A Short History of The Twilight Zone
Rod Serling Producer/Writer
of
THE TWILIGHT ZONE
“You are traveling through another dimension, a dimension not only of sight and sound but of mind. A journey into a wondrous land of imagination. Next stop, the Twilight Zone!”
Of course this is going to be more than a short history. It’s going to be an appreciation of one of the early great television shows. A show that brought not only better, more imaginative writing to television, but also was an incredible showcase for many talented people. Writer’s, actors, and directors all had a chance to work on television in a quality vehicle. In 1959 the American home was invaded once a week by an incredibly imaginative mind (Serling wrote over 50% of the scripts for the five season span). From 1959 to 1964 five seasons and one hundred and sixty-four episodes aired on CBS Television.
The pilot that Serling chose was a story he wrote called, Where Is Everybody? starring Earl Holliman in a tour de force of a one man performance. This episode clearly reflected not only Serling’s intent, but that he was raising the bar for what could be called quality television. It would be decades before the majority of television producers would catch up and then only in fits and bounds and finally with the introduction of cable and more freedom would the renaissance really begin.
The second episode was shear genius, giving the audience a heartwarming story about death called, One for the Angels. Ed Wynn and Murray Hamilton soar in this simple tale of Mr. Death (Murray Hamilton) coming for an old salesman known as Lou Bookman (Ed Wynn). The cast is completed by Dana Dillaway who plays one of the children that lives in the same building as Bookman. These two episodes remain among the best of the original Twilight Zone. Before we get too far into the individual episodes, a little background is required.
The Twilight Zone was produced by Cayuga Productions, Inc., which was Serling’s own company. Before producing the show, Serling had written a number of well known scripts for TV including Patterns and Requiem for a Heavyweight (both of which eventually were made for the silver screen), Patterns (1956) and Requiem for a Heavyweight (1962). Patterns is the story of a man who is recruited onto the board of a large New York corporation and finds that his ethics and ambitions are at odds. Requiem for a Heavyweight is the story of a punch drunk boxer who is at the end of the road; but can he get away from the only thing he knows and the men that want to exploit him?
Serling’s deep interest in social issues and his defiance of the network norms would be his undoing with TV further down the road, but for now–he was it’s golden boy. He had pitched the show with a script called, The Time Element which was then produced for Westinghouse-Desilu Playhouse anthology. The episode starred William Bendix and was about a man that believed he has travelled back in time to the attack on Pearl Harbor.
The episode was so popular that CBS green lighted The Twilight Zone. Rod Serling was about to break television out of the prison imposed by short sightedness, sponsors, and venal motivation.
In Part 2 we will look at the first season of The Twilight Zone.