Twilight Zone Companion (29 page)

We know that a dream can be real, but who ever thought that reality could be a dream? We exist, of course, but how, in what way? As we believe, as flesh-and- blood human beings, or are we simply parts of someones feverish, complicated nightmare? Think about it, and then ask yourself, do you live here, in this country, in this world, or do you live instead … in the Twilight Zone.

As in Perchance to Dream, Charles Beaumont once again explored the shadow realm of the nightmare in Shadow Play.

Although somewhat stereotypical, the episode is suspenseful. Will Adam Grant be able to convince the D. A. that this is all a dream, or will he go to the chair? Its a race to the wire. Dennis Weaver, then known principally as Matt Dillons limping right-hand man Chester, gives an intense if broad performance. Directing this was John Brahm, and he was a good choice, having directed many segments of Alfred Hitchcock Presents. One sequence seems particularly Hitchcockian: Grant is describing to a fellow prisoner the long walk to the electric chair. He concludes his monologue with, Then they drop the mask. Its musty, it smells like an old sofa. Then you wait, every muscle tense, straining. Any second, any second. Then you can almost hear it. They pull the switch … Quick cut to a closeup of a stove as the D.A.s wife pulls a sizzling steak from the broiler. Effective black humor.

Perhaps best of all, Shadow Play, like Mirror Image and a number of others, was an episode that could easily set a viewers mind to thinking, to questioning the nature of reality. Or perhaps it should be put like this: Are you really reading this page, or is someone dreaming you reading this page?

THE SILENCE (4/28/61)

Written by Rod Serling

Producer: Buck Houghton

Director: Buzz Kulik

Director of Photography: George T. Clemens

Music: stock

Cast:

Col. Archie Taylor: Franchot Tone Jamie Tennyson: Liam Sullivan George Alfred: Jonathan Harris Franklin: Cyril Delevanti 1st Man: Everett Glass 2nd Man: Felix Locher 3rd Man: John Holland

The note that this man is carrying across a club room is in the form of a proposed wager; but its the kind of wager that comes without precedent. It stands alone in the annals of bet-making as the strangest game of chance ever offered by one man to another. In just a moment, well see the terms of the wager and what young Mr. Tennyson does about it. And in the process, well witness all parties spin a wheel of chance in a very bizarre casino called the Twilight Zone.

Aristocratic Archie Taylor wants nothing more than to enjoy a little peace and quiet at his mens club, but this is made impossible by the incessant chatter of fellow member Jamie Tennyson. Filled with contempt, he offers Tennyson a wager: if Tennyson can remain silent for a year, he will pay him half a million dollars. In order to insure his unbroken silence, he will be housed in the clubs basement. Hopelessly in debt, in love with a wife with expensive tastes, Tennyson reluctantly agrees. As the weeks roll by, it becomes clear that Tennyson is determined to win. Taylor offers him a thousand dollars to call off the bet. When this fails, he uses every dirty trick he can think of to get Tennyson to speak, including making insinuations that his wife is being unfaithful to him. Finally, the year is over. Tennyson emerges from the basement and puts out a hand for his winnings. A broken man, Taylor reveals that he lost his fortune years before, that he never had any intention of paying off the bet. Tennyson is clearly devastated by this news, but he enigmatically remains silent. The truth becomes horribly clear when he writes a note and hands it to Taylor. It reads: I knew I would not be able to keep my part of the bargain, so one year ago I had the nerves to my vocal chords severed!

Mr. Jamie Tennyson, who almost won a bet, but who discovered somewhat belatedly that gambling can be a most unproductive pursuit, even with loaded dice, marked cards, or in his case some severed vocal chords. For somewhere beyond him a wheel was turned and his number came up black thirteen. If you dont believe it, ask the croupier, the very special one who handles roulettein the Twilight Zone.

The Silence is a curiously atypical episode. It has no supernatural nor science-fictional elements, nor is there even the suggestion of any, as in Where Is Everybody? In every aspect, the story seems more suited to Alfred Hitchcock Presents than to The Twilight Zone.

Although it isnt credited, The Silence is almost certainly based on The Bet, a short story by Anton Chekhov, in which a banker bets a young lawyer a huge sum of money that he will not be able to stay in solitary confinement for a period of fifteen years. Fifteen years pass during which the banker suffers numerous setbacks. If he pays the bet he will be ruined, so he determines to murder the lawyer in his sleep. Fortunately, over the years the lawyer has come to the conclusion that material goods are without value. To prove this, he decides to disappear just before the fifteenth year expires, thus forfeiting the bet and saving the bankerand himself, though he doesnt know it.

Appropriate or not, the story did present its share of challenges. The first headache went to George Clemens. The set where Sullivan was to be imprisoned was made up entirely of panes of glass! When I saw the set, I pretty near lost my lunch, Clemens recalls. How in the world am I going to get a light in there, and show light, without getting reflections? But Buck Houghton had hired the right man, and Clemens persevered. Once I started on the thing, he says, I think I only had to take two panes of glass out in the whole picture.

The first days shooting went just fine. The opening and closing scenes of the episode, both of which take place in the main room of the mens club, were completed. The company broke for the weekend. But the biggest problem was yet to come.

On the second day of shooting, Franchot Tone didnt show up, Serling recalled years later. And we waited and we waited. The call is six in the morning. When it got to be ten a.m. and everybody had been sitting

there in their own smoke waiting and no Franchot Tone, we get his agent who tracks him down. Hes in a clinic.

Stories differ. According to Liam Sullivan, Tone told him that hed been at a party and, in attempting to pick a flower for his date off a bush on the terrace, had fallen down a hillside and landed on the driveway of the house next door. According to Serling, Tone had approached a girl in the parking lot of a restaurant and her boyfriend had taken offense and beaten him up. Whatever the truth, the result was still the same: half of Tones face was scraped raw.

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.