Twilight Zone Companion (57 page)

Jeb and Sport are playing in their back yard, trying to ignore the continuous bickering of their parents, when Whitt, a boy resembling Huckleberry Finn, suddenly appears in their swimming pool. He beckons the children to follow him. Intrigued, they dive in and surface in a swimming hole adjacent to a backwoods paradise populated by happy children. This is presided over by Aunt T, a loving, matronly old woman who tells them that this is a sanctuary for children of unworthy parents. Sport explains that their parents love them. Thinking their arrival has been a mistake, Aunt T sends them back home. But next morning, Jeb dives in the pool and returns to Aunt T. Sport pursues him and convinces him to come back home, but when they return their parents tell them that theyre getting a divorceand the children must decide which parent they want to live with. We dont have to stay with neither one of ya! says Sport, and she and Jeb plunge into the pool, magically returning to Aunt T or good.

A brief epilogue for concerned parents. Of course, there isn’t any such place as the gingerbread house of Aunt T, and we grownups know there’s no door at the bottom of a swimming pool that leads to a secret place. But who can say how real the fantasy world of lonely children can become? For Jeb and Sport Sharewood, the need for love turned fantasy into reality; they found a secret place in the Twilight Zone.”

That was my reaction to California, where there seemed to be a startling divorce rate at that time, says Hamner of The Bewitchin Pool, and being somewhat puritanical, I felt that must have a terrible effect on children. And living, as I still do, in the San Fernando Valley, I saw affluence affecting people who were not accustomed to the California lifestyle, transplanted Eastern people who come out and suddenly start making a great deal of money but dont know how to deal with it and dont have social grace; surface kind of people. Then I was struck by the number of swimming pools. Back where I grew up, there was never a swimming pool. We would consider such things sissy. But there were marvelous wide places in the creek that, over generations, had become the traditional old swimming hole. So I put all of those together and thought how marvelous it would be for children not to have to hear parents quarreling if to escape it they could simply come up in the arms of some Earth Mother-type person.

The Bewitchin Pool had more than its share of problems, though. I didnt like that old woman who played the Earth Mother, says Hamner. There are real Earth Mothers, like Patricia Neal, women who can impart love without it being cloying. I thought that old woman was sort of cute.

In the lead as one of the children was Mary Badham, fresh from her role as Scout in To Kill a Mockingbird (for which she received an Oscar nomination). Unfortunately, in all but her scenes with Aunt T, her voice is actually that of June Foray. We had backlot noise, but that wasnt entirely the trouble, explains William Froug. She had such a thick Southern accent, combined with some bad noise, that between that and the voice levels, we were forced to loop her. It wasnt good. The others we got around, and it was sloppy and we hated it. What remains is a scarred-up version of what was, for which Froug blames the director. I never worked with him again. I just didnt like what he did with her at all. It was all overplayed and corny, I thought, even granted it was a childrens story.

In coming to the close of Hamners contributions to Twilight Zone, it is interesting to observe that throughout his eight scripts, country folk are generally presented as honest, warm, and well-balanced, while city folk are for the most part bitchy, self-centered, and neurotic. What I was going through was a psychological adjustment to a city that did not seem to care for me, says Hamner. A psychiatrist might say that I was working out some hostility toward city people. But I think that all along in my work, because Im so attuned to country folk, that unconsciously if Im looking for a villain it probably triggers in my mind that the city person would be a more likely candidate to be evil which shows you how provincial I was, and am.

Number Twelve Looks Just Like You

Written by John Tomerlin

Producer: William Froug

Director: Abner Biberman

Director of Photography: Charles Wheeler

Music: stock

Cast: Marilyn Cuberle: Collin Wilcox Lana Cuberle/Simmons/Doe/ Grace/Jane/Patient/# 12:

Suzy Parker Uncle Rick/Dr. Rex/Sigmund Friend/Dr. Tom/Attendant: Richard Long Valerie/Marilyn (after operation), #8: Pam Austin

Given the chance, what young girl wouldnt happily exchange a plain face for a lovely one? What girl could refuse the opportunity to be beautiful? For want of a better estimate, lets call it the year 2000. At any rate, imagine a time in the future when science has developed a means of giving everyone the face and body he dreams of. It may not happen tomorrow but it happens now in the Twilight Zone.

At the age of nineteen, people in this world of the future undergo the supposedly voluntary Transformation, which makes them beautifully identical to millions of others. But eighteen-year-old Marilyn Cuberle, whose free-thinking father committed suicide after his Transformation, thinks the operation is merely a way of enforcing conformity she wants to keep her own face. Her mother Lana, her Uncle Rick and her friend Valerie all view this as an aberration. Marilyn is sent to a doctor, then to a psychiatristwho puts her in the hospital. Marilyn tries to escape, but finds herself in an operating room with a doctor and nurse waiting for her. She emerges with nothing but joy in her mind, looking and thinking just like Valerie. The Transformation has been a complete success.

Portrait of a young lady in love with herself. Improbable? Perhaps. But in an age of plastic surgery, body building and an infinity of cosmetics, let us hesitate to say impossible. These and other strange blessings may be waiting in the future which after all, is the Twilight Zone

Number Twelve Looks Just Like You is a companion piece to The Eye of the Beholder. This is a world where books are outlawed, people drink a cup of Instant Smile when they feel blue, and concerns are only skin-deep. Supposedly, the transformation surgery is entirely voluntary. But it soon becomes clear that it represents far more than the miraculous cosmetic boon of a beneficent society. Rather, it is a rite of passage into a rigid physical and mental conformity. The rebellious girl quotes her father (who committed suicide after the transformation): When everyone is beautiful no one will be, because without ugliness there can be no beauty. … They dont care whether youre beautiful or not, they just want everybody to be the same! But her protests fall on deaf ears.

Based on Charles Beaumonts short story The Beautiful People (originally published in 1952 in If and included in his collection Yonder), the episode is credited to Beaumont and Tomerlin. By this time, however, Beaumonts mind was failing rapidly. By 1963 he was still able to sell stories, but he was neither conceiving nor writing them, says Tomerlin. The short story, of course, was his, but I wrote the script entirely myself. I wrote it in New York, as a matter of fact, consulting with him on the phone as to deadlines and things of that sort. He just called and said he had an assignment and asked if I would do it, and I said, Sure. I needed the money and was delighted to do it.

Tomerlins script is an improvement over the original short story, in which the teenager is put on trial and the verdict forces her to submit to the operation. Here, things are more subtle. Everyone seems to be trying to help. Marilyn doesnt want to be beautiful? Unthinkable. She must be ill.

Playing all of the adults in the episode in multiple roles are Richard Long (previously in Beaumonts Person or Persons Unknown) and Suzy Parker. Suzy Parker was at that time the most famous model in the country, says producer William Froug. She was the superstar of models. She wasnt much of an actress, but she was gorgeous to look at. It was my notion that if you were going to do a show about everybody looking as beautiful as possible to use her.”

In the lead, Collin Wilcox is excellent. Intelligent, intense, pretty-plain but by no means beautiful, she is ideally suited to the role. Her anguish when she realizes that she is utterly alone, that no one can understand her feelings, seems very genuine. In the end, she emerges looking and thinking exactly like her best friend

Valerie (Pam Austin). As she stands admiring herself in the mirror, she says, And the nicest part of all, ValI look just like you! She has been utterly crushed by a society intent on conformity. It is a chilling finale, made all the more so by its uncomfortable and deliberate similarity to our own society.

QUEEN OF THE NILE (3/6/64)

Written by Jerry Sohl

Producer: William Froug

Director: John Brahm

Director of Photography: Charles Wheeler

Music: composed by Lucien Moraweck; conducted by Lud Gluskin

Cast: Jordan Herrick: Lee Philips Pamela Morris: Ann Blyth Viola Draper: Celia Lovsky Krueger: Frank Ferguson Mr. Jackson: James Tyler Maid: Ruth Phillips

Jordan Herrick, syndicated columnist whose work appears in more than a hundred newspapers. By nature a cynic, a disbeliever; caught for the moment by a lovely vision. He knows the vision hes seen is no dream; she is Pamela Morris, renowned movie star; whose name is a household word and whose face is known to millions. What Mr. Herrick does not know is that he has also just looked into the face of the Twilight Zone

Arriving at her house to interview her, Herrick finds Pamela Morris as lovely and youthful-looking as when she starred in the 1940 film, Queen of the Nile. Upon leaving, he is confronted by seventy-year-old Viola Draper, a woman he takes for Morris  mother but who tells him she is actually her daughter  Intrigued, he does some investigating and finds that Constance Taylor a femme fatale from the early years of the century who looked exactly as Morris does now starred in a silent version of Queen of the Nile, then disappeared. Suspecting that, somehow, Morris and Taylor are the same woman, Herrick confronts Pamela. She drugs his coffee, then admits she really was a queen of the Nile in ancient Egypt! Using a live scarab, she drains all of Herricks life force and transfers it to herself. Just then, the doorbell rings. A handsome young man enters soon to be yet another in a long line of victims.

Everybody knows Pamela Morris, the beautiful and eternally young movie star. Or does she have another name, even more famous, an Egyptian name from centuries past? Ifs best not to be too curious, lest you wind up like Jordan Herrick, a pile of dust and old clothing, discarded in the endless eternity of the Twilight Zone

The final Twilight Zone script credited to Beaumont was Queen of the Nile, which deals with an immortal movie queen who lures men to her mansion and transfers their life force to herself via an Egyptian scarab. (One curious item that is never explained in the show is why Ann Blyth, as the immortal Queen of the Nile, speaks English perfectly while her daughter [Celia Lovsky, later to play ruler of the planet Vulcan on Star Trek], now an aged woman, speaks with a heavy Viennese accent.)

Beaumont had already made his statement regarding immortality four years earlier with Long Live Walter Jameson. Why do it all again, and not as well? The answer is that Beaumont had little to do with Queen of the Nile.

He was in bad shape at this time, explains Jerry Sohl. It was I who suggested it. I had a scarab ring many years ago and knew that the scarab was the symbol of fertility and immortality in Egyptian times, so I said, Chuck, lets have this woman wear this scarab ring, it gives her immortality. After about half an hour we had the story worked out. I just went home and did it, sent it in, and they shot it exactly the way I wrote it.

THE FEAR (5/29/64)

Written by Rod Serling

Producer: William Froug

Director: Ted Post

Director of Photography: Fred Mandl

Music: stock

Cast: Trooper Robert Franklin: Mark Richman Hazel Court and Mark Richman Charlotte Scott: Hazel Court

The major ingredient of any recipe for fear is the unknown. And here are two characters about to partake of the meal: Miss Charlotte Scott, a fashion editor, and Mr. Robert Franklin, a state trooper. And the third member of the party: the unknown, that has just landed a few hundred yards away. This person or thing is soon to be met. This is a mountain cabin, but it is also a clearing in the shadows known as the Twilight Zone .

Trooper Franklin visits the cabin of Miss Scott, a frightened woman living in seclusion following a nervous breakdown, to investigate her reports of lights in the sky. Suddenly, there is a blinding light outside, following which Franklin sees his patrol car roll away and crash. His radio is broken, and Miss Scotts telephone no longer works; the two are stranded. But later, Franklin finds his car has been righted and huge fingerprints cover the side of it. Next morning, the two of them discover a tremendous footprint. Terrified, Miss Scott runs blindly away and directly in front of a gigantic, one-eyed, space suited figure. Franklin draws his pistol and tells Miss Scott to run; hell try to fend the creature off. But shes found new courage shes staying with the trooper. Franklin fires several shots at the giant. Hissing, it collapses on top of them its no more than a balloon! The real culprits stand revealed: two minuscule aliens in a tiny flying saucer. Frightened by the size of the humans, they hurriedly depart, their campaign of terror a failure.

Fear, of course, is extremely relative. It depends on who can look down and who must look up. It depends on other vagaries, like the time, the mood, the darkness. But its been said before, with great validity, that the worst thing there is to fear is fear itself. Tonights tale of terror and tiny people on the Twilight Zone.

In the seven remaining shows written by Serling, his fatigue was clearly evident in the writing. Most of the scripts were cliched, maudlin and melodramatic. Often, the plots were so thin that the episode consisted of people standing around stating and restating the obvious. Everything had to be made verbal; characters either defined themselves or each other at tedious length. And because Serling dictated his scriptsand because his verbal style as narrator was easily recognizableif he wasnt cautious his characters ended up speaking in a manner that was exclusively his. In The Fear, much of the dialogue sounds like two Rod Serlings talking to each other.