Twilight Zone Companion

by Marc Scott Zicree

  Taylor, andfinallyDr. Kildare, casting Richard Chamberlain and setting the tone of the show. And then came Twilight Zone.

  Luckily for Hirschman, production manager Ralph W. Nelson and director of photography George T. Clemens were staying put, allowing the show to maintain some sense of continuity. Clemens found Hirschman a man to his liking. Hirschman and I got along great, he says. He didnt try to change anything. He didnt come in with his own fixed ideas. He said, What youve been doing in the past has certainly worked. Im going to keep it that way. Clemens also found Hirschmans experience as a director a welcome asset. Whenever it came to a point where we had to make retakes or something, he wouldnt bring the director back, hed come down and direct it himself, which was great for us because then we werent dependent on one person.

  The shooting schedule that greeted Hirschman on the hour shows was quite different from the half hours. Says George Clemens, It was six days. There was a day of rehearsal and a day of set pickups. So I would work eight days and then I would have four days with the weekend off.

  Since the shooting of episodes was scheduled back to back, and since preparation was needed prior to each episodes shooting, Clemens couldnt possibly be director of photography on all episodes. At his recommendation, Hirschman hired Robert W. Pittack (who had substituted for him on Person or Persons Unknown) to alternate with him as director of photography every other episode.

  As for scripts, when Hirschman entered the scene he had to start from scratchalmost. There was only one script that actually had been prepared, he relates. CBS gave me a script to read which fit into our format in a way. It was a story of a lot of scientists of the United States government vying with Russia to invent an anti-gravity device. It was a fascinating script by a very prominent screenwriter and it had been written as a pilot. The reason we finally didnt do it was that it was going to be so expensive to do, because of the various devices that had to be created when the government built this instrument, so that it could lift itself off the ground. It just got to be too cumbersome and expensive.

  Meanwhile, Serling was off at Antioch, teaching Mass Media and Writing in Dramatic Form to undergraduates. But this was not turning out to be the vacation from writing he had intended. He was busy at work on the screenplay adaptation of Seven Days in May. In addition, Serling was turning out a number of Twilight Zone scripts. He would mail me his scripts, says Hirschman, and I would send him the other scripts that he himself hadnt written. Then wed discuss his comments and notes on the phone.

  Serling was busy, and his full attention was not on Twilight Zone. We had a few fights, Hirschman admits. Rod was a tremendously talented writer and very, very facile. He was so much better than the average television writer that even half as good as he was capable of writing was better than most. I think it became easy for him. And our fights consisted of me saying, Rod, I think you can do better than this. The scripts were pretty good by television standards, I just thought he was capable of better work, and he had to be flogged and kicked in the ass, frankly, and argued with to bestir him to improve on what was already pretty good. So any arguments we had were basically in those categories where hed send me a script which, if it came from somebody else, Id have been thrilled with, but I knew he was capable of better things.

  Serlings presence in Yellow Springs also complicated his role as host-narrator on the show. Whenever he had to fly in to L.A. on other business, Hirschman made sure Rod came in to the studio and got in front of the cameras. That was part of our day off, George Clemens recalls. Wed get Serling out here and do as many as we could, three or four at a time. Wed do things before the picture was made and hope that the things that he spoke about would come to pass in the picture. Hirschman directed all of these openings, which were filmed with Serling standing in front of a gray background.

  Hirschman recalls yet another uncredited contribution to the show. I did, for good or bad, create the main title. You know, the clock ticking and the mannequin. I wanted to find some things that were interesting. I created that and I directed it. I supervised the making of the props and I came up with the notion of the things floating through the void. Rod wrote the narration and that sparked in me the symbols that I wanted to use.

  Hirschman was determined that the hour shows have a fighting chance. He bought high-quality scripts from Matheson, Beaumont, Reginald Rose and Earl Hamner, Jr., and recruited Twilight Zone alumni directors Buzz Kulik, Don Medford, John Brahm and Abner Biberman. Production got under way at a brisk pace, as this passage in a letter from Hirschman to Serling, dated September 19, 1962, indicates: We are very busy here today shooting scenes with Hitler on one stage, a spaceship on another, and a leopard on a third.

  The new Twilight Zone debuted January 3, 1963. Serling was less than ecstatic about the scheduling. The Thursday nine oclock slot will eliminate a sizeable young audience that we had in the Friday night berth, he wrote the network, adding philosophically, but Im sure one cant expect everything.

  Others on the show had even greater misgivings. After about the fourth or fifth episode, recalls George Clemens, I said, Itll die very quick. I didnt think that the story material we had would carry for an hour.

  But, as everyone realized, in the end that determination would have to be made by the audience.

  IN HIS IMAGE (1/3/63)

  Written by Charles Beaumont

  Producer: Herbert Hirschman

  Director: Perry Lafferty

  Director of Photography: George T. Clemens

  Music: stock

  Cast: Alan Talbot/Walter Ryder, Jr.:George Grizzard Jessica Connelly: Gail Kobe Old Woman:Katherine Squire Man: Wallace Rooney Girl: Sherry Granato Sheriff: James Seay Driver: George Petrie Hotel Clerk: Jamie Forster Double for Grizzard:George Grizzard Joseph Sargent

  What you have just witnessed could be the end of a particularly terrifying nightmare. It isnt its the beginning. Although Alan Talbot doesnt know it, he is about to enter a strange new world, too incredible to be real, too real to be a dream. Its called the Twilight Zone.

  Leaving his New York City hotel at 4:30 a.m., Alan Talbot enters a subway station. The only person there is an old woman, a religious fanatic who presses a pamphlet into his hands. Hearing odd electronic sounds in his mind, he pleads with the woman to leave him alone, but when she wont he throws her in the path of a speeding subway train. Niney minutes later, he arrives at the apartment of his fiancee, Jessica Connelly whom hes known for only four dayswith no memory of the murder. Together, they start the long drive to Coeurville, Alans home town, to meet his Aunt Mildred. During the drive, Alan dozes off, mumbles something about Walter and, strangely, upon awakening, tells Jessica he knows no one of that name. Reaching Coeurville, Alan begins Jessicas tour and is met with a number of nasty surprises: there are buildings which he has never seen before which seemingly have been erected in the week hes been gone; his key doesnt fit the lock on Aunt Mildreds house, and the stranger who answers the door claims hes never heard of any such person; the university

  he works at is now an empty field; people he remembers seeing a week before have been dead for years; and in the graveyard, the tombstones marking his parents graves are gone, replaced by those of a Walter Ryder and his wife. Jessica doesnt know what to make of this, but she loves Alan and intends to stick by him. But driving back to New York, Alan hears the odd noises and is filled with a murderous rage. He orders Jessica to stop, leaps from the car and demands she drive on. She obeysunaware of Alan as he runs behind the car, insanely brandishing a large rock. Suddenly, another car rounds a bend and strikes him, putting a large gash in his arm. He looks down and sees, not blood, but lights, wires and transistors revealed just beneath his skin! Alan quickly covers the injury with a cloth, then has the driver drop him off at his hotel room. Looking in a phone book, he finds a listing for a Walter Ryder, Jr. He goes to the address and, disconcertingly, his key does fit this door. He steps inside and comes face to face with … Walter, a shy and lonely man who is his exact dou
ble! Walter explains that Alan is a robot that he created eight days ago. Although he left Coeurville twenty years earlier, he used his hazy recollections of the place to give Alan a fictitious past. His intention was to create an artificial man in his own image but with none of the defects. However, Alan is flawed: a week ago, he attacked Walter with a pair of scissors, then fled. Hes insane, and he cant be fixed. Desperate, Alan tells Walter of Jessica and insists despite Walters protests that its not possiblethat Walter make another Alan, a perfect one, for Jessica. He fishes the crumpled pamphlet out of his pocket and jots down her address, but the sight of the pamphlet triggers another fit; murderously, he attacks Walter. Later, answering a knock at her door, Jessica is relieved to see Alan, who reassures her that everything is going to be fine. Fortunately for her, this isnt really Alanits Walter. Alan is back in Walters lab, deactivated for good.

  In a way, it can be said that Walter Ryder succeeded in his lifes ambition, even though the man he created was, after all, himself There may be easier ways to self-improvement, but sometimes it happens that the shortest distance between two points is a crooked linethrough the Twilight Zone.

  Charles Beaumonts In His Image (based on the short story included in his collection Yonder) begins with youthful Alan Talbot (George Grizzard) pushing an old woman into the path of a speeding subway trainto the accompaniment of bizarre electronic noises in his head then, only minutes later, cheerfully meeting with his fiancee. (Jay Fredericks, in his review of the episode in the Charleston, West Virginia, Gazette-Mail, jokingly noted that when the weird noises started, I thought the Martians were arriving by subway.) Alan Talbot discovers what he is made of

  When the short story first appeared in the February, 1957, issue of Imagination (under the title The Man Who Made Himself), the main characters name was Pete Nolan, after Beaumonts friend William F. Nolan. But Beaumont, sensitive to the fact that Nolan might not like having a murderous robot with his last name plastered across the television screens of America, changed it when he wrote the script. Very possibly, the name Talbot came from another character with a dreadful inner secret Lawrence Talbot, better known as The Wolf Man.

  In this episode, Beaumonts writing is some of his most thoughtful since Long Live Walter Jameson. Particularly effective is a scene near the end, in which Alan confronts his creator, Walter Ryder. Here, Grizzard plays a dual role far removed from his part in The Chaser. It is a tour de force of writing, directing and acting, for although Grizzard plays both Alan and Walter the illusion that this is a scene between two separate men is perfect. Grizzard presents two completely distinct characters. Alan warm, intelligent and personable (if you can excuse the occasional lapses into psychosis); and Walter bitter, lonely, full of self-loathing. The split screen when the two are talking to each other is indiscernable, and the double for Grizzard when either Walter or Alan is seen from the back (played by Joseph Sargent, later to turn director and do such films as The Forbin Project and The Taking of Pelham One, Two, Three) looks exactly like Grizzard from the back. Alan asks Walter the all-important question:

  alan: Who am I?

  Walter: Youre nobody, Alan, nobody at all.

  alan (Angrily): Stop it, Walter!

  Walter: Well, who is this watch Im wearing, ask me that. Who is the refrigerator in the kitchen?

  Dont you understand?

  alan: No.

  Walter: Youre a machine, Alan, a mechanical device.

  alan: I dont believe it!

  Walter: I dont blame you, I wouldnt believe it either,

  * but its true. The fact is, you were born a long time ago, in my head. All kids have dreams, dont they? Well, you were mine. The others thought about joining the army or flying to Mars, and they finally grew up and forgot their dreams. I didnt. I thought about one thing and longed for one thing always. Just one. A perfect artificial man. Not a robot. A duplicate of a human being. Well, it was harmless, not even very imaginative for a child. But then I became an adult, only somewhere along the way I forgot to grow uplike most geniuses. I kept my dream. I created you, Alan, is that straight enough for you?

  The finale that Beaumont provides is a happy one: the killer robot is destroyed; Walter, by impersonating his own creation, finds an escape from loneliness; and Jessica gets the man she lovesor, at least, someone mighty close. Beaumont tries to keep this a last-minute cliff-hanger by having Alan and Walter grapple in a fight to the death, so that when one of them subsequently knocks at Jessicas door, we are kept in suspense as to which it really is. But it isnt really much of a surprise. In order to present the alternative endingan innocent young woman being left to the mercies of a clockwork maniac Twilight Zone itself would have to have been demented. This does not matter, though. In His Image is exciting, suspenseful and thought-provoking. If this was to be a representative example of the hour-long shows, the series had nothing to worry about.

  Unfortunately, such was not the case.

  THE THIRTY-FATHOM GRAVE (1/10/63)

  Written by Rod Serling

  Producer: Herbert Hirschman

  Director: Perry Lafferty

  Director of Photography: George T. Clemens

  Music: stock

  Cast: Chief Bell: Mike Kellin Capt. Beecham: Simon Oakland Doc: David Sheiner McClure: John Considine O.O.D.: Bill Bixby Lee Helmsman: Tony Call Helmsman: Derrick Lewis Ensign Marmer: Conlan Carter Sonar Operator: Charles Kuenstle ASW Officer: Forrest Compton Jr. O.O.D.: Henry Scott Sailor #1: Vince Bagetta Sailor #2: Louie Elias

  Incident one hundred miles off the coast of Guadalcanal. Time: the present. The United States naval destroyer on what has been a most uneventful cruise. In a moment, they’re going to send a man down thirty fathoms to check on a noise maker someone or some thing tapping on metal. You may or may not read the results in a naval report, because Captain Beecham and his crew have just set a course that will lead this ship and everyone on it into the Twilight Zone.”

  Onboard the destroyer, sonar picks up a sunken submarine on the ocean floor and a persistent clanging coming from within the sub! One sailor jokingly says its ghosts, a suggestion that causes Chief Bella man seemingly on the verge of a nervous breakdown to faint. Diver McClure is sent down to investigate. He finds the sub considerably damaged, with evidence of having been strafed. Although it is of American design, the numbers on it are inaccessible. McClure taps on the outside and gets a tapping response from within: someone definitely seems to be inside. And yet no subs are listed as being in that area. Later, the sub shifts slightly and its numbers become legible; it is an American sub, sunk by the Japanese on August 7, 1942over twenty years agol Meanwhile, in sick bay, Chief Bell feels some mysterious force beckoning to him. Looking in the mirror and down the corridor, he sees the ghosts of young seamen, their clothes drenched, motioning for him to join them. The doctor dismisses this as an

  hallucination, but he has no explanation for the seaweed he finds in the corridor! Then McClure discovers something beside the sub: dogtags with Chief Bells name on them. Bell confesses to Captain Beecham that he was assigned as a signalman on the sub during World War II, and that it was sunk because he accidentally dropped a signal lamp, knocking off its red filter and exposing light to the enemy. He alone survived and now, burdened by tremendous guilt, he feels that the ghosts of his crewmates are calling muster on him. Beecham argues that the sub was surrounded; it wasnt Bells fault. Bell doesnt seem to hear. Hysterical, he slips the dogtags on, rushes from the room, runs to the side of the ship, dives overboard and drowns. Later, a team of divers enters the sub. McClure reports to the captain that a sheared section of periscope was swinging, and that, no doubt, accounted for the sounds. Very probably, but then what about the disquieting fact that one of the dead men had a hammer in his hand … ?

  Small naval engagement, the month of April, 1963. Not to be found in any historical annals. Look for this one filed under H for hauntingin the Twilight Zone

  Executed as a half-hour show, The Thirty-Fathom Grave might have been effective
ly eerie, in the tradition of Judgment Night, but at an hour it is impossibly padded. Rather than having the story develop at a normal pace, each new piece of information is revealed with all the urgency of sap dripping from a tree. Having divers investigate the sub once would suffice dramatically; here they go down three separate times. The writing borders on self-parody, as in this snatch of dialogue between the destroyers captain (Simon Oakland) and the officer of the day (Bill Bixby):

  o.o.d. (.Reacting to the clanking sound coming over the speaker from the sonar shack): Its wild.

  captain: That it is, Lieutenant.

  o.o.d.: But if it isnt a sub, sir, what is it?

  captain: Maybe its a Spanish galleon with a treasure chest and a loose lid thats off its hinges. (Meaningfully) Or maybe itsmaybe its just our imaginations.

  And later, when they discover that the ship was sunk in 1942:

  officer: Well, that was twenty years ago! Captain

  Beecham, whos down there? Whos inside that sub?

  captain: Somebody who dies damn hard.

  As the spooked bosuns mate, Mike Kellin (later to get an Oscar nomination for his role as the father in the movie Midnight Express) gives a convincing performance, as does Simon Oakland. But their efforts are in vain. As Variety noted in its review of the episode (regrettably drawing conclusions about the series as a whole), In a show where the imagination has been given freedom to run riot, it has chosen to plod along a well-marked groove.

  MUTE (1/31/63)

  Written by Richard Matheson