Twilight Zone Companion (50 page)

In 1963, Serling purchased Blind Alley, a short story written in 1943 by Malcolm Jameson, for his anthology Rod Serlings Triple W: Witches, Warlocks, and Werewolves (Bantam, 1963). The story concerned an elderly, unscrupulous millionaire industrialist who, on his last legs, makes a deal with the Devil to go back in time forty years to Cliffordville, the town of his boyhood, with the intention of starting over. Only trouble is that he forgot to mention that he wanted to be young again (foolishly assuming it was part of the deal), so that he arrives in town old and sick and dies soon after. It was an adequate gimmick story, but no classic. Serling adapted this story into Of Late I Think of Cliffordville, making numerous changes, but keeping some of the basics.

Directed by David Lowell Rich, (A Family Upside-Down, and The Defection of Simas Kudirka) Of Late I Think of Cliffordville remains static and uninvolving. The age makeup on several actors is mediocre, and Salmi never makes a convincing seventy-five-year-old man. Likewise, the final revelation of Feathersmith being an old man in a young mans skin is a bit contrived. At no point prior to this has Feathersmith shown any sign of infirmity; he seems vigorous and self-assured. More than that, the revelation is unnecessary. Feathersmith doesnt fail because of his chronological age; it is Feathersmiths mind that defeats him, not his body.

The Parallel

Written by Rod Serling

Producer: Bert Granet

Director: Alan Crosland

Director of Photography:Robert W. Pittack

Music: stock

Cast: Robert Gaines: Steve Forrest Helen Gaines: Jacqueline Scott Col. Connacher: Frank Aletter Maggie Gaines: Shari Lee Bernath General Eaton: Philip Abbott Captain: Morgan Jones Project Manager: William Sargent Psychiatrist: Paul Comi

In the vernacular of space, this is T minus one hour; sixty minutes before a human being named Major Robert Gaines is lifted off from the Mother Earth and rocketed into the sky, farther and longer than any man ahead of him. Call this one of the first faltering steps of man to sever the umbilical cord of gravity and stretch out a fingertip toward an unknown. In a moment well join this astronaut named Gaines and embark on an adventure, because the environs overheadthe stars, the sky, the infinite spaceare all part of a vast question mark known as the Twilight Zone.

While orbiting the Earth, Gainess capsule inexplicably disappears from the radar screens. Gaines wakes up in a hospital. He was found in his capsule forty-six miles from point of lift-off. The capsulewhich had no gear for landing on solid groundwas completely undamaged. It is a mystery for which Gaines has no explanation. He soon finds, however, that it is but the first of a number of mysteries: Colonel Connacher claims not to have called Gainess wife Helen prior to the launch when Gaines is certain that he did; Gainess house has a white picket fence hes never seen before; and everyone says hes a colonel when he knows hes a major. Both his wife and his daughter Maggie sense something strangely different about him. Doubting his own mind, he visits the Army Psychiatric Division. A psychiatrist finds Gainess delusions peculiar, particularly his belief that the President of the United States is John Kennedysomeone no one else has ever heard of! Later, Gaines tells Connacher that hes looked through a set of encyclopedias and found a number of historical facts subtly altered, as though this is a world parallel to the one he knows. Connacher finds this all hard to swallow. To prove his point, Gaines asks Maggie who he is. She doesnt knowall she knows is that hes not her daddy! Meanwhile, back

at the base, scientists have discovered that the capsule in which Gaines was found is not the one they sent up, but rather an almost-identical duplicate. Asking Gaines to identify it, he runs toward the capsule and abruptly finds himself back in orbit, bringing his capsule in for a splash-down. In the hospital, Gaines learns that he was out of radar contact for six hours. He tells General Eaton and Colonel Connacher that he was in a parallel world populated by duplicates of all of them, in which he was a colonel. The others dismiss this as a bizarre delusion, but then an officer rushes up to them with the news that just moments ago the Cape picked up an unidentified spacecraft on radar for a period of ninety seconds accompanied by a radio transmission from a Colonel Robert Gaines!

Major Robert Gaines, a latter-day voyager just returned from an adventure. Submitted to you without any recommendations as to belief or disbelief. You can accept or reject; you pays your money and you takes your choice. But credulous or incredulous, don’t bother to ask anyone for proof that it could happen. The obligation is a reverse challenge: prove that it couldn’t. This happens to be … the Twilight Zone.”

Although an interesting concept, The Parallel suffers from flat acting, particularly in the lead. As a result, what might have been as engrossing as And When the Sky Was Opened never generates much energy. (The same theme was explored in Journey to the Far Side of the Sun, a 1969 film starring Roy Thinnes.)

There were other problems, too. Censorship was so strict at that time, Bert Granet recalls. We tried something that was a shade too subtle, but basically I didnt want him to find out he was on the wrong planet until he went to bed with [the woman he thought was his wife]. The sexual habits were different. Theres a suggestion of it but its insufficient. Unless youre looking for it, I dont think youll find it.

 The New Exhibit

Written by Jerry Sohl

Producer: Bert Granet

Director: John Brahm

Director of Photography:  George T. Clemens

Music: stock

Cast: Martin Lombard Senescu: Martin Balsam Mr. Ferguson: Will Kuluva Emma Senescu: Maggie Mahoney Dave: William Mims Henri Desire Landru: Milton Parsons Jack the Ripper: David Bond Albert W. Hicks: Bob Mitchell Burke: Robert L. McCord Hare: Billy Beck Gas Man: Phil Chambers Van Man: Lennie Breman Sailor: Ed Barth Guide: Marcel Hillaire 2nd Sailor: Craig Curtis

Martin Lombard Senescu, a gentle man, the dedicated curator of murderers’ row in Ferguson’s Wax Museum. He ponders the reasons why ordinary men are driven to commit mass murder. What Mr. Senescu does not know is that the groundwork has already been laid for his own special kind of madness and torment found only in the Twilight Zone.”

Mr. Ferguson tells Martin that, as the result of poor attendance, he has been forced to sell the wax museum; it is to be demolished and a supermarket built in its place. Martin has been his employee for thirty years, and five of the figures have come to have special meaning for him, almost as though they were close friends. They are Jack the Ripper, Burke and Hare, Albert W. Hicks (who, one day in 1860, killed every member of a ships crew with an ax) and Henri Desire Landruall notorious murderers and all the handiwork of the great Henri Guilmont. Martin pleads to be allowed to house the figures in his basement; perhaps he will be able to get backers to open his own wax museum. Reluctantly, Ferguson agreesto the dismay of Martins wife Emma. As the weeks pass, Martin is unable to get backers, and the electricity bills to keep the basement air conditioned are staggering. The Senescus are broke. Nevertheless, Martins obsession with the figures continues to grow; he spends all his wraking hours down with them, grooming and attending them. Desperate to return to some kind of normalcy, Emma asks her brother Dave for advice. He suggests sabotage; disconnect the air conditioner and soon the wax figures wont be a problem. Late that night, Emma sneaks down to the basement to pull the plug. But suddenly, Jack the Ripper comes to life and murders her. Next morning, Martin discovers the body and sees blood on Jacks knife. Realizing that the police would never believe that a wax dummy killed his wife, Martin buries Emma in the basement and covers the grave with cement. But when Dave shows up, Martin has another problem: Dave wont swallow his story that Emmas gone to visit his sister, particularly when he hears the air conditioner going full blast downstairs! Dave sneaks into the basement and is promptly dispatched by an ax wielded by Albert W. Hicks. Now Martin has to dig a second grave! Sometime later, Mr. Ferguson arrives with the news that he intends to sell the five figures to the Marchand Museum in Brussels. Although Martin protests, Ferguson remains adamant. When Martin goes upstairs to prepare some tea, Landru strangles Ferguson with a garrote. Returning, Martin is appalled to find Ferguson dead. Enraged, he tells the figures that hes going to destroy them. They come alive and draw near him, speaking to Martin in his mind, telling him that it is he, not they, who committed the murders. Later, at the Marchand Museum, a guide leads a group of the curious through the murderers row, luridly relating the terrible deeds of each of the figures. Finally, he comes to the rows newest addition, a man who murdered his wife, brother-in-law and employer. It is the figure of Martin Lombard Senescu!

The new exhibit became very popular at Marchands, but of all the figures none was ever regarded with more dread than that of Martin Lombard Senescu. It was something about the eyes, people said. Ifs the look that one often gets after taking a quick walk through the Twilight Zone

In The New Exhibit, Martin Balsam does an excellent job playing a quiet little man with a most grisly hobby. As for the wax figures of the murderers, these are played by live actors, shown still-frame in closeups; the waxen makeup and their ability to stand very still creating a convincing illusion that they are actually inanimate wax. Where the story falls down is in its denouement. Although we see Jack the Ripper kill Martins wife, Hicks his brother-in-law and Landru his boss, at the end the murderers reveal that it is Martin who committed the murders. This just does not wash. Had there been a greater subtlety in the murder scenes, merely

suggesting that the murders were committed by the figures without actually showing them, this ambiguity might have allowed for such a conclusion. But such is not the case.

Although Charles Beaumont is credited as the sole writer on The New Exhibit, it was actually ghostwritten, in its entirety, by Jerry Sohl, a man who had been a staff writer on Alfred Hitchcock Presents and the author of numerous novels, including Costigans Needle and Point Ultimate (later, he would write the novel The Lemon Eaters and pen episodes for The Outer Limits, Star Trek and The Invaders). A year earlier, Beaumont had farmed out the writing of Dead Mans Shoes to OCee Ritch because he had been overwhelmed by his numerous writing commitments.

But now, the reason was quite different.

He was never well, Beaumonts friend William F. Nolan comments. He was always thin. He almost always had a headache. He used Bromo like somebody would use water. He had his Bromo bottle with him all the time. Hed buy it in those giant sizes, what he called window sizes, and hed empty one of those a month.

Everybody kept saying, Chucks working too hard. Hes taking on too many jobs. Hes stretching himself too thin. Hes not sleeping enough. And the headaches got worse, and we thought, well sure, theyd get worse. If I was doing seventy scripts instead of two, Id have a headache, too. Sometimes, hed have as many as ten projects going on at once in 62. Hed have like five different TV scripts, a movie script that hes supposed to be working onand each one, the producers thought Beaumont was working on exclusively. But meanwhile, hed have OCee Ritch holed up in one part of the city writing a draft of one, hed have Jerry Sohl holed up writing a draft of another, John Tomerlin would be writing a draft of a third, Id be polishing a magazine article for him, hed be trying to get the movie written, Ray Russell would be working with him on a Roger Corman project, and hed just be running and running, making different appointments. Hed say, Ill be at Dupars and well have a ten-minute conference on the script, but I cant give you more than ten minutes, because Ive got to be over at Rays at four-thirty to meet him.’ So youd go, Chuck! Chuck! and youd try to fit yourself into this wild schedule. And I said to myself, Man, hes just going to kill himself doing that! He was pushing himself way too hard. Nobody could survive that kind of pressure.

Soon, the pressure seemed to be taking its toll. By 63, he was drinking an awful lot, which Chuck never used to do, says Nolan. Every lunch hour, he had to have two or three martinis, and he would invite you over and it wouldnt be coffee anymore, it would be a martini or brandy or something. And his voice began to get slower, it began to get kind of loggy. Wed be calling up at ten in the morning, and hed say, Yesss, this is ol Beaumont! And Id say to myself, My God, he must have started drinking at ten oclock today! He just woke up an hour ago; he sounds fogged out already!

Yet, for all of this, it turned out that the drinking was merely a reaction to something much, much worse that was happening to Beaumont. Says John Tomerlin, I was spending a great deal of time with Chuck at that time and was close enough to know that what he was drinking could not possibly account for the odd mental set that he had taken. He had a distorted view of his relationships with people, in business and personally. By distorted, I mean they were kind of just a half-notch off center, they were almost right, but not quite. He became extremely deliberate about his speech, and there would be pauses sometimes between syllables and words, and then at other times he would simply lose the thread of what he was saying and look at you rather bemusedly, as though he was waiting to hear whatever it was you were saying. It was kind of a frightening experience, because one realized that there was something wrong and it was impossible at that point to tell what it was.

There were other, extremely mysterious symptoms not attributable to drinking. Says director Douglas Heyes, I didnt understand what was happening. Each time Id see him, hed seem so much older than I knew he was. Id say, God, Chuck has aged a lot! It was true. In a photograph published in Playboy at the time, Beaumontthen thirty-threeappears at least fifty.

The last half of 63, he couldnt write, says William E Nolan. He was drunk all the timeor so we thought. He would go out unshaven to meetings, and the meetings would be disastrous. He couldnt come up with ideas in front of producers. Youve got to have the ability to think on your feet. If they dont like the purple elephant, youd better think of a red giraffe to throw in there. If you cant think of the red giraffe, the guy says, Well, I dont want the purple elephant. What else you got? Chuck would say, I … dont … have … anything … else! And theyd say, Well, were sorry, Mr. Beaumont, but we dont like the script.