Twilight Zone Companion (14 page)

Much of the credit for the episodes success must go to McCarthy and his ability to play a man centuries old. Leader says of him, To work with McCarthy was a pleasure. You worked very hard, he worked very hard, and he was always trying. There was no sloughing it off, no superficiality, if he could help it and you could help him.

McCarthy, the star of the 1956 filming of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, gave considerable thought to playing Jameson and decided that the most credible way to play an immortal lay in underplaying everything. Part of it, he explains, is that he had to be modest and unassuming. He didnt want to call any attention to himself … He always sort of fades into the landscape.

Since doing Walter Jameson, McCarthy has come to feel that his role in it may have been typecasting of an entirely unforeseen kind. I did a little segment in the new Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and they said, My God, except that your hair has changed color, you look the same as you did when you did it twenty years ago! What is this anyway? My own kids, I can see, are very young looking, they dont have faces or physiques that denote the passage of time so easily. So I say to myself, Maybe I am going to live to be two thousand years old.

THE TWILIGHT ZONE DEBUTS

Its very likely that during the making of Long Live Walter Jameson there was a certain nervousness on the set, but it wasnt over the prospect of having to turn a man to dust. Rather, it stemmed from the fact that on that Friday, October 2, 1959, The Twilight Zone was to be unveiled to the public. For four months, Serling, Houghton, and the crew had labored in the dark, with no idea as to what the reaction, if any, would be. The Twilight Zone wasnt the only series with such concerns. This season also marked the debut of The Untouchables, Bonanza, Dennis the Menace, and The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis (They were just the successes; ever hear of

The Alaskans or Staccato}). Going in, The Twilight Zone would face tough competition: on NBC, People Are Funny and (in the East) Friday night prize fights; on ABC, 77 Sunset Strip for the first two weeks and then The Detectives, starring Robert Taylor.

Before the debut of the series, Serling embarked on a media blitz, writing magazine articles and granting newspaper and television interviews. The purpose of this was twofold: first, to explain his reasons for entering into series television, and secondly, to define the series itself. Regarding the former, he told TV newsman Mike Wallace, I dont want to fight anymore. I dont want to have to battle sponsors and agencies. I dont want to have to push for something that I want and have to settle for second best. I dont want to have to compromise all the time, which in essence is what the television writer does if he wants to put on controversial themes. To the Marion, Indiana, Leader-Tribune, he gave the positive side of the coin: This is something Ive wanted to do for years. Television hasnt touched it yet. Sure, there have been science-fiction and fantasy shows before, but most of them were involved with gadgets or lepre-cauns. He went on to explain, The Twilight Zone is about peopleabout human beings involved in extraordinary circumstances, in strange problems of their own or of fates making. In an article in TV Guide, he enlarged upon the subject. Heres what the program isnt: its not a monster rally or a spook show. There will be nothing formulad in it, nothing telegraphed, nothing so nostalgically familiar that an audience can usually join the actors in duets. Serling knew that science-fiction fans were a tiny minority, too small to ever make much of a television audience. If The Twilight Zone was to succeed, it had to appeal to people who had never read a word of science fiction, nor ever wanted to.

The second of October came and went. It wasnt a promising start.

Unfortunately, the debut title Where Is Everybody? posed a question that could best be answered by another network, wrote Harvey Karman of the Hollywood Reporter; but when word gets around, Twilight should give the competition a run for their ratings.

Two groups were immediately enthralled by the show: television critics and children. The appeal to children was a complete surprise to us, says Buck Houghton. We never thought of that. I dont think CBS did, either; it was on at ten oclock. We got a lot of nasty notes from parents, saying, Youre keeping the kids up.

As for the critics, they couldnt have been more enthusiastic. Cecil Smith of the Los Angeles Times cdlled The Twilight Zone the finest weekly series of the season, the one clear and original light in a season marked by the muddy carbon copies of dull westerns and mediocre police shows. John Crosby of the New York Herald Tribune agreed, saying it was certainly the best and most original anthology series of the year. Time commented, Whether the hero is an Air Force officer suffering hallucinations after more than 400 hours of isolation, or a tired old pitchman bargaining with Mr. Death, tales from The Twilight Zone are proof that a little talent and imagination can atone for a lot of television. Probably the greatest compliment came from Terry Turner of the Chicago Daily News, who wrote, … Twilight Zone is about the only show now on the air that I actually look forward to seeing. Its the one series that I will let interfere with other plans.

Meanwhile, production of episodes continued. October found the crew back in Death Valley, filming I Shot an Arrow Into the Air.

I SHOT AN ARROW INTO THE AIR (1/15/60)

Written by Rod Serling

Based on an idea by Madelon Champion

Producer: Buck Houghton

Director: Stuart Rosenberg

Director of Photography:George T. Clemens

Music: stock

Cast:

Corey: Dewey Martin Col. Donlin: Edward Binns Pierson: Ted Otis Brandt: Leslie Barrett Langford: Harry Bartell

Her name is the Arrow One. She represents four and a half years of planning, preparation and training, and a thousand years of science and mathematics and the projected dreams and hopes of not only a nation but a world. She is the first manned aircraft into space. And this is the countdown, the last five seconds before man shot an arrow into the air.

But something goes wrong; the Arrow One disappears off the radar screen and crashes. Three of the eight astronauts survive the wreck. They find themselves on what they take to be an asteroid, with only five gallons of water between them. Corey intends to kill Pierson and Donlin for their water, but before Pierson dies he manages to crawl to the top of a mountain, look over it, and draw a peculiar symbol in the sand. Corey, paying this no mind, kills Donlin. But when he climbs the mountain, he finally sees what the symbol meant: telephone poles. Theyve been on Earth the entire timein the Nevada desert.

Practical joke perpetrated by Mother Nature and a combination of improbable events. Practical joke wearing the trappings of nightmare, of terror, of desperation. Small human drama played out in a desert ninety-seven miles from Reno, Nevada, U.S.A., continent of North America, the Earth, and of coursethe Twilight Zone .

I Shot An Arrow Into the Air represents the only time that Serling was approached in a social setting with an idea for a Twilight Zone episode that excited him. Madelon Champion said to me, What would happen if three guys landed on what they thought was an asteroid and it turned out to be outside of Las Vegas? I paid five hundred dollars for that one on the spot. But it never happened again.

On a dramatic level, the episode is fairly effective, but, as with many of The Twilight Zone’s forays into science fiction, on a scientific level its utterly ludicrous. Any astronaut who crash lands on a body within our solar system that has the same gravity and atmosphere as Earth and doesnt immediately realize hes on Earth, had better go back to astronaut school.

The filming took the crew back to Death Valley. Buck Houghton recalls, The weather was no better, but we knew better how to deal with it. Dietetically speaking, our meals were much more on the saladsvery satisfying but light. Also, we said to the crew, Look, were going to have a two-hour lunch. Were going to go back to the hotel and serve lunch around the pool. You can go to your room. And dont lets have any horseplay about the union and the overtime and all that jazz because you know very well that its the best thing to do for all of us, and youll still come out the same number of pay hours as if we gave you the forty-five- minute lunch out here on location and made you sweat through it and work on till six. And they all said, Hail!

WHAT YOU NEED (12/25/59)

Written by Rod Serling

Based on the short story What You Need by Lewis Padgett (pseudonym of Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore)

Producer: Buck Houghton

Director: Alvin Ganzer

Director of Photography: George T. Clemens

Music: Van Cleave

Cast:

Fred Renard: Steve Cochran Pedott: Ernest Truex Girl in Bar: Arline Sax Lefty: Read Morgan Bartender: William Edmonson Woman on Street: Judy Ellis Man on Street: Fred Kruger Hotel Clerk: Norman Sturgis Waiter: Frank Allocca Photographer: Mark Sunday

Youre looking at Mr. Fred Renard, who carries on his shoulder a chip the size of the national debt. This is a sour man, a friendless man, a lonely man, a grasping, compulsive, nervous man. This is a man who has lived thirty-six undistinguished, meaningless, pointless, failure-laden years and who at this moment looks for an escapeany escape, any way, anything, anybodyto get out of the rut… . And this little old man is just what Mr. Renard is waiting for.

Pedott is a sidewalk salesman with the uncanny ability to tell what people will need before they need it. To Fred Renard, a two-bit thug, he gives a pair of scissorsscissors that save Renards life when his tie gets caught in the doors of an elevator. But Renard wants more, much more. Sensing that unless he acts, Renard will eventually kill him, Pedott gives him a pair of shoes. Renard slips them on. Suddenly, a truck rounds the corner, heading directly for him. Renard tries to run, but the new soles are slippery and he cant get any traction on the wet pavement. He is struck and killed … and Pedotts safety is assured.

Street scene. Night. Traffic accident. Victim named Fred Renard, gentleman with a sour face to whom contentment came with difficulty. Fred Renard, who took all that was needed … in the Twilight Zone

For What You Need the crew returned to the comfortable backlots of Metro. The original story by Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore (under the pseudonym of Lewis Padgett) concerned a scientist who invented a machine that could read peoples probable futures and who then gave them what they needed to be guided in a certain direction. Serling liked the idea but not the scientist or the machine, so he instead crafted a story about an elderly sidewalk peddler who can see into the future and sells people seemingly trivial items (spot remover, scissors, a ticket to Scranton, Pennsylvania) which ultimately prove essential to them.

Unfortunately, the show suffers from lackluster direction and performances, but the ending is cleverly set up, with the threatened old man giving the thug the pair of slippery shoes. He puts them on and stands in the street. Come on, old man, he says. Tell me. Are these what I need?

I didnt say they were, the peddler replies. But Ill tell you somethingthey happen to be what I need.

Cosmic justice from the Twilight Zone.

A WORLD OF DIFFERENCE (3/11/60)

Written by Richard Matheson

Producer: Buck Houghton

Director: Ted Post

Director of Photography: Harkness Smith

Music: Van Cleave

Cast:

Arthur Curtis: Howard Duff Marty: Frank Maxwell Nora: Eileen Ryan Brinkley: David White Sally: Gail Kobe Endicott: Peter Walker Kelly: William Idelson Marian: Susan Dorn

You’re looking at a tableau of reality, things of substance, of physical material: a desk, a window, a light. These things exist and have dimension. Now, this is Arthur Curtis, age thirty-six, who is also real. He has flesh and blood, muscle and mind. But in just a moment we will see how thin a line separates that which we assume to be real with that manufactured inside of a mind.

Businessman Arthur Curtis is surprised to find the phone in his office dead but hes even more surprised when he hears a voice behind him shout, Cut! and turns to see that his office is actually a set on a soundstage. Whats more, everyone on the set insists that Curtis is actually Jerry Raigan, a drunken movie star on the decline, and that Arthur Curtis is the character Raigan plays in the movie! Determined to assert his identity, Curtis commandeers the car of Raigans shrewish ex-wife and drives to where his home should be. There, he finds no trace of his wife or daughter, or his house, or even the street they live on. Later, at Jerry Raigans house, Curtis calls information for the number of the company hes worked at for the past seven yearsno listing. Thinking his client is having a nervous breakdown, Raigans agent tries to reassure him, telling him he neednt return to the picture, that the studio has cancelled the production. The sets are being dismantled. Realizing that the only fragile link to his worldthe office setis about to be destroyed, Curtis races to the studio. Just in time, he dashes onto the set and pleads with some unseen force not to maroon him in this uncaring place. The sounds of studio hustle-bustle fade away. Curtis finds himself back in the office he knew, complete with four solid walls. Meanwhile, the agent arrives on the soundstage and finds that Jerry Raigan is nowhere to be found.

The modus operandi or the departure from life is usually a pine box of such and such dimensions, and this is the ultimate in reality. But there are other ways for a man to exit from life. Take the case of Arthur Curtis, age thirty-six. His departure was along a highway with an exit sign that reads: (This way to escape. Arthur Curtis, en route to … the Twilight Zone.

The nature of identity (or Am I who I think I am?) was a theme The Twilight Zone would explore many times.

Of A World of Difference, Richard Matheson says, I liked that one. Its one of those Kafkaesque ideas that you get, that a man goes to his office, thinks hes living his normal life, and suddenly finds out that hes an actor on a set.