Twilight Zone Companion

by Marc Scott Zicree

  The Parallel

  Written by Rod Serling

  Producer: Bert Granet

  Director: Alan Crosland

  Director of Photography:Robert W. Pittack

  Music: stock

  Cast: Robert Gaines: Steve Forrest Helen Gaines: Jacqueline Scott Col. Connacher: Frank Aletter Maggie Gaines: Shari Lee Bernath General Eaton: Philip Abbott Captain: Morgan Jones Project Manager: William Sargent Psychiatrist: Paul Comi

  In the vernacular of space, this is T minus one hour; sixty minutes before a human being named Major Robert Gaines is lifted off from the Mother Earth and rocketed into the sky, farther and longer than any man ahead of him. Call this one of the first faltering steps of man to sever the umbilical cord of gravity and stretch out a fingertip toward an unknown. In a moment well join this astronaut named Gaines and embark on an adventure, because the environs overheadthe stars, the sky, the infinite spaceare all part of a vast question mark known as the Twilight Zone.

  While orbiting the Earth, Gainess capsule inexplicably disappears from the radar screens. Gaines wakes up in a hospital. He was found in his capsule forty-six miles from point of lift-off. The capsulewhich had no gear for landing on solid groundwas completely undamaged. It is a mystery for which Gaines has no explanation. He soon finds, however, that it is but the first of a number of mysteries: Colonel Connacher claims not to have called Gainess wife Helen prior to the launch when Gaines is certain that he did; Gainess house has a white picket fence hes never seen before; and everyone says hes a colonel when he knows hes a major. Both his wife and his daughter Maggie sense something strangely different about him. Doubting his own mind, he visits the Army Psychiatric Division. A psychiatrist finds Gainess delusions peculiar, particularly his belief that the President of the United States is John Kennedysomeone no one else has ever heard of! Later, Gaines tells Connacher that hes looked through a set of encyclopedias and found a number of historical facts subtly altered, as though this is a world parallel to the one he knows. Connacher finds this all hard to swallow. To prove his point, Gaines asks Maggie who he is. She doesnt knowall she knows is that hes not her daddy! Meanwhile, back

  at the base, scientists have discovered that the capsule in which Gaines was found is not the one they sent up, but rather an almost-identical duplicate. Asking Gaines to identify it, he runs toward the capsule and abruptly finds himself back in orbit, bringing his capsule in for a splash-down. In the hospital, Gaines learns that he was out of radar contact for six hours. He tells General Eaton and Colonel Connacher that he was in a parallel world populated by duplicates of all of them, in which he was a colonel. The others dismiss this as a bizarre delusion, but then an officer rushes up to them with the news that just moments ago the Cape picked up an unidentified spacecraft on radar for a period of ninety seconds accompanied by a radio transmission from a Colonel Robert Gaines!

  Major Robert Gaines, a latter-day voyager just returned from an adventure. Submitted to you without any recommendations as to belief or disbelief. You can accept or reject; you pays your money and you takes your choice. But credulous or incredulous, don’t bother to ask anyone for proof that it could happen. The obligation is a reverse challenge: prove that it couldn’t. This happens to be … the Twilight Zone.”

  Although an interesting concept, The Parallel suffers from flat acting, particularly in the lead. As a result, what might have been as engrossing as And When the Sky Was Opened never generates much energy. (The same theme was explored in Journey to the Far Side of the Sun, a 1969 film starring Roy Thinnes.)

  There were other problems, too. Censorship was so strict at that time, Bert Granet recalls. We tried something that was a shade too subtle, but basically I didnt want him to find out he was on the wrong planet until he went to bed with [the woman he thought was his wife]. The sexual habits were different. Theres a suggestion of it but its insufficient. Unless youre looking for it, I dont think youll find it.

  The New Exhibit

  Written by Jerry Sohl

  Producer: Bert Granet

  Director: John Brahm

  Director of Photography: George T. Clemens

  Music: stock

  Cast: Martin Lombard Senescu: Martin Balsam Mr. Ferguson: Will Kuluva Emma Senescu: Maggie Mahoney Dave: William Mims Henri Desire Landru: Milton Parsons Jack the Ripper: David Bond Albert W. Hicks: Bob Mitchell Burke: Robert L. McCord Hare: Billy Beck Gas Man: Phil Chambers Van Man: Lennie Breman Sailor: Ed Barth Guide: Marcel Hillaire 2nd Sailor: Craig Curtis

  Martin Lombard Senescu, a gentle man, the dedicated curator of murderers’ row in Ferguson’s Wax Museum. He ponders the reasons why ordinary men are driven to commit mass murder. What Mr. Senescu does not know is that the groundwork has already been laid for his own special kind of madness and torment found only in the Twilight Zone.”

  Mr. Ferguson tells Martin that, as the result of poor attendance, he has been forced to sell the wax museum; it is to be demolished and a supermarket built in its place. Martin has been his employee for thirty years, and five of the figures have come to have special meaning for him, almost as though they were close friends. They are Jack the Ripper, Burke and Hare, Albert W. Hicks (who, one day in 1860, killed every member of a ships crew with an ax) and Henri Desire Landruall notorious murderers and all the handiwork of the great Henri Guilmont. Martin pleads to be allowed to house the figures in his basement; perhaps he will be able to get backers to open his own wax museum. Reluctantly, Ferguson agreesto the dismay of Martins wife Emma. As the weeks pass, Martin is unable to get backers, and the electricity bills to keep the basement air conditioned are staggering. The Senescus are broke. Nevertheless, Martins obsession with the figures continues to grow; he spends all his wraking hours down with them, grooming and attending them. Desperate to return to some kind of normalcy, Emma asks her brother Dave for advice. He suggests sabotage; disconnect the air conditioner and soon the wax figures wont be a problem. Late that night, Emma sneaks down to the basement to pull the plug. But suddenly, Jack the Ripper comes to life and murders her. Next morning, Martin discovers the body and sees blood on Jacks knife. Realizing that the police would never believe that a wax dummy killed his wife, Martin buries Emma in the basement and covers the grave with cement. But when Dave shows up, Martin has another problem: Dave wont swallow his story that Emmas gone to visit his sister, particularly when he hears the air conditioner going full blast downstairs! Dave sneaks into the basement and is promptly dispatched by an ax wielded by Albert W. Hicks. Now Martin has to dig a second grave! Sometime later, Mr. Ferguson arrives with the news that he intends to sell the five figures to the Marchand Museum in Brussels. Although Martin protests, Ferguson remains adamant. When Martin goes upstairs to prepare some tea, Landru strangles Ferguson with a garrote. Returning, Martin is appalled to find Ferguson dead. Enraged, he tells the figures that hes going to destroy them. They come alive and draw near him, speaking to Martin in his mind, telling him that it is he, not they, who committed the murders. Later, at the Marchand Museum, a guide leads a group of the curious through the murderers row, luridly relating the terrible deeds of each of the figures. Finally, he comes to the rows newest addition, a man who murdered his wife, brother-in-law and employer. It is the figure of Martin Lombard Senescu!

  The new exhibit became very popular at Marchands, but of all the figures none was ever regarded with more dread than that of Martin Lombard Senescu. It was something about the eyes, people said. Ifs the look that one often gets after taking a quick walk through the Twilight Zone

  In The New Exhibit, Martin Balsam does an excellent job playing a quiet little man with a most grisly hobby. As for the wax figures of the murderers, these are played by live actors, shown still-frame in closeups; the waxen makeup and their ability to stand very still creating a convincing illusion that they are actually inanimate wax. Where the story falls down is in its denouement. Although we see Jack the Ripper kill Martins wife, Hicks his brother-in-law and Landru his boss, at the end the murderers r
eveal that it is Martin who committed the murders. This just does not wash. Had there been a greater subtlety in the murder scenes, merely

  suggesting that the murders were committed by the figures without actually showing them, this ambiguity might have allowed for such a conclusion. But such is not the case.

  Although Charles Beaumont is credited as the sole writer on The New Exhibit, it was actually ghostwritten, in its entirety, by Jerry Sohl, a man who had been a staff writer on Alfred Hitchcock Presents and the author of numerous novels, including Costigans Needle and Point Ultimate (later, he would write the novel The Lemon Eaters and pen episodes for The Outer Limits, Star Trek and The Invaders). A year earlier, Beaumont had farmed out the writing of Dead Mans Shoes to OCee Ritch because he had been overwhelmed by his numerous writing commitments.

  But now, the reason was quite different.

  He was never well, Beaumonts friend William F. Nolan comments. He was always thin. He almost always had a headache. He used Bromo like somebody would use water. He had his Bromo bottle with him all the time. Hed buy it in those giant sizes, what he called window sizes, and hed empty one of those a month.

  Everybody kept saying, Chucks working too hard. Hes taking on too many jobs. Hes stretching himself too thin. Hes not sleeping enough. And the headaches got worse, and we thought, well sure, theyd get worse. If I was doing seventy scripts instead of two, Id have a headache, too. Sometimes, hed have as many as ten projects going on at once in 62. Hed have like five different TV scripts, a movie script that hes supposed to be working onand each one, the producers thought Beaumont was working on exclusively. But meanwhile, hed have OCee Ritch holed up in one part of the city writing a draft of one, hed have Jerry Sohl holed up writing a draft of another, John Tomerlin would be writing a draft of a third, Id be polishing a magazine article for him, hed be trying to get the movie written, Ray Russell would be working with him on a Roger Corman project, and hed just be running and running, making different appointments. Hed say, Ill be at Dupars and well have a ten-minute conference on the script, but I cant give you more than ten minutes, because Ive got to be over at Rays at four-thirty to meet him.’ So youd go, Chuck! Chuck! and youd try to fit yourself into this wild schedule. And I said to myself, Man, hes just going to kill himself doing that! He was pushing himself way too hard. Nobody could survive that kind of pressure.

  Soon, the pressure seemed to be taking its toll. By 63, he was drinking an awful lot, which Chuck never used to do, says Nolan. Every lunch hour, he had to have two or three martinis, and he would invite you over and it wouldnt be coffee anymore, it would be a martini or brandy or something. And his voice began to get slower, it began to get kind of loggy. Wed be calling up at ten in the morning, and hed say, Yesss, this is ol Beaumont! And Id say to myself, My God, he must have started drinking at ten oclock today! He just woke up an hour ago; he sounds fogged out already!

  Yet, for all of this, it turned out that the drinking was merely a reaction to something much, much worse that was happening to Beaumont. Says John Tomerlin, I was spending a great deal of time with Chuck at that time and was close enough to know that what he was drinking could not possibly account for the odd mental set that he had taken. He had a distorted view of his relationships with people, in business and personally. By distorted, I mean they were kind of just a half-notch off center, they were almost right, but not quite. He became extremely deliberate about his speech, and there would be pauses sometimes between syllables and words, and then at other times he would simply lose the thread of what he was saying and look at you rather bemusedly, as though he was waiting to hear whatever it was you were saying. It was kind of a frightening experience, because one realized that there was something wrong and it was impossible at that point to tell what it was.

  There were other, extremely mysterious symptoms not attributable to drinking. Says director Douglas Heyes, I didnt understand what was happening. Each time Id see him, hed seem so much older than I knew he was. Id say, God, Chuck has aged a lot! It was true. In a photograph published in Playboy at the time, Beaumontthen thirty-threeappears at least fifty.

  The last half of 63, he couldnt write, says William E Nolan. He was drunk all the timeor so we thought. He would go out unshaven to meetings, and the meetings would be disastrous. He couldnt come up with ideas in front of producers. Youve got to have the ability to think on your feet. If they dont like the purple elephant, youd better think of a red giraffe to throw in there. If you cant think of the red giraffe, the guy says, Well, I dont want the purple elephant. What else you got? Chuck would say, I … dont … have … anything … else! And theyd say, Well, were sorry, Mr. Beaumont, but we dont like the script.

  While all this was going on, Beaumonts wife was desperately trying to understand what was happening and treat it. Beaumonts son Chris explains, Because he worked very, very hard, we thought maybe it was just overwork, so we sent him to places where he could rest, hoping he would come back the man that we knew. When he didnt, it was very frustrating, because we thought each time we tried out one of these therapies that it would work. It was a great disappointment every time he would come home from whatever it was and he would be not only no better, he would be worse.

  Bill Idelson, with whom Beaumont collaborated on Long Distance Call, takes up the story. I was in analysis at that time and I sent Beaumont there, because people thought it was an emotional thing. My analyst saw him and he said, T cant do anything for this man, because hes too illphysically ill.

  Nolan: Finally, he went to UCLA for a battery of tests in about May of 64. The doctors diagnosed Beaumont as having one of two diseases: Alzheimers Disease or Picks Disease. Which one could only be discerned by an autopsy, but both had this much in common: they were degenerative diseases of the brain, popularly known as presenile dementia. The cause was unknown. The symptoms included acceleration of the aging process and a progressive loss of mental functions, including intellect, memory and coordination. Nolan recalls, They sent him home, saying, Theres absolutely no treatment for this disease. Its permanent and its terminal. Hell probably live from six months to three years with it. Hell decline and hell get where he cant stand up. He wont feel any pain. In fact, he wont even know this is happening.

  Time had run out for Beaumont, at the age of thirty-five. The drinking had been merely an effort to cloud his mind to a point where he was unaware that his mind was clouded for other reasons, as yet unnamed, terrifying in their implication. By the time he was properly diagnosed, he was too far gone to understand the truth. Says John Tomerlin, I think it just kind of faded out on him.

  The only time that he ever seemed to be aware of something dark and awful really happening to him, says William F. Nolan, was one night, late in 63, when John Tomerlin and I and Chuck went to Musso and Franks in Hollywood. We were going to have dinner and go to a movie. And I remember that night, he put his head in his hands and he said, I cant go to the movies, guys. We said, Whats wrong? He said, I just cant go to any more movies. I cant think about them. I cant follow them. I cant stay there and watch all that. I dont know whats wrong with me. And he just started to cry, and he said, I love you guys, but I just cant go to any more movies with you, and going to movies was one of the things that we all loved to do.

  That was a very sad night. Driving home, we dropped him off, John and I, and we said, Shit, something is horribly wrong with Chuck, and I wish to God we knew what it was.

  Charles Beaumont died February 22, 1967, at the age of thirty-eight. When he died, says his son Chris, he was physically a ninety-five-year-old man and looked ninety-five and was, in fact, ninety-five by every calendar except the one on your watch. Writer Brian Aldiss commented that Beaumont died in the old age of his youth. Says William F. Nolan, Like his character Walter Jameson, he just dusted away.

  In early 1963, all of this was in the future. For now, there were only early, minor symptoms, and Beaumont needed a ghost writer for Twilight Zone.

  Although it was against Writers Gui
ld rules, Jerry Sohl agreed, splitting the money fifty-fifty with Beaumont. Over the next year or so, he wrote five Twilight Zone scripts, three of which were produced, teleplays for Route 66, Naked City, and Alfred Hitchcock Presents, plus articles for Playboyall under Beaumonts name. It was ridiculous of me to do this, says Sohl, because he was just using me and I was not getting any pension money, I was not getting any health money, and it was perfectly dumb. On the other hand, I didnt have to deal with Bert Granet, I didnt have to deal with Rod Serling, I didnt have to do anything but write. What more could you ask? He was the one who went in and fought the battles, you see.

  About The New Exhibit, Sohl says, One of the men in the script is the man that gave Chuck the idea for the script itself, Albert W. Hicks, the ax murderer. So we got to talking about, Well, supposing that someone had an exhibit wherein this murderer was, and he came alive and did all this and then went back to the exhibit after he had committed the murder. The police would never be able to find him. This is the way that our minds went. Then we decided to change that and make it that they were all murderers, this is the murderers exhibit. In other words, all this evolved.

  Sohls script went before the cameras virtually unchanged, with no rewrites at all. This was the case with most of the scripts he ghosted. They went right in, and the reason is that Chuck Beaumont scripts were always so great that they didnt have to do anything.