Twilight Zone Companion (18 page)

Several factors raise Klugmans performance here above the merely competent. The first is his total dedication to the part. Buck Houghton recalls: Klugman took pains, for instance, to learn how to finger a trumpet. He got a good trumpeter to teach him how to do it.

Another major factor is one hard to define, but an example is easily given. Here is an excerpt from the final scene of Serlings original script, reprinted verbatim. Joey has opted to stay alive. He sits on the roof of a building, playing his trumpet. From out of the shadows appears Nan (again that name!), a pleasant-looking young woman who has just arrived in New York. They exchange names, then:

nan: Will you play some more, Joey?

joey: Sure. Sure Ill play some more. Ill play whatever you like. For as long as you like. You know …

You know, you may like it here. Its not a bad town.

nan (Smiles): Im sure it isnt. Maybe … (And then very shyly looking away) Maybe youll show me some of it, Joey.

joey: Me?

The smile again that stretches from ear to ear, the face that lights up like a hundred watt bulb, and at this moment we see a beauty in that face and a sensitivity and a gentleness.

Perhaps the greatest testament to Klugmans ability is that hes able to do exactly what the script says.

A Passage for Trumpet had its share of problems. Director of photography George Clemens remembers: Klugman gave one of the finest performances Ive ever seen an actor give. But I got Rod and Buck down on the set in the middle of the second day. I said, Tf youre not gonna stop the director the way hes going this picture is gonna be an hour picture. But if you can figure out any way we can put it in two episodes or get the network to let it go in an hour, well have one of the greatest pictures ever seen. They wouldnt go with me and, unfortunately, they cut the picture just to shreds.

In spite of this, A Passage for Trumpet succeeds quite well. Visual inventiveness is in evidence throughout much of the episode. In one scene, Joey is standing beside a ticket booth outside a movie theater. He looks across to a wall-length mirror. Reflected in the mirror are the ticket booth, the girl inside the ticket booth, everythingexcept him! To accomplish this, clear glass was used, behind which was a reverse duplicate of the set. And as for the girl in the ticket boothidentical twins!

Equally ingenious is the scene in which Joey meets the angel Gabriel (a top-notch performance by John Anderson), whos dressed in a tuxedo and playing a trumpet. The set, supposedly in an alley back of a night club, consists of scaffolding and a row of hanging, circular lamps. That was one of the cheapest sets we ever put up in our lives, says George Clemens. It was all built with what we call parallelscamera platforms two, four, six, and eight feet high. That was all it was, scaffolding on each side, planks over it, some lights I had, and black drapes.

The set works to the shows advantage. As Gabriel is walking down the corridor away from him, Joey cries out, I didnt get your name! The man pauses directly below one of the lamps and turns. My name? Call me Gabe … Short for Gabriel. The circle of light above his head forms a perfect halo.

MR. BEVIS (6/3/60)

Written by Rod Serling

Producer: Buck Houghton

Director: William Asher

Director of Photography: George T. Clemens

Music: stock

Cast:

James B. W. Bevis: Orson Bean J. Hardy Hempstead: Henry Jones Mr. Peckinpaugh: Charles Lane Policeman: William Schallert 2nd Policeman: House Peters, Jr. Young Lady: Colleen OSullivan Bartender: Horace McMahon Margaret: Florence MacMichael Landlady: Dorothy Neuman Peddler: Vito Scotti Little Boy: Timmy Cletro

In the parlance of the twentieth century, this is an oddball. His name is James B. W. Bevis, and his tastes lean toward stuffed animals, zither music, professional football, Charles Dickens, moose heads, carnivals, dogs, children, and young ladies. Mr. Bevis is accident prone, a little vague, a little discombooberated, with a life that possesses all the security of a floating crap game. But this can be said of our Mr. Bevis: without him, without his warmth, without his kindness, the world would be a considerably poorer place, albeit perhaps a little saner… . Should it not be obvious by now, James B. W. Bevis is a fixture in his own private, optimistic, hopeful little world, a world which has long ceased being surprised by him… . James B. W. Bevis, on whom Dame Fortune will shortly turn her back, but not before she gives him a paste in the mouth. Mr. James B. W. Bevis, just a block away from the Twilight Zone

After losing his job, wrecking his car, and being evicted from his apartment all in the same day Bevis makes the acquaintance of guardian angel J. Hardy Hempstead, who, thanks to an act of courage on the part of one of Bevis ancestors, is obliged to render his assistance. He arranges that Bevis start the day over-but with a difference. This time, Bevis is a success in his job, his rent is paid in advance, and his mode of transportation, instead of being a 1924 jalopy, is a flashy sports  car. There are drawbacks, however; in order to have a new life, there must be a new Bevis. No more loud clothes, no more zither music, no more model ship building. Worst of all, Bevis can no longer be the well-liked neighborhood oddball. Realizing that, for him, happiness lies in eccentricity, Bevis asks to be returned to the way he was before broke, jobless, and with no place to live. Hempstead complies, but he arranges for Beviss jalopy to be given back to him undamaged. He is still Bevis guardian angel, and will continue to help him in small ways.

Mr James B. W. Bevis, who believes in a magic all his own. The magic of a childs smile, the magic of liking and being liked, the strange and wondrous mysticism that is the simple act of living. Mr. James B. W. Bevis, species of twentieth-century male, who has his own private and special Twilight Zone

Angels made another appearance in the episode produced directly after A Passage for Trumpet. Originally, Serling intended Mr. Bevis as a pilot for a series starring Burgess Meredith, wherein each week the angel would get Bevis out of yet another scrape. But Meredith was unwilling to commit himself to a series and turned the offer down. As a result, Serling abandoned the idea of doing Bevis as a series and the script was filmed simply as a one-shot Twilight Zone episode, with Orson Bean as Bevis and Henry Jones as J. Hardy Hempstead, Beviss guardian angel.

Considering what was filmed, it seems just as well that the series was never made. That was one of my least favorite, says Buck Houghton. Somehow, it just didnt come together. It was apples and oranges. I didnt think there was any excitement or interest. You just wondered, why watch it?

As with most of Serlings attempts at comedy, the humor here seems artificial and strained. The jokes rarely work and the material flows sluggishly. Weighting down the comedy even further are the direction of William Asher (/ Love Lucy) and the performance by Orson Bean as Bevis. While Burgess Meredith might have fleshed out the main character, as he did in Time Enough at Last (whose main character, certainly not coincidentally, was named Bemis), Bean just amiably strolls through the part. His Bevis is palpably a loser, a man using eccentricity as a blind behind which he can hide from a world hopelessly beyond his ability to cope. Certainly, Meredith would have presented a character with more backbone, one who, despite his eccentricities, was undeniably a survivor. Beans Bevis has charm but no substance, and without that he can seem no more than silly and trivial. Consequently, so does the episode.

THE AFTER HOURS (6/10/60)

Written by Rod Serling

Producer: Buck Houghton

Director: Douglas Heyes

Director of Photography: George T. Clemens

Music: stock

Makeup: William Tuttle

Cast:

Marsha White: Anne Francis Saleswoman: Elizabeth Allen Armbruster: James Millhollin Elevator Operator: John Conwell Miss Pettigrew: Nancy Rennick James Milhollin and Anne Francis Sloan: Patrick Whyte

Express elevator to the ninth floor of a department store, carrying Miss Marsha White on a most prosaic, ordinary, run-of-the-mill errand… . Miss Marsha White on the ninth floor, specialty department, looking for a gold thimble. The odds are that shell find itbut there are even better odds that shell find something else, because this isnt just a department store. This happens to be the Twilight Zone.

Marsha finds the ninth floor to be a disturbingly barren place where the only piece of merchandise is a single gold thimble. This is sold to her by an overly familiar, strangely insolent saleslady. Returning to the main floor, Marsha notices that the thimble is scratched but when she goes to complain shes told that there is no ninth floor. Spotting the salesgirl, Marsha points her outand is horrified to see that the figure is a mannequin! Shaken, she is assisted by store personnel to an inner office where she falls asleep. When she awakens, she finds the store closed and herself a prisoner within. As she wanders in the dark, she hears voices speaking to her which seem to come from the mannequins. Terrified, she backs into an elevator which takes her to the ninth floor. The mannequins are there, and one by one they come to life, including the saleslady and the elevator operator who originally conducted her to the ninth floor. Under their probing, Marsha remembers that she too is a mannequin. Each of them is allowed a months sojourn among the humans, but Marsha forgot her true identity and did not return on time. With melancholy resignation, Marsha apologizes, then reverts to her original and inanimate form.

Marsha White in her normal and natural state: a wooden lady with a painted face who, one month out of the year, takes on the characteristics of someone as normal and as flesh and blood as you and I. But it makes you wonder; doesnt it? Just how normal are we? Just who are the people we nod our hellos to as we pass on the street? A rather good question to askparticularly in the Twilight Zone.

One of the high points of the first season was Serlings bizarre and frightening The After Hours. The biggest challenge of this episode was to construct mannequins which would look like the principal actors, yet still be clearly recognizable as mannequins. I was very concerned about that one being technically good, says Buck Houghton, because I felt it would fall right on its face if those models werent awfully good. And we debated whether to have Anne Francis do it herself in some sort of frozen pose and we talked about waxing her face and doing a lot of things to make her look like a mannequin, but we felt that wouldnt work. I remember going round and round on how to make that so solid that nobody would laugh at it or say, Oh, I caught them doing their tricks.

What was finally done was that William Tuttle and his assistant Charles Schram made molds of the faces of the three principals, Anne Francis, Elizabeth Allen, and John Conwell. From these, duplicate heads were cast in plaster and painted with acrylics. The heads were then affixed to mannequin bodies. With that, The After Hours had three superb-looking props.

But a good prop does not necessarily a good show make, and for that the best efforts of Serling, Anne Francis, and director Douglas Heyes were required. For his part, Serling once again utilized the fear of the unknown working on you, which you cannot share with others. Who, after all, cant identify with a woman trapped all alone in a department store with something chasing her?

From there, Douglas Heyes elaborated upon the script and gave the thing a spooky, unspoken, oppressive quality. He was fortunate to be able to work within a truly enormous set. We inherited a huge basic set from some feature picture which had been a big newspaper office, Heyes remembers, and we converted it into a big department store. Given this kind of space, Heyes could make use of a wide variety of shots to create tension: long shots of silhouetted figures, closeups of Anne Franciss feet as she walks down darkened aisles, shots through pebbled glass of her faceand through all of this, the camera is almost always in motion, as though it were itself a character, nervously stalking.

No amount of visual flair could make this episode work without a strong central presence, and this is where the contribution of Anne Francis comes in. As a rule, women in The Twilight Zone generally come across as drab, colorless, uninteresting. Think of Vera Miles in Mirror Image or Janice Rule in Nightmare as a Child. Possibly this was due to a chauvinism on the part of Serling, possibly to the sexism of the times. But Ms. Francis is an exception. Theres an energy about her and a freshness, an individuality. Her performance is exciting, her reactions genuine. Says Douglas Heyes, I think the casting of Anne Francis in that role was unbelievably good. Apparently, this opinion is shared by many others, for Anne Francis observes, I still have people who walk up to me and say, The favorite show that I ever saw that you were in was that. It did make a mark, it did make an impression.

A WORLD OF HIS OWN (7/1/60)

Written by Richard Matheson 

Producer: Buck Houghton

Director: Ralph Nelson

Director of Photography: George T. Clemens

Music: stock

Cast:

Gregory West: Keenan Wynn Victoria West: Phyllis Kirk Mary: Mary La Roche

The home of Mr. Gregory West, one of Americas most noted playwrights. The office of Mr. Gregory West. Mr. Gregory West shy, quiet, and at the moment very happy. Mary warm, affectionate … And the final ingredient Mrs. Gregory West.

Victoria West is surprised when she looks in the window of her husbands study and sees him sharing a drink with Mary, an attractive blonde. But shes even more surprised when she barges in a moment later and finds the woman gone without a trace. Gregory explains that simply by describing something or somebody into his dictation machine, he can cause that thing to materialize in his office. To make it disappear, all he need do is throw the tape in the fireplace. He demonstrates both these actions, first with Mary, and then when Victoria attempts to run off with a full-grown elephant in the hallway. Despite the evidence of her own senses, Victoria informs Gregory she is convinced he is insane and intends to have him committed. In reply, Gregory removes an envelope from a wall safe. He tells her it contains the length of tape on which she is described. Believing none of this, Victoria snatches the envelope away from him and throws it on the fire. She has just enough time to register astonishment before she disappears. Gregory rushes to the tape machine and frantically begins to redescribe Victoria … then reconsiders and describes instead Mrs. Mary West. The lovingand far less temperamental Mary appears, contentedly mixing her husband a drink.