What put me on edge as a third grader in the 1960s was the television. Back then, stations at random times broadcast alerts to remind viewers of the threat of war with the Soviet Union. As I sank my Oreo in my milk, a triangular Civil Defense logo would interrupt Bugs and Daffy’s pretend mayhem, and a deep male voice would say, “This is a test of the Emergency Broadcast System.” A piercing tone, an inhuman sound, would play for an entire minute. Then the voice would return, saying, “In the event of an actual emergency, you would have been instructed where to tune for more information.” By that time my spiritual cookie was sludge at the bottom of my glass.
Another familiar TV voice in those times regularly took children and adults to a different kind of zone than a war zone — “another dimension not only of sight and sound but of mind: a journey into a wondrous land whose boundaries are that of imagination.”
The solemn voice behind that introductory narration belonged to America’s Aesop, Rod Serling, the creator and executive producer of The Twilight Zone. The king of short tales that ended with a twist, he was the O. Henry of the buttoned-down Organization Man era.
Serling appeared on camera to introduce most episodes. Short in stature, he wore the era’s uniform — a suit, white shirt and tightly knotted, impossibly thin tie. His constant companion was a Chesterfield cigarette, the brand that sponsored the show. Its smoke coiled around him like incense around an oracle. He smoked at least three packs of them a day, and he would die of a heart attack in 1975 at age 50, a “victim of the intense, raw emotions he expressed so vividly through his life and art,” writes Marc Scott Zicree in The Twilight Zone Companion.
From 1959 to 1964 Serling hosted 156 fantasy- and science-fiction-themed episodes, 92 of which he wrote. Since its cancellation, not only has The Twilight Zone been available through constant syndication or streaming, it has spawned a movie, three TV-series revivals, a radio show, theme park attractions, short story collections, a magazine and even a pinball machine. The often-eerie program has been ranked by TV Guide and other media mavens among the best shows ever aired.
“Good writing — like wine — has to age well with the years, and my stuff is momentarily adequate,” Serling once told an interviewer. Years later he deemed about one-third of the episodes “pretty damn good.” Having re-watched them all over several months, I agree.
Zicree’s book, now in its third edition, is stuffed with essays about each episode as well as interviews with guest stars and directors of various episodes. Like any other reviewer, he often hits the mark while writing too kindly of episodes that have aged badly.
The best installments are spellbinding, especially Serling’s “Eye of the Beholder.” The story follows the thoughts of hospital patient Janet Tyler, played by the gorgeous Donna Douglas, who later starred in The Beverly Hillbillies. As the episode opens, Janet’s face is encased in bandages. Surgery after surgery has failed to correct her sickening appearance. Thanks to clever camerawork, the faces of the medical staff are kept from us.
As the bandages come off, we see that the supposed monster is a beauty — and that the doctors and nurses all have distorted pig faces. Though Janet runs in terror from their failure to help her look “normal,” she is told she will be sent to a community where others like her live in peace.
The episode ends with the brown-shirted “Leader” raging from flat telescreens. “There must be a single purpose, a single norm, a single approach, a single entity of peoples, a single virtue, a single morality, a single frame of reference, a single philosophy of government,” he rants. “We must cut out all that is different like a cancerous growth!” One wonders if Janet is going to be sent up a smokestack, rather than to an idyllic village.
The show’s simple message, according to Zicree: “The only escape from alienation lies in reaching out to others, trusting in their common humanity. Give in to the fear, and you are lost.”
Serling’s earlier TV dramas, like “Requiem for a Heavyweight” on the live show Playhouse 90, had won him the nickname “Television’s Angry Young Man.” No wonder. The former Army paratrooper had come home from World War II recovering from severe shrapnel wounds. On one occasion he saw down the barrel of a Japanese rifle, and he thought his time had come. At the last second, another G.I. shot the enemy soldier, saving Serling’s life.
Raised in a Reform Jewish household in upstate New York, Serling had wanted to fight in Europe. Uncle Sam had other ideas. While in the service, Serling’s emotional outlet was boxing. He won 17 of 18 bouts. For his efforts he got his nose broken in his first and last fights.
He used writing as therapy and conformist culture as a kind of punching bag. When the show launched, agencies and sponsors knew the impact of Serling’s dramatic punches. They were wary. He assured them he would never air allegories about distressing issues like civil rights.
But six months later, with the episode titled “The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street,” he delivered a knockout blow. What appears to be an idyllic suburban neighborhood descends rapidly into a riot zone when aliens cause a power failure and other mysterious events. Their purpose? To find humans’ weaknesses so they will be easier to conquer. Zicree deems it “the greatest piece ever written about mob violence in any medium.”
Serling wrote the episode, and in his voiceover coda says: “There are weapons that are simply thoughts, attitudes, prejudices — to be found only in the minds of men. For the record, prejudices can kill, and suspicions can destroy.”
He later confessed, “It was all right to have Martians saying things Democrats and Republicans could never say.”
Of course, all is not gloom and doom in The Twilight Zone. Many episodes are whimsical. Others touch the heart. In “Nothing in the Dark,” a young Robert Redford comforts an elderly woman afraid of death. An older couple shopping for youthful android replacement bodies in “The Trade-Ins” realize they can only afford one new body.
Some episodes are preposterous. In “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet” William Shatner, newly released from an asylum, spots a bear-like beast on the wing of his airplane tearing loose the cowling of a propeller engine. Of course, no one else can see the goofy gremlin, but the audience could — because Serling crafted tales of timeless magic. Filmed in black-and-white, they have colored our imaginations for 65 years, and may do so for our descendants 650 years from now. As Serling wrote, “The place is here, the time is now and the journey into the shadows that we’re about to watch could be our journey.”
George Spencer is a freelance writer who lives in Hillsborough, North Carolina. For more on The Twilight Zone’s creator, Spencer recommends Rod Serling: His Life, Work, and Imagination by Nicholas Parisi.