Twilight Zone Companion

by Marc Scott Zicree

  With one days shooting in the can, recasting was out of the question. Serling: I said, So be it. Come on in, Franch, and well shoot the other side of your face, which we did.

  The result was indeed odd. During the opening scene of the episode, we see Tone full face. When the scene changes to the glass cage in which Sullivan is imprisoned, we only see Tones face in profile or with half of it obscured. Then in the final scene, we see Tone full-face again.

  Surprisingly, the effect works to the episodes advantage. The scenes in the middle are those in which Tone tries to convince Sullivan to break his silence, using every dirty trick he can think of, including relaying ugly rumors about Sullivans wife. Speaking out of the corner of his mouth, only half-turned toward Sullivan, Tone seems predatory and sly, what he says takes on an added suggestiveness. The impact was not lost. In fact, director Boris Sagal once recalled that at the time a number of critics complimented him on the effect!

  THE MIND AND THE MATTER (5/12/61)

  Written by Rod Serling

  Producer: Buck Houghton

  Director: Buzz Kulik

  Director of Photography:George T. Clemens

  Music: stock

  Cast:

  Archibald Beechcroft: Shelley Berman Henry: Jack Grinnage Rogers: Chet Stratton Landlady: Jeane Wood

  A brief if frenetic introduction to Mr. Archibald Beechcroft, a child of the twentieth century, a product of the population explosion, and one of the inheritors of the legacy of progress …Mr. Beechcroft again. This time act two of his daily battle for survival. And in just a moment; our hero will begin his personal one-man rebellion against the mechanics of his age, and to do so he will enlist certain aids available only in the Twilight Zone

  Beechcroft detests people, but he feels he has no alternative but to suffer the crowds and the noise until an office boy, trying to make up for spilling coffee on his suit, gives him a book on mind power. After reading this, Beechcroft is convinced that concentration can do anything, and he proves it by making his landlady disappear, followed by everybody else in the world! The next day, he finds his office barren, quietand lonely. Suddenly, he gets a brainstorm: hell repopulate the world with men and women who look, act, and sound exactly like him. But when he does this he finds to his dismay that these duplicates are relentlessly sour, snappish, and self-centered. A lot of me is just as bad as a lot of them, he concedes. Perhaps a little more forgiving of the faults of others, he returns things to the way they were originally, determined never to play God again.

  Mr. Archibald Beechcroft, a child of the twentieth century, who has found out through trial and errorand mostly errorthat with all its faults it may well be that this is the best of all possible worlds. People notwithstanding, it has much to offer. Tonights case in point … in the Twilight Zone.

  The Mind and the Matter is filled with any number of clever little gags, such as when Archibald Beechcroft (comedian Shelley Berman), after having made everyone else in the world disappear, arrives at his empty office and notices a ticking clock. Thatll be just about enough of that he says, at which point the clock immediately stops. Or when, out of boredom, he idly says, Although if the truth be known, I would like a little diversion of some kind, any sort of diversion… . Like, um, like … an earthquake. Immediately, the office begins to shake violently. For goodness sake! cries Beechcroft in dismay. No! No! Not that! The quake subsides. How about a nice little electrical storm? The lights in the office dim. Outside, thunder and lightning do their damndest. Forget it! he says.

  Bored and lonely, Beechcroft finally decides to repopulate the world with himself. The results are bizarre and hilarious as Beechcroft has to contend with sour and obnoxious people who look and sound just like him. On the elevator, a woman (played by Berman) snaps at him, Will you please get off my foot, you ugly little man? Arriving at his office, Beechcroft scans his coworkers seated at their desks (in a seemingly continuous pan, technically superb): all are played by Berman.

  The noise, the miserable noise! grouses the first. Ill go out of my mind, Ill go out of my ever-lovin mind!

  A sty, thats what it is, says the second. Nothing but people, and people are pigs.

  People, people, people, people! comments the third. Is there no respite? Is there no relief?

  Herds, droves, hosts, and bevies of people, says the fourth.

  Will you people stop muttering back there? snarls the fifth. Im trying to work!

  One effect which didnt quite come off was a sequence in which Beechcroft was to enter an elevator crammed with exact duplicates of himself. In the finished product, what we see is that with the exception of Shelley Berman as Beechcroft, all the rest are clearly actors in ill-fitting Shelley Berman masks. These were crafted by William Tuttle.

  The first batch he made just didnt seem to look like Shelley at all, says director Buzz Kulik. And Im not sure that they ever looked like Shelley. The problem is, when you do television you cant say, Lets wait another three or four weeks and take another shot at it.

  WILL THE REAL MARTIAN PLEASE STAND UP (5/26/61)

  Written by Rod Serling

  Producer: Buck Houghton

  Director: Montgomery Pittman

  Director of Photography: George T. Clemens

  Music: stock

  Makeup: William Tuttle

  Cast: Ross: John Hoyt Haley: Barney Phillips Avery: Jack Elam Trooper Dan Perry: Morgan Jones Trooper Bill Padgett: John Archer Olmstead: Bill Kendis Ethel McConnell: Jean Willes Peter Kramer: Bill Erwin Rose Kramer: Gertrude Flynn George Prince: Ron Kipling Connie Prince: Jill Ellis

  Wintry February night, the present. Order of events: a phone call from a frightened woman notating the arrival of an unidentified flying object, and the check-out youve just witnessed with two state troopers verifying the event, but with nothing more enlightening to add beyond evidence of some tracks leading across the highway to a diner. Youve heard of trying to find a needle in a haystack? Well, stay with us now and youll be part of an investigating team whose mission is not to find that proverbial needle, no, their task is even harder. Theyve got to find a Martian in a diner; and in just a moment youll search with them, because youve just landed in the Twilight Zone.

  Troopers Perry and Padgett follow the tracks from a frozen pond in which something may have landed. In the diner they encounter a soda jerk, a bus driver and his seven passengers all of whom seem perfectly human. Only problem is that the driver is certain only six people originally got on his bus. Someone is not what he seems. Two married couples are automatically eliminated from suspicion because there is only one extra person. That leaves three suspects: an edgy, middle-aged businessman impatient to make his meeting in Boston, an attractive professional dancer who has no identification, and a wild-eyed, eccentric old man. The troopers try to narrow it down even further but are hampered by a jukebox starting up, lights flickering on and off, and items on the tables flipping overall seemingly of their own accord. A call comes from the county engineer. A decaying bridge has been declared safe; the bus can continue on its way. Reluctantly, the troopers give up the chase (… you cant hold somebody on suspicion of being a monster). The passengers board the bus and depart, escorted by the troopers patrol car. A little later, the businessman returns. The bridge wasnt safe; it collapsed and he alone survived. The phone call was merely an illusion. He is the Martian, advance scout of an invasion force. Smugly, he drinks a cup of coffee and smokes a cigarette, using all three of his arms. But the soda jerk has a surprise for him: hes a Venusian, and his invasion force has intercepted the Martian fleet. Grinning from ear to ear, he removes his cap, revealing a third eye. The real Martian has stood up and had the rug pulled out from under him.

  Incident on a small island, to be believed or disbelieved. However; if a sour faced dandy named Ross or a big, good-natured counterman who handles a spatula as if hed been bom with one in his mouth, if either of these two entities walks onto your premises, youd better hold their hands all three of them or check the color of the
ir eyes all three of them. The gentlemen in question might try to pull you into … the Twilight Zone.

  In a story precis written October 12, 1958, titled The Night of the Big Rain, Serling laid down the basics of this story, with one big difference the alien turns out to be a stray dog that the operator of the diner has adopted. In the intervening years, sanity must have prevailed, for when Serling wrote the script (originally titled Nobody Here But Us Martians) he played fair with the audience and revealed one of the people in the diner as the Martian. This didnt stop him from putting in a twist, though, and having the fellow who runs the diner reveal himself as a Venusian!

  Directed with style and humor by Montgomery Pittman, Will the Real Martian Please Stand Up is genuinely entertaining. Veteran character actor Jack Elam, made up as an old man, performs outrageously and wonderfully, spouting lines like, Shes just like a science fiction, thats what she is! A regular Ray Bradbury! With his wild eyes and exaggerated movements, he seems every bit the Martian, which is exactly what hes supposed to seem. Actually, hes just a decoy.

  In the end, we see how the Martian differs from an Earthling as he lights a cigarette and drinks a cup of coffee using three hands instead of two. The effect was easy to accomplish: someone crouched behind John Hoyt, reaching an arm around and under one of Hoyts real arms. The arm was clothed in the same materials as Hoyts arms and an overcoat was draped over Hoyts shoulders to obscure the fact that the extra arm didnt originate from his body. With plenty of rehearsal to insure a fluidity of movement between the three hands, the illusion was complete and perfect.

  John Hoyt as the real Martian reveals his third arm

  Not so successful was the way in which the Venusian (Barney Phillips) differed. In the end, he pushes back his soda jerks hat to reveal a third eye. Unfortunately, it looked pretty much like one you might buy in a joke shop. It didnt come that easy, though. Barney Phillips reveals, They had run a wire over my head concealed in my hair and one of the property men was concealed behind me, manipulating the trigger on the wire to effectuate the rolling of the eyeball in the socket. They had done a very big makeup job. They made a cast of the eye socket. I guess they must have spent well over a day working with me fitting that device prior to the actual shooting of the show.

  Says Buck Houghton of the third eye, We tried that two ways. We had the actor with an eye in his head, and we were also going to try it with a double exposure. But the double exposure didnt work at all because you could still see through it. And it wouldnt have allowed for hardly any movement, but we could have had it blink, which we couldnt do with the other one.

  In spite of its failings, the third eye definitely had an impact. Says Barney Phillips, Every time that that particular segment is televised, without exception, the next day Im greeted by somebody, some total stranger along the way, who says, My God, wheres the third eye?

  THE OBSOLETE MAN (6/2/61)

  Written by Rod Serling

  Producer: Buck Houghton

  Director: Elliot Silverstein

  Director of Photography: George T. Clemens

  Music: stock

  Cast:

  Romney Wordsworth:

  Burgess Meredith Chancellor: Fritz Weaver Subaltern: Joseph Elic Guard: Harry Fleer 1st Man: Barry Brooks 2nd Man: Harold Innocent Woman: Jane Romeyn

  You walk into this room at your own risk, because it leads to the future, not a future that will be but one that might be. This is not a new world, it is simply an extension of what began in the old one. It has patterned itself after every dictator who has ever planted the ripping imprint of a boot on the pages of history since the beginning of time. It has refinements, technological advances,

  and a more sophisticated approach to the destruction of human freedom. But like every one of the superstates that preceded it, it has one iron rule: logic is an enemy and truth is a menace… . This is Mr. Romney Wordsworth, in his last forty-eight hours on Earth. Hes a citizen of the State but will soon have to be eliminated, because hes built out of flesh and because he has a mind. Mr. Romney Wordsworth, who will draw his last breaths in the Twilight Zone.

  In this future society, all books have been banned, along with all religion. Wordsworth, a God-fearing librarian, is judged obsolete by a chancellor of the State and sentenced to be executed in a manner of his own choosing. He is granted three requests: that only his assassin know the method of his death, that he die at midnight the next day, and that he have an audience. Forty-five minutes before he is to die, he invites the Chancellor to his room and reveals that he has chosen to be killed by a bomb set to explode precisely at twelve. He then locks the door, trapping the Chancellor. A TV camera will broadcast all that transpiresand Wordsworth will prove which is stronger, the will of the State or that of the individual. At first, the Chancellor hides behind his bravado, but soon it becomes clear that no one is coming to save him. Wordsworth calmly reads from a forbidden Bible. The minutes tick by. Finally, the Chancellor cries out, In the name of God, let me out! Wordsworth hands him the key and the Chancellor bolts from the roomnone too soon. The bomb explodes and Wordsworth is killed. But he has triumphed; when the Chancellor returns to his court, he finds he has been judged obsolete and replaced. Loyal members of the State surround him and tear him to pieces.

  ((The Chancellorthe late Chancellorwas only partly correct. He was obsolete. But so was the State, the entity he worshipped. Any state, any entity, any ideology that fails to recognize the worth, the dignity, the rights of man, that state is obsolete. A case to be filed under M for mankind … in the Twilight Zone.

  The final show of the second season was The Obsolete Man, Serlings cautionary tale of a neo-Nazi superstate of the near future. Although it is well acted, Serling has stacked the deck too much, presenting the story in such black-and-white terms that there is no controversy. The viewer can sit at home smug and comfortable, certain that he would never be part of such a State.

  These criticisms notwithstanding, The Obsolete Man is still a remarkable episode, thanks in large part to the contribution of director Elliot Silverstein. Silverstein had come from live theater, and later he would direct such films as Cat Ballou and A Man Called Horse. In this, the first of four Twilight Zone episodes he would direct, he imposes upon the proceedings his own unique theatricality. From the first, he made it clear what he wanted.

  Says Silverstein, It was vaguely reminiscent of some of the German films of the twenties, and there was a certain amount of expressionism in the style of the performances and the sets. Indeed, the major set of the piece, the room in which Meredith is judged, is quite unlike anything seen before on The Twilight Zone. The walls are completely covered with black velvet. There is a single, long, narrow table. At the end of it is an immensely tall, narrow lectern, behind which the Chancellor stands elevated and apart. The only other feature of the room is the door, which opens from the middle. Like the table and the lectern, it is long and narrow.

  That was very tough to do, says Silverstein, because a door that high had never been built in television before. It was twenty-five feet, an enormously high thing. I had done some work like that in the theater before I came to Hollywood, so it was a very natural thing for me to just automatically adapt what I had already done and use it in this.

  The people too are unusual. Starkly uniformed, they stand at attention on either side of the table, arms at their sides, their shapes mirroring the shapes of the table, the lectern and the door. The lighting is harsh, casting long, narrow shadows. The first words of the episode come from the subaltern (Joseph Elic). Wordsworth. Romnzy. Obsolescence. A curiously harsh monotone, that Silverstein reveals was inspired by the sound of Joseph McCarthys voice during the Army-McCarthy hearings.

  One sequence of events which occurred during the making of The Obsolete Man has had repercussions that have extended far beyond The Twilight Zone. Silverstein explains: There was a key scene and a key moment in the expressionistic sequence, when these two high, vertical doors open and Fritz Weaver comes in
to be addressed and judged, and the place was ringed by automaton-like witnesses. Now, it was reminiscent, of course, both in structure and in my view of it, of Franz Kafkas The Trial. Vaguely reminiscent, not in the story but in the feeling.

  Sometime before this, I had a nightmare that involved sound, a group of people standing and looking at someone and just going, deep-throated, Aaahhhh … and it would grow stronger in intensity and move very slowly up the chromatic scale as it grew in intensity, but it had to grow in intensity first. I tried to reproduce that sound with this chorus which surrounded Fritz Weaver. I wanted them to do absolutely nothing but stand there and start this deep-throated, growl-like Aaahhhh, until it reached a pitch of volume that required something else to happen, like a cover on boiling water; until the water boils high enough, the cover wont move.

  So they started. Aaaahhhhhhhhhh … making their voices get lower rather than higher as they went louder, and they stared at him with a kind of insane fury. Then, when they could go neither lower nor louder, I had them start moving slowly forward, and as they reached him they leaped on him like a pack of mad dogs and dragged him along the table.

  The editor was working very well with me until we came to that moment. He showed me this rough assembly and he had them moving immediately, as soon as they started to growl. I said, No, no, you dont understand. You see, in the master shot I have them standing there. He said, Well, so what? I said, Well, that is how I staged the scene. I want them standing there until their voices reach a certain pitch. The master is a message to you and to everybody else. He said, Well, I dont want to cut it that way. I remember very clearly, I felt my temperature and my blood pressure go up. I said, You what? I dont want to cut it that way. Its ridiculous. I said, Its only ridiculous because you havent done it before. I want it this way. He said, I wont do it.