Twilight Zone Companion (9 page)

This strength in plotting not only helped Matheson sell the concept of The Last Flight to the viewers, but to Serling and Houghton as well. Normally, the procedure for a first-time contributor to the show would have been to write an outline before going to script, but in this case, Matheson just told them the idea. That was one of those cases, he explains, where the idea is so vivida World War I pilot lands and hes on a modern airbaseit gives you a vision so immediately that they responded to it.

The Last Flight was filmed on location at Norton Air Force Base in San Bernardino, California. Director William Claxton sent actors Kenneth Haigh, Simon Scott, Alexander Scourby, arid Robert Warwick through the motions with as little trickery and embroidery as possible, with the result that the drama of the piece emerges out of its utter straightforwardness. The vintage 1918 Nieuport biplane used in the episode was both owned and flown by Frank Gifford Tallman, a veteran motion picture pilot. As for the plane, it too had been previously before the cameras in such films as The Dawn Patrol, Lafayette Escadrille, Men with Wings, and The Lost Squadron. As a matter of fact, Tallman remarked in 1959, this particular airplane has appeared in more World War I motion pictures than any other plane.

When Tallman landed the biplane at Norton Air Force Base, he discovered that the allure resulting from the juxtaposition of two time-frames extended beyond Mathesons teleplay. Director of photography George Clemens recalls, When he landed at this airport and taxied up, youve never seen people come around a thinglike kids around a new toyas these modern-day jet pilots. They looked in the cockpit and felt the wings. Theyd never seen anything like that! This attention was so enthusiastic

the plane had to be roped off and special guards posted to protect it from damage.

It is a mark of both the quality of the writing and the respect in which the written word was held on The Twilight Zone that Mathesons script was filmed almost exactly as written. The only change was one of title, from Flight to The Last Flight.

I had double meanings in many of my titles, says Matheson, and I wanted it to refer not only to the flight of the airplane but to the protagonists flight from the situation he was in. I suppose it still had a similar meaning. It was the last time he ran away as a coward.

AND WHEN THE SKY WAS OPENED (12/11/59)

Written by Rod Serling

Based on the short story Disappearing Act by Richard Matheson

 Producer: Buck Houghton

Director: Douglas Heyes

Director of Photography:

\George T. Clemens

Music: Leonard Rosenman

Cast:

Col. Clegg Forbes: Rod Taylor Col. Ed Harrington:Charles Aidman  Maj. William Gart: James Hutton   Amy: Maxine Cooper  Girl in Bar: Gloria Pall Bartender: Paul Bryar Nurse: Sue Randall Investigator: Logan Field Officer: Oliver McGowan Medical Officer: Joe Bassett Mr. Harrington: S. John Launer Sue Randall and James Hutton Nurse Two: Elizabeth Fielding

Her name: X-20. Her type: an experimental interceptor. Recent history: a crash landing in the Mojave Desert after a thirty-one-hour flight nine hundred miles into space. Incidental data: the ship, with the men who flew her, disappeared from the radar screen for twenty-four hours… . But the shrouds that cover mysteries are not always made out of a tarpaulin, as this man will soon find out on the other side of a hospital door.

Three astronauts have returned from this first space flight. Major Gart is hospitalized with a broken leg, but the other two, Colonels Harrington and Forbes, go off for a night of revelry. In a bar, Colonel Harrington suddenly gets a strange feeling. He calls his parents. They tell him that they have no son. Suddenly, mysteriously, Harrington disappears, with no one but Colonel Forbes remembering that he ever existed. When Forbes tells Gart the story at the hospital, Gart says he doesnt know any Ed Harrington either. Suddenly, Forbes gets a peculiar feeling of euphoria. He shakes it off, screams, I dont want this to happen! and runs out of the room. By the time Gart gets to the hallway, Forbes too has disappeared, and nobody else has any memory of him. Then Gart disappears, and with him their ship, wiping the last evidence of their existence off the face of the earth.

Once upon a time, there was a man named Harrington, a man named Forbes, a man named Gart. They used to exist, but dont any longer. Someone or something took them somewhere. At least they are no longer a part of the memory of man. And as to the X-20 supposed to be housed here in this hangar, this too does not exist. And if any of you have any questions concerning an aircraft and three men who flew her, speak softly of them … and only in the Twilight Zone.

Serlings script for And When the Sky Was Opened was ostensibly based on Mathesons short story, Disappearing Act (which appears in his collection, Third From the Sun), but the connection was very thin. The original story concerns an unsuccessful writer who finds that the people in his life, one by one, are disappearing, and only he remembers them. Ultimately, of course, he too disappears. In comparing the episode with his short story, Matheson says, My feeling about it is like my feeling about the second version of my novel, I Am Legend [filmed as The Omega Man. its so far removed that theres nothing to judge by.

And When the Sky Was Opened marked director Douglas Heyess entry into The Twilight Zone. Neither Serling nor Houghton had ever worked with him before, but his work on a number of episodes of Maverick convinced Houghton to hire him. I was taken with Dougs direction right off the bat, says Houghton. And When the Sky Was Opened is a beautiful job of directing, wonderfully executed in handling of both actors and equipment. Houghton made it a point to use Heyes on episodes where something imaginative in the way of direction was needed, such as Eye of the Beholder, in which none of the characters faces could be seen until the very end, or Nervous Man in a Four Dollar Room, in which the entire show is a dialogue between a man and his mirror image.

Heyes found the challenge invigorating. Buck and Rod Serling both were extremely encouraging as to finding unusual and new ways to do things. They didnt say, Stick to the script, to me or to any director. Theyd say, Think of something to make it Twilight Zone, to make it unusual. with And When the Sky Was Opened, Heyes took the initiative in two specific scenes. Cast as the three astronauts (in order of disappearance) were Charles Aidman, Rod Taylor, and Jim Hutton. The climactic moment of the episode comes when Taylor, after trying futilely to convince those around him that there was a third astronaut on the mission, begins to feel himself disappearing. Originally, says Heyes, Rods disappearance or the feeling that he was going was written as a very painful experience, but I decided to make it a very euphoric experience. Instead of playing it for terror or agonyeverything had been fear up till then, fear of disappearance, fear of the unknown, and so forthI said to Rod Taylor, Lets play this as if this is the most marvelous thing that ever happened. We took an angle on him and we lowered the camera as he was talking, so the effect was that he seemed to be rising while he was talking.

The other departure was far less euphoric. Heyes explains, Rod Taylor is searching for Charles Aidman, who disappeared in a telephone booth in a bar while they were talking. Taylor gets drunk and he comes to this bar which is now closed and forces his way in. Now, its not written in the script, but because Rod encouraged me to do things like that, I simply had him walk through the glass door, sort of spin and crash through it into the bar. It was an unexpected entrance and Rod Serling liked it very much.

And When the Sky Was Opened is a frightening episode, and not inadvertently so. Serling had thought long and hard on the subject of fear. In making a judgment, or any analysis or inventory, he once said, of what are the degrees of emotional reaction and indeed types of emotional reaction, I think there is a universality of reaction to certain given prods. Now, our reaction to fear of a mugging, I think, is relatively universal. There are maybe eight different types of reactions, but I think you could almost categorize them and put them in a textbook.

The worst fear of all is the fear of the unknown working on you, which you cannot share with others. To me, thats the most nightmarish of the stimuli. Serling had defined a fear that was universal and basic. This fear would be exploited repeatedly on The Twilight Zone, and not just by Serling. Here, it is used to particular advantage.

Of course, what makes the threat of disappearance so believable lies mostly in the performances of Hutton, Aidman, and Taylor. All three react with an uneasiness that grows to near-hysteria as the realityor unrealityof the situation sinks in. Australian-born Rod Taylor, so very fine in the movies The Birds and The Time Machine, is the focal character of the episode, and his performance is intelligent, appealing, and powerful. His is a most difficult task, to make us believe that the impossible is happeningand he succeeds admirably.

And When the Sky Was Opened is a flawed episode, however, and this flaw lies in its resolution. Like Where Is Everybody? it sets up the question What is going on here?then fails to satisfactorily answer it. In this case, an answer isnt even attempted; the astronauts are simply yanked out of existence with no explanation at all, like an old vaudevillian getting the hook from a stagehand in the wings. Serling didnt feel that this was particularly significant, though. My feeling here was that the bizarre quality of what occurred so out-shadowed the required rationale that we didnt have to worry about it.

One consideration perhaps should soften any dissatisfaction with And When the Sky Was Opened. In a sense, the episode was made in a different era. We know that when astronauts go into outer space they dont cease to existweve done it. But when Serling wrote the script, no one could be certain what would happen when men first ventured into space. In his script, he was trying to capture that dread of the unknown, and in that, at least, he succeeded.

THE HITCH-HIKER (1/22/60)

Written by Rod Serling

Based on the radio play The Hitch-Hiker by Lucille Fletcher

Producer: Buck Houghton

Director: Alvin Ganzer

Director of Photography:George T. Clemens

Music: stock

Cast:

Nan Adams: Inger Stevens Hitch-Hiker: Leonard Strong Sailor: Adam Williams Mechanic: Lew Gallo Highway Flag Man:Dwight Townsend Counterman: Russ Bender Waitress: Mitzi McCall Gas Station Man: George Mitchell Mrs. Whitney: Eleanor Audley

Her name is Nan Adams. Shes twenty-seven years old. Her occupation: buyer at a New York department store, at present on vacation, driving cross-country to Los Angeles, California, from Manhattan… . Minor incident on Highway11 in Pennsylvania, perhaps to be filed away under accidents you walk away from. But from this moment on, Nan Adams companion on a trip to California will be terror; her routefear; her destination quite unknown.

Following a blowout in Pennsylvania, Nan Adams repeatedly sees the same ominous hitch-hiker. Frightened by the fact that the man seems to be beckoning to her, she tries to run him over, only to be told by a sailor to whom shes given a lift that there was no hitch-hiker on the road. Finally she calls homeand learns her mother has suffered a nervous breakdown following the death of her daughter six days earlier in an automobile accident in Pennsylvania. Strangely devoid of emotion, Nan returns to her car where the hitch-hikerwhose identity and purpose she now understandsawaits.

((Nan Adams, age twenty-seven. She was driving to California, to Los Angeles. She didnt make it. There was a detour through the Twilight Zone.

Death personified made his second appearance on The Twilight Zone in The Hitch-Hiker. People generally credit Serling with originating the story, but in truth he only adapted it, and very well indeed, from a radio play by Lucille Fletcher, author of the famous radio play Sorry, Wrong Number.

The Hitch-Hiker was the first and only radio play to be made into a Twilight Zone episode. In 1941, Serling had heard the original broadcast of The Hitch-Hiker on The Mercury Theatre on the Air, starring Orson Welles in the lead (Welles reprised the role at least once, on Suspense). The play stuck with him and when The Twilight Zone came along, he contacted Lucille Fletcher and bought the rights. He then reworked the play, changing the first name and gender of the main character (from Ronald Adams to Nan Adams), but otherwise leaving the basic plot intact.

A press release on the episode, written in 1960, claims that Serling wrote the script of The Hitch-Hiker in just six hourswhich, considering Serlings average output, is entirely within the realm of possibility. As for the change in name, Serling named the character after his daughter, Anne, whose family nickname is Nan. That one always bothered me, says Anne. I thought, why did he have to use that name?

I was not asked to adapt the play to television, says Lucille Fletcher, nor was I asked about the change of gender in the main character. If I had been, I would never have approved of it, for good though Inger Stevenss performance was, I dont think a female in the part added anything to my play. In fact, I think that the dramatic effect was minimized.

Curiously, although Serling was unaware of it when he changed the main character to a woman, The Hitch-Hiker was based on an incident happened to the author herself. She explains, I first got the idea for The Hitch-Hiker in 1940, when I crossed the countryfrom Brooklyn to Californiawith my first husband, Bernard Herrmann (who wrote the music for the radio play, incidentally)and we saw an odd-looking man, first on the Brooklyn Bridge and then on the Pulaski Skyway. We never saw him again. However, I didnt quite know what to do with the idea until a year later, when, shortly after my first daughter was born, I conceived the idea of doing it as a ghost story. After that I wrote it in a couple of days, during the afternoon, when my newborn baby was taking a nap.

It reached radio and Orson Welles, because Benny, my husband, was musical director of the Mercury Theatre on the Air. I knew Orson, and in fact, had done a lot of publicity on him, when I was working at CBS before my marriage to Benny. I wrote the show for him, designing the narration more or less to fit his style and manner of speaking. Welles did it eloquently and imaginatively and I was very pleased with the result.