The Twilight Zone (1959 TV series)
The Twilight Zone is a
television series created by
Rod Serling. The original series ran for five seasons on
CBS from
1959 to
1964 and remains
syndicated to this day.
As an
anthology series, each episode presented its own separate story, often involving people who face unusual or extraordinary circumstances, therefore entering "The Twilight Zone." Rod Serling served as a head
writer,
executive producer and
host of the program, delivering on-or-off-screen monologues at the beginning and end of each episode.
Development
By the late
1950s, Rod Serling was not a new name to
television. His successful teleplays included
Patterns (for
Kraft Television Theater) and
Requiem for a Heavyweight (for
Playhouse 90), but constant
changes and edits made by the networks and sponsors frustrated Serling, who decided that creating his own show was the best way to get around these obstacles. He thought that behind a television series with
robots,
aliens and other
supernatural occurrences, he could also express his political views in a more subtle fashion.
The Time Element was Serling's
1957 pilot pitch for his show, a
time travel adventure about a man who travels back to
Honolulu in
1941 and unsuccessfully tries to warn everyone about the impending
attack on Pearl Harbor. The script, however, was rejected and shelved for a year until
Bert Granet discovered and produced it as an episode of
Desilu Playhouse in
1958. The show was a huge success and enabled Serling to finally begin production on his anthology series,
"The Twilight Zone."
Season 1 (1959-1960)
The Twilight Zone premiered the night of
October 2,
1959 to rave reviews. "...
Twilight Zone is about the only show on the air that I actually look forward to seeing. It's the one series that I will let interfere with other plans," said Terry Turner for the
Chicago Daily News. Others agreed, the
Daily Variety ranking it with "the best that has ever been accomplished in half-hour filmed television" and the
New York Herald Tribune finding it to be "certainly the best and most original anthology series of the year".
Even as the show proved popular to television's critics, it struggled to find a receptive audience of television viewers. CBS was banking on a
rating of at least 21 or 22, but its initial numbers were much worse. The series' future was jeopardized when its third episode,
Mr. Denton on Doomsday earned an abysmal 16.3 rating. The show attracted a large enough audience to survive a brief hiatus in
November, during which it finally surpassed its competition on
ABC and
NBC and convinced its sponsors (
General Foods and the
Kimberly-Clark Corporation) to stay on until the end of the season.
With one exception (
The Chaser), the first season featured only scripts written by Rod Serling,
Charles Beaumont and
Richard Matheson, a team that was eventually responsible for 127 of the show's 156 episodes. Many of the first season's episodes proved to be among the series' most celebrated, including
Time Enough at Last,
Walking Distance and
The After Hours. The first season won Serling an unprecedented fourth
Emmy for dramatic writing, a Producers Guild Award for Serling's creative partner
Buck Houghton and the
Hugo Award for best dramatic presentation.
Season 2 (1960-1961)
The second season premiered on
September 30,
1960 with
King Nine Will Not Return, Serling's fresh take on the pilot episode
Where Is Everybody?. The familiarity of this first story stood in stark contrast to the novelty of the show's new packaging:
Bernard Herrmann's original theme had been replaced by
Marius Constant's guitar-and-bongo riff, the
Daliesque landscapes of the original opening were replaced by an even more surreal introduction inspired by the new images in Serling's narration ("That's the signpost up ahead"), and Serling himself stepped in front of the cameras for the first time to present his opening narration surrounded by the scenery he was describing.
A new sponsor,
Colgate-Palmolive, replaced the previous year's
Kimberly-Clark Corporation and a new network executive,
James Aubrey took over CBS. "Jim Aubrey was a very, very difficult problem for the show", said associate producer
Del Reisman. "He was particularly tough on
The Twilight Zone because for its time it was a particularly costly half hour show.... Aubrey was real tough on [the show's budget] even if it was a small number of dollars".
In a push to keep
Twilight Zone's expenses down, Aubrey ordered that seven fewer episodes be produced than last season and that six of those being produced would be shot on
videotape rather than film.
The second season saw the production of many of the series' most acclaimed episodes, including
The Eye of the Beholder and
The Invaders. The trio of Serling, Matheson and Beaumont began to admit new writers, and this season saw the television debut of
George Clayton Johnson. Emmys were won by Serling (his fifth) for dramatic writing and by director of photography
George T. Clemens and, for the second year in a row, the series won the
Hugo Award for best dramatic presentation. It also earned the Unity Award for "Outstanding Contributions to Better Race Relations" and an Emmy nomination for "Outstanding Program Achievement in the Field of Drama".
Season 3 (1961-1962)
In his third year as executive producer, host, narrator and primary writer for
The Twilight Zone, Serling was beginning to feel exhausted. "I've never felt quite so drained of ideas as I do at this moment", said the 37-year old playwright at the time. In the first two seasons he contributed 48 scripts, or 73% of the show's total output. He contributed only 56% of the third season's. "The show now seems to be feeding off itself", said a
Variety reviewer of the season's second episode, who couldn't understand Serling's endless and exhaustive treatment of themes,
"Twilight Zone seems to be running dry of inspiration".
Despite his avowed weariness Serling again managed to produce several teleplays that are widely regarded as classics, including
It's a Good Life,
To Serve Man and
Five Characters in Search of an Exit. Scripts by
Montgomery Pittman and
Earl Hamner Jr. supplemented Matheson and Beaumont's output, and George Clayton Johnson submitted three teleplays that examined complex themes. The episode
I Sing the Body Electric could boast: "Written by
Ray Bradbury". By the end of the third season, the series had reached over 100 episodes.
The Twilight Zone received two Emmy nominations (for cinematography and art design), but was awarded neither. It again received the
Hugo Award for "Best Dramatic Presentation", making it the only three-time recipient.
In Spring
1962,
The Twilight Zone was late in finding a sponsor for its fourth season and was replaced on CBS' fall schedule with a new hour-long situation comedy called
Fair Exchange. In the confusion that followed this apparent cancellation, producer Buck Houghton left the series for a position at
Four Star Productions. Serling meanwhile accepted a teaching post at
Antioch College, his "alma mater". Though the series was eventually renewed, Serling's contribution as executive producer decreased in its final seasons.
Season 4 (1963)
In November
1962 CBS contracted
Twilight Zone (now sans the
The) as a
mid-season January replacement for
Fair Exchange, the very show that replaced it in the September
1962 schedule. In order to fill
Fair Exchange’s timeslot each episode had to be expanded to an hour, an idea which did not sit well with the production crew. “Ours is the perfect half-hour show,” said Serling just a few years earlier. “If we went to an hour, we’d have to fleshen our stories,
soap opera style. Viewers could watch fifteen minutes without knowing whether they were in a
Twilight Zone or
Desilu Playhouse".
Herbert Hirschman was hired to replace long-time producer Buck Houghton. One of Hirschman's first decisions was to direct a new opening sequence, this one illustrating a door, eye, window and other objects suspended
Magritte-like in space. His second task was to find and produce quality scripts.
This season of
Twilight Zone once again turned to the reliable trio of Serling, Matheson and Beaumont. However, Serling’s input was limited this season; he still provided the lion’s-share of the teleplays, but as executive producer he was virtually absent and as host, his artful narrations had to be shot back-to-back against a gray background during his infrequent trips to
Los Angeles. Due to complications from a developing brain disease, Beaumont’s input also began to diminish significantly. Additional scripts were commissioned from Earl Hamner Jr. and
Reginald Rose to fill in the gap.
With five episodes left in the season, Hirschman received an offer to work on a new
NBC series called
Espionage and was replaced by
Bert Granet, who had previously produced
The Time Element. Among Granet’s first assignments was
On Thursday We Leave for Home, which Serling considered the season's most effective episode. There was an Emmy nomination for cinematography, and a nomination for the
Hugo Award. The show returned to its half-hour format for the fall schedule.
Season 5 (1963-1964)
Serling later claimed, “I was writing so much, I felt I had begun to lose my perspective on what was good and what was bad.” By the end of this final season, he had contributed 92 scripts in five years.
Beaumont was now out of the picture entirely, contributing scripts only through the ghostwriters
Jerry Sohl and John Tomerlin, and after producing only thirteen episodes, Bert Granet left and was replaced by
William Froug, with whom Serling had worked on
Playhouse 90.
Froug made a number of unpopular decisions, first by shelving several scripts purchased under Granet’s term (including Matheson’s
The Doll, which was nominated for a Writer’s Guild Award when finally produced in
1986 on
Amazing Stories). Secondly, Froug alienated George Clayton Johnson when he hired
Richard deRoy to completely rewrite Johnson’s teleplay
Tick of Time, eventually produced as
Ninety Years Without Slumbering. “It makes the plot trivial,” complained Johnson of the resulting script.
Tick of Time became Johnson’s final submission to
The Twilight Zone.
Even under these conditions, several episodes were produced that are generally remembered, including
Nightmare at 20,000 Feet,
A Kind of a Stopwatch and
Living Doll. Although this season received no
Emmy recognition, episode number 142,
An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridgeâ€"a
French-produced short filmâ€"received the
Academy Award for
best short film, making
Twilight Zone the only television show in history to win both an Emmy and an Oscar.
In late January
1964, CBS announced
Twilight Zone's cancellation. "For one reason or other, Jim Aubrey decided he was sick of the show", explained Froug. "He claimed that it was too far over budget and that the ratings weren't good enough". Serling countered by telling the
Daily Variety that he had "decided to cancel the network".
ABC showed interest in bringing the show over to their network under the new name
Witches, Warlocks and Werewolves, but Serling wasn't impressed. "[The network executives seem] to prefer weekly ghouls, and we have what appears to be a considerable difference in opinion. I don't mind my show being supernatural, but I don't want to be booked into a graveyard every week". Shortly afterwards Serling sold his 40% share in
The Twilight Zone to CBS, leaving the show and indeed all projects involving the supernatural behind him until
1969 and the debut of
Night Gallery.
* Rod Serling was not the original choice for narrator.
Orson Welles was considered, but the producers felt he asked for too much money. The original version of the
Twilight Zone pilot
Where Is Everybody? featured
Westbrook Van Voorhis as the narrator.
* Except for the season's final episode, Serling's narrations during the first season were off-camera voiceovers—he only appeared on-camera at the end of each show to introduce previews of the next episode.
*
The Twilight Zone*
List of The Twilight Zone episodes*
Night Gallery*
The Outer Limits*
The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror at
Disney theme parks* Sander, Gordon F.
Serling: The Rise and Twilight of Television's Last Angry Man. New York: Penguin Books,
1992.
* Zicree, Marc Scott.
The Twilight Zone Companion. Sillman-James Press,
1982 (second edition).
*
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