Twilight Zone Companion

by Marc Scott Zicree

  Perhaps the most amazing achievement of Mantells performance is a simple, wordless reaction shot. The hit hasnt been done. Jackie is in his room, sitting on the bed, his head in his hands. The gangster who ordered him to do the job (William D. Gordon) comes in and says, Whatta you got to say for yourself, crumb? Slowly, Jackie raises his head. In an instant, before hes said a single word, we know that a transformation has occurred, that this is the mirror image, and that Jackie has been given a second chance.

  THE MAN IN THE BOTTLE (10/7/60)

  Written by Rod Serling

  Producer: Buck Houghton

  Director: Don Medford

  Director of Photography: George T. Clemens

  Music: stock

  Cast:

  Arthur Castle: Luther Adler Edna Castle: Vivi Janiss Genie: Joseph Ruskin Mrs. Gumley: Lisa Golm Man From the IRS: Olan Soule German Officer: Peter Coe German Officer #2: Albert Szabo

  Mr. and Mrs. Arthur Castle, gentle and infinitely patient people, whose lives have been a hope chest with a rusty lock and a lost set of keys. But in just a moment that hope chest will be opened, and an improbable phantom will try to bedeck the drabness of these two peoples failure-laden lives with the gold and precious stones of fulfillment. Mr. and Mrs. Arthur Castle, standing on the outskirts and about to enter the Twilight Zone .

  After taking pity on an old woman and giving her a dollar for a seemingly worthless bottle she fished from the trash, impoverished curio shop owner Arthur Castle is amazed to see emerge from it a dapper genie in modern dress, who informs him that he and his wife have been granted four wishes. Unbelieving, Castle wishes for the cracked glass in a display case to be fixed. In an instant, it is done. His next wish is considerably grander: a million dollars in cash. But after giving thousands away to the folks in the neighborhood, he and his wife have a nasty shock; income taxes take all but five dollars of whats left. For his third wish, Castle comes up with what he thinks is foolproof. He wishes to be ruler of a foreign country sometime in the twentieth century, one who cant be voted out of office. Laughing, the genie willingly complies. All is exactly as Castle specified, but it is certainly not what he desired. The country is Germany, it is the end of World War II, and he is Adolf Hitler! Frantically, he uses the final wish to return to his old life. The genie is gone, the wishes expended, and Castle is back where he started. And yet, somehow, life doesnt seem so bad.

  A word to the wise now to the garbage collectors of the world, to the curio seekers, to the antique buffs, to everyone who would try to coax out a miracle from unlikely places. Check the bottle youre taking back for a two-cent deposit. The genie you save might be your own. Case in point, Mr. and Mrs. Arthur Castle, fresh from the briefest of trips into the Twilight Zone.

  The second episode to be produced, written by Serling, was a pretty pale affair.

  There are a couple of nice special effects shotsa broken glass display case heals itself and the shards of a bottle reassemble into an unblemished wholeand Joseph Ruskin, in modern dress, makes a dapper and menacing genie, but overall the episode isnt terribly interesting.

  MR. DINGLE, THE STRONG (3/3/61)

  Written by Rod Serling

  Producer: Buck Houghton

  Director: John Brahm

  Directors of Photography: George T. Clemens and William Skall

  Music: stock

  Cast:

  Burgess Meredith Luther Dingle: Burgess Meredith Bettor: Don Rickies OToole: James Westerfield Callahan: Edward Ryder 1st Martian: Douglas Spencer 2nd Martian: Michael Fox Abernathy: James Millhollin Boy: Jay Hector 1st Venusian: Donald Losby 2nd Venusian: Greg Irvin 1st Man: Phil Arnold 2nd Man: Douglas Evans 3rd Man: Frank Richards Nurse: Jo Ann Dixon Photographer: Bob Duggan

  Uniquely American institution known as the neighborhood bar. Reading left to right are Mr. Anthony OToole, proprietor; who waters his drinks like geraniums but who stands foursquare for peace and quiet and for booths for ladies. This is Mr. Joseph J. Callahan, an unregistered bookie, whose entire life is any sporting event with two sides and a set of odds. His idea of a meeting at the summit is any dialogue between a catcher and a pitcher with more than one man on base. And this animated citizen is every anonymous bettor who ever dropped rent money on a horse race, a prize fight, or a floating crap game, and who took out his frustrations and his insolvency on any vulnerable fellow barstool companion within arms and fists reach. And this is Mr. Luther Dingle, a vacuum-cleaner salesman whose volume of business is roughly that of a valet at a hobo convention. Hes a consummate failure in almost everything but is a good listener and has a prominent jaw… . And these two unseen gentlemen are visitors from outer space. They are about to alter the destiny of Luther Dingle by leaving him a legacy, the kind you cant hardly find no more. In just a moment, a sad-faced perennial punching bag who missed even the caboose of lifes gravy train will take a short constitutional into that most unpredictable region that we refer to as the Twilight Zone.

  As an experiment, a couple of Martians (two heads, but one body) give Dingle the strength of three hundred men. Discovering his new power, Dingle performs various tricks lifting a statue, tearing boulders in two, and so on and gains the notice of both the newspapers and the general public. In the bar, he prepares to perform an amazing feat not only for those assembled but also for a live TV audience: he plans to lift the entire building. Just then, the Martians, appalled by his foolish behavior, remove his strength. Unable to make good his claims, Dingle is made a laughing stock. As the Martians exit, they encounter two Venusians in search of an Earthling on whom to perform an intelligence experiment. The Martians recommend Dingle. Shining a ray on him, the Venusians boost his intelligence three-hundred fold and away we go again.

  Exit Mr. Luther Dingle, formerly vacuum-cleaner salesman, strongest man on Earth, and now mental giant. These latter powers will very likely be eliminated before too long, but Mr. Dingle has an appeal to extraterrestrial note-takers as well as to frustrated and insolvent bet-losers. Offhand, id say that he was in for a great deal of extremely odd periods, simply because there are so many inhabited planets who send down observers, and also because of course Mr. Dingle lives his life with one foot in his mouth and the other in the Twilight Zone

  A year before, in an article about The Twilight Zone, a reporter had mistakenly referred to the main character of Mr. Denton on Doomsday as Mr. Dingle. Serling must have liked the name, for he created Mr. Dingle, the Strong.

  As with Mr. Bevis, Serling once again threw all sensitivity for his characters out the window in an effort to achieve out-and-out boffo comedy. Consequently, Mr. Dingle is little more than a bland punching bag of a character, whom virtually anyone and everyone can walk over.

  This isnt to say that Mr. Dingle, the Strong is without interest, though. The Martian might not be a terribly convincing alien, but with its two high-domed heads one with a turning radar dish, the other with a blinking light pointed ears, and central pedestal, its certainly peculiar enough to grab our attention. And, at the end of the episode, there are two equally bizarre Venusians, played by a couple of nine-year-olds wearing moustaches, eye stalks, and bald caps with cones of foam rubber under them.

  Then there are the various strong-man tricks that Dingle performs. Engineered by special-effects man Virgil Beck, these include reaching over to turn off his alarm clock and inadvertently squashing it, lifting a woman on a park bench with one hand, tearing a statue from its base, and ripping rocks and a phone book in half.

  THE EYE OF THE BEHOLDER (11/11/60)

  Written by Rod Serling

  Producer: Buck Houghton

  Director: Douglas Heyes

  Director of Photography: George T. Clemens

  Music: Bernard Herrmann

  Makeup: William Tuttle

  Cast: Janet Tyler (under bandages):Maxine Stuart Janet Tyler (revealed):Donna Douglas Doctor: William D. Gordon Janets Nurse: Jennifer Howard Leader: George Keymas Reception Nurse: Joanna Heyes Walter Smith: Edson Stroll

  S
uspended in time and space for a moment, your introduction to Miss Janet Tyler,; who lives in a very private world of darkness, a universe whose dimensions are the size, thickness, length of a swath of bandages that cover her face. In a moment well go back into this room and also in a moment well look under those bandages, keeping in mind, of course, that were not to be surprised by what we see, because this isnt just a hospital, and patient 307 is not just a woman. This happens to be the Twilight Zone, and Miss Tyler, with you, is about to enter it.

  Lying in a darkened hospital room, her head entirely wrapped in bandages, Janet Tyler, whose hideously abnormal face has made her an outcast all her life, waits to see if the last treatment has succeeded in making her look normal. This is her eleventh hospital visit the maximum allowed by the State. If it is a failure, she will be sent to a village where others of her kind are segregated. Unseen by her, only heard, the shadowy figures of her doctor and her nurse come and go. On televisions throughout the hospital, the Leader of the State speaks of glorious conformity, as Miss Tylers bandages are gradually removed. Revealed, her face is extremely beautiful. The doctor draws back in horror. The treatment has been a failure! As the lights are turned on, we see the faces of the others: misshapen, asymmetrical, like something out of a nightmare. Crying hysterically, Miss Tyler runs from her room, down several hallways, and finally into a room where she comes face to face with another freakWalter Smith, a strikingly handsome man in charge of an outcast village in the north. He has come to take her there. Gently, he assures her that she will come to have a sense of belonging and that she will be loved. He advises her to remember the old saying: Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

  Now the questions that come to mind. Where is this place and when is it, what kind of world where ugliness is the norm and beauty the deviation from that norm? The answer is, it doesnt make any difference. Because the old saying happens to be true. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, in this year or a hundred years hence, on this planet or wherever there is human life, perhaps out among the stars. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Lesson to be learned … in the Twilight Zone.

  After Mr. Dingle, the Strong, Serling demonstrated that he hadnt lost his touch with The Eye of the Beholder, an episode that is indisputably one of the series finest.

  What makes this episode remarkable is the artistry of its creators: the delicacy and sensitivity of Serlings writing, the directorial imagination and control of Douglas Heyes, the superb delivery of all the actors, the visual beauty and technical perfection of George Clemenss camera work, the alien and moody score by Bernard Herrmann, and the brilliant makeup work by William Tuttle.

  From the first, Buck Houghton realized that this script required a great deal of imagination and innovation if it was to succeed. I think that Eye of the Beholder is probably the most difficult directors job that ever came down the pike. I was scared to death of that, the problems of making that picture in such a way that the tag wasnt foreseen long before you got there. To Houghton, Douglas Heyes was the obvious and immediate choice for this most difficult of shows.

  Essential to the credibility of the piece was that the makeup revealed at the climax be both repulsive and convincing. Production manager Ralph Nelson saw that we got the time, William Tuttle recalls. Now, this is something that I cant recall any of the other television productions doing. Theyd come in the day before and expect a miracle for the next morning.

  From the beginning, Heyes and Tuttle worked together closely. As a matter of fact, says Heyes, the first problem on the makeup on that was that it was going to be too expensive. Fortunately, Heyes had had experience in this area. I had started as a cartoonist at Walt Disneys and had been an art director and so on. When we did those faces for Eye of the Beholder, Tuttle had just done The Time Machine, and he had created those Morlocks. When he told me the problem as far as cost, I went down to his department and I saw some of the pieces that he had put the Morlocks together with, and I said, Bill, why cant we do something like this, just make some pieces and paste them on?

  The idea was sound, and the final makeup consisted of variations of a brow piece and a large piece that covered the nose, cheeks and upper lip. These were cast in foam rubber and attached to the actors faces with spirit gum. To remove them, acetone was used.

  The physical appearance of the uglies also involved a collaboration between Tuttle and Heyes. Doug came up and got his fingers in the clay, Tuttle remembers. Wed model some things, and then hed take a look and offer some suggestions, and it sort of evolved from that. As for the initial concept, Tuttle explains, The idea was to make them look like pigs, with the big nostrils and the piglike nose.

  Heyes elaborates: The important thing about that group of people was that although they had to look slightly different, they had to conform, they had to be the same species. They couldnt all be different monsters.

  In all, about twelve actors portrayed the uglies. We didnt take masks of each one, says Tuttle, but we took three or four different ones and modelled them so they looked different, and then before theyd cast the people wed try them on, see if one would fit another one. In other words

  we didnt have to do twelve different ones. On a thing like this, the more distortion you get the better.In the end, Heyes was glad that what was originally planned had been too expensive. They were thinking of doing complete makeups on everything, and actually it was better not to, because the individual characteristics of the actors could still show uptheir cheekbones, their jawlines, their ears. Another thing is that by doing that, I was able to photograph the backs of heads and ears and things like that, which were perfectly normal. It was only frontally that they looked different. What emerged was a makeup that was horrifying, unique, and unforgettable.

  In Serlings original script, the doctors and nurses were presented as unsympathetic, but Heyes felt that portraying them as such would be a tip-off, so he decided to take a different approach. I cast the show without looking at the actors. I kept my back to them until after Id heard them, because what I wanted from the doctors and the nurses were the most sympathetic voices that I could hear.

  The only major role left to cast was that of Janet Tyler, the main character, and that presented a major problem: The important surprise is that the girl who emerges from the bandages is incredibly beautiful by our standards, says Heyes. So it doesnt really matter, I said, if that girl is a great actress or not so long as shes a great beauty. It does matter that the girl under bandages is a great actress, but were not going to be able to see her. Now, its very difficult to find a great beauty who is that great an actress, so my original concept was that it would be easier to find a great actress who could do the voice and then find a great beauty who could look like that.

  Accordingly, Heyes cast two actresses to play the lead. The first was Maxine Stuart, as the woman under wraps. Heyes cast her because of her voice, because her voice did not suggest a beautiful girlit suggested a strong, harsh, realistic woman, and therefore the unveiling would be a surprise.

  Maxine Stuart, who today is still active on stage and television, finds it ironic that she was cast to play only part of the role. Its absolutely right for Hollywood to do a script about conformity and then demand that your leading lady conform to a standard of beauty. I do understand that, though. They were saying something. They wanted a really beautiful beauty to point up the difference.

  Nevertheless, Ms. Stuart found the role a delight, particularly the fact that her entire head was covered and that she could not see the other actors. It was heaven, she says. It was like I was in my little womb. I was acting all alone. I didnt have to be bothered with all those others. (Ironically, Serlings original title for the script was A Private World of Darkness.)

  God, she gave a fantastic performance, says Douglas Heyes. I figured this was strictly a vocal performance, but she also did great gestures.Her hands were terribly expressive. I later used her in other things, but this was the first time Id ever worked with her.

  The
other actress cast in the leadthe beautywas Donna Douglas. Although not well-known at the time, she soon would be, as Jed Clam-petts daughter Ellie on The Beverly Hillbillies. She was not yet known to anybody, but she was absolutely beautiful, says Heyes. So I said, Youll have a few lines, but later Maxine Stuart will dub them in her voice.

  It turned out that Donna was a very good actress, and she hung around during the entire performance, the playing of scenes under bandages, and when it came to the time that she was unveiled and she had these words to say, she did them so accurately in the same voice that we never dubbed her.

  The single most difficult aspect in filming The Eye of the Beholder lay in hiding the faces of the doctors and nurses without limiting camera movement. To accomplish this, Heyes and George Clemens worked together to block every movement of camera and actor perfectly. As a result, The Eye of the Beholder is choreographed as meticulously as a ballet.

  The trick in that, Heyes recalls, was to keep you from seeing them for a great part of the story, yet I didnt want it to be obvious that I was only using hands and inserts and hearing dialogue. So I evolved a very complicated camera movement, by which you were seeing these doctors and nurses all the time but actually they would be passing one another at exactly the same moment that the camera would be, so that you wouldnt really see their faces, or theyd go behind a pillar just as they were turning toward the camera and so onand the place was shadowed. And my justification for playing it that way was that the girl who was under bandages couldnt really see them, so I was using it as her viewpoint. In other words, she knew that they were there, but she didnt know what they looked like. So in a kind of way it made that credible, the fact that we didnt know what they looked like, either, because she didnt.