The
Twilight Zone
is generally considered to be the first real "adult"
science-fantasy anthology series to appear on American television,
introducing the late 1950s TV audience to an entertaining and at
the same time thought-provoking collection of human condition stories
wrapped within fantastic themes. Although the series is usually
labeled a science fiction program its true sphere was fantasy, embracing
elements of the supernatural, the psychological, and "the almost-but-not-quite;
the unbelievable told in terms that can be believed" (Rod Serling).
During
the show's five-year, 155-episode run on CBS (1959-64) the program
received three Emmy Awards (Rod Serling, twice, for Outstanding
Writing Achievement in Drama, and George Clemens for Outstanding
Achievement in Cinematography), three World Science Fiction Convention
Hugo Awards (for Dramatic Presentation: 1960, 1961, 1962), a Directors
Guild Award (John Brahm), a Producers Guild Award (Buck Houghton
for Best Produced Series), and the 1961 Unit Award for Outstanding
Contributions to Better Race Relations, among numerous other awards
and presentations.
The Twilight
Zone : The After Hours
The
Twilight Zone: In Praise
The
brain-child of one of the most successful young playwrights of his
time (with such "Golden Age" TV successes as "Patterns" and "Requiem
for a Heavyweight"), Rod Serling's The Twilight Zone began life
as a story called "The Time Element" which Serling had submitted
to CBS, where it was produced as part of the
Westinghouse-Desilu
Playhouse
anthology. Although it was little more than a simple
time-warp tale, starring William Bendix as a man who believes he
goes back in time to the attack on Pearl Harbor, the TV presentation
received an extraordinary amount of complementary mail and prompted
CBS to commission a
Twilight Zone
pilot for a possible series.
With his "Time Element" script already used, Serling prepared another
story which would be the pilot episode for the series. "Where Is
Everybody?" opened
The Twilight Zone
on 2 October 1959, and
featured a riveting one-man performance by Earl Holliman as a psychologically
stressed Air Force man who hallucinates that he is completely alone
in a deserted but spookily "lived in" town while actually undergoing
an isolation experiment. It was this hallucinatory human stress
situation placed in a could-be science-fantasy landscape, complete
with an O. Henry-type "snapper ending", that was to become the standard
structure of The
Twilight Zone
. "Here's what
The Twilight
Zone
is," explained Serling to
TV Guide
magazine in November
1959. "It's an anthology series, half hour in length, that delves
into the odd, the bizarre, the unexpected. It probes into the dimension
of imagination but with a concern for taste and for an adult audience
too long considered to have IQs in negative figures."
Serling's
contract with the network stipulated that he would write eighty
per cent of the first season's scripts which would be produced under
Serling's own Cayuga Productions banner. The prolific Serling, of
course, ended up writing well over 50% of the entire show's teleplays
during its five years on the air. This enormous output was for the
most part supported by two other writers of distinction in the science-fantasy
genre: Richard Matheson and Charles Beaumont. Matheson's literary
and screenplay work before and during the series ran parallel to
that of Beaumont; not suprisingly, since they were personal friends
and often script-writing collaborators during their early days in
television. Matheson's early writing had included the short story
collection,
Born of Man and Woman,
and a novel,
I Am Legend
(both published 1954), and later the screenplays for
The Incredible
Shrinking Man
(1957; from his own novel),
House of Usher
(1960), and
The Pit and the Pendulum
(1961). Beaumont's
work included similar science fiction and horror-fantasy writings,
with the short story collections
Shadow Play
(published 1957)
and
Yonder
(1958) as well as screenplays for
Premature
Burial
(1962) and
The Haunted Palace
(1963) alongside
others in a similar vein. Their individual scripts for
The Twilight
Zone
were perhaps the nearest in style and story flavor to Serling's
own work. George Clayton Johnson was another young writer who, emerging
from Beaumont's circle of writer friends, produced some outstanding
scripts for the series, including the crackling life-or-death bet
story "A Game of Pool", featuring excellent performances from Jack
Klugman and Jonathan Winters. Earl Hamner Jr., later to be creator
and narrator of the long-running
The Waltons
, supplied eight
scripts to the series, most of which featured good-natured rural
folk and duplicitous city slickers. The renowned science fiction
author Ray Bradbury was asked by Serling to contribute to the series
before the show had even started but due to the richness of Bradbury's
written work, he contributed only one script, "I Sing the Body Electric",
based on his own short story.
As
an anthology focusing on the "dimension of imagination" and using
parable and suggestion as basic techniques,
The Twilight Zone
favored only a dozen or so story themes. For instance, the most
recurring theme appeared to be Time, involving time warps and accidental
journeys through time: a W.W.I flier lands at a modern jet air base
(Matheson's "The Last Flight"), a man finds himself back in 1865
and tries to prevent the assassination of President Lincoln (Serling's
"Back There"), three soldiers on National Guard maneuvers in Montana
find themselves back in 1876 at the Little Big Horn (Serling's "The
7th Is Made Up of Phantoms"). Another theme explored The Confrontation
with Death/The Dead: a girl keeps seeing the same hitchhiker on
the road ahead, beckoning her toward a fatal accident (Serling's
"The Hitchhiker", from Lucille Fletcher's radio play), an aged recluse,
fearing a meeting with Death, reluctantly helps a wounded policeman
on her doorstep and cares for him overnight before she realizes
that he is Death, coming to claim her (Johnson's "Nothing in the
Dark"). Expected science fiction motifs regarding Aliens and Alien
Contact, both benevolent and hostile, provide another story arena:
a timid little fellow accustomed to being used as a
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doormat
by his fellow man is endowed with super-human strength by a visiting
scientist from Mars (Serling's "Mr. Dingle, the Strong"), visiting
aliens promise to show the people of earth how to end the misery
of war, pestilence and famine until a code clerk finally deciphers
their master manual for earth and discovers a cook book (Serling's
"To Serve Man", from a Damon Knight story). Other themes common
to the series were Robots, with Matheson's excellent "Steel" a standout;
The Devil, Beaumont's "The Howling Man"; Nostalgia, Serling's "Walking
Distance" and "A Stop at Willoughby"; Machines, Serling's "The Fever";
Angels, Serling's poetic "A Passage for Trumpet"; and "Premonitions/Dreams/Sleep,"
Beaumont's "Perchance to Dream". The general tone of many
Twilight
Zone
stories was cautionary, that man can never be too sure
of anything that appears real or otherwise.
The Twilight Zone: Night of the Meek
The Twilight Zone: Time Enough at Last
In
1983 Warner Brothers, Steven Spielberg and John Landis produced
Twilight Zone
the Movie, a four segment tribute to the original
series presenting pieces directed by Landis (also written by Landis),
Spielberg (written by George Clayton Johnson, Richard Matheson,
Josh Rogan, based on the original 1962 episode "Kick the Can"),
Joe Dante (written by Matheson, based on the original 1961 episode
"It's a Good Life"), and George Miller (written by Matheson from
his own story and original 1963 episode "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet").
From 1985 onwards CBS Entertainment produced a new series of
The
Twilight Zone.
Honored science fiction scribe Harlan Ellison
acted as creative consultant under executive producer Philip DeGuere;
the series is particularly noted for the participating name directors,
such as Wes Craven, William Friedkin, and Joe Dante. In more recent
times,
Twilight Zone: Rod Serling's Lost Classics
presented
a 2-hour TV movie based on two unproduced works discovered by the
late writer's widow and literary executor, Carol Serling: Robert
Markowitz directed both "The Theater" (scripted by Matheson from
Serling's original story) and "Where the Dead Are" (from a completed
Serling script).
With its subtext of escape from reality, a nostalgia for more simple
times, but generally a hunger for other-worldly adventures, it seems
appropriate that the original The Twilight Zone series appeared
at about the right time to take viewers away, albeit briefly, from
the contemporary real-life fears of the Cold War, the Berlin Wall,
the Cuban Missile Crisis, and, eventually, the tragic events of
Dallas. That
The Twilight Zone,
directly or indirectly, inspired
such later fantasy and SF anthologies as Thriller (1960-62), with
its dark Val Lewtonesque atmosphere, and, following that, the superb
The Outer Limits
(1963-64), a delicious tribute to 1950s
science fiction cinema when it was at its most imaginative, remain
testimony to both Rod Serling and his
Twilight Zone'
s spirit
of poetry and principle.
-Tise
Vahimagi
HOST
Rod Serling (1959-1965)
NARRATORS
Charles Aidman (1985-1987)
Robin Ward (1987-1988)
PRODUCERS
Rod Serling, Buck Houghton, William Froug, Herbert Hirschman
PROGRAMMING
HISTORY
134 Half-hour Episodes; 17 One-hour Episodes
CBS
October 1959-September 1962 Friday 10:10:30
January 1963-September 1963 Thursday 9:00-10:00
September 1961-September 1964 Friday 9:30-10:00
May 1965-September 1965 Sunday 9:00-10:00
September 1985-April 1986 Friday 8:00-9:00
June 1986-September 1986 Friday 8:00-9:00
September 1986-October 1986 Saturday 10:00-11:00
December 1986 Thursday 8:00-8:30
July 1987 Friday 10:00-11:00
1987-1988 First Run Syndication
FURTHER
READING
Boddy, William. "Entering the Twilight Zone."
Screen
(London),
July-October, 1984.
Javna,
John.
The Best of Science Fiction TV: The Critics' Choice: From
Captain Video to Star Trek, from The Jetsons to Robotech.
New
York: Harmony, 1987.
Lentz, Harris M.
Science Fiction, Horror & Fantasy Film and Television
Credits: Over 10,000 Actors, Actresses, Directors
. Jefferson,
North Carolina: McFarland, 1983.
_______________.
Science Fiction, Horror & Fantasy Film And Television Credits, Supplement
2, Through 1993.
Jefferson,
North Carolina: McFarland, 1994.
Rothenberg,
Randall. "Synergy of Surrealism and The Twilight Zone."
The New
York Times,
2 April 1991.
Sander,
Gordon F.
Serling: The Rise and Twilight of Television's Last
Angry Man.
New York: Dutton, 1992.
Schumer,
Arlen.
Visions from the Twilight Zone
. San Francisco: Chronicle,
1990.
Zicree,
Marc Scott.
The Twilight Zone Companion.
Toronto; New York:
Bantam, 1982.
Ziegler,
Robert E. "Moving Out of Sight: Fantastic Vision in The Twilight
Zone."
Lamar Journal of the Humanities
(Beaumont, Texas),
Fall 1987.
See also
Science-fiction
Programs
;
Serling,
Rod
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