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| Professor Ellis Fowler (Donald Pleasence) and the students of the Vermont Rock Springs School for Boys |
Season Three, Episode 102
Original Air Date:
June 1, 1962
Cast:
Professor Ellis Fowler:
Donald Pleasence
Headmaster:
Liam Sullivan
Mrs. Landers:
Philippa Bevans
Artie Beachcroft:
Tom Lowell
Bartlett:
Russell Horton
Dickie Weiss:
Buddy Hart
Graham:
Bob Biheller
Butler:
Kevin O’Neal
Boy:
Jimmy Baird
Boy:
Kevin Jones
Thompson: Darryl
Richard
Rice:
James Browning
Hudson:
Pat Close
Whiting:
Dennis Kerlee
Crew:
Writer:
Rod Serling (original teleplay)
Director: Robert
Ellis Miller
Producer:
Buck Houghton
Production Manager:
Ralph W. Nelson
Director of Photography:
George T. Clemens
Art Direction:
George W. Davis and Merril Pye
Set Decoration:
Henry Grace and Keogh Gleason
Make Up:
William Tuttle
Assistant Director:
E. Darrel Hallenbeck
Casting:
Robert Walker
Editor:
Bill Mosher
Sound:
Franklin Milton and Bill Edmondson
Music:
Stock
Optical Effects:
Pacific Title
Rod Serling’s Wardrobe:
Eagles Clothes
Filmed at M.G.M. Studios
And Now, Mr. Serling
“Next week on the Twilight Zone,
Mr. Donald Pleasence, visiting us from Broadway, brings his exceptional talents
to a very special program. The story of an aging schoolmaster who finds some
faith, some hope, and some mending glue for a few shattered dreams. But he
finds it in that strange manner unique in the shadow regions of the Twilight
Zone. Next week Donald Pleasence stars in “The Changing of the Guard.”
Rod Serling’s Opening Narration:
“Professor Ellis Fowler, a gentle,
bookish guide to the young, who is about to discover that life still has
certain surprises, and that the campus of the Rock Spring School for Boys lies
on a direct path to another institution, commonly referred to as the Twilight
Zone.”
Summary:
Professor Ellis
Fowler is an aging English teacher at the Vermont Rock Spring School for
Boys, a position he has held for over half a century. After saying goodbye to
his last class of the fall semester, Professor Fowler is summoned to the
headmaster’s office before leaving for the winter break. The headmaster, a
young well-to-do man, reluctantly informs the professor that the school’s board
of trustees have voted not to renew his contract for the Spring. They feel that
someone younger may be more beneficial to the students. Fowler is speechless.
At home that evening, he flips through old
yearbooks, remembering the hundreds of students who have graced his
classroom. He wonders how many of his
students remember him. He thinks of all the years he spent spouting poetry to bored, indifferent faces and feels foolish. He informs his
housekeeper that he is going for a walk and wanders out into the night. After
he leaves she discovers an empty gun holster in his desk drawer.
Professor Fowler makes his way to the deserted school campus and finds himself in front of a statue of Horace Mann. He remarks to the statue that he has won no victory for humanity, in reference to the great educator's famous quote. As he raises the barrel of the gun to his temple, Fowler hears class bells ringing. Curious, he walks off to investigate.
He eventually
finds himself back in his classroom, now empty. Before he has a chance to get a hold of
his senses he sees a room full of students materialize out of nothing right
before his eyes. He recognizes each of them. They are former students from
various classes throughout the years, all of which are now dead. Each student tells
him of the enormous impact that he had on their lives. The professor is
moved to tears.
He returns home
in better spirits and tells his housekeeper that he is looking forward to
retirement. He has made his mark and is ready to turn the reigns over to
someone else. As he settles in for the night he hears Christmas carolers
outside his window. He opens the window to find his students gathered on the
lawn. They wish him a Merry Christmas and continue on their way. The professor
closes the window and smiles, content with the victory he has won for humanity.
Rod Serling’s Closing Narration:
“Professor Ellis Fowler, teacher,
who discovered rather belatedly something of his own value. A very small
scholastic lesson, from the campus of the Twilight Zone.”
Commentary:
To close out the
third season of The Twilight Zone, Rod
Serling penned this incredibly warm, moving story that seems to foreshadow many
of the events that were to happen in his life in the coming years. While The Twilight Zone always held a
dedicated fan base it was never a strong candidate when it came to ratings due
likely to the fact that it was a fantasy program. The show lived in constant
fear of cancellation and at the end of its third season, after failing to
attract a new sponsor after the departure of Liggett and Myers Tobacco Company, it finally found itself off the air. It would
cease to broadcast new episodes for the next seven months until it was brought back as a mid-season replacement, unseating the very program that had replaced it. This
temporary hiatus would have a lasting impact on the show and its creators.
Long-time producer Buck Houghton, faced with the possibility of sudden
unemployment, would reluctantly leave the show as would other important figures
of the show’s production crew including film editors Bill Mosher and Jason
Bernie and assistant director E. Darrel Hallenbeck. As for Serling, the constant
grind of writing the bulk of the show’s scripts as well as acting as host and
executive producer had taken an enormous creative toll. At the end of the
1961-62 season he accepted a teaching position at his alma mater, Antioch College, in
Yellow Springs, Ohio, thousands of miles away from Los Angeles, leaving incoming
producer Hebert Hirschman with the task of resurrecting the show largely by
himself. So when CBS finally brought The
Twilight Zone back in January of 1963 it may have resembled its former self
in many ways but it was, without question, a noticeably different show.
I.
Rod Serling’s “The Changing of the
Guard”
When first
viewing “The Changing of the Guard” the influence of Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life (1946) is
immediately noticeable given its celebration of the common man and the promise
that no one goes unnoticed or unloved in life. The fact that this episode,
which aired in June, takes place around Christmas is probably not a coincidence
but a deliberate nod to Capra’s classic holiday film. It should come as no
surprise that Serling would be influenced by a storyteller like Capra for his
films possess the same brand of empathy found in much of Serling’s work. Capra
believed in humanity and the overlying message found throughout his body of work
is simply that every human being has value and therefore has the right to feel
valuable. This maxim seems to have greatly appealed to Serling for much of his
work concerns the forgotten members of society: the misunderstood alcoholic with a heart of gold, the convict who is
unjustly punished, the aging man who has suddenly found himself in an
unfamiliar world. Like Capra, Serling seemed to possess a genuine affection for
these types of characters and often awarded them a second chance at life as he
does for Professor Fowler here. The theme of moral forgiveness appears in many of
his Twilight Zone scripts including “A
Hundred Yards Over the Rim” “The Night of the Meek” “A Passage for
Trumpet” and "In Praise of Pip," all Capra-esque episodes with unlikely heroes similar to Professor
Fowler. But his dedication to the downtrodden of the world is found throughout
his work from early teleplays like Requiem
for a Heavyweight and Old MacDonald
Had a Curve to episodes of his western series, The Loner, and even in several of his scripts for Night Gallery—an unapologetically macabre
series—including the Emmy-nominated “They’re Tearing Down Tim Riley’s Bar.”
Serling’s
empathetic relationship with his lowly protagonists was more than just his
preaching of the humanist gospel. Serling was, above anything else, an
autobiographical writer. No matter the setting or premise of a story Serling’s
personality was always present and many of his heroes were simply extensions of
himself. It seems safe to assume that Professor Fowler represents many of
Serling’s fears as a writer even though he would later claim that he felt this
episode was too sentimental. These fears would only grow as he grew older. In
the years after The Twilight Zone, as
the counter-culture movement flourished and television began to change, Serling
saw the medium that he helped create more or less move on without him. The live
dramas of the previous decade were gone, The
Loner was canceled after a single season, many of his series ideas went
unrealized, Night Gallery turned out
to be an unpleasant experience for him, and his career as a screenwriter never
quite progressed the way his television career had. In later years he often
told interviewers that his work would likely be forgotten and that to simply be
remembered as a writer would be sufficient enough. Time has proven him wrong
and the fact that he allows Fowler a second chance at happiness in an attempt
to remind his fellow man to simply treat one another with dignity and respect
is probably the hallmark of his career as a writer, one which earned him six
Emmy Awards for writing, a record he holds to this day. Ironically, given his
fame as a writer, his epitaph simply reads RODMAN E. SERLING, TEC5 U.S. ARMY,
WORLD WAR II in reference to his military rank as Technician 5th
Class in the United States Army.
Poetry plays an important role in "The Changing of the Guard." But the poems Serling includes are not chosen at random nor were they poems everyone in a 1960's television audience would necessarily recognize. The first poem mentioned, recited in-full by Donald Pleasence in the first scene of the episode, is from English poet A.E. Housman's (1859-1936) 1896 collection A Shropshire Lad. "Poem XIII," commonly referred to by its opening line, "When I was One and Twenty," recounts a young protagonist's encounter with a presumably older, wiser man at the age of twenty-one who tells him that falling in love has consequences that are not repaired as easily as losing money or material possessions, advice the young protagonist ignores. One year later, now a victim of a broken heart, the speaker regrets his ignorance. Fowler's recitation of the poem to his young students reflects the old sage's advice to the protagonist and the theme of the poem also foreshadows Fowler's heartbreak at having the thing he loves most, teaching, taken away from him. Serling may also have included it in reference to Fowler's students who died young, as many of the poems in A Shropshire Lad pay tribute to English soldiers who lost their lives at a young age. As Fowler recites this to the class, the camera pans slowly across the classroom of boys, some fiddling restlessly, some staring vacantly into thin air, all naive and inexperienced like the protagonist of the poem. Pleasence gives a fantastic rendition of the poem and this ends up being a very powerful moment in the episode.
The two other
poems Serling includes are mentioned during the second classroom scene and are
recited by the ghosts of Fowler’s former students. The first is American
minister Howard Arnold Walter’s (1883-1918) poem “My Creed,” commonly referred
to by its opening line “I Would be True,” first published in 1906. Serling
includes the first four lines which are read by Russell Horton who plays a
young man who gave his life for the cause of medical research. The poem is a
testament to being brave and honest in the face of adversity.
The last poem mentioned is John Donne’s (1572-1631) “No Man is an
Island.” First published in 1624 in his collection of religious essays, Devotions upon Emergent Occasions, Donne
actually wrote this as part of a much larger essay called Meditation XVII. The short passage that has become so famous is
commonly referred to by either its opening phrase, “No man is an island” or its
closing phrase, “never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee”
often recited as “ask not for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.” It
basically suggests that every person is part of a larger fabric of humanity and
therefore what effects one person’s life inadvertently effects all of humanity.
The second half of the passage is recited here by actor Buddy Hart who plays Dickie
Weiss, a Naval officer who was on-board the Arizona and became the first
person killed at Pearl Harbor while rescuing his crew mates—Serling’s reference
here is perhaps a little over the top but the message still resonates. Audiences
at the time might have recognized Hart as he had a reoccurring role on Leave It to Beaver. He later changed his
name to Buddy Joe Hooker and went on to enjoy an enormously successful career
as a stunt coordinator. This last poem is probably the best known of the three
mentioned in the episode and one Serling likely admired.
This was Donald
Pleasence’s first appearance on American television. He had already enjoyed
success in his native England both on the stage and on the big and small
screens. While he was known for being gentle and soft-spoken, Pleasence enjoyed
playing malevolent characters. Before being cast as the bookish Professor
Fowler, Pleasence had just spent an entire year playing the role of Davies, an incredibly
unlikable character, in Harold Pinter’s play The Caregiver, first in London and then on Broadway. The role
earned him a Tony Award nomination, the first of four, and he revived the role
for a film version, The Guest, in 1963.
Pleasence would make a name for himself playing seedy, vicious characters and
enjoy a successful and highly prolific career in a variety of mediums. His film
roles include The Great Escape (1963),
Dr. Crippen (1963), The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965), Fantastic Voyage (1966), Escape to Witch Mountain (1975), Dracula (1979), and Escape from New York (1981). He was well-known among horror fans
and appeared in numerous independent films, mostly anthologies, from American
International Pictures, Amicus Productions and others including Circus of Horrors (1960), From Beyond the Grave (1974), The Uncanny (1977), and The Monster Club (1981). He appeared in
episodes of One Step Beyond, The Outer
Limits, and The Ray Bradbury Theatre and
was nominated for an Emmy Award for Best Supporting Actor in The Defection of Simas Kudirka in 1978. The
two roles he is most known for, however, are Bond villain Ernest Stavro
Blofeld in You Only Live Twice (1967)
and as Dr. Samuel Loomis in the original Halloween
film series. Before becoming an actor Pleasence served as a Flight
Lieutenant in the Royal Air Force during World War II and was taken captive by
German forces after his plane was shot down over France. He remained a prisoner
of war for almost two years before being released. Pleasence died in 1995 at
the age of seventy-five.
II.
Rod Serling, Horace Mann, and
Education
The idea that
Ellis Fowler is, at least to some degree, an extension of Serling’s personality
is further solidified by the fact that Serling makes his hero an educator at a
school that prominently displays a statue of education pioneer Horace Mann, a
hero of Seling’s and the founder of Serling’s alma mater, Antioch College, where
Serling would soon be a faculty member. Education was clearly important to
Serling and he had a great admiration for teachers. He spoke fondly of the teachers
who had made an impact on him creatively, particularly his public speaking teacher at West
Junior High in Binghamton, Helen Foley. The two became lifelong friends and Serling even named the main
character from his season one Twilight
Zone episode, “Nightmare as a Child,” after Foley.
Before becoming a
writer Serling thought he wanted to be a teacher himself. After returning home from
World War II, he enrolled in Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio as a
physical education major. He soon changed it to language and literature. Serling
found that writing offered a therapeutic outlet which helped him process the
psychological trauma of combat and allowed him to learn more about himself.
Serling saw Antioch as a haven of unrestricted self-expression, a place where
he was encouraged to question things he felt were wrong with the world in which
he lived. Not long after he began writing Serling became the head of the
Antioch Broadcasting System’s radio program where he wrote, directed, and acted
in weekly productions. In 1949 he made his first professional sale to the Dr. Christian radio show where his radio
play “To Live a Dream” placed second in the annual script writing contest. In many
ways Antioch was the place where Rod Serling the writer was born.
While still a student, Serling came to admire the life of the
school’s founder, American politician and education reformer, Horace Mann
(1796-1859). Mann was one of the first prominent advocates of universal,
tax-funded public education. Born into poverty, he went on to graduate
valedictorian from Brown University and held positions in the Massachusetts
State House of Representatives, the State Senate, and the United States House
of Representatives. He was an early advocate of gender equality, state-funded
mental health facilities, the separation of church and state, and an outspoken
opponent of slavery. Education, however, was always his priority. “A republic,”
he said, “cannot long remain ignorant and free, hence the necessity of
universal popular education…such education is best provided in schools
embracing children of all religious, social, and ethnic backgrounds.” In 1853,
Mann became the first president of Antioch College, the first non-sectarian,
coeducational college in the United States. During Mann’s six years as
president, Antioch became the first college to appoint a female to its faculty--with
the same rank and pay as her male coworkers. Mann also kept tuition at a rate
affordable for students, something that almost caused the school to close after
the Christian Connexion withdrew its funding. The college enrolled students of
all races, religions, and financial backgrounds. In his 1859 commencement
address Mann delivered the phrase which he would forever be associated with and
which Serling includes in “The Changing of the Guard.”
"Be
Ashamed to Die Until You Have Won Some Victory for Humanity."
Mann collapsed not long after the ceremony and died a few months
later. Today he is considered a pioneering social activist and the father of American
public education.
It should come as
no surprise that Serling was an admirer of Horace Mann for their principles are
very much the same. Serling mentions Mann in his lectures and in several of his
teleplays. In an early teleplay for NBC’s Hallmark Hall of Fame titled “Horace
Mann’s Miracle” Serling recounts Mann’s struggle to keep Antioch from closing
its doors in financial ruin after losing most of its funding. The half-hour
drama aired on March 8, 1953. It was directed by Albert McCleery and stars
Frank M. Thomas as Mann.
After accepting a faculty position at Antioch in the fall of 1962, Serling told
interviewers that his official title would be “writer in
residence.” During his brief time at the college from September, 1962 to
January, 1963 Serling taught two classes. One was an open enrollment survey
course for undergraduates called Mass Media. The other was an
evening course called Writing in the Dramatic Form. Enrollment for this course
was by invitation only and was intended for graduate students or individuals
just beginning their careers as writers. Jeanne Marshall was an aspiring writer
at the time and was a student in the evening class. She kept detailed notes of
each class period, noting the films they watched, assignments they were given,
and Serling’s book and film recommendations. If you are interested, all
twenty-three pages of her notes are available on the Rod Serling Memorial Foundation website. While Serling clearly needed a break from
The Twilight Zone his choice for
in-class viewing material suggested otherwise. Serling screened a variety of episodes of the show throughout the semester including “The Changing of
the Guard.” Among the numerous books Marshall lists as recommended by Serling
are Joseph Heller’s Catch 22, works
by Gore Vidal and Paddy Chayefsky, and The
Beardless Warriors by Richard Matheson.
It should be noted that several of the students who attended the course,
including Marshall, went on to make a career for themselves as writers. Serling
even helped future television writer Sue Clauser sell her first two teleplays
to Bonanza.
Serling’s trial
run as a teacher was short-lived. Not long after he moved to Ohio CBS green lit
the fourth season of The Twilight Zone which
would debut in January as a mid-season replacement. So in January of 1963
Serling and family moved back to California. However, this was not the last time he
would don the educator's hat. Serling began to lecture at college campuses
across the country. He held film screenings at the Sherwood Oaks Experimental
College in Hollywood where he would often screen episodes of The Twilight Zone. He
was also a founding member of the Famous Writers School. In the late 1960’s,
Serling took another teaching position, this time at Ithaca College near his
home in Ithaca, New York. He is said to have found this job peaceful and
rewarding. He continued to teach at Ithaca until his death in 1975.
III.
The End of Season Three
The reason The Twilight Zone went off the air is
because Liggett & Myers Tobacco Company, who had sponsored the show since
the beginning of the third season, chose not to renew their sponsorship due to
CBS’s decision to move the show from its original time-slot of Fridays at 10:00
pm to Wednesdays at 7:30 pm. They did not think the audience would follow them
to the earlier time and they were probably correct. The Twilight Zone was too weird to be placed in the middle of the
primetime lineup next to westerns and situational comedies. When the show failed to find a
new sponsor in time for production to begin on the fourth season they found
themselves off the air. But this was not the first time the show had faced cancellation. A similar set of events had occurred at the end of the first
season but popular demand managed to keep the show on the air. This time they
weren’t so lucky.
Unfortunately, many
members of the show’s production crew found themselves at the risk of potential
unemployment. Many could not afford to wait it out, so they submitted their
resumes elsewhere. The show lost numerous members of its production crew, many of which had been there since the beginning. The biggest blow, however, was the departure of long-time producer Buck Houghton, who was a
fundamental part of the show’s success. Unable to wait for a decision
from CBS, Houghton accepted a position with Four Star Productions
working on The Richard Boone Show at
NBC. He had produced 101 episodes of the show, had won the award for Best
Produced Series from the Producer’s Guild of America, and had helped create an invaluable piece of television history.
With so many new faces it’s no surprise that the show looked and felt different going into its fourth season and its seems appropriate that this new season have a different format and a different name—the show dropped the definite “the” from its title and would now be known simply as Twilight Zone.
With so many new faces it’s no surprise that the show looked and felt different going into its fourth season and its seems appropriate that this new season have a different format and a different name—the show dropped the definite “the” from its title and would now be known simply as Twilight Zone.
As for Serling,
his time in Yellow Springs was not the rejuvenating getaway he had hoped it
would be. Serling had the type of personality that had to remain in motion all
the time. If he found himself with downtime he would invent another project for
himself. In addition to his two classes at Antioch, while in Yellow Springs Rod
was also writing the screenplay for Seven
Days in May and writing scripts for Twilight Zone, which were now twice as long. He also had to fly back to Los
Angeles periodically to film his onscreen introductions for the show and to
meet with producer Herbert Hirschman. He also briefly hosted a movie series on
WBNS in Columbus called 10 O’Clock Theatre. So when he returned to Los Angeles
in January he was still fatigued and frustrated which would unfortunately affect much of his writing for the show for the remainder of its existence.
IV.
Even if The Twilight Zone had ended after just
three seasons Serling and company could have walked away from it with a sense
of accomplishment. The 102 television episodes they produced in just under
three years are some of the finest pieces of drama ever committed to film. “The
Changing of the Guard” would have made an appropriate swan song to the series
for it unabashedly embraces Serling’s sentimentalism and celebrates the value
of human beings. But the show did continue. And despite the uneven quality of
the fourth and fifth seasons, some fine episodes were still to come.
Grade: B
Grateful acknowledgement to the
following:
As I Knew Him: My Dad, Rod Serling
by Anne Serling (Citadel Press, 2013)
The Twilight Zone Companion
by Marc Scott Zicree (Second Edition, 1989)
The Twilight Zone: Unlocking the
Door to a Television Classic by Martin Grams, Jr. (OTR
Publishing, 2008)
Rod Serling Teaches Writing: Jeanne
Marshall's Seminar Notes, 1962-63 arranged and annotated by Jeanne Marshall; Rod Serling Memorial Foundation
“The Radio Career of Rod Serling” by Martin Grams, Jr.; Old Time
Radio Researchers Group
“Fading into the Twilight Zone?” TV Guide (Summer, 1963); Rod Serling Memorial Foundation
Notes:
 |
| Illustration by Jim Harter which accompanied Anne Serling's adaptation of "The Changing of the Guard," from Rod Serling's The Twilight Zone Magazine |
--Liam Sullivan also appeared in
the season two episode “The Silence.”
--Russell Horton also appeared in
the season five episode “In Praise of Pip.”
--Check out the Twilight Zone Radio Drama starring Twilight Zone alumni Orson Bean.
--“The Changing of the Guard” was
adapted into a short story by Serling’s daughter Anne Serling which first
appeared in the January/February 1985 issue of Rod
Serling’s The Twilight Zone Magazine. It
was reprinted later that year in two anthologies: The Twilight Zone: The
Original Stories, published by MJF Books
and edited by Martin H. Greenberg, Richard Matheson, and Charles G. Waugh and Young
Ghosts, published by Harper and Row and
edited by Isaac Asimov, Greenberg, and Waugh.
--Brian