed up, red faced and lethargic, Rod was furious. Shortly after the episode was completed, Rod called up Paul's agent to complain. But he was again assured that Paul was not drinking at all.
What had happened is during the production Paul was suffering from heart failure. The episode literally recorded Paul in the act of dying and he succumbed to a heart attack shortly afterwards. Rod told the executives they had to reshoot with another actor and eat the costs. But the executives said, no, they had the show in the can and it had to go the way it was. So Rod dug down into his own pocket and reshot the scenes that had featured Paul by substituting veteran actor Jack Warden.
In some shows Rod wrote from a naturalistic standpoint. In other words there was no real moral except that that people can't rely on nature to insure that good always prevails. In "Time Enough to Last" Burgess Meredith plays Henry Bemis, a Milquetoast bookworm who by chance is the sole survivor of an atomic attack (remember this was the late 1950's and early 1960's where the inevitability of an atomic World War III was a given). Although he finds himself now with unlimited time and opportunity to read (the books in the local library were undamaged), the ending - well, there's a surprise ending.
The shows were scripted for half an hour which meant the action had to be compressed in a fairly tight time slot. Fortunately this constraint produced plots that moved along even if there was little overt action. But for the fourth season the choice was made to go to an hour format. Although there were some good scripts - "The New Exhibit", "Miniature" - having to stretch the action out decreased the impact of many of the stories.
For the fifth year the show returned to the half-hour time and produced the famous "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet" with the pre-Captain Kirk Willam Shatner. There was also "A Kind of a Stopwatch" where it's hard not to smirk when the - quote - "hero" - unquote - ends up in his self-created inescapable predicament.
And of course, there's "Living Doll" with Telly Salvalas playing one of his most disagreeable roles. The moral here is 1) clear and 2) not quite so clear. Certainly we learn you shouldn't be mean to your spouse and children. But at the very end we're not quite sure what to think - unless we're seeing an early warning about the dangers of unintended and uncontrolled Artificial Intelligence.
Naturally you can't talk about The Twilight Zone without mentioning all-time favorites like "The Hitchhiker" with Inger Stevens (with its creepy but inevitable ending), "The Dummy" with Cliff Robertson (where it's hard to tell the ventriloquist from the dummy), and "It's a Good Life" (where Billy Mumy is every parent's worst nightmare).
We also have to mention "What's in the Box" where Sterling Holloway (most famous as the voice of Winnie the Pooh) plays a rather unsettling TV repair man who was called in by Joe, an elderly but unfaithful cab-driving husband played by William Demarest (Uncle Charley of My Three Sons). Joan Blondell - formerly the blonde bomshell of Goldiggers fame - is Phyllis, Joe's increasingly critical and fed up wife.
After the television set is fixed, Joe finds he can tune to watch the past and the future - his. And he doesn't like what he sees particularly when he watches himself kill Phyllis and get convicted and executed. The final fight scene between Joe and Phyllis has to be one of the most extreme depictions of domestic violence filmed for early television and even now can be tough to watch.
The last broadcast of the series was June 19, 1964. This was "The Bewitchin' Pool" which seems to be mostly a warning for parents not be be jerks to their kids. Inexplicably the two kids speak with most unconvincing Southern (?) accents which for some reason their parents don't have.
Rod was not sorry to see the series end. He had personally penned over 70 of the scripts and was ready for a respite and a change.
And a change came in 1969 where Rod hosted
(DRUM ROLL)
A GAME SHOW
This was the amusing and entertaining but now totally forgotten Liar's Club4. (The) Liar's Club was a "celebrity" panel show. That is, the show featured four celebrities - mostly from television but with the occasional movie star. They were handed some unusual object and each then told the contestants - selected from the audience - a different story about what the object was and what it was used for. Only one story was true. The contestants had to wager a certain amount on who was telling the truth. It was common that the panel would stump most everyone.
Rod hosted the show for only one year (1969) and after a hiatus, the show was presented by Bill Armstrong from 1974 to 1976 and then by Allen Ludden (famed as the host of Password game series) from 1977 to 1978. There was also a later Canadian version that lasted only a year.
Rod didn't stop writing of course. He penned the scripts for movies such as Seven Days in May, The Doomsday Flight, Carol for Another Christmas, Assault on a Queen, The Man, and probably one of his biggest hits Planet of the Apes. This movie was based on the novel by Pierre Boulle and starred Charlton Heston and launched the now familiar francise.
It was inevitable we suppose but in 1969 Rod returned to host the horror series Night Gallery. Filmed in color, the show was reasonably popular with a clear similarity to The Twilight Zone. The stories, though, tilted more toward the supernatural and the macabre with less science fiction. The show lasted for three seasons - not too bad a run for the time.
On camera it was common to see Rod with a cigarette in his hand and in real life he was a heavy smoker. In 1975 he suffered three heart attacks and died age 50.
Rod, according to his daughter Anne, was not like the stories he wrote. Instead he had a congenial personality and a good sense of humor which explains the funny Twilight Zone sketch he did on the Jack Benny Show. But there's no doubt he had become frustrated with the grind of television production and found himself often butting heads with the network bigwigs.
One of the current trends in American television and cinema is to revive the hits of yesteryear but in a manner to appeal to the younger crowd. And let's admit it. TV shows from over half a century ago do look a bit dated.
The first revision was actually a movie which was a compilation of several stories. Not unexpectedly called Twilight Zone: The Movie it was released in 1983 to so-so reviews.
Despite the lukewarm reception, the movie did turn a profit, and this led to the television remake of the series in 1985. The Twilight Zone now aired in color and like Night Gallery the new series lasted three seasons. Then in 2002 the show was revived once more and lasted only a single season.
But The Twilight Zone is just too good to fade away. Most recently a new Twilight Zone series has been released. As of this writing it's still on.
Naturally some of the original stories were changed to suit modern tastes. "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet" was redone as "Nightmare at 30,000 Feet" and "The After Hours" was set in a mall rather than a stand-alone department store.
The rewriting of earlier stories featured new special effects and subtle (or not so subtle) changes in the plots, no doubt as a way to make them both less dated and more frightening for today's sophisticated audiences. But true TZ aficionados swear by the earlier shows and will say it was the lack of modern special effects and no deliberate attempt to be frightening that made the first shows so scary.
Reviews of the later incarnations of the series - although not necessarily bad - haven't been up to the snuff of the original series - whose viewers were fortunate to be able to watch the shows from the vantage of ...
References
Rod Serling: His Life, Work, and Imagination, Nicholas Parisi, University Press of Mississippi, 2018.
As I Knew Him: My Dad, Rod, Anne Serling, Citadel, 2014.
"Rod Serling", Internet Movie Data Base.
The Twilight Zone: The Complete Definitive Collection, DVD Collection.
The Twilight Zone: Complete Stories, Rod Serling, TV Books, 1990.
The Twilight Zone, Rod Serling (Host, Creator, and Writer), Internet Movie Data Base, 1959-1964
The Twilight Zone, Robin Ward (Narrator), Charles Aidman (Narrator), Rod Serling (Creator), Internet Movie Data Base, 1985-1989.
The Twilight Zone, Robin Ward (Narrator), Charles Aidman (Narrator), Rod Serling (Creator), Internet Movie Data Base, 2002-2003.
The Twilight Zone, Robin Ward (Narrator), Charles Aidman (Narrator), Simon Kinberg (Creator), Jordan Peele (Creator), Marco Ramirez (Creator), Rod Serling (Creator), Internet Movie Data Base, 2019-2020.
"25 Best 'Twilight Zone' Episodes", David Fear, Sean T. Collins, Angie Martoccio, Rolling Stone, April 1, 2019.
"A Brief History of the Theme From The Twilight Zone From the Grateful Dead to KoЯn, Each New Version of the Twilight Zone Theme was More Terrifying than the Last", Matthew Dessem, Slate, April 8, 2019.
"Forgotten Television Shows of the 1950s & 1960s", Silver Screens, July 20, 2014.
"Watch The Top 10 Plays From The Detroit Lions During The 2018 Season", David Hookstead, Daily Caller, February 28, 2019.
Dear Papa, Dear Hotch: The Correspondence of The Correspondence of Ernest Hemingway and A. E. Hotchner, Albert DeFazio, III (Editor), University of Missouri, 2005.
Superman: Serial to Cereal, Gary Grossman, Popular Library, 1976.
"You Endure More Commercials When Watching Cable Networks Compared to Broadcast", Sam Thielman, AdWeek, June 23, 2013.
"Are Commercials In The Cards For Netflix?" Rob Salkowitz, Forbes, Jun 20, 2019.
"Netflix Insists It Won't Move Into Selling Advertising", Todd Spangler, Variety, July 17, 2019.
"Ranking Every Episode Of 'The Twilight Zone'", Arianna Rebolini, BuzzFeed, December 30, 2014.
Liar's Club, Internet Movie Database, 1969, 1974-1978.
"The Episodes", Twilight Zone Museum.
"Mrs. Helen Foley", Rod Serling Memorial Foundation.