I always loved TTZ-aside from the sillier episodes, its a fascinating look at 1950’s America. My question: TTZ seemed to attrat veteran actors like Jack Klugman, James Whitemore, etc.-was the pay pretty good? Or was it a way to make pin money between movie gigs?
Judgement Night is just finishing. I’m surprised Nehemiah Persoff is still alive!
Of course they weren’t veteran actors back then, they were up-and-coming character actors happy to get a paycheck.
Look at Klugman’s credits from the Twilight Zone era: Studio One, Kraft Television Theater, Playhouse 90 – anthology shows produced in New York that drew from a stable of theater actors (kind of like the Law & Order franchise today.) It looks like Klugman moved to L.A. about 1959 or 1960, where he worked steadily on a bunch of shows, but always as different characters.
In other words, just a working actor trying to pay the rent.
Which sillier episodes?
And Collin Wilcox, the young woman in Number 12 Looks Just Like You and also the woman who accuses Tom Robinson of raping her in To Kill A Mockingbird, died on 14 October.
It’s on right now…
The DC-3 in The Arrival, N67588, was built in 1946. It’s registered to an individual in Nevada, but DC3 USA Census says it belongs to Majestic Air Cargo and is undergoing rebuild in Anchorage. (I assume that either the registered owner owns Majestic, or else she’s leasing the aircraft to them.)
The other tail number seen in the episode is fake, as it has six characters after the N.
The Hunt. A mountain man drowns while saving his dog. At the end:
Mr. Simpson: Uh… Rachel. That’s my old woman. She won’t have any trouble gettin’ past that feller up the road, will she?
Angel: Rache? No, not her! And she’ll be along directly too, I’m told.
Mr. Simpson: Well, glad to hear it!
I love that bit! 
A Hundred Years Over The Rim is coming on at 0200. I haven’t seen that one in ages, and it’s another fave. Got my DVR set.
I Am The Night — Color Me Black, which I mentioned earlier, comes on at 0430 and I have the DVR set for that one as well.
Too bad I either missed or they didn’t show King 9 Will Not Return.
Yeah, it’s a bit contradictory. He loves his wife and hopes she dies soon.
How about those army reserve guys with the tank, showing up at the battle of the Little Bighorn? last I heard, arrows and carbines wern’t much use against a tank!
Or that one with the airliner going back in time to the dinosaur age-does a jet stream REALLY move at light speed?
I mean, most of the stories were OK, but those two made absolutley NO sense at all!
The acting in the 60’s was so over the top. A criminal spoke with a Brooklynese accent and dressed differently. They were unredeemable.
They had some very famous actors in the episodes. Robert Redford was on the one I saw last night. It was made in 1962.
Ouch. The 7th Is Made Up Of Phantoms and The Odyssey of Flight 33 are two that I like!
In The 7th, they couldn’t take the tank with them. Their captain comments on it at the end.
The explanation, such as it was, for Flight 33’s time slipping was unsatisfactory. But it was 1961 and audiences were less critical. Heck, just go back and read some Heinlein or Clarke stories to see the ‘dated’ science. The dinosaurs were unconvincing compared to what we can do with CGI today, but at the time it was either stop-motion or else glue a fin to an iguana. As a pilot (or future pilot, when I first saw it), I wondered what would happen when they ran out of fuel. But I still liked the story. I tend to like ‘lost in time’ stories.
Ah, Twilight Zone, one of my all-time favorites.
Episodes I like: Walking Distance, The Purple Testament, Back There, A Hundred Yards Over the Rim, Two, The Midnight Sun, Death Ship, In Praise of Pip, King Nine Will Not Return.
If one is lucky, they may be able to catch Serling’s pre-TZ production of The Time Element, which was originally broadcast on Desilou Playhouse.
The series owed a lot to Dead of Night, a late 40s Ealing horror movie.
Man, I could have written that entire post, except the part about the boyfriend not liking it…my husband loves TZ.
I love the over the top acting in the thimble episode. The floor manager that has to go talk to the store manager about the thimble lady…hahaaa! I crack up at his mannerisms! (you tube link) And even the lady herself, the way she bats her eyes and over enunciates in that faux Manhattan kind of 40s movies way. Jeez, I love that episode.
Sgt Hulka!
Particularly the one that showed that rotating cone/spiral thingy-what was that supposed to suggest?
How about the later one-with that artist’s mannikin and Einstein’s equation E=MC2? Really cheap if you ask me!
Couldn’t Serling afford something nicer?
Nothing in the Dark and A World of His Own are two of my faves.
Black Leather Jackets. That one’s hilariously fun to mock.
A Most Unusual Camera–audience loves a slow learner. And that ending–it’s so ridiculous.
They’re not supposed to make sense . . . that’s the entire point, things happening that don’t make sense. An airliner going back in time makes just as much sense as a little boy who can make people disappear, or a woman who has forgotten that she’s really a mannequin.