Twilight Zone Companion (4 page)

episode, the facilities of Universal International Studios were chosen for the shooting of the pilot.

The pilot was an expensive one, and this concerned a number of network executives. My impression is that the budget was somewhere around $75,000, says Bill Self, which in those days was very high for a half-hour pilot. Today, a half-hour pilots like $225,000 to $250,000, so it seems cheap by todays standards.

Rehearsal and shooting of the pilot took a total of nine days. The film was dubbed, scored and edited in three, and then flown immediately to New York to be screened for prospective sponsors. There, it took only six hours to sell. On March 8, 1959, General Foods, represented by the Young and Rubicam agency, signed with CBS as the primary sponsor of The Twilight Zone. Soon after, Kimberly-Clark, makers of Kleenex products, signed on as secondary sponsor. It was all very smooth, Self remembers. It was not a hard sale. It was a good pilot, as you know.

A contract was drawn up between CBS and Serling. It stipulated that The Twilight Zone would be produced by Serlings company, Cayuga Productions (named after Cayuga Lake in upstate New York, where Serling and family vacationed each summer) and that Serling would write eighty percent of the first seasons scripts. In return for this service, Serling would own fifty percent of the series plus the original negatives, with CBS owning the other fifty percent. Within two months of the signing of the contracts, the series had a full crew assigned to it, with production of the first seasons episodes under way.

WHERE IS EVERYBODY?
(originally broadcast 10/2/59)

Written by Rod Serling Producer: William Self Director: Robert Stevens Director of Photography:

Joseph La Shelle Music: Bernard Herrmann

Cast:

Mike Ferris: Earl Holliman Air Force General: James Gregory With: John Conwell, Paul Langton, James McCallion,

Jay Overholts, Carter Mulavey, Jim Johnson, and Gary Walberg

uThe place is here, the time is now, and the journey into the shadows that we’re about to watch could be our journey.

Mike Ferris, an amnesiac in an Air Force jumpsuit, finds himself in a town strangely devoid of people. But despite the emptiness, he has the odd feeling that hes being watched. As he inspects the towns cafe, phone booth, police station, drugstore and movie theater, his desperation mounts. Finally he collapses, hysterically pushing the walk button of a stoplight again and again. In reality, the walk button is a panic button, and Ferris is an astronaut-trainee strapped into an isolation booth in simulation of a moon flight. After 484 hours in the booth, he has cracked from sheer loneliness. His wanderings in the vacant town have been nothing more than an hallucination.

Up there, up there in the vastness of space, in the void that is sky, up there is an enemy known as isolation. It sits there in the stars waiting, waiting with the patience of eons, forever waiting … in the Twilight Zone.

Where Is Everybody? aired October 2, 1959, as the premier episode of The Twilight Zone. But the film that was shown that evening, and continues to be shown in syndication to this day, differed in several significant ways from the film that was shown to the sponsors months beforeand all of these differences could be discerned within the first minute of the show. For one thing, the visual opening was different: images of galaxies dissolve into one another until finally out of a spiral galaxy, in heavy, seemingly three-dimensional block letters (a la every science-fiction movie of the 1950s), the words TWILIGHT ZONE appear. No doubt this sequence was abandoned because even then that kind of opening was cliched.

Then there was the matter of the opening narration, which ran: There is a sixth dimension, beyond that which is known to man. It is a dimension as vast as space and as timeless as infinity. It is the middle ground between light and shadow, and it lies between the pit of mans fear and the sunlight of his knowledge. This is the dimension of imagination. It is an area that might be called The Twilight Zone

Bill Self took particular exception to the opening line, There is a sixth dimension … I said Rod, what is the fifth one? And he said, I dont know. Arent there five? I said, I can only think of four. So we rewrote it and rerecorded it and said, There is a fifth dimension, beyond that which is known to man … Serling made several other slight revisions in the opening, changing the line sunlight of his knowledge to summit of his knowledge and It is an area that might be called The Twilight Zone to It is an area which we call The Twilight Zoneas well as adding a line that the Twilight Zone was the middle ground between science and superstition.

Asked how he came up with the title The Twilight Zone, Serling said, I thought Id made it up, but Ive heard since that there is an Air Force term relating to a moment when a plane is coming down on approach and it cannot see the horizon, its called the twilight zone, but its an obscure term which I had not heard before.

Undoubtedly, the most significant change made was in the identity of the narrator. Originally, the narrator was not Rod Serling. That came about accidentally and out of necessity, I guess, says Self. It was from the outset decided that there would be a narrator, someone who would set the stage or wrap it up. The first person we used was Westbrook Van Voorhis, who had done The March of Time and had that kind of big voice. But when we listened to it we decided it was a little too pompous-sounding.

At the screenings of the pilot in New York, all agreed that a different narrator had to be found. Ira Steiner, then of the Ashley-Steiner Agency, which represented Serling, remembers the general consensus: Orson Welles was the choice for the narrator, he was everybodys numero uno. That is, he was everybodys choice but one; Rod was not at all thrilled with the idea of having Orson Welles narrate The Twilight Zone. But Welles sat well with the agency, sat well with the sponsor, sat well with the network except for one little problem. I dont even know how far it got as far as Welles was concerned, but he was quoted at a price which took the show to a point more than Young and Rubicam and General Foods had in mind as a budget.

Many narrators were suggested who would be within the budget, but no choice was satisfactory to all concerned. Bill Self recalls, Finally, Rod himself made the suggestion that maybe he should do it. It was received with skepticism. None of us knew Rod except as a writer. But he did a terrific job.

Because Serling wanted to give Where Is Everybody? his best shot, he invested much from personal experience into the script. The original idea came from two separate sources. Serling read an item in Time magazine that isolation experiments were being performed on astronaut-trainees. This was then coupled with a purely subjective experience on his part: I got the idea while walking through an empty lot of a movie studio. There were all the evidences of a communitybut with no people. I felt at the time a kind of encroaching loneliness and desolation, a feeling of how nightmarish it would be to wind up in a city with no inhabitants.

Then theres the scene in which Ferris, believing himself trapped in a phone booth, pushes and pushes on the door, only to find that the door pulls open. Thats dummy me, Rod recalled in 1975. The reason I put that in was because I was once in a phone booth, trying to catch a plane, and I heard the loudspeaker and I started to push on the door and I couldnt get out and I got panicky. I started to yell at people, Could you do this? Suddenly, some guy comes along and kicks it with his foot. I wanted to die.

Over the years, Serling became increasingly dissatisfied with Where Is Everybody?, commenting in 1975 that unlike good wine, this film hasnt taken the years very well at all … Certainly, almost as soon as he finished writing the episode he must have been unhappy with the totally straightforward ending, devoid of any twists or surprises, for when he adapted the script into a short story for his collection Stories From The Twilight Zone (Bantam, 1960), he altered it, beginning at the point where Ferris enters a movie theater. When he goes into the theater, Serling later explained, theres nobody giving tickets. So he reaches in and takes a ticket, and he walks in and he tears off the stub and he drops one in the little reticule there and he puts the other stub in his pocket. And then you play the whole thing, and when he gets out of the isolation booth and theyre carrying him on the [stretcher], he reaches into his pocket and theres a theater stub. Now, it doesnt mean anything except, Wait a minuteBwaang!What happened here? Its a fillip upon a fillip. Particularly galling to Serling later was a dramatic device that he employed in the episode in order to advance the plot, that of an endless monologue on the part of the main character.

Serling recounted a way in which, in retrospect, he would have made it more plausible. Seat (Ferris) on the counter. Take a shot through the door and theres a little white cloth that moves, like the apron of a cook. And you say, Hey buddy, Id like ham and eggs… . You got quite a town here. You like this music? … Finally, he goes over and its an apron hanging from a [hook], blowing in a fan. But you cant continue to make this man talk to a ghost and get any sense of reality at all, and it gets a little ludicrous after a while.

For all its faults, Where Is Everybody? accomplished one thing that perhaps no other episode of The Twilight Zone could have done: it sold the series. A number of other episodes might have been superior in terms of drama or imagination, but they would almost certainly have seemed too far out to ever sell this unique series to such conservative executives. Even as it was, there were questions as to whether The Twilight Zone was really viable. Says agent Ira Steiner, While it was a stunning pilot, it nevertheless wasI guess in todays wordsa little freaky in terms of the kind of show that was usually brought in for viewing.

My only concern about it, says Bill Self, which I think was everybodys, was that, being an anthology, there were no recurring elements other than the concept. You couldnt say, Gee, Earl Hollimans great, hell be back next week, you could say, Earl Hollimans great, but he won’t be back next week. So we felt that it was a very good film but whether the sponsors would believe we could duplicate it, with different stories and different actors, was the question in everybodys mind.

With all these concerns, it should come as no surprise to learn that those involved hold different opinions as to why the pilot did sell. Rod Serling believed that a large portion of it was luck. Buck Houghton, soon to be the producer of The Twilight Zone and a man with forty years worth of savvy in the motion picture and television business, believes that The Twilight Zone sold primarily due to Serlings reputation. You see, Rod had muscle from the Playhouse 90s hed done and the network wanted to hold on to him. And if hed said, I want to do a series about a tightrope walker, theyd have said, Lets indulge this guy because hes very important. Well let him write this thing and we may even make a pilot, and then well say, Well, Rod, while we think about this, how about adapting this John Steinbeck novel for us? This has been done many times before, where a man has a certain strength and you induce him to join your club with all sorts of promises, intending to use him in his area of strength and indulge him in the areas hes interested in but nobody gives a shit about. Nobody but a guy with the muscle that Rod had could have gotten a science-fiction series launched. They were very, very touchy about it.

Bill Self disagrees. The reason it sold was, first, it was a very good show, and, secondly, CBS wanted it on the air. They wanted it because they thought that it was good. If it hadnt been good, they wouldnt have put it on. Rods written a lot of pilots that didnt get on.

The most obvious and likely answer is that it was a combination of all threeluck, Serlings name, and the quality of the showthat sold The Twilight Zone. And perhaps a fourth factor should be added to that list: push. A number of people besides Serling had to push with all their talent, influence, and gall to get this series on. The first man to push for The Twilight Zone was Bert Granet, producer of Westinghouse Desilu Playhouse, producer of The Time Element. And what does he have to say about The Twilight Zone? I cant make any comment, except I was the first to like it, basically. I fought very hard because it was very difficult to get it on the air. Its questionable whether Twilight Zone would have ever existed if I hadnt beat down McCann-Erickson … because they did not want that show nohow. At any rate, the rest of it just became history.

Producer: Buck Houghton

Executive Producer: Rod Serling

Production Manager: Ralph W. Nelson ’

A Director ofPhotography: George T. Clemeifc ,

Assistant Directors: Edward Denault,

Kurt Neuman, Jr., Joe Boyle and Don I&uhe Catting: Mildred Gusse and John Erman Art Directors: George W. Davis, William Ferrari and Merrill Pye *

Editors: Joseph Gluck, Bill Mosher, Isyle Boyer and . ,

, Feed Maguire ‘ x

Makeup: Jiob Keats Special Effects: Virgil Beck Camera Operators: Ja^ck Swain, Paul Uhl and John Travers Hill

Sound: Franklin Milton, Jean Valentino and

Philip N..Mitchell ,

. Theme Music: Bernard Herrmann, Marius Constant Set Direction: Rudy Butler, Henry Grace,. Keogh Gleason and Budd S? Friend* ? .

Animated Title: U. PA..

Filmed at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

III / THE FIRST SEASON

A year ago, when the first publicity came out on the series, I was inundated by submissions from agents offering me six foot nine actors with long necks to which electrodes could easily be attached. One agent told me that he had an actor so versed in horror movies that hed taken to sleeping in a box in the basement. rod serling

With the go-ahead from the network to produce the first twenty-six episodes of The Twilight Zone, Rod Serling asked Bill Self to stay on as producer of the show. Self declined, preferring his executive position with the network. As his replacement, he suggested Buck Houghton, a producer who had been his script editor on Schlitz Playhouse of Stars. Serling had no objections and so, as Houghton recalls, Bill Self called me up and asked if I was free, and fortunately I just happened to be at that moment. So he sent me a couple of Rods Twilight Zone scripts, then arranged for a meeting with Rod. I must say, the first two scripts were really very striking, and my enthusiasm showed, and they said, Fine, lets go