Twilight Zone Companion (15 page)

To effect the transition from one reality (the office business as usual) to the other (the soundstage), director Ted Post (whose movie credits include Magnum Force, Hang ‘em High, and Beneath the Planet of the Apes) employed an ingenious visual trick. The scene in the show goes as follows, in one continuous shot: businessman Arthur Curtis enters his office. We see all four walls, establishing its solidity and reality. Curtis sits down at his desk and picks up the phoneonly to find that the line is dead. Suddenly, he hears someone say, Cut! As he turns to look in the direction of the voice, the camera follows his gaze to reveal that one wall has disappeared, revealing a soundstage with a full production crew looking on.

To accomplish this shot, one wall was built on rails and removed during the scene. Because it was one continuous shot, the wall had to move silently, which it did. Buck Houghton was totally supportive of this procedure, explaining, If youre going to prove something, its better to prove it in a continuous shot so that people are really nailed.

THE FEVER (1/29/60)

Written by Rod Serling

Producer: Buck Houghton

Director: Robert Florey

Director of Photography:George T. Clemens

Music: stock

Cast:

Franklin Gibbs: Everett Sloane Flora Gibbs: Vivi Janiss Drunk: Art Lewis Public Relations Man: William Kendis Floor Manager: Lee Sands Cashier: Marc Towers Photographer: Lee Millar Sheriff: Arthur Peterson Girl: Carole Kent Croupier: Jeffrey Sayre

Mr. and Mrs. Franklin Gibbs, from Elgin, Kansas, three days and two nights, all expenses paid, at a Las Vegas hotel, won by virtue of Mrs. Gibbs’s knack with a phrase. But unbeknownst to either Mr. or Mrs. Gibbs is the fact that there’s a prize in their package neither expected nor bargained for. In just a moment one of them will succumb to an illness worse than any virus can produce, a most inoperative, deadly, life-shattering affliction known as The Fever.”

Tight-fisted Franklin Gibbs is not at all pleased when his wife Flora wins the trip for two to Las Vegas, nor when a noisy drunk gives him a silver dollar and forces him to put it in a one-armed bandit. But things change when he pulls down the lever and it pays off. He begins to hear the machine calling his name, and develops a mania to playuntil hes soon down to his last dollar. When he feeds this into the slot, the machine inexplicably jams. Certain that it has done so in a deliberate effort not to pay out a big jackpot, he pushes it over, hysterically screaming, Give me back my dollar! Later upstairs in his room with Flora, he believes he sees the machine coming for him. Terrified, he takes a fatal fall out the window.

On the pavement, the triumphant machine rolls up to him and spits out his dollar.

Mr. Franklin Gibbs, visitor to Las Vegas, who lost his money, his reason, and finally his life to an inanimate metal machine variously described as a one-armed bandit, a slot machine or, in Mr. Franklin Gibbs’s words, a monster with a will all its own. For our purposes well stick with the latter definition because we’re in the Twilight Zone.”

As far as the human performers in The Fever went, Serling had nothing to worry about. Everett Sloane, who had done so well for him in Patterns, was cast in the lead as Franklin Gibbs. Playing his browbeaten wife, Flora, was Vivi Janiss, an actress of intelligence, subtlety, and depth.Serlings problem lay in casting the role of the slot machine. In the show, the machine comes alive, calling Franklins name, beckoning him. Now, how to give a slot machine a voiceand make it sound like a slot machine?

The initial problem was getting a slot machine at all. Gambling machines were illegal in California, explains Buck Houghton. A prop house couldnt even have them. So we had to get one-armed bandits from the police department where they were impounded. It was just like a machine gun, you had to have a policeman along with it. There was a policeman on the set at all times, to make damn sure that somebody didnt take one off and set it up in his uncles barber shop.

It was decided that the most effective voice would be one that sounded like tinkling coinsthe sound a machine makes when it pays off. The first step in the process was to tape the sound of metal coins. Says Buck Houghton, We made it as metallic as we could. We put hundreds of dimes and quartersnot nickels, because they were lead and didnt make the same sounddown a metal chute. So we just had yards and yards and yards of coins running down metal.

Next, a human subject was chosen. Two small speakers were strapped to either side of his esophagus. The sound of tinkling coins was played out through the speakers, to the effect that when the man opened his mouth, the sound came from his throat. This sound could then be shaped into words by using the tongue and lips just as with sounds from the larynx. But he himself made no use of his own voice whatsoever; the tape provided all the sound. And voilaone talking slot machine.

ELEGY (2/19/60)

Written by Charles Beaumont

Based on the short story Elegy by Charles Beaumont

Producer: Buck Houghton

Director: Douglas Heyes

Director of Photography:George T. Clemens

Music: Van Cleave

Cast:

Jeremy Wickwire: Cecil Kellaway Capt. James Webber: Kevin Hagen Kurt Meyers: Jeff Morrow Peter Kirby: Don Dubbins

The time is the day after tomorrow. The place: a far comer of the universe. The cast of characters: three men lost amongst the stars, three men sharing the common urgency of all men lostthey’re looking for home. And in a moment theyll find home, not a home that is a place to be seen but a strange, unexplainable experience to be felt.

Their ship almost out of fuel, astronauts Webber, Meyers, and Kirby set down on a remote asteroid and run smack into a mystery. The place is quite Earthlike, down to the buildings and the people, but no one moves. The men witness a number of inanimate tableaux: a full marching band, a man being elected mayor, a card table at which one of the players holds four aces, a romantic liaison in a hotel suite, complete with violinists, and a homely woman winning a beauty contest. The three are startled when they find someone who does moveJeremy Wickwire, caretaker of the place. He explains that the entire asteroid is an exclusive cemetery where the dear departed can realize their greatest wish in life, after they die. He serves the men wine and asks what their greatest wish would be. All three reply that they would like to be on their ship, heading for home. Too late, they realize that Wickwire, who is a robot, has poisoned their drinks. Having thus insured the continuing tranquility of Happy Glades, Wickwire installs the inanimate, embalmed figures of the three men back in their ship.

Kirby, Webber; and Meyers, three men lost. They shared a common wish, a simple one, reallythey wanted to be aboard their ship, headed for home. And fate, a laughing fate, a practical jokester with a smile that stretched across the stars, saw to it that they got their wish, with just one reservation: the wish came true, but only in the Twilight Zone.

While The Fever presented the problem of bringing an inanimate object to life, Elegy, Charles Beaumonts third Twilight Zone, presented exactly the opposite problem. A large percentage of the show was devoted to the exhibiting of various tableaux, including a full marching band, all utterly frozen. We did not use dummies once, says director Douglas Heyes. We used real people.

Using real people brought its own share of problems. No matter how still a person tries to be, there are always small movements. To minimize audience awareness of these, Heyes utilized a little technical sleight-of- hand. If youll notice on Elegy, when you see those characters, the camera is almost always in movement, moving backwards and forwards, panning, and so forth. Despite this, the motions of the actors are still noticeable and this works against the episodes credibility. Later, when Heyes was brought back to do The After Hours, another episode demanding inanimate human figures, he would remember this experience and take an entirely different approach Heyes had no objections to most of the tableaux in Beaumonts script, but there was one that he felt was totally unworkable: an automobile race. Auto racing was one of Beaumonts hobbies and very probably to him it was the most personally appealing of all the tableaux. But whatever its appeal, Heyes knew it would not translate effectively to film. To me, he says, stationary cars dont seem to be frozen in movement; they just seem to be parked cars. In its place, he substituted the beauty contest, which remains perhaps the single most memorable image of the entire episode.

As for Beaumont, he wasnt happy with the change. Charles never liked anything I did with any story he ever wrote, says Heyes, but continued to be friends with me, assuming apparently that we had the right to be different. Rod would endorse what I had done in terms of changes on his stories enthusiastically, while Charles would say, T dont think you did my story any good at all.

Unquestionably, what saves Elegy from becoming unbearably morbid is Cecil Kellaways performance as Wickwire, the robot caretaker. Short and cute and likeable, his many fine performances in films such as / Married a Witch, The Postman Always Rings Twice, and Harvey (plus two Oscar nominations, for The Luck of the Irish and Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner) had proved him inimitable. Says Buck Houghton, You couldnt really feel too depressed about these fellows in the care of such a fine old fellow, I dont think.

In Elegy, The Twilight Zone was once again on shaky ground scientifically. According to the script, the asteroid circles twin stars 655 million miles from Earth. Quite a trick, considering the fact that the nearest star to our solar system is approximately twenty-six trillion miles away. In fact, if these stars were actually where claimed, they would be closer to our sun than is the planet Saturn.

MIRROR IMAGE (2/26/60)

Written by Rod Serling

Producer: Buck Houghton

Director: John Brahm

Director of Photography:George T. Clemens

Music: stock

Cast:

Millicent Barnes: Vera Miles Paul Grinstead: Martin Milner Ticket Agent: Joe Hamilton Woman Attendant: Noami Stevens Husband: Ferris Taylor Old Woman: Terese Lyon Bus Driver: Edwin Rand

Millicent Barnes, age twenty-five, young woman waiting for a bus on a rainy November night. Not a very imaginative type is Miss Barnes, not given to undue anxiety or fears, or for that matter even the most temporal flights of fancy. Like most young career women, she has a generic classification as a, quote, girl with a head on her shoulders, end of quote. All of which is mentioned now because in just a moment the head on Miss Barnes’s shoulders will be put to a test. Circumstances will assault her sense of reality and a chain of nightmares will put her sanity on a block. Millicent Barnes, who in one minute will wonder if she’s going mad.”

Millicent suspects the bus station is run by lunatics: snappishly, the ticket taker tells her that shes repeatedly asked when the bus will arrive, adding that her suitcase has already been checked. In the washroom, the attendant claims she was there only a moment before. Yet shes done none of these things. She realizes that it is not their sanity which is in question when, in the washroom mirror, she spies a duplicate of herself sitting in the waiting room. Rushing out, she finds the room empty. A short time later, Millicent elicits the sympathy of Paul Grinstead, an amiable businessman also waiting for the bus. When it arrives, the two of them start to get on, but Millicent flees back into the station when she sees that the other her has already boarded. Concerned, Paul misses the bus to remain with the distraught Millicent, who says she now knows what is occurringa mirror image of her from a parallel world has somehow slipped into this world, and must take her place to survive. Certain shes mentally ill, Paul summons the police, who take Millicent away. But a few minutes later, he has reason to regret his decision: chasing an elusive figure he believes has stolen his case, he sees that the mans mockingly grinning face ishis own!

Obscure metaphysical explanation to cover a phenomenon, reasons dredged out of the shadows to explain away that which cannot be explained. Call it parallel planes or just insanity. Whatever it is, you find it in the Twilight Zone.”

With Mirror Image, Serling took the loss-of-identity theme and raised it to even greater heights of paranoia. I was in an airport in London, he once recalled. I was sitting there very quietly, with my topcoat in hand and a briefcase at my feet. And I looked up and across the room there stood a man five foot six, my identical height, wearing the identical topcoat, with a briefcase of identical cowhide. And I kept staring and staring, with this funny ice-cold feeling that if he turns around and its me, what will I do?

Well, in point of fact, he did turn around and he was ten years younger and far more attractive. But this did leave its imprint sufficiently to write a story about it.

Mirror Image represents The Twilight Zone at its most malevolent, presenting a world where threatening, destructive forces hold the upper hand and where the best intentions of people bring only disaster. The moral, stated previously in other episodes, is clear: without trust or belief, there can be no survival.

FIRST SEASON HIATUS

With the beginning of November, 1959, production of The Twilight Zone came to a halt. Twenty-six episodes had been produced. Now the network was going to see whether the show could attract a sizeable enough audience to warrant renewing it for the remainder of the season.

Serling continued his campaign to publicize the unique qualities of the show. I make no bones about taking every opportunity to blatantly plug my show, he said. Clever turns of phrase came as readily to him in conversation as they did when he was alone with his Dictaphone. Reporters quoted him in hundreds of newspapers across the country.

Nervously, Serling watched the ratings. It was touch and go all the way. I dont believe them. I dont think theyre statistically accurate. But, boy, am I on the phone waiting to hear them … Doom-criers predicted an early cancellation. In the L.A. Mirror-News, Hal Humphrey reported one sooth-sayer as dismissing the show with, Its a think show, and viewers dont want to think.