Twilight Zone Companion (10 page)

Despite Ms. Fletchers preferences, the fact remains that it is the Twilight Zone version of The Hitch-Hiker which is remembered today, and judged on its own merits it proves quite effective. Inger Stevens plays her role with an extreme nervousness which, when coupled with the

deadpan calm of Leonard Strong as the hitch-hiker (Mr. Death), makes for a great deal of tension. Director Alvin Ganzer adds to this tension by setting up a number of shots so that the face of the hitch-hiker suddenly and unexpectedly comes into view. Very creepy stuffsurrounded by a cemetery chill.

At one point, Ganzers inventiveness almost brought several camera technicians face to face with their own hitch-hikers. A certain scene called for Nan Adamss car to stall on the railroad tracks with a train bearing down on her (finally, the car starts and she backs it off the tracks, just in time). Ganzer couldnt rent a train, so he had to set up his equipment by a railroad crossing and wait for a regularly scheduled train to go by. Initially, it occurred to him that it might be exciting to film the train coming dead-on. We had the camera on the tracks, he explains, and we were going to pull it off. Luckily, a train went the opposite direction and we realized how fast the train went through that intersection. When we saw that, we thought three times and put the camera on the side of the tracks.

TIME ENOUGH AT LAST (11/20/59)

Henry Bemis,  finally has his chance. Sneaking into the vault on his lunch hour to read, he is knocked unconscious by a mammoth shock wave. When he comes to, he discovers that the world has been devastated by a nuclear war and that he, having been protected by the vault, is the last man on Earth. He decides to commit suicide, but at the final moment his eyes fall on the ruins of a library. For him, it is paradise. Gleefully he piles the books high, organizing his reading for the years to come. But as he settles down to read the first book, his glasses slip off his nose and smash, trapping him forever in a hopelessly blurry world.

The best-laid plans of mice and men and Henry Bemis, the small man in the glasses who wanted nothing but time. Henry Bemis, now just a part of a smashed landscape, just a piece of the rubble, just a fragment of what man has deeded to himself. Mr. Henry Bemis … in the Twilight Zone.

If The Hitch-Hiker demonstrated Rod Serlings ability to use restraint in adapting a work of merit, then the next episode demonstrated that he also knew when not to.

Time Enough at Last began as a six-page short story by Lynn Venable in the January, 1953, issue of If magazine. It told in a clipped, bland manner the story of a harassed little bookworm who survives a nuclear war and is faced with a blissful future of solitude in which to read … only to break his glasses. The story was cute, clever and forgettable.

What Serling did with this piece was to expand it, flesh out its characters (the short story has almost no dialogue) and transform it into a show that is unforgettable in its humor, its humanity, and its tragedy. Central to this transformation was Serlings delineation of Mr. Bemis. In the short story, he is just a chess piece moved from square to square. But in the show, Serling takes the time to acquaint us with this mild, introspective and funny man, to get to know and like him, so that when disaster befalls him, we feel an overwhelming sympathy. Take, for example, this piece of dialogue, original with Serling, that does nothing to advance the plot, but much to reveal the character. The scene is the bank in which Bemis works. He is counting money out to a customer:

bemis: Mrs. Chester, have you ever read David Copperfield?

mrs. Chester: Hows that?

bemis: Its a wonderful book. Theres this poor

little fella, and his father has passed away and his mother has married this miserable man called Murdstone. Isnt that a villainous name? Murdslonz.

Well, this Murdstone has a sister called Jane

mrs. Chester: Mr. Bemis, you shortchanged me again!

You owe me one more dollar! See?

Theres only twenty-four here and there should be twenty-five!

bemis: Oh! Im terribly sorry, Mrs. Murder,

uh, Mrs., uh, Chester …

Playing Bemis is Burgess Meredith, star of the film adaptation of Of Mice and Men, and two-time Oscar nominee (for Day of the Locust and Rocky). It is the first of four episodes he will do for The Twilight Zone, and his performance shines. John Brahm, director of Time Enough at Last, says of working with Meredith, It is so easy. He understands immediately. You respect him. Actually, one can say that everything moves right, from the beginning, without much talk. Burgess Meredith is in a class by himself. Mention should also be made of the wonderfully obnoxious performances turned in by Vaughn Taylor and Jacqueline deWit as Bemiss monstrous, anti-literate boss and wife, respectively.

A great deal of ingenuity went into the making of Time Enough at Last. To give Meredith a properly bookwormish appearance, he was given a fake moustache and tremendously thick glasses (two pairs were actually used; one with thick, distorting lenses for the closeups, and another with window glass so that Meredith could see on the long shots). To get across the idea of a nuclear attack, all cliches were avoided. There are no stock shots of mushroom clouds nor of real destroyed cities. Instead, the focus is moved in close. Bemis is in the bank vault, eating his lunch. He glances down casually at a book lying on the floor next to his pocket watch. Suddenly, the book flips open. The glass in the watch shatters. Then the concussion hits. To accomplish this last effect, George Clemens had the entire set built on springs, so that both the camera and the set could shake at the same time.

The after-the-Bomb sets were also particularly striking. Two different sets were used. One was a seemingly huge Bomb-wrecked landscape, complete with stormcloud-filled skies. In reality, this set was built on a soundstage, with a sky originally painted for a motion picture. In order to bring out the clouds even more, Clemens decided to use a blue filter, which was quite unorthodox so unorthodox, in fact, that when he had to take off half a day to go to court and had to explain the procedure to a replacement, Clemens remembers, He was scared to death!

The other set was an enormous flight of steps, representing the sole remains of a massive library. In reality, these impressive steps were a standing set on the MGM backlot. Generally, actors would be filmed standing on or walking up the steps, and then a painting of a state capitol or some such building would be matted in. These same steps can be seen in the episode A Nice Place to Visit, also directed by Brahm, and in George Pals The Time Machine. It was Brahms idea to place Meredith on the steps. I had the idea to put him there, all by himself, after this end of the world, so to speak. In other words, the emptiness was shown. Everything was gone.

Time Enough at Last remains one of the best-remembered and bestloved episodes of The Twilight Zone. Few can watch it and not be seduced by its simplicity and its pathos.

The only thing I can tell you about that particular episode, says Meredith, is that Ive heard more about that than any of [the other three Twilight Zone episodes], and indeed almost more about it than anything else Ive done on television. I think it must have had a great impact on people. I dont suppose theres a month goes by, even to this day, that people dont come up and remind me of that episode.

PEOPLE ARE ALIKE ALL OVER (3/25/60)

Written by Rod Serling

Based on the short story Brothers Beyond the Void by Paul Fairman    

Producer: Buck Houghton

Director: Mitchell Leisen

Director of Photography:George T. Clemens

Music: stock

Cast:

Sam Conrad: Roddy McDowall Warren Marcusson: Paul Comi Teenya: Susan Oliver Martian #1: Byron Morrow Martian #2: Vic Perrin Martian #3: Vernon Gray

Youre looking at a species of flimsy little two-legged animal with extremely small heads whose name is Man. Warren Marcusson, age thirty-five. Samuel A. Conrad, age thirty-one… . Theyre taking a highway into space, Man unshackling himself and sending his tiny, groping fingers up into the unknown. Their destination is Mars, and in just a moment well land there with them.

When their ship crashes on the Martian surface, Marcusson the optimist who believes people are alike all over, even on Mars is killed. Left alone is Sam Conrad, who does not share Marcusson's philosophy and who is terrified when he hears someone banging on the outside of the ship. His terror turns to relief, however, when he ventures out and sees that the Martians are indeed human, albeit telepathic, and that they appear extremely friendly. The next morning, the Martians present him with a surprise, a house built to look exactly like one on Earth. Pleased by this, Conrad is left alone inside. But very soon, Conrad comes to the shocking realization that the house has no windows and all the doors are locked. Suddenly, a wall slides upward, revealing vertical bars beyond which stands a crowd of gaping Martians. Conrad is in a zoo. He cries out, Marcusson, you were rightpeople are alike everywhere!

Species of animal brought back alive. Interesting similarity in physical characteristics to human beings in head, trunk, arms, legs, hands, feet. Very tiny undeveloped brain; comes from primitive planet named Earth. Calls himself Samuel Conrad. And he will remain here in his cage with the running water and the electricity and the central heat as long as he lives. Samuel Conrad has found the Twilight Zone.

People Are Alike All Over is adapted from Paul Fairmans Brothers Beyond the Void, which originally appeared in the March, 1952, issue of Fantastic Adventures and is included in August Derleths anthology Worlds of Tomorrow (Berkley, 1953). In the original story, however, it is Marcusson alone who goes to Mars; Sam Conrad is an older friend who stays at home. As for the Martians, they are four-and-a-half feet tall, not ugly or especially beautiful, and they certainly dont look like Susan Oliver (something that is undoubtedly the Martians loss).

In scripting this for The Twilight Zone, Serling put added emphasis on the irony of the piece by making Sam Conrad initially afraid of the Martians and then being reassured by Marcussons conviction that people are the same all overa cosmic truth that ultimately brings about his downfall. Particularly nice is the shows opening shot. It is the night before the launch. Marcusson and Conrad stand behind a metal fence looking up at their ship; their hands idly grasp the metal links. They look, for all the world, like animals in a cage.

THIRD FROM THE SUN (1/8/60)

Joe Maross

Written by Rod Serling

Based on the short story Third From the Sun by Richard Matheson

Producer: Buck Houghton

Director: Richard L. Bare

Director of Photography:Harry Wild

Music: stock

Cast:

William Sturka: Fritz Weaver Jerry Riden: Joe Maross Carling: Edward Andrews Eve: Lori March Jody: Denise Alexander Ann: Jeanne Evans Guard: Will J. White Loudspeaker Voices. John Launer

5:30 p.m.: Quitting tine at the plant. Time for supper now. Time for families. Time for a cool drink on a porch. Time for the quiet rustle of leaf-laden trees that screen out the moon. And underneath it all, behind the eyes of the men, hanging invisible over the summer night, is a horror without words. For this is the stillness before storm. This is the eve of the end.

Scientist William Sturka, certain that an all-out nuclear war is imminent, plots with test pilot Jerry Riden to steal an experimental spaceship and escape with their families to a planet eleven million miles away. They are almost stopped by a slimy government stooge named Carling, but they manage to overpower him, board the ship, and take off. In space, they wonder what their new home will be like. From radio broadcasts, they know it is inhabited by people like themselves, and that its name is … Earth!

Behind a tiny ship heading into space is a doomed planet on the verge of suicide. Ahead lies a place called Earth, the third planet from the sun. And for William Sturka and the men and women with him, ifs the eve of the beginning … in the Twilight Zone.

Serling adapted Richard Mathesons short story Third from the Sun (which appears in Mathesons collection of the same name), retaining both the title and the basic plot.

A neat little scientific inaccuracy crops up in this episode. At one point, Maross mentions that the distance from his planet to the Earth is 11 million miles. Considering the fact that Venus is our closest neighbor at 24,600,000 miles (at its nearest), then either a number of astronomers are nearsighted or Serling didnt do his homework.

In order to set the stage for the final twist, director Richard L. Bare resorted to some pretty tricky uses of the cameia. Only a handful of shots were filmed straight-on: most were distorted, tilted this way or that. And that wasnt all. I shot every scene with an extremely wide-angle lens, Bare explains. Even on closeups, which are normally shot with a 75mm or 100mm lens, I used a 28mm.

Buck Houghton elaborates. He used wide-angle lenses all the time on the theory that if you were going to tell people in the end that they werent on Earth, you should have a peculiar feeling while youre getting there, you should have been made a little restless or uncomfortable. And while Dick was a very straightforward sort of directorhed have to have a big reason not to use an eye-level camerahe was shooting up under tables and past flashlights to peoples faces and all that sort of thing, which I thought was very clever of him. It was an idea of his that I applauded.

The thirteenth episode to be produced by Cayuga Productions, Perchance to Dream, was the first script written for The Twilight Zone by the late Charles Beaumont. As did Matheson, Beaumont produced stories totally unlike Serlings, displaying virtually no sentimentality but revealing a strong morbidity and an almost clinical fascination with the horrific.

Chuck was the perfect Twilight Zone writer, says writer William F. Nolan, more than Matheson or Rod Serling, even. Matheson is very much of a realist who can mentally lose himself in those worlds. He doesnt live in them the way Chuck lived in them. Chuck actually lived in the Twilight Zone.