Allenby, the captain of a supply ship that travels the solar system, takes pity on Corry, whos serving a fifty-year sentence for murder, and leaves him a box containing Alicia, a robot that looks and sounds exactly like a woman. Initially, Corry is repelled by the robot, but eventually his heart melts and he falls deeply in love with her. Eleven months pass. Then one
day the supply ship lands. Allenby tells Corry hes received a full pardon, and that theyve come to get him. But theres a hitch: Corry can only take fifteen pounds of gear, and Alicia weighs more than that. Corry refuses to leave her behind, claiming that shes a woman. Reluctantly, Allenby draws his gun and shoots Alicia full in the face, revealing a mass of smoldering wires. He tells Corry, All youre leaving behind is loneliness. Stunned, Corry replies, I must remember that. I must remember to keep that in mind.
On a microscopic piece of sand that floats through space is a fragment of a man’s life. Left to rust is the place he lived in and the machines he used. Without use, they will disintegrate from the wind and the sand and the years that act upon them; all of Mr. Corrys machinesincluding the one made in his image, kept alive by love, but now obsolete … in the Twilight Zone.
The first episode ready to go before the cameras was The Lonely, which presented a unique problem for Buck Houghton: Where to find an asteroid?
The answer was Death Valley. It was supposed to be an asteroid and look as kooky as possible, says Houghton, and Death Valley is about as kooky as you can find. Its barren and deserted. That must be the way Mars looks.
So on the second week of June, 1959, Houghton, director Jack Smight (whose film credits now include Harper; The Illustrated Man, No Way to Treat a Lady, and Midway), actors Jack Warden, Jean Marsh (later to co-create and star in the Masterpiece Theatre presentation Upstairs> Downstairs), John Dehner, Ted Knight (later of The Mary Tyler Moore Show), and James Turley, set out with the production crew for the lowest, driest, hottest place in the United States. The maiden voyage proved a trial by fire.
That was unbelievable heat when we shot out there, says Jack Smight. The temperature was around 130 degrees. One day the caterer very foolishly served a very heavy meal for lunch, and about eight crew members just dropped in the afternoon. George Clemens actually fell off the camera crane right into the sand. I thought he was having a heart attack, because he was up on the crane, we were setting up a shot, and he just toppled off.
We had a nurse with us and she kept pushing lukewarm water, Buck Houghton recalls. And once in a while a guy would say, Well, dont worry about me, and put down a quart of nice, cold chocolate milk. In about a half hour, hed turn green and have to lie down in the truck.
Edward Denault recalls being called on to do double duty. As well as being the assistant director, I wound up doing script work and was the sound boom man for a couple of shots. Everybody was filling in for somebody else because people were just dropping off like flies.
Buck Houghton: One time, Jean Marsh lay down in the shot thats the tag of the picture. We put a thermometer down beside her. It was 140 degrees where she was lying.
The incredible heat also created technical problems. Theres a funny problem that nobody but someone connected with motion pictures would ever think of, explains George Clemens. When we want to show heat, to make people look like theyre sweating, we spray them with a composition of oil and water. Each makeup artist has a different thing that he puts on. Of course, you always darken under the arms and so forth to make it look like theyre sweating like hell. Well, in Death Valley, we wanted to convey this idea, but I dont care what we put on them, before wed start the camera it was gonethey were just as dry as you or me. We ended up putting about ninety percent oil and a little water on their faces, and the oil would stay in little droplets.
Finally, Death Valley proved too much. After two days of shooting, Houghton and Smight decidedto the relief of cast and crew aliketo return to MGM, reconstruct the interior of the metal shack in which the convict in the story lives, and shoot the final days scenes under comparatively cool klieg lights. Smight undoubtedly speaks for all concerned when he says, It was just too hot.
ESCAPE CLAUSE (11/6/59)
Written by Rod Serling
Producer: Buck Houghton
Director: Mitchell Leisen
Director of Photography:George T. Clemens
Music: stock
Cast:
Walter Bedeker: David Wayne Mr. Cadwallader: Thomas Gomez Ethel Bedeker: Virginia Christine Adjuster #1: Dick Wilson Adjuster #2: Joe Flynn Judge: George Baxter Doctor: Raymond Bailey Cooper: Wendell Holmes Guard: Nesdon Booth Subway Guard: Allan Lurie Janitor: Paul E. Burns
Youre about to meet a hypochondriac. Witness Mr. Walter Bedeker, age forty-four, afraid of the following: death, disease, other people, germs, drafts and everything else. He has one interest in life, and thats Walter Bedeker. One preoccupation: the life and well-being of Walter Bedeker. One abiding concern about society: that if Walter Bedeker should die, how will it survive without him?
Bedeker makes a deal with Mr. Cadwallader, an impeccably-dressed, jovial fat man who also happens to be the Devil. Bedeker will receive immortality and indestructibility in exchange for his soul. An escape clause is provided, however; if at any time he tires of life, all he need do is summon Cadwallader. Soon after the deal is struck, Bedeker realizes hes been taken. Nothing can harm him, truebut nothing thrills him either. He throws himself in front of subway trains and buses, drinks poison, all without the slightest ill effect. Finally he decides to jump off the top of his apartment building. In trying to stop him, his wife accidentally falls off the building to her death. Realizing that this gives him a unique opportunity to experience the electric chair, Bedeker confesses to murdering his wife. He receives a shock of a different kind, however, when the judge sentences him to life imprisonment without chance of parole. Cadwallader appears and grants him a reprieve, in the form of a fatal heart attack.
Theres a saying, Every man is put on Earth condemned to die, time and method of execution unknown. Perhaps this is as it should be. Case in point: Walter Bedeker, lately deceased, a little man with such a yen to live. Beaten by the Devil, by his own boredom and by the scheme of things in this, the Twilight Zone .
Of this second episode in the production schedule, Daily Variety said, Here was a little gem. Good work, Rod Serling. This little piece about a hypochondriac who gets tangled up with an obese, clerical devil ranked with the best that has ever been accomplished in half-hour filmed television. High praise for an episode that was really par for the course during the first season.
WALKING DISTANCE (10/30/59)
Written by Rod Serling
Producer: Buck Houghton
Director: Robert Stevens
Director of Photography:George T. Clemens
Music: Bernard Herrmann
Cast:
Martin Sloan: Gig Young Martins Father: Frank Overton Martins Mother: Irene Tedrow Martin as a boy:
Michael Montgomery Charlie: Byron Foulger Soda Jerk: Joseph Corey Wilcox Boy: Ronnie Howard Mr. Wilson: Pat OMalley Mr. Wilcox: Bill Erwin Teenager: Buzz Martin Woman: Nan Peterson Attendant: Sheridan Comerate
Martin Sloan, age thirty-six. Occupation: vice-president, ad agency, in charge of media. This is not just a Sunday drive for Martin Sloan. He perhaps doesnt know it at the timebut its an exodus. Somewhere up the road hes looking for sanity. And somewhere up the road, hell find something else.
On a drive in the country, world-weary advertising executive Martin Sloan leaves his car at a gas station and sets off on foot to his home town, Homewood, where he finds things are exactly the same as when he was a child. Soon he realizes that he has somehow gone back in time. He confronts his parents but only succeeds in convincing them hes a lunatic. And when he tries to catch up with himself as a childwanting only to tellthe young Martin to savor his youththe frightened boy falls off a merry-go-round and breaks his leg. Later, Martins father, who has gone through Martins wallet and now realizes Martin i
s his son, tells him he must leave, that there is only one summer to every customer. Reluctantly, Martin returns to the presentwith a limp he got from falling off a merry-go- round when he was a child.
Martin Sloan, age thirty-six, vice-president in charge of media. Successful in most things, but not in the one effort that all men try at some time in their lives trying to go home again. And also like all men perhaps therell be an occasion maybe a summer night sometimewhen hell look up from what hes doing and listen to the distant music of a calliope, and hear the voices and the laughter of his past. And perhaps across his mind therell flit a little errant wish, that a man might not have to become old, never outgrow the parks and the merry-go-rounds of his youth. And hell smile then too because hell know it is just an errant wish, some wisp of memory not too important really, some laughing ghosts that cross a mans mindthat are a part of the Twilight Zone.
I think probably Walking Distance was as good as any we made, says Buck Houghton. It may be personal but I dont think so, because Im not beleaguered by my work.
With Walking Distance, Rod Serling took a fantasy journey to the Binghamton of his youth and invited us along for the ride. Not long ago, he told Kay Gardella of the New York Daily News in 1959, I was walking on a set at MGM when I was suddenly hit by the similarity of it to my home town. Feeling an overwhelming sense of nostalgia, it struck me that all of us have a deep longing to go backnot to our home as it is today, but as we remember it. It was from this simple incident that I wove the story Walking Distance …
Upon the recommendation of CBS management, who were much pleased by the job he had done on the pilot, director Robert Stevens was hired to direct. Gig Young was cast in the lead, with Frank Overton and Irene Tedrow as his parents. Ronnie Howard (later of the long-running Happy Days) was also cast, as a neighborhood child. Houses originally built on MGMs Lot 3 for the movie Meet Me in St. Louis were magically transformed into the homes of Homewood. From an outside firm, a gorgeously detailed carousel was rented and set up on a backlot park.
From the first, there was a feeling that Walking Distance was something special. Says Buck Houghton, There was a fortunate conspiracy of all sorts of arts and crafts that came to bear on that picture: the good fortunes of casting, the good fortunes of direction. Gig Young was just superb. The sets were absolutely magnificent for a half-hour show. There were a lot of good vibes coming out of the material as you encountered it, all the way up and down the line. Its a beauty.
Walking Distance makes no pretense at being science fiction; its clearly a fantasy. Nowhere is this delineation so clear as in Martins entrance into the past. Rather than using a time machine, Serling and Stevens employ a visual allusion to Through the Looking Glass. In the present, Martin heads down a dirt road toward his home town. The camera pans over to a mirror in which we see his reflection. This cuts to a reflection of Martin in a drugstore mirror in the past, just as he enters. A similar device was used for the return to the present. Martin jumps on a spinning merry-go-round which cuts to a record spinning in a jukebox in the present-day version of the same drug store.
Serling realized that the harsh, hard-edged style of writing hed used in Where Is Everybody? and The Lonely wouldnt do here. Instead, he used a style that was wistful, nostalgic. A longing for the past fills this episode, and that longing is communicated more through words than action. Nowhere is Serlings command of the language more in evidence. Take for example this scene near the end of the show, between Martin and his father:
father: Martin, you have to leave here. Theres no room, theres no place. Do you understand that?
martin: I see that now, but I dont understand. Why not?
father: I guess because we only get one chance.
Maybe theres only one summer to every customer. That little boy, the one I know, the one who belongs here, this is his summer, just as it was yours oncedont make him share it.
martin (Bitterly): All right.
father: Martin, is it so bad where youre from?
martin: I thought so, Pop. Ive been living at a dead run and I was tired. Then one day, I knew I had to come back here. I had to come back and get on a merry-go-round and eat cotton candy and listen to a band concert, to stop and breathe and close my eyes and smell and listen.
father: I guess we all want that. Maybe when you go back, Martin, youll find that there are merry-go-rounds and band concerts where you are.
Maybe you havent been looking in the right place. Youve been looking behind you, Martin. Try looking ahead.
Then, too, there is Serlings closing narration, perhaps the most touching and beautifully written of any episode of The Twilight Zone.
Walking Distance is also a prime example of how greatly a musical score can benefit a piece of drama. Bernard Herrmann, with movie credits including The Ghost and Mrs. Muir; The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad, Journey to the Center of the Earth, The Three Worlds of Gulliver; Mysterious Island, and Jason and the Argonauts, was one of the great composers of fantasy film music. Here, his gentle and evocative score permeates the episode, omnipresent yet unobtrusive. Listening to this score, composed specifically for this episode, it is hard to believe any composerparticularly one with such distinguished credits in feature filmswould bother to take such pains. In mood, if not in specifics, the score is reminiscent of much of Herrmanns superb score for Francois Truffauts Fahrenheit 451, which he composed seven years later. But to Buck Houghton, theres no mystery behind the excellence of the Walking Distance score. When you have a good rough cut, a musician does a better job than he would with a less distinguished picture. Bernie responded very strongly to things that he thought were good. Its a great score.
This episode was certainly Serlings most personal and undoubtedly one of the series most finely crafted. Surprisingly, for all its beauty and lyricism, Walking Distance caused Houghton and Serling some problems. Following the production and sale of the pilot, but before regular production of the series began, network vice-president William Dozier was given several of Serlings Twilight Zone scripts to read. Buck Houghton explains where the trouble came in: The pilot could have happened. This was about a guy in a space machine who got claustrophobia to a point where he thought he was the only man in the world. That was one of the two or three Twilight Zones that could have happened. The next script that Bill Dozier read was Walking Distance, about a guy who walks into his own home town hale and hearty and comes back with a limp that he got as a child, and Dozier said, Bullshit! This doesnt work. Who the fucks going to believe this, Rod?
I remember Rod and I spending a couple of two-hour-long sessions with Bill Dozier saying, Its just that people wont swallow this! And Rod said, Bill, thats The Twilight Zone, thats what imaginative fiction is about. Its like the one Im writing, in which a guy falls in love with a girl and, sure enough, shes a mechanical girl, just like it says on the label. And Bill said, Oh shit, youre kidding. Is this what this is all going to be about?
We got through the two-hour conferences, and the next time I heard of it, Bill was totally supportive. Hed been convinced to jump off the deep end and he was with it. So when sponsors started to say, Hey, whats this? he said, Well, thats what you bought. He acted just like hed never had any objections himself, which was great.
MR. DENTON ON DOOMSDAY (10/16/59)
Written by Rod Serling
Producer: Buck Houghton
Director: Allen Reisner
Director of Photography:George T. Clemens
Music: stock
Cast:
Al Denton: Dan Duryea Hotaling: Martin Landau Pete Grant: Doug McClure Henry J. Fate: Malcolm Atterbury Liz: Jeanne Cooper Charlie: Ken Lynch Leader: Arthur Batanides Doctor: Robert Burton Man: Bill Erwin
Portrait of a town drunk named Al Denton. This is a man whos begun his dying earlya long, agonizing route through a maze of bottles. Al Denton, who would probably give an arm or a part of his soul to have another chance, to be able to rise up and shake the dirt from his body and the bad dreams that infest his c
onsciousness. [Shot of Henry J. Fate.] In the parlance of the times, this is a peddler; a rather fanciful-looking little man in a black frock coat. [A six-gun materializes beside Denton.] And this is the third principal character of our story. Its function: perhaps to give Mister Al Denton his second chance
The setting is the old west. Al Dentononce a feared gunslinger, now the town drunkis forced to draw against Hotaling, a sadistic bully. But on that same day, Henry J. Fate rides into town. Somehow, Fates glance gives Dentons hand a life of its own, and Denton gets off two miraculous shots, disarming his tormentor and regaining the respect of the town. His dignity renewed, he swears off liquor. But all too soon, he finds himself in the same trap that drove him to the bottle in the first place: his newly-won reputation causes a young hotshot to challenge him to a duel. Denton discovers, however, that his old ability is completely gone, and in desperation he buys a potion from Fate guaranteed to give him ten seconds of deadly accuracy. The moment his opponent enters the saloon, Denton downs the potionand sees the other man doing exactly the same thing! The two shoot the guns out of each others hands, each sustaining an injury that will never allow him to shoot again. Denton, freed of ever having to face down another man, tells his adversary that theyve both been blessed.
Mr. Henry Fate, dealer in utensils and pots and pans, liniments and potions. A fanciful little man in a black frock coat who can help a man climbing out of a pitor another man from falling into one. Because, you see, Fate can work that way … in the Twilight Zone.
Serling followed up Walking Distance with the first of what would be three strong and moving fantasies in a row. Originally, his idea for the story was something entitled You Too Can be a Fast Gun, about a meek schoolteacher who achieves his wish to be a gunfighter by way of a magic potion, but eventually Serling rethought the story and opted for something a little less superficial. Mr. Denton on Doomsday explores a theme that writers would touch on often on The Twilight Zone, that of a person magically granted a second chance.
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