Twilight Zone Encyclopedia

By Steven Jay Rubin

A rich, fact-filled collectible, packed with vibrant history, amazing trivia, and rare photographs, The Twilight Zone Encyclopedia, assembled with the full cooperation of the Rod Serling estate, includes biographies of every principal actor involved in the series and hundreds who toiled behind the scenes—producers, writers, and directors. It is an exhaustive and engrossing guide, a compendium of credits, plot synopses, anecdotes, production details, never-before-seen images, and interviews with nearly everyone still alive who was associated with the show.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Chicago Review Press
• Release date: Nov 1, 2017
• ISBN: 9781613738917

Book preview

SERLING

A

ADDISS, JUSTUS (June 23, 1917–October 26, 1979): Television director who helmed three episodes: The Odyssey of Flight 33; The Rip Van Winkle Caper; and No Time Like the Past. Born in New York City, Addiss honed his skills directing both live and filmed dramatic shows. He made his directing debut on Girl from Nowhere, a 1953 episode of City Detective, which starred Rod Cameron, and later directed Schlitz Playhouse (38 episodes, 1954–1957).

ADLER, LUTHER (May 4, 1903–December 8, 1984; birth name Lutha Adler): American stage, screen, and television actor who portrayed antique shop owner Arthur Castle in The Man in the Bottle (salary: $2,500). The son of famed Yiddish theater entrepreneur Jacob Adler and the brother of renowned acting teacher Stella Adler, Luther was an acclaimed leading man onstage. However, his stage success did not translate into leading roles in film or television. For instance, in Clifford Odets’s original stage play Golden Boy, Adler played the lead—boxer Joe Bonaparte. However, when it was time to adapt the play into a film, he lost the part to newcomer William Holden. This happened on a number of other occasions. It is ironic that, considering he was Jewish, Adler portrayed Adolf Hitler twice: in The Desert Fox (1951) and The Magic Face (1951).

Luther Adler. Steve Rubin Collection

THE AFTER HOURS: Originally aired Friday, June 10, 1960; season 1, episode 34.

ROD SERLING’S OPENING NARRATION

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, Specialties Department—looking for a gold thimble. The odds are that she’ll find it, but there are even better odds that she’ll find something else, because this isn’t just a department store. This happens to be … the Twilight Zone.

THE SETUP

Striking blonde Marsha White (Anne Francis) goes to a typical big-city department store to buy a very specific gift: a gold thimble. She soon finds herself in an express elevator to the ninth floor, where she is left stranded in what appears to be a darkened, deserted department. There she’s greeted by a saleswoman (Elizabeth Allen), who ushers her to a practically empty display case—in fact, the only item for sale is a gold thimble. Marsha purchases it, only to discover in the elevator going down that it’s scratched and dented. Annoyed, Marsha goes immediately to the department store complaints department and meets Mr. Armbruster (James Millhollin), the assistant store manager, who is surprised that she purchased the item on the ninth floor, given that there is no ninth floor in this store. Furthermore, they don’t sell thimbles. Marsha then spies the salesgirl who sold her the damaged item—who turns out to be a mannequin. Freaked out, Marsha is allowed to lie down in the manager’s office, where she falls asleep. When she awakens, she finds herself locked in the closed department store—where the mannequins start to speak …

BEHIND THE SCENES

The episode’s star, Anne Francis, remembered, When we did ‘The After Hours’ we had the whole soundstage set up for this store—it was a five-day project and we rehearsed for three days like it was theater, and this character I played had to build up to this insane hysteria at the end. So being able to do it straight through was fabulous, and on the fourth day they blocked with the camera, and on the fifth day they shot it. It was wonderful to be able to work that way. At the Twilight Zone convention in Los Angeles in 2002, Francis revealed that she kept a souvenir from the episode: the mannequin-head duplicate of herself, which she used as a receptacle for her straw hats.*

John Conwell and Anne Francis in The After Hours. Courtesy Carol Serling Collection

THE CAST

THE CREW

AHERNE, BRIAN (May 2, 1902–February 10, 1986; birth name William Brian de Lacy Aherne): Tall, sophisticated Anglo-American performer of stage, screen, and television who portrayed time-traveling actor Booth Templeton in The Trouble with Templeton (salary: $3,500). Aherne earned an Academy Award nomination in 1939 for the part of Emperor Maximilian in Juarez (but lost to Stagecoach’s Thomas Mitchell). With credits dating to the silent era, Aherne’s films include: My Sister Eileen (1942); The Locket (1946); I Confess (1953); Titanic (1953), as Captain E. J. Smith; Prince Valiant (1954), as King Arthur; The Swan (1956); The Best of Everything (1959), as philandering book editor Fred Shalimar; Susan Slade (1961); and Sword of Lancelot (1963), again as King Arthur. He made his television debut in Dear Brutus, a 1950 episode of The Ford Theatre Hour.

Brian Aherne. Steve Rubin Collection

AIDMAN, CHARLES (January 21, 1925–November 7, 1993): American character actor who portrayed US Air Force astronaut Colonel Ed Harrington in And When the Sky Was Opened (salary: $600), and Bill, the physicist who helps a suburban family search for their missing daughter, in Little Girl Lost (salary: $1,000). Like many actors who served in World War II, Aidman was comfortable in uniform. One of his first roles was that of a patriot captain in the You Are There episode Washington’s Farewell to His Officers (1955). Four years later, he had the small role of Easy Company’s Lieutenant Harrold opposite Gregory Peck in Lewis Milestone’s Pork Chop Hill (1959). In War Hunt (1962), another Korean War drama, he played Captain Wallace Pratt opposite John Saxon and a very young Robert Redford. He would later serve as narrator for two seasons when The Twilight Zone was revived in 1985.

AKINS, CLAUDE (May 25, 1926–January 27, 1994): Durable and gritty character actor who portrayed Steve Brand in The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street (salary: $1,000), and level-headed space jockey Commander William Fletcher in The Little People (salary: $1,500). Tough, beefy, and formidable on screen, Akins was adept at playing villains, no-nonsense cops, and soldiers. In The Twilight Zone, Serling tapped into his good-guy side. A native of Bedford, Indiana (although his birthplace was Nelson, Georgia), Akins made his first screen appearance as Sergeant Baldy Dhom, one of the boxers in From Here to Eternity (1953). Gliding between features and increasingly more visible TV roles, particularly westerns, Akins achieved a higher profile as murderer Joe Burdette, whose arrest incites the action in Howard Hawks’s western classic Rio Bravo (1959). After appearing in the memorable Combat! episode Nightmare on the Red Ball Run (1967) and in the recurring role of Cotton Buckmeister on Laredo (1966–1967), Akins played Sheriff Butcher in the classic TV movie The Night Stalker (1972), written by Twilight Zone veteran Richard Matheson. The following year, under heavy ape makeup, he played bullish gorilla general Aldo in Battle for the Planet of the Apes (1973).

Claude Akins (left) with Jan Handzlik, his costar in The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street. Courtesy Carol Serling Collection

ALBERTSON, JACK (June 16, 1907–November 25, 1981; birth name Harold Jack Albertson): Celebrated American character actor and former song-and-dance man in burlesque, vaudeville, and Broadway who portrayed Jerry Harlowe, a friend of bomb shelter builder Dr. Bill Stockton (Larry Gates) in The Shelter (salary: $1,000), and the one-wish genie in I Dream of Genie. Albertson received the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance in The Subject Was Roses (1968), in a role he originated in the Broadway play (which netted him a Tony for Featured Actor). He also won two Emmy Awards, one for a guest appearance on the variety show Cher (1975) and the other for playing one of the leads in the sitcom Chico and the Man (88 episodes, 1974–1978). He had appeared in bit parts as early as 1940’s Strike Up the Band, and made a memorable impression in the small role of the US Post Office mail sorter who directs thousands of Dear Santa letters to the courthouse in Miracle on 34th Street (1947). Albertson found new popularity in early television, where he made his debut in Firebug, a 1950 episode of the suspense anthology series The Clock. To younger audiences, Albertson is best remembered as Grandpa Joe in 1971’s Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory.

Jack Albertson. Steve Rubin Collection

ALEXANDER, DENISE (November 11, 1939– ): Actress and former child television star who portrayed Jody Sturka, the daughter of a nuclear engineer (Fritz Weaver) in Third from the Sun (salary: $500). Remembered Alexander, I enjoyed doing the show—it was a slightly unusual experience, and it had a sense of mystery about it. There are questions I’ve had about it that have never been answered—which makes it unique, in my experience. I had been working since I was a kid, I had worked a lot in New York—my family’s original base was back east. It was a natural move to come west, because that was where the film and television work was. It just stuns me how creative Rod Serling was, and the wonderful premise the show was built on, and how lasting it has been.* A New York State native, Alexander made her television debut in the 1951 Armstrong Circle Theatre episode That Man Is Mine. That same year, she appeared opposite future Twilight Zone player J. Pat O’Malley in the Bubbles episode of Robert Montgomery Presents. Alexander is best known for her recurring roles on a number of popular television soap operas, including Days of Our Lives, in which she played Susan Hunter Martin (1,329 episodes, 1966–1972), and General Hospital, in which she appeared as Dr. Lesley Webber (1975–2013). It was for her performance as Dr. Webber that she received an Emmy nomination, for Outstanding Actress in a Daytime Drama Series.

Denise Alexander. Courtesy Denise Alexander Collection

ALIENS: For five years running, The Twilight Zone was central casting for all manner of interplanetary life. In effect, all the material relegated to B movies throughout the 1950s was suddenly fodder for a grown-up anthology series on national television. Sometimes the aliens on The Twilight Zone were background observers. In Serling’s fascinating The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street, an average suburban neighborhood comes unglued when an alien saucer cuts the town’s electric power. In Serling’s equally disturbing Eye of the Beholder, a beautiful woman (Maxine Stuart / Donna Douglas) awakens from plastic surgery only to learn that her procedure has failed, and that she looks nothing liked the normal pig-faced creatures that surround her. In a rare comedic turn, Serling wrote Mr. Dingle, the Strong, in which a quiet vacuum cleaner salesman (Burgess Meredith) is chosen by twin aliens to become the world’s strongest man. In Will the Real Martian Please Stand Up? Serling took a cue from Agatha Christie, setting up a mystery involving a downed spaceship and stranded bus passengers in a quiet, warm diner. The title said it all. Next, working from a story by Damon Knight, Serling gave us one of the iconic episodes of the series: To Serve Man, in which a giant alien (Richard Kiel) arrives on Earth, apparently to peacefully guide the human race forward—secretly maintaining a dark agenda that must be decoded by cryptanalysts played by Lloyd Bochner and Susan Cummings. In Charles Beaumont’s The Fugitive, one of the kindest aliens of all time is introduced: Old Ben (J. Pat O’Malley), who comes to Earth to escape alien pursuers but finds time to help a disabled young girl (Susan Gordon). In Serling’s The Little People, space explorers (Joe Maross, Claude Akins) discover a civilization of fascinating and industrious alien beings the size of sand grains—and one of the explorers realizes that there are advantages to being a relative giant. Returning to comedy, Serling wrote Hocus-Pocus and Frisby, in which a desert gas station owner and chronic spinner of tall tales (Andy Devine) is abducted by humanoid aliens who must soon reckon with the fact that he isn’t the apex of human intelligence he claims to be. In Serling’s The Gift, the focus is on Pedro, a little Mexican boy (Edmund Vargas) who befriends a kindly alien fugitive (The Bridge on the River Kwai’s Geoffrey Horne) with an extraordinary gift to share with humanity. In Black Leather Jackets, the humanoid aliens created by writer Earl Hamner Jr. are a mixed bag: Scott (Lee Kinsolving) falls for next-door neighbor Ellen (Shelley Fabares), but his two motorcycle-riding buddies are dead set on fulfilling their mission—to destroy all human life on Earth. In Serling’s last episode on the show, The Fear, he perfectly captures the tension of a California Highway Patrol officer (Peter Mark Richman) and a beautiful recluse (Hazel Court) investigating a possible alien close encounter in the rural wilderness.

Burgess Meredith poses with his two alien benefactors in Mr. Dingle, the Strong. Courtesy Carol Serling Collection

Two more aliens come to Luther Dingle’s aid in Mr. Dingle, the Strong. The gentleman on the right is Douglas Spencer, who played Scotty in director Christian Nyby’s The Thing from Another World. Courtesy Carol Serling Collection

Old Ben ( J. Pat O’Malley) from The Fugitive. Courtesy Carol Serling Collection

ALLEN, ELIZABETH (January 25, 1929–September 19, 2006; birth name Elizabeth Ellen Gillease): Tall, striking leading lady who portrayed the unusual thimble-selling department store saleswoman opposite Anne Francis in The After Hours (salary: $750). A native of Jersey City, New Jersey, Allen jump-started her television career when she landed the high-profile role of Jackie Gleason’s sexy Away We Go Girl on The Jackie Gleason Show (1957). She later made an even bigger splash as initially stuffy Boston heiress Amelia Dedham in director John Ford’s Donovan’s Reef (1963). Her on-screen chemistry with John Wayne was palpable.

Elizabeth Allen. Courtesy Carol Serling Collection

ALONZO, JOHN A. (June 12, 1934–March 13, 2001): Award-winning cinematographer who began his career as an actor, and portrayed convicted killer Luis Gallegos in Dust (salary: $400). Alonzo received an Oscar nomination for shooting Chinatown (1974) and won the Emmy Award for Outstanding Lighting Direction for the TV movie remake Fail Safe (2000). He was previously nominated for Outstanding Cinematography Emmys for World War II: When Lions Roared (1994) and Lansky (1999). In his earlier life as an actor, he made his film debut in director Don Siegel’s The Gun Runners (1958), a thriller starring Audie Murphy and Eddie Albert that was a remake of To Have and Have Not (1944). Like Vladimir Sokoloff, who plays his father in Dust, Alonzo had a small part in The Magnificent Seven (1960). Alonzo made his feature film debut as a cinematographer on Bloody Mama (1970), directed by Roger Corman.

AMERICAN AIRLINES: Major US airline, founded in 1930, that offered a mock-up of a Boeing 707 jetliner passenger cabin to any studio that needed it for film or television production. MGM took them up on the offer, and in 1960 The Twilight Zone used it for airplane interior sequences in The Odyssey of Flight 33. It was used again in 1963 for Nightmare at 20,000 Feet—though, out of dramatic necessity, the episode notably takes place in a propeller-driven aircraft, not a 707. The mock-up cabin was originally used for stewardess training. Since the airline was building a new one, the old one was considered expendable.

AMONTILLADO: Type of dry Spanish sherry that KGB commissar Vassiloff (John Van Dreelen) shares with defecting Major Ivan Kuchenko (Martin Landau) in The Jeopardy Room. Unfortunately, Vassiloff laces the vintage with a sleep-inducing drug.

AND WHEN THE SKY WAS OPENED: Originally aired Friday, December 11, 1959; season 1, episode 11.

ROD SERLING’S OPENING NARRATION

Her name: X-20. Her type: an experimental interceptor. Recent history: a crash landing in the Mojave Desert after a 35-hour flight, 900 miles into space. Incidental date: the ship with the men who flew her disappeared from the radar screen for 24 hours. But the shrouds that cover mysteries are not always made out of a tarpaulin, as this man will soon find out on the other side of a hospital door.

THE SETUP

At a US Air Force base somewhere in the southwest, an experimental rocket interceptor, the X-20, which recently crashed in the desert, sits under a tarpaulin in a locked hanger. In a nearby hospital, US Air Force lieutenant colonel Clegg Forbes (Rod Taylor) enters the hospital room of Major William Bill Gart (Jim Hutton). Both men are astronauts and survivors of the X-20 crash; Gart is nursing a broken leg. The experimental jet flew 900 miles into outer space but was lost on radar for 24 hours before it crashed. Forbes is nervous and disoriented. He claims to Gart that the headline in the local newspaper that proclaims, Two Spacemen Return from Crash in Desert is wrong—terribly wrong. Forbes claims that three men went up in the X-20, and that the third pilot, Colonel Ed Harrington (Charles Aidman) is missing. Forbes can’t understand how a close friend he has known for 15 years has disappeared into thin air. Furthermore, no one seems to know who Harrington is, as if he had never even existed in the first place.

BEHIND THE SCENES

Rod Serling based the screenplay for this episode on Richard Matheson’s short story Disappearing Act, which was first published in the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction in March 1953. The episode itself was shot the week of July 20, 1959.

THE CAST

THE CREW

Gloria Pall and Rod Taylor in And When the Sky Was Opened. Courtesy Carol Serling Collection

ANDERSON, JOHN (October 20, 1922–August 7, 1992): Tall, authoritarian American character actor who portrayed Gabriel the trumpet player in A Passage for Trumpet (salary: $500); Captain Skipper Farver in The Odyssey of Flight 33 (salary: $800); tool and die tycoon Sebastian Deidrich in Of Late I Think of Cliffordville (salary: $1,500); and Goldsmith, the leader of a postapocalyptic community in The Old Man in the Cave (salary: $1,000). Anderson recalled a mysterious encounter that took place years after his appearances on The Twilight Zone: I was out in Death Valley Junction seeing some friends of ours who ran the Amargosa Opera House. And they said to me, ‘A friend of yours is going to be here tonight—Rod Serling.’ Our friends did a one-woman dance program, and they told me that Rod kept calling but never showed up. That night, at the performance, I asked if Rod had shown, and they said no. During intermission I stepped outside for a cigar and lit up. I’m looking out at this bleak, moonlit terrain that is Death Valley Junction, and I see a little guy lighting up a cigarette. And he says, ‘John?’ And I said, ‘Hey, Rod.’ So we talked in the moonlight, smoking, and he says, ‘John, you know what I saw the other night? The airplane picture, The Odyssey of Flight 33." God, I loved that.’ And I responded, ‘They were all good.’ By that time, intermission was over, and I told him I would see him after the show. When I came out, he was nowhere to be seen. Rod was a very shy, private person. He wasn’t there … and he died about three months later. And ever since, I’ve wondered if that really happened. Did we really stand there in the moonlight talking quietly? Or was that a scene out of The Twilight Zone? Twilight Zone represents a good time in my life in Hollywood. It was a very exciting time. I moved from New York with television, which had left New York—live TV—and came out here on film. I didn’t plan it that way, but that’s sort of the way it happened. It was really a high-keyed atmosphere that you worked in."* Whether he was playing presidents, judges, army officers, or homesteaders, Anderson brought grit and gravitas to scores of television and film roles.

John Anderson. Steve Rubin Collection

ANDREWS, DANA (January 1, 1909–December 17, 1992; birth name Carver Dana Andrews): Durable leading man of the 1940s and ’50s who portrayed frustrated time traveler Paul Driscoll in No Time Like the Past (salary: $5,000 + $1,250 for retakes). A native of Covington County, Mississippi, Andrews, one of 13 children (his younger brother was Twilight Zone veteran Steve Forrest), is best known for a number of acclaimed major studio films he made in the 1940s. These include: The Ox-Bow Incident (1943); The Purple Heart (1944); Laura (1944), as Detective Lieutenant Mark McPherson; State Fair (1945); A Walk in the Sun (1945), as Sergeant Bill Tyne; and The Best Years of Our Lives (1946), in perhaps his finest performance as former US Army Air Forces bombardier Fred Derry. Andrews made his big-screen debut in director H. Bruce Humberstone’s western Lucky Cisco Kid (1940). He later starred in the moody, atmospheric supernatural thriller Curse of the Demon (a.k.a. Night of the Demon, 1957), a film that, over the years, has attained cult status. Andrews made his television debut in The Right Hand Man, a 1958 episode of Playhouse 90 directed by Franklin J. Schaffner of Patton fame. Twilight Zone director John Brahm cast him in the leading role in Hot Rods to Hell (1967), about a family man fending off the attacks of teen drag racers, one of his better roles of the 1960s. Andrews later retired from acting and pursued a quite successful career in real estate development.

Dana Andrews. Courtesy Cinema Retro Magazine Collection

ANDREWS, EDWARD (October 9, 1914–March 8, 1985): Tall, heavyset character actor specializing in slightly pompous business executives, politicians, and authority figures, who portrayed the sinister Carling in Third from the Sun (salary: $1,000) and the irresponsible hit-and-run driver Oliver Ollie Pope in You Drive (salary: $2,250). A native of Griffin, Georgia, known for his signature horn-rimmed glasses, Andrews spent 20 years in the legitimate theater before bringing his considerable acting chops to film and television. His first major on-screen role was as the charming but murderous Rhett Tanner in The Phenix City Story (1955). After baby boomers grew accustomed to seeing him in most of the seminal dramatic series of the 1960s, he found a home in a number of popular Disney features, including The Absent Minded Professor (1961), Son of Flubber (1963), and A Tiger Walks (1964). Leveraging his comedic skills, Andrews starred in the short-lived series Broadside (1964–1965), a sitcom about female naval officers in World War II from McHale’s Navy creator Edward Montagne. He was also a regular on The Doris Day Show (1970–1972), and on another short-lived series, Supertrain (1979).

Edward Andrews. Steve Rubin Collection

ANGELS AND DEVILS: These days, biblical references tend to scare studio and network executives, who fear a storm of protests coming from the religious fringe, so contemporary films and television shows tend to shy away from direct references to heaven, hell, and their representative angels and devils. But they were once all the rage—frequently cultivated as the supernatural forces behind the events of The Twilight Zone. As early as the second episode of season 1—Serling’s One for the Angels—the Angel of Death (Murray Hamilton) appears, eager to take the soul of a good-natured, aging street vendor (Ed Wynn). Perhaps taking a cue from the wildly successful stage musical and then film Damn Yankees, in which the devil is outwitted by an insurance salesman, Serling empowered his vendor by giving him a chance to outwit Mr. Death with one of the great sales pitches of all time—literally the pitch of a lifetime. In Serling’s Escape Clause, another first-season episode, we meet whining hypochondriac Walter Bedeker (David Wayne), who willingly sells his soul to Cadwallader, the devil (Thomas Gomez), in exchange for immortality. Big, brassy, and larger than life, Gomez was a perfect choice to play the Prince of Darkness. The always reliable Charles Beaumont supplied the next story in this genre: A Nice Place to Visit, in which hoodlum Henry Francis Valentine (Larry Blyden) is killed in a shootout with police and ends up in what seems to be a total heaven for him—nonstop gambling, gorgeous, available women, and an endless bankroll. This time his escort is the marvelous white-bearded, white-suited Mr. Pip (Sebastian Cabot) who appears to cater to every one of Mr. Valentine’s wishes—appears being the operative word here. Serling’s A Passage for Trumpet introduces one of actor Jack Klugman’s iconic Zone characters: down-on-his-luck trumpeter Joey Crown, a man who kills himself by stepping in front of a speeding truck but gets a second chance from an angel with a familiar name (John Anderson). There’s no question that Frank Capra’s classic guardian angel drama It’s a Wonderful Life (1946) was a strong influence on Serling, who considered the film one of his favorites. And like George Bailey (James Stewart), Serling’s characters often get a chance to see what the world would be like without them. In Serling’s very next episode, he introduces bumbling James B. W. Bevis (Orson Bean), a likable eccentric who can’t hold a job to save his life. However, just like Clarence the angel in training in It’s a Wonderful Life, Bevis’s angel—J. Hardy Hempstead (Henry Jones)—finds it easier said than done to change a man’s life for the better. Serling would recycle this story for the third-season episode Cavender Is Coming; James B. W. Bevis’s character morphed into klutzy Agnes Grep (Carol Burnett) whose own guardian angel—inept Harmon Cavender (Jesse White)—faces the same problem: how to make a generally happy person happier. From guardian angels to the darkest of all the show’s devils: in Charles Beaumont’s wonderfully atmospheric The Howling Man, a traveler (H. M. Wynant) stumbles upon a European monastery, where the monks claim they have captured the real devil (Robin Hughes). Every night, the captive is heard howling in his cell, leading the traveler to suspect that he’s an innocent man. The Angel of Death returns in George Clayton Johnson’s riveting third-season episode Nothing in the Dark, in which an elderly woman (Gladys Cooper) is so terrified of dying that she’s convinced herself that the wounded police officer lying outside her door (Robert Redford) is the Angel of Death himself. The devil returns in Charles Beaumont’s fourth-season episode Printer’s Devil, with Burgess Meredith portraying Mr. Smith, who aids a down-on-his-luck small-town newspaper publisher (Robert Sterling) by conveniently manufacturing news and then printing it faster than the competition. In Of Late I Think of Cliffordville, based on Malcolm Jameson’s short story, Serling combined a biblical antagonist with another his favorite subjects: time travel. In this episode, a wealthy corporate raider (Albert Salmi), bored with life and work, makes a pact with a female devil (Julie Newmar) to go back in time to his hometown and remake his fortune. He’s eager to give up his wealthy present in order to close the inevitable Faustian bargain, but, male or female, the devil always inserts that diabolical twist.

Robin Hughes (left) is the devil—or so his captors claim—with H. M. Wynant and John Carradine in The Howling Man. Courtesy Carol Serling Collection

Robert Redford as a dying police officer—an old woman’s notion of the Angel of Death—in Nothing in the Dark. Courtesy Carol Serling Collection

Julie Newmar as the devil in Of Late I Think of Cliffordville. Courtesy Julie Newmar Collection

ANTIOCH COLLEGE: A private, coeducational liberal arts college located in Yellow Springs, Ohio, the alma mater of Rod Serling. When The Twilight Zone was temporarily canceled in 1962, Serling returned there to teach, telling the Cincinnati Post Times why he was trading in a soundstage for a classroom: "I have three reasons. First is extreme fatigue. Secondly, I’m desperate for a change of scene, and third is a chance to exhale with the opportunity for picking up a little knowledge instead of trying to spew it out. I might die in limbo from lack of activity. But if I don’t take this step now, I never will. At the moment, my perspective is shot. I think that is evident at times in the lack of quality of the Twilight Zone scripts. And, frankly, I’d like to do my best work all the time. Who wouldn’t?"* While back at Antioch, Serling hosted a 39-week show that aired Sundays at 6:00 pm on WBNS-TV. Each episode of The Rod Serling Show centered on the career of a famous movie personality: Marlene Dietrich, Cecil B. DeMille, Clark Gable, etc. Antioch College’s motto, Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity (coined by famed educator Horace Mann), is featured in the Twilight Zone episode The Changing of the Guard, where it serves to inspire the aging Professor Fowler (Donald Pleasence).

ARNAZ, DESI (March 2, 1917–December 2, 1986): Renowned Cuban American actor, television entrepreneur, producer, bandleader, and host who co-owned the company—Desilu Productions—that produced Rod Serling’s screenplay The Time Element for Westinghouse Desilu Playhouse, which Arnaz also hosted. Essentially, Arnaz helped deliver Serling’s initial concept of The Twilight Zone. He and his wife, redheaded comedy legend Lucille Ball, were the most famous couple in television history, thanks to their groundbreaking sitcom I Love Lucy (181 episodes, 1951–1957)—which their company also produced. Arnaz made his film debut in 1940 in director George Abbott’s musical comedy Too Many Girls for RKO Pictures, the film where he first met Lucy.

Desi Arnaz in his pre–I Love Lucy days. Steve Rubin Collection

THE ARRIVAL: Originally aired Friday, September 22, 1961; season 3, episode 2.

ROD SERLING’S OPENING NARRATION

This object, should any of you have lived underground for the better part of your lives and never had occasion to look toward the sky, is an airplane, its official designation a DC-3. We offer this rather obvious comment because this particular airplane, the one you’re looking at, is a freak. Now, most airplanes take off and land as per scheduled. On rare occasions they crash. But all airplanes can be counted on doing one or the other. Now, yesterday morning this particular airplane ceased to be just a commercial carrier. As of its arrival it became an enigma, a seven-ton puzzle made out of aluminum, steel, wire, and a few thousand other component parts, none of which add up to the right thing. In just a minute, we’re going to show you the tail end of its history. We’re going to give you 90 percent of the jigsaw pieces and you and Mr. Sheckly here of the Federal Aviation Agency will assume the problem of putting them together along with finding the missing pieces. This we offer as the evening’s hobby, a little extracurricular diversion which is really the national pastime in the Twilight Zone.

THE SETUP

Grant Sheckly (Harold J. Stone) is an investigator with the Federal Aviation Agency, called in to solve an astonishing riddle. Trans East Airline, flight 107, a DC-3 inbound from Buffalo, has landed without crew, passengers, or luggage. Sheckly is very thorough and interviews a number of employees and airport administrators, but his only supposition is that the plane may be a figment of their imagination.

BEHIND THE SCENES

The original title of this episode was The DC-3. Exteriors of the airfield were shot at the Santa Monica Airport in Santa Monica, California.*

THE CAST

THE CREW

The Douglas DC-3, the real star of The Arrival. Courtesy Pima Air & Space Museum, Tucson, AZ

ARROW 1: The first manned aircraft into space, as seen in I Shot an Arrow into the Air. It required four and a half years of planning, preparation, and training for its eight-man crew. Commanded by Colonel R. G. Bob Donlin (Edward Binns), it crash lands on what appears to be an uncharted, deserted asteroid. Cause of crash: unknown.

ASHER, WILLIAM (August 8, 1921–July 16, 2012): Writer/producer/director of mostly comedies, who directed Mr. Bevis. A native of New York City, Asher directed episodes of I Love Lucy (100 episodes, 1952– 1957) and Bewitched (132 episodes, 1964–1972), the latter of which starred his then-wife, actress Elizabeth Montgomery. Comfortable with lighthearted romps, Asher also launched the surf movie careers of Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello, directing their features Beach Party (1963), Muscle Beach Party (1964), Bikini Beach (1964), Beach Blanket Bingo (1965), and How to Stuff a Wild Bikini (1965). The beaches of the world may never run out of sand, but Asher eventually ran out of beach titles.

ATTERBURY, MALCOLM (February 20, 1907– August 16, 1992): American character actor, ubiquitous in films and television for decades starting in 1954, who portrayed the mysterious potion merchant Henry J. Fate in Mr. Denton on Doomsday (salary: $600), and elixir salesman Professor Eliot in No Time Like the Past (salary: $375). Like Martin Landau, with whom he costarred in Mr. Denton on Doomsday, Atterbury appeared in Alfred Hitchcock’s North by Northwest (1959), as the innocent bystander waiting for the bus across from Cary Grant on a lonely stretch of highway called Prairie Stop. Four years later, Hitchcock cast him as the blockheaded deputy who thinks Jessica Tandy is overreacting in The Birds. John Frankenheimer then cast him as the president’s physician in Seven Days in May. He made his television debut in 1954 in the After Darkness episode of Medic, and later had recurring roles on Wagon Train (1957–1958) and Apple’s Way (28 episodes as Grandfather Aldon, 1974–1975).

ATWATER, BARRY (May 16, 1918–May 24, 1978; birth name Garrett Atwater): Tall character actor who portrayed Les Goodman in The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street (salary: $750). A native of Denver, Colorado, Atwater is best known as Janos Skorzeny, the terrifying and nearly unstoppable vampire in the ABC Movie of the Week The Night Stalker (1972), written by Twilight Zone veteran Richard Matheson. A true chameleon in his performances, Atwater bounced between western and war pictures early in his career. As real-life US Army colonel John Davis, he gave Gregory Peck his orders in Pork Chop Hill (1959). Atwater played a number of other true-life figures on television: Doc Holliday in a 1955 episode of You Are There, George Armstrong Custer in two 1960 episodes of Cheyenne, and President Abraham Lincoln that same year in an episode of One Step Beyond. On the original Star Trek in 1969, he portrayed a character from the mists of Vulcan history: Surak, the philosopher who originated the race’s devotion to logic. Atwater also appeared in the 1969 pilot for Night Gallery, a new series hosted by Rod Serling, and returned for its 1973 episode The Doll of Death.

Barry Atwater. Steve Rubin Collection

AUBREY, JAMES T. (December 14, 1918–September 3, 1994; birth name James Thomas Aubrey Jr.): Handsome, arrogant, egotistical, and controversial producer, television executive, motion picture studio head, and visionary who was in charge of CBS television programming during the period that The Twilight Zone was on the air. A native of Kalamazoo, Michigan, and a graduate of Princeton University, Aubrey was the son of James Thomas Aubrey Sr., who founded a successful Chicago advertising firm: Aubrey, Moore & Wallace. During World War II, the younger Aubrey served in the US Army Air Forces as a flight instructor in Alaska—actor Jimmy Stewart was one of his students—and rose to the rank of major. After the war, he stayed in Southern California, where he had married actress and future Twilight Zone player Phyllis Thaxter after a 10-day courtship. He began his civilian career selling magazine advertising for Street & Smith and Condé Naste. He then started selling radio advertising spots for KNX in Los Angeles, and later transferred to L.A.’s new television station, KNXT. Two years later, the ambitious Aubrey Barry Atwater. Steve Rubin Collection was CBS’s West Coast television programming chief. Hired away to ABC by that network’s head, Leonard Goldenson, Aubrey developed such successful shows as Maverick, 77 Sunset Strip, The Donna Reed Show, The Rifleman, and The Real McCoys. After returning to CBS in 1958, he was named president of the network on December 9, 1959, only two months after The Twilight Zone debuted. Like a medieval baron, Aubrey wielded his programming authority with an iron fist, which upset fellow executives, producers, and talent. It was legendary actor/producer John Houseman who dubbed him the Smiling Cobra in 1959. Serling and Aubrey were not close, and the latter probably spent more time assessing The Twilight Zone’s ratings than the quality of its episodes. But the series was never going to be one of Aubrey’s favorites regardless of its weekly performance, because it was an anthology—and Aubrey, visionary that he was, saw that anthologies were a relic of the past. He believed strongly that audiences needed to follow a regular cast from week to week, and no one could deny his instinct for picking hit shows and maximizing profits. It was Aubrey who greenlit such mass-market hits as The Beverly Hillbillies, Gilligan’s Island, The Andy Griffith Show, Mister Ed, Green Acres, Petticoat Junction, The Munsters, and My Favorite Martian. At one time, he may have been the most influential programmer in America, reaching the largest entertainment audience ever assembled. CBS was so successful during his regime that the two rival networks, NBC and ABC, refused to go first in announcing their yearly schedules. They waited for CBS to make the first move, then adjusted their programming accordingly. Thus, Aubrey was in effect running all three networks. Like any player on a roll, Aubrey’s luck eventually ran out at CBS. Thanks to an abortive power play that would have involved the dismissal of network chairman William Paley; to assorted accusations of bribery, favoritism, and excess spending; and, not least, to a ratings decline for the 1964–1965 season, Paley and network president Frank Stanton fired him. Four years later, one of Aubrey’s close friends and confidants, superstar attorney Greg Bautzer, arranged a meeting between Aubrey and Las Vegas businessman Kirk Kerkorian, who had just taken control of MGM. Aubrey was subsequently hired to run the studio, and it was under his supervision that MGM sold off the fabled backlot where The Twilight Zone had been filmed. Once again, Aubrey riled studio executives, producers, employees, and everyone else, but, true to form, he returned the company to profitability. In the 1970s and 1980s, Aubrey produced a number of low-budget feature and TV movies. His daughter, actress Skye Aubrey, starred in the unique 1974 television film The Phantom of Hollywood, which was principally shot on the crumbling and soon-to-be-bulldozed MGM backlot.

AUSTIN, PAMELA (December 20, 1941– ; birth name Pamela Joan Akert): Actress who portrayed the twin roles of Valerie and Marilyn in Number 12 Looks Just Like You (salary: $750). A native of Omaha, Nebraska, and best known as the Dodge Girl in a series of automobile commercials that ran in the 1960s, Austin made her film debut opposite Elvis Presley in Blue Hawaii (1961). That same year, she made her television debut in the Prescription for Panic episode of Surfside 6. Austin’s feature credits include: Rome Adventure (1962); Hootenanny Hoot (1963); Kissin’ Cousins (1964), once again with Elvis; and The Perils of Pauline (1967), as the title character.

Pamela Austin and Richard Long costar in Number 12 Looks Just Like You. Steve Rubin Collection

_________________

* Panel discussion, Stars of the Zone Convention, Beverly Garland Holiday Inn, Los Angeles, CA, August 24–25, 2002, courtesy Andrew Ramage and the Twilight Zone Museum.

* Denise Alexander, interview by the author, September 25, 2015.

* John Anderson, interview by David J. Eagle, 1987, courtesy of David Eagle Productions Inc.

* Cincinnati Post Times, May 3, 1962.

* Martin Grams Jr., The Twilight Zone: Unlocking the Door to a Television Classic (Churchville, MD: OTR Publishing, 2008), 420.

B

B-25 MEDIUM BOMBER: World War II airplane featured in the episode King Nine Will Not Return. The crew purchased a real B-25 for $2,500. The warplane, which originally cost the US government $345,000, was disassembled, packed in the hold of a cargo plane and flown to Lone Pine, California, and reassembled on location.* In the episode, a crude grave marker in the Sahara desert pays tribute to a member of the crew of the B-25 bomber King Nine. The memorial dates the crash to April 5, 1943—the date that a real B-24 Liberator bomber, the Lady Be Good, was lost in Libya, the wreckage of which was discovered intact in 1958.

BACK THERE: Originally aired Friday, January 13, 1961; season 2, episode 13.

ROD SERLING’S OPENING NARRATION

Witness a theoretical argument, Washington, DC, the present. Four intelligent men talking about an improbable thing like going back in time. A friendly debate revolving around a simple issue: could a human being change what has happened before? Interesting and theoretical because whoever heard of a man going back in time—before tonight, that is? Because this is … the Twilight Zone.

THE SETUP

Pete Corrigan (Russell Johnson) is a member of the prestigious Potomac Club in modern Washington, DC. After an interesting discussion about time travel with his friends, he walks outside and suddenly finds himself back in the year 1865. It’s the night President Lincoln was assassinated at Ford’s Theater, and Corrigan tries desperately to convince the local police that the president’s life is indeed in jeopardy.

Russell Johnson portrayed time traveler Pete Corrigan in Back There. Steve Rubin Collection

THE CAST

THE CREW

BACTERIA UNIT 59: Unit ID for three motorcycle-riding tough guys (Lee Kinsolving, Michael Forest, Tom Gilleran) in Black Leather Jackets. This is no motorcycle gang—they’re the advance guard of an alien invasion that plans to poison every human being on Earth. There are 29 similar advance units operating in the state.

BADHAM, MARY (October 7, 1952– ): American child actress with a brief but distinguished career in Hollywood, who portrayed Sport Sharewood in The Bewitchin’ Pool, the last new episode of the original Twilight Zone to air (salary: $1,500). A native of Birmingham, Alabama, Badham is best known for playing the part of Scout in To Kill a Mockingbird (1962), the iconic adaptation of Harper Lee’s beloved novel. She was nominated for an Oscar for the role, which was also her film debut; until Tatum O’Neal won her Oscar for Best Supporting Actress in Paper Moon (1973), Badham held the record for youngest nominee in the category (she was 10, O’Neal was 9). She appeared in three other feature films: This Property Is Condemned (1966), with fellow Twilight Zone veterans Robert Redford and Charles Bronson; Let’s Kill Uncle (1966), for horror film impresario William Castle; and, as an adult, Our Very Own (2005). She made her television debut in Sister Mike, a 1963 episode of Dr. Kildare, featuring fellow Twilight Zone veteran Collin Wilcox. Her older brother is director John Badham (Saturday Night Fever, WarGames).

Mary Badham and Gregory Peck in To Kill a Mockingbird. Courtesy Cinema Retro Magazine Collection

BAER, BUDDY: See Louis, Joe.

BALSAM, MARTIN (November 4, 1919–February 13, 1996): Dependable American character actor who portrayed Dr. Arnold Gillespie, a sympathetic psychiatrist listening to a bartender (William Bendix) spin a fantastic tale of time travel in The Time Element (1958), the one-hour episode of Westinghouse Desilu Playhouse that served as the unofficial pilot for The Twilight Zone. Balsam later costarred as a frustrated talent agent opposite Ida Lupino in the first-season episode The Sixteen-Millimeter Shrine (salary: $1,000), and he returned as Martin Lombard Senescu, an obsessed and perhaps possessed wax museum curator in The New Exhibit (salary: $3,500). Balsam won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor in 1966 for playing Jason Robards’s agent in A Thousand Clowns. He made his live television debut in the Actor’s Studio episode Concerning a Woman of Sin (1949), and he later made a strong credited feature debut as Juror #1, the foreman, in Sidney Lumet’s classic film adaptation of Reginald Rose’s 12 Angry Men (1957), after earlier garnering attention for his uncredited role in On the Waterfront (1954). After seeing him on a 1958 episode of his signature show, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Hitchcock cast Balsam as doomed detective Milton Arbogast in Psycho (1960). Some of his most memorable film appearances include: the presidential assistant who travels to Gibraltar to obtain evidence of a potential military takeover of the United States in Rod Serling’s adaptation of Seven Days in May (1964); the medical reservist who is assigned to Richard Widmark’s American destroyer in The Bedford Incident (1965); Mr. Green, the subway hijacker suffering from a cold in director Joseph Sargent’s thriller The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (1974); and real-life Washington Post editor Howard Simons in All the President’s Men (1976).

Martin Balsam. Steve Rubin Collection

BARBER, PHILIP: (March 14, 1912–May 24, 2000) Art director who worked on 51 episodes of The Twilight Zone, beginning with King Nine Will Not Return. Prior to his association with Rod Serling, Barber had served as art director on series including Steve Canyon (33 episodes, 1958–1959), Mr. Lucky (33 episodes, 1959–1960), and Peter Gunn (112 episodes, 1958–1961). He later worked on Combat! (131 episodes, 1962–1967), which traversed the same MGM backlot that had hosted The Twilight Zone, albeit a little more violently. Barber’s art director credits for film include Soldier in the Rain (1963), A Man Called Horse (1970), and Support Your Local Gunfighter (1971). He received an Emmy nomination in 1962 for his work on The Twilight Zone, losing to Perry Como’s Kraft Music Hall on rival NBC.

THE BARD: Originally aired Thursday, May 23, 1963; season 4, episode 18.

ROD SERLING’S OPENING NARRATION

You’ve just witnessed opportunity, if not knocking, at least scratching plaintively on a closed door. Mr. Julius Moomer, a would-be writer who, if talent came 25 cents a pound, would be worth less than carfare. But in a moment, Mr. Moomer, through the offices of some black magic, is about to embark on a brand-new career. And although he may never get a writing credit on The Twilight Zone, he’s to become an integral character in it."

THE SETUP

Wannabe television writer Julius Moomer (Jack Weston), a talentless hack, is forever pitching ideas to his agent Gerald Hugo (Henry Lascoe), but they haven’t clicked yet. But then Moomer finds a curious book of black magic in the local bookstore and accidentally summons William Shakespeare (John Williams) to the present. Armed with the ultimate ghostwriter, Moomer sells a drama to the network and is perceived as the latest genius to arrive on the TV scene. However, Moomer soon discovers that Shakespeare doesn’t cotton to sitting on the sidelines—or, more importantly, network or sponsor revisions of his work.

BEHIND THE SCENES

Remembered actor Jason Wingreen, who portrayed the TV director, An old Hollywood director, David Butler, directed it. When I went to meet him, he said, ‘Now, when I direct, I sit down. So when you’re directing here, I want you to sit down, too.’ So I played the role sitting down. The wonderful English character actor John Williams played Shakespeare, and Jack Weston was in it, an old friend of mine…. Burt Reynolds did a Marlon Brando impression on that one, and Joseph Schildkraut’s [third] wife [Leonora Rogers] played the young woman on the show I was ‘directing.’* Recalled composer Fred Steiner, My favorite comedy episode was ‘The Bard,’ where I was able to write some really funny music for Jack Weston. Every show was different and [you were] able to use your imagination and pick a special orchestra for whatever the show required. For ‘The Bard,’ I think I had a tuba, reflecting a big fat guy—Jack Weston. And for the appearance of Shakespeare, we had a harpsichord. I did some research and found music from the old Elizabethan collection. That was a lot of fun.† Rod Serling’s script includes references to three superstar actors of the 1960s—Kirk Douglas, Burt Lancaster, and Tony Curtis—one of the few times in the Twilight Zone series that Serling used real names in his work. Considering the references are by hack television writer Julius Moomer (Jack Weston), who name-drops the stars as possible stars of one of his dumb TV series ideas, their inclusion seems entirely appropriate to an episode that skewers modern television. But the unusual celebrity name-dropping also extends to several major league baseball players, who are mentioned during a radio broadcast of the sixth inning of a San Francisco Giants–New York Mets game: Tom Haller, Gil Hodges, and Willie Mays.

John Williams and Jack Weston (right) in The Bard. Courtesy Carol Serling Collection

THE CAST

THE CREW

BARE, RICHARD L. (August 12, 1913–March 28, 2015): American director, mostly of television but occasionally film, who helmed seven episodes: Third from the Sun, The Purple Testament, Nick of Time, The Prime Mover, To Serve Man, The Fugitive, and What’s in the Box. Remembered Bare, I’ll never forget meeting Rod Serling. I had envisioned Rod Serling as a very thin, bespectacled, tousled-haired young man, a complete intellectual. He came in to meet me—I was at the studio at MGM—and I was shocked. Here was a guy who looked like a quarterback, no glasses, no demeanor of being the intellectual—we found out he was … you would never cast Rod Serling as a writer.* For Third from the Sun, Bare chose to shoot all his long shots through a bug-eye lens, while his close-ups were shot with a 25mm lens—which he claimed gave the episode a new and different look. As a novice director in 1942, Bare cut his teeth on the long-running So You Want to … series of comedy shorts, writing and directing over 60 of them over the next 14 years. He met his future wife, actress Jeanne Evans, on the drama Girl on the Run (1958), and she joined him on two episodes of The Twilight Zone: Third from the Sun and (in a bit role) To Serve Man. Bare also became close friends with The Purple Testament star William Reynolds, whom he cast in the pilot of the television series The Islanders. The two men were subsequently involved in a deadly seaplane crash; see Reynolds, William for the story. Getting back to his comedy roots, Bare went on to direct Green Acres (166 episodes, 1965–1971) and Petticoat Junction (34 episodes, 1964–1965).

BARRY, PATRICIA (November 16, 1922–October 11, 2016;* birth name Patricia Allen White): Actress from Davenport, Iowa, who portrayed the seductive Leila in The Chaser (salary: $1,250), and four different roles—Ann Lawson, the accounting office secretary; Ann the movie star; Ann the multimillionaire’s assistant; and Ann the worried mother of a young sentry about to be hung for falling asleep on guard duty—in I Dream of Genie (salary: $2,500). Using her maiden name, Patricia White, Barry made her film debut as a showgirl in Her Kind of Man, a 1946 Warner Bros. crime drama. She portrayed Jack Klugman’s wife in Harris Against the World (13 episodes, 1964), one of three situation comedies featured in an experimental NBC programming block titled 90 Bristol Court. Barry had recurring roles on Days of Our Lives (1973), All My Children (1981), Guiding Light (1985–1987), and Ghostwriter (1993). She also costarred opposite Hope Lange and Paul Burke in one of the most suspenseful TV movies of the 1970s: Crowhaven Farm (1970).

Patricia Barry. Courtesy Carol Serling Collection

BASEHART, RICHARD (August 31, 1914–September 17, 1984; birth name John Richard Basehart): Durable character actor, often in military, government, or diabolical roles, who portrayed stranded astronaut Colonel Adam Cook in Probe 7, Over and Out (salary: $3,500). Basehart is best known as stalwart Admiral Harriman Nelson of the submarine Seaview in producer Irwin Allen’s television adaptation of Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea (110 episodes, 1964–1968). A native of Zanesville, Ohio, he made his feature film debut as William Williams in the film noir crime drama Repeat Performance (1947). But it was his portrayal of a resourceful criminal in another film noir crime drama, He Walked by Night (1948), that truly launched his film career. Basehart’s other film credits include: Fourteen Hours (1951), as a suicidal man; Decision Before Dawn (1951); Titanic (1953); La Strada (1954); Moby Dick (1956), as Ishmael; Time Limit (1957); The Brothers Karamazov (1958); Hitler (1962), as Adolf Hitler; Kings of the Sun (1963); The Satan Bug (1965), as Dr. Gregor Hoffman; and Being There (1979). He made his television debut in 1957 on the So Soon to Die episode of Playhouse 90, which was helmed by future Twilight Zone director John Brahm, and he later had recurring roles on W.E.B. (1978) and Knight Rider (84 episodes, 1982–1986).

Richard Basehart. Courtesy Richard Basehart Collection

BATTLING MAXO: Aging robot fighter portrayed by Tip McClure in Steel. Out of Philadelphia and managed by Sam Steel Kelly (Lee Marvin) and Pole (Joe Mantell), Maxo is not only an obsolete B-2 model robot fighter in a world where B-7s are the norm, he’s falling apart. Pole doesn’t think he has a chance in the ring against a B-7, but Kelly is determined to make a showing—they need the bout money for an overhaul. But determination alone may not cut it.

BEAN, ORSON (July 22, 1928– ; birth name Dallas Frederick Burroughs): Comedic actor of stage, screen, and television who portrayed James B. W. Bevis in Mr. Bevis (salary: $2,000). Bean was nominated for a Tony Award for his performance in the Betty Comden / Adolph Green musical Subways Are for Sleeping (1961– 1962), which was followed by an even bigger Broadway hit: Never Too Late (1962–1963). Bean had begun his career as a magician and stand-up comic in his hometown of Cambridge, Massachusetts. He moved to New York City, built his reputation as a top comic, and began appearing on television, first as a live comic guest on The Arthur Murray Party. Says Bean, Arthur Murray made Ed Sullivan look like the most exciting person in the world. I had just started to be known as a comic, and I was opening the Blue Angel.* His television acting debut came in 1952 on the Three Letters episode of Goodyear Playhouse, opposite future Twilight Zone player Edward Andrews. Three years later, he made his feature film debut in the Betty Grable comedy How to Be Very, Very Popular (1955), for 20th Century Fox. Says Bean, "It was a sequel to How to Marry a Millionaire, and Marilyn Monroe was supposed to star. But she walked off the film and was replaced by Betty Grable." It would be Grable’s final film. Bean’s other film credits include: Anatomy of a Murder (1959), as the army psychiatrist; Innerspace (1987); and Being John Malkovich (1999). Bean was Loren Bray, a recurring character on the long-running series Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman (146 episodes, 1993–1998), and he played Roy Bender on Desperate Housewives (23 episodes, 2009–2012). Bean has also enjoyed a successful career as a voiceover artist. Long before director Peter Jackson made his epic Lord of the Rings and Hobbit films, Bean was the voice of Bilbo Baggins in an animated television adaptation of The Hobbit (1977). Three years later, he voiced both Bilbo and Frodo Baggins in The Return of the King. He also played the title character in an animated adaptation of Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court (1970).

Orson Bean (right) with the author. Steve Rubin Collection

BEAUMONT, CHARLES (January 2, 1929–February 21, 1967; birth name Charles Leroy Nutt): Prolific short story and television writer who aside from Rod Serling was one of most regular contributors to The Twilight Zone. In all, Beaumont wrote