"Two"

Charles Bronson and Elizabeth Montgomery at the
beginning of a new life.

“Two”

Season Three, Episode 66

Original Air Date: September 15, 1961

Cast:

The Man: Charles Bronson

The Woman: Elizabeth Montgomery

Crew:

Writer: Montgomery Pittman (original teleplay)

Director: Montgomery Pittman

Producer: Buck Houghton
Production Manager: Ralph W. Nelson

Director of Photographer: George T. Clemens
Art Direction: George W. Davis and Phil Barber
Set Decoration: H. Web Arrowsmith
Assistant Director: Darrell Hallenbeck
Editor: Bill Mosher
Sound: Franklin Milton and Bill Edmondson

Music: Nathan Van Cleave

Rod Serling’s Opening Narration:

“This is a jungle: a monument built by nature honoring disuse, commemorating a few years of nature being left to its own devices. But it’s another kind of jungle, the kind that comes in the aftermath of man’s battles against himself. Hardly an important battle, not a Gettysburg or a Marne or an Iwo Jima. More like one insignificant corner patch in the crazy quilt of combat. But it was enough to end the existence of this little city. It’s been five years since a human being walked these streets. This is the first day of the sixth year—as man used to measure time. [Enter the Woman] The time? Perhaps a hundred years from now. Or sooner. Or perhaps it’s already happened two million years ago. The Place? The signposts are in English so that we may read them more easily, but the place—is the Twilight Zone.”

Summary:

            We open on a deserted city, a city that said goodbye to the spirit of progress and the electric hum of bustling streets ages ago. A city that clings to a world forgotten, one ripped apart and abandoned by those who helped build it. A city whose buildings lay in ruin, whose streets are littered with debris, whose stores are empty. A lonely city.

            A young woman enters the city. She walks its streets and gazes at its buildings, she admires its artwork. Her clothes, a military uniform, are tattered and dirty, her hair unkempt. Her face is worn with exhaustion and caked with dirt and time. Still, she is beautiful.

She spots the remnants of a restaurant and makes her way to the kitchen. She rummages through trash and rubble and finds a sealed container of food. As she works to open it a young man appears in the doorway. He is also wearing a uniform, one different from hers. The woman immediately begins hurling objects at the man. He dodges them and approaches her. After a short struggle he knocks her unconscious. After searching around for food he wakes her up by dumping a bucket of water on her face. The woman jolts up and the man slides the can of food towards her. He tries to communicate with her but fails because she doesn’t understand his language. He continues talking anyway and tells her that since there are no more armies or governments left then there is no reason for them to fight. He waxes philosophically to himself for a moment then leaves.

The woman follows after him, cautiously. They walk through the city, rummaging through shops, taking what they need. They stop at a movie theater and admire film posters from another world. The man takes a wedding gown from a window display. He hands the dress to the woman encouragingly and she walks inside an abandoned recruiting office to change. While inside she spots a war propaganda poster in which her homeland is presumably portrayed as the enemy. Enraged, she grabs her rifle and charges outside. She fires at the man but misses. He stares back at her in disbelief and then walks away. Confused and embarrassed, she goes back inside the store.

She returns later and sees the man wearing a suit. He tells her to go away, that he is done fighting. She emerges from behind a bus wearing the wedding dress. Her face is apologetic and eager. She is ready to move on. The man looks at her for a moment and tells her she is beautiful and she smiles.

She joins him as they stroll quietly through the littered streets of the forgotten city, man and woman, on their way to another city and to tomorrow.

Rod Serling’s Closing Narration:

            “This has been a love story, about two lonely people who found each other…in the Twilight Zone.”

Commentary:

            For the Season Three premiere the producers chose this sweet, poignant story about love and survival in a post-nuclear world. It may not seem like a bold decision today, but “Two” was a risky choice for the season opener. There are only two actors in the entire episode, little dialogue, and basically no plot. And for the first time in the show’s history the producers chose an episode not written by Serling as the season opener, an episode penned by someone who had never written for the show before. The risk proved to be well worth it, however, and the result is a warm, well-crafted fairytale delivered in the show’s signature brand of pathos and wonder.

            Montgomery Pittman holds a unique spot in the show’s history. He is the only writer to direct his own episodes, which he did a total of three times. He also directed two additional episodes written by others. Considering the short time he was involved with the show, Pittman’s output is both impressive and significant. He seemed to appear out of nowhere at the end of Season Two and by the middle of Season Three he had disappeared just as quickly. He may have contributed much more to the show had he been given the opportunity. Unfortunately, The Twilight Zone would be one of his last projects. He succumbed to cancer in June of 1962. He was 45.

Although his career spanned only a decade or so, his body of work is impressive. He started on Broadway as an actor then moved to Hollywood where he turned his attention to writing and eventually directing. Pittman made the leap to directing his own scripts mostly due to his frustration with directors and networks altering his material. This may have been why he was attracted to a venue like The Twilight Zone, where the writer was often the star of the show and the producers took great care to preserve the original script. He was primarily known during his lifetime as a writer of western television, penning teleplays for Maverick, Sugarfoot, Cheyenne, and Lawman, among others. He had worked with Buck Houghton several years before as a writer on Schlitz Playhouse.

            While his two other writing efforts on The Twilight Zone are probably better representations of his style and personality, “Two” is Pittman’s crowning achievement on the show. The plot is simple and the dialogue sparse. He simply sets up a situation in Serling’s opening monologue and hides a few plot points in Bronson’s dialogue and in various set pieces. Explanatory exposition is always tricky for a writer and Pittman pulls it off brilliantly without saying hardly anything. This episode works because it appeals to many themes the show had already explored and would continue to explore until the end of its run. On the surface it’s a post-apocalyptic story about life after the big war. But it’s not a cautionary tale. It’s simply a story about loneliness and about two individuals who find each other in the aftermath of devastation. It’s warm-hearted but it doesn’t pour on the sentimentalism to the point of nausea like many of the lighter episodes do.

This episode is notable for featuring early performances from two actors who later became parts of Hollywood immortality. With little dialogue and only a vague concept of a plot it was largely up to the actors to make this story believable. If their chemistry wasn’t genuine then the entire episode was lost. To play the part of the Woman, Houghton enlisted a largely unknown actress named Elizabeth Montgomery, daughter of actor Robert Montgomery. This is several years before her iconic role on Bewitched and she is almost unrecognizable here as a brunette with tattered military clothes and a dirt smeared face. The part called for her to remain silent for nearly the entire episode. This meant that her thoughts and emotions had to be conveyed through physical mannerisms and facial expressions. She pulls this off nicely and there is never a moment in the episode where the audience is unsure of her thought process.

               Charles Bronson plays the part of the Man. This was an interesting casting choice albeit a brilliant one. At this point in his career Bronson had primarily made his living in television often playing a villain, vigilante killer, detective, or similar brutish-type character. But a year or so before this episode he landed a part in The Magnificent Seven where he played the role of Bernardo O’ Reilly, a hardened gunfighter who turns out to have a soft spot when he gives his life to save a group of small children. This role was a turning point for Bronson and it helped mold his on-screen image as the archetypal tough guy with a moral center. It’s this persona that he brings to his performance here. His physical appearance and demeanor give the audience the first impression of a brute without a conscience. But he turns out to be a sympathetic character. Pittman plays against gender stereotype here and Bronson’s character, the male, is the one resisting a confrontation while the attractive female is the aggressor. Bronson seems to understand this for he plays the character with an equal mix of wisdom, anger, and hope.

            Van Cleave’s score deserves a nod here as well for it also helps to convey the thoughts of both characters, particularly Montgomery’s. It's suspenseful when it needs to be, whenever the characters feel as though they are in danger, but mostly takes a sad stroll with them throughout the city. They are many scenes, however, that have no music or dialogue at all. It was most likely Pittman’s decision to leave these scenes with nothing but sound effects in order to convey how empty and still the city is supposed to be.

            The first time I saw this episode I found it enjoyable but forgettable. Over the years, however, I have developed an attachment to it. It has a refreshing quality that isn’t cheap or sugary-sweet like many of the show’s happier episodes. It’s a doomsday story without the same tired message that often accompanies such fare. Instead, it begins as one type of story and ends as another, leaving the audience with empathy for these two characters and quite possibly a better understanding of themselves.

Grade: B

Grateful acknowledgment is made to:

"A Somewhat Forgotten Figure to Some Extent Remembered: Notes on Television Director, Script Writer, and Occasional Actor Montgomery Pittman" by John Desmond. Bright Lights Film, October, 2010.

The Twilight Zone Companion, Second Edition by Marc Scott Zicree (Silman-James, 1989)

Notes:

--Montgomery Pittman also wrote and directed Season Three’s “The Grave” and “The Last Rights of Jeff Myrtlebank.” He also directed Season Two’s “Will the Real Martian Please Stand Up?” and Season Three’s “Dead Man’s Shoes.” For a more in-depth look at his career check out this cool essay by John Desmond.

--“Two” was adapted into a Twilight Zone Radio Drama starring Don Johnson.
--This episode was shot at Hal Roach Studios in Culver City, CA where numerous influential comedy films were shot during the silent and early sound eras including those of Laurel and Hardy and early Harold Lloyd two-reelers. Part of the studio backlot was in disrepair and was about to be demolished. Houghton thought the decaying scenery would suit the episode well.
--Buck Houghton previously worked with Charles Bronson on the television series Man With a Camera (1958-1960).
--At the time this episode was produced, Elizabeth Montgomery was married to actor Gig Young, who'd previously starred in the exceptional first season episode, "Walking Distance." They divorced in 1963. Montgomery also appeared alongside Dick York, Agnes Moorehead, and David White on Bewitched, all four of whom appeared in episodes of The Twilight Zone. York appeared in "The Purple Testament" from season one and "A Penny For Your Thoughts" from season two, Moorehead starred in the highly regarded second season episode "The Invaders," and White appeared in "A World of Difference" from season one, and "I Sing the Body Electric" from season three.  

--Brian

Season Three (1961-1962)

“Your Next Stop, The Twilight Zone!”

The Twilight Zone entered its third season at what was probably the height of its popularity. By this point the show had established itself as both a commercial and creative success, scoring points with viewers, critics, and the CBS front office. On the surface, the transition from Season Two to Season Three seemed a smooth one. But for his part, Rod Serling was beginning to feel stretched too thin, both physically and creatively. Between being the on-screen host, showrunner, and primary writer, fatigue was beginning to catch up with him. He also felt that the quality of his writing was slipping. “I’ve written so much I’m woozy,” he told an interviewer in 1961. “If only I could take off for about six months and replenish the well.” Serling would not get that opportunity to replenish the well until the show ended, leaving its creator exhausted and further disillusioned with the medium he helped legitimize as an art form. Of course, Serling would come back a few years later with Night Gallery, an underrated anthology series that would present its own unique production problems for the talented dramatist. Not all was as bad as Serling reasoned anyhow and he was able to craft some of the most enduring material from the series during the third season, including the adaptations "Five Characters in Search of an Exit," "To Serve Man," and "It's a Good Life," as well as the original teleplays "Deaths-Head Revisited," "The Midnight Sun," and "The Dummy."

In addition to his current responsibilities, the new season of the show also saw Serling promoting products on camera. The American Tobacco Company was brought in as a sponsor and Serling became contractually obligated to plug products for the company at the end of every episode they sponsored, which alternated with the sponsor of the previous season, General Foods. It was another transition on a show that seemed to always be in flux, despite the exemplary job being done by producer Buck Hougton to keep the production running at a consistently high level. Rod Serling went from a voice off screen to a host on-screen between the first and second seasons. There was also the unsuccessful experiment of recording six episodes of the second season on videotape. The third season would see little of these types of alterations outside of Serling's new obligation to the series sponsor. The show again changed its opening sequence, as it would do one more time before the end of its run. It also began to list the title, writer, producer, and director at the beginning of every episode, a much needed change.

 Writer George Clayton Johnson began selling his original teleplays to the series with the second season's "A Penny For Your Thoughts" and "The Prime Mover" (written with Charles Beaumont, credited only to Beaumont) after sustaining himself chiefly as a contributor of story material through the first and second seasons. Johnson would produce his finest scripts for the third season with the classic episodes "Nothing in the Dark," "A Game of Pool," and "Kick the Can." Richard Matheson also began adapting his own short stories into teleplays with "Little Girl Lost," based on his 1953 story first published in the October-November issue of Amazing Stories. Adapting his own previously published material was something Matheson resisted during the first and second seasons, only going so far as to allow Rod Serling to adapt two of his short stories. Matheson quickly warmed to the idea and adapted more of his previously published short fiction in the fourth and fifth seasons, including the episodes "Death Ship," "Mute," "Night Call," and "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet," but would also continue to a steady output of original material, including "Once Upon a Time" and "Young Man's Fancy," from the third season.

On the other hand, Charles Beaumont returned to crafting original teleplays for the third season after spending the second season working with other writers (OCee Ritch, George Clayton Johnson, William Idelson) or adapting his previously published short fiction ("The Howling Man," "Shadow Play"). These original efforts include the excellent "Person or Persons Unknown" and the disappointing "The Fugitive." Beaumont continued with adaptations of his short fiction as well with "The Jungle" from the third season, a story that first saw light in the December 1954 issue of If: Worlds of Science Fiction. 

The third season episode "The Hunt" marked the first appearance of writer Earl Hamner, Jr. Hamner continued as a regular contributor to the series right up until the final broadcast episode, "The Bewitchin' Pool." Hamner also contributed the unusual Serling-esque morality play, "A Piano in the House," to the third season. Also making his debut on the series was director Lamont Johnson, who directed many of the finest episodes of the third season. It was fortunate for the series that a director like Johnson could step in after the departure of Douglas Heyes, who was one of the most consistent directors of quality episodes in the show's entire run. 

By the end of the third season, the show lost another key figure with the departure of producer Buck Houghton. When the show struggled to secure corporate sponsorship at the end of the third season, Houghton found himself dangerously close to unemployment and took a new job. Although the show did secure sponsorship for another season, as mid-season replacement and as an hour-long program, Houghton’s departure signaled the beginning of the end, for the consistency and creative quality would never be the same. 

The season following would be one of transition and change, but for now the show was still going strong as it began the longest (37 episodes) of its five seasons with writer/director Montgomery Pittman's post-apocalyptic love story "Two," starring Charles Bronson and Elizabeth Montgomery.

Rod Serling’s Introduction Narration to Season Three:

“You’re traveling through another dimension. A dimension not only of sight and sound, but of mind. A journey into a wondrous land whose boundaries are that of imagination. Your next stop, the Twilight Zone.”

--Brian Durant & Jordan Prejean

"The Obsolete Man"

Mr. Romney Wordsworth (Burgess Meredith) stands
ready to be judged by jury and Chancellor (Fritz Weaver)

"The Obsolete Man"

Season Two, Episode 65

Original Air Date: June 2, 1961

Cast:

Romney Wordsworth: Burgess Meredith

The Chancellor: Fritz Weaver

The Subaltern: Josip Elic

The Guard: Harry Fleer

First Man: Barry Brooks

Second Man: Harold Innocent

Third Man: Bob McCord

Woman: Jane Romeyn

Crew:

Writer: Rod Serling (original teleplay)

Director: Elliot Silverstein

Producer: Buck Houghton
Production Manager: Ralph W. Nelson

Director of Photography: George T. Clemens

Art Direction: George W. Davis and Phil Barber

Set Decorations: Henry Grace and H. Web Arrowsmith
Assistant Director: Darrell Hallenbeck
Editor: Jason Bernie
Sound: Franklin Milton and Bill Edmondson

Music: Stock

And Now, Mr. Serling:

            “Mr. Burgess Meredith is no stranger to the Twilight Zone, but his role in next week’s story is a unique one, even for him. The Time will be the future, the place just about anywhere where men have been taken over by a machine state. Our story is called ‘The Obsolete Man.’ It may chill, it may provoke, but we’re certain it will leave a mark. Next week on the Twilight Zone, ‘The Obsolete Man.’”

Rod Serling’s Opening Narration: 

         “You walk into this room at your own risk, because it leads to the future, not a future that will be but one that might be. This is not a new world, it is simply an extension of what began in the old one. It has patterned itself after every dictator who has ever planted the ripping imprint of a boot on the pages of history…since the beginning of time. It has refinements, technological advancements, and a more sophisticated approach to the destruction of human freedom. But like every one of the super states that preceded it, it has one iron rule: logic is an enemy and truth is a menace. This is Mr. Romney Wordsworth, in his last forty-eight hours on Earth. He’s a citizen of the state but will soon have to be eliminated, because he’s built out of flesh and because he has a mind. Mr. Romney Wordsworth, who will draw his last breath…in the Twilight Zone.”

Summary:

            The future. Dark, cold, empty. A door opens onto a large, shadowy court room, and Mr. Romney Wordsworth, rigid with fright, enters to await his doom. Wordsworth is ordered to approach a large podium where a chancellor will tell him if he is worthy of living. The Chancellor takes the podium and asks Wordsworth what his occupation is. “A librarian,” he replies. Laughter rolls from the shadows of the courtroom. “A librarian?” the Chancellor says. He tells Wordsworth that since all books were banned by the state that there is no need for librarians. Wordsworth then mentions God and the Chancellor tells him that the state has proven that there is no God. A state-run jury declares Romney Wordsworth to be obsolete and sentences him to death. He is, however, given a choice as to his execution method. He chooses for his death to be broadcast live from his library. He also asks that his method be known only by himself and his executioner. The Chancellor seems amused by this and eagerly agrees.

            Later. The Chancellor, upon Wordsworth’s request, meets the condemned man in his library hours before his execution. Wordsworth tells the Chancellor that a bomb is set to explode at midnight right there in his library. Frightened, the Chancellor runs for the door but finds it locked. He demands that Wordsworth unlock the door. But the librarian refuses. The Chancellor has no choice but to sit and wait.  They are being filmed live in front of millions.

            Hours, minutes, seconds tick by. The Chancellor squirms like an impatient child. Wordsworth reads his tattered bible paying little attention to his guest. Finally in the last minutes before the explosion the Chancellor begs that Wordsworth release him. “For the love of God!” He shouts. Wordsworth hands him the key and the Chancellor escapes just moments before the room explodes.

           The next day. The Chancellor arrives in the court room to start his work for the day. To his horror he finds that his podium is occupied by another man. The new chancellor informs him that his declaration of a deity renders him unable to perform his task and therefore declares him obsolete. The former chancellor begs like a child for his life as a mob of mindless zombies converge on him and rip him apart.

Rod Serling’s Closing Narration:

“The Chancellor—the late Chancellor—was only partly correct. He was obsolete. But so was the State, the entity he worshipped. Any state, any entity, any ideology that fails to recognize the worth, the dignity, the rights of man, that state is obsolete. A case to be filed under ‘M’ for mankind…in the Twilight Zone.”

Commentary:

            For the second season closer Serling turned in this Orwellian horror story of a machine-like society that disposes of anyone or anything deemed unnecessary by the all-powerful forces of the State. I have always enjoyed this episode but it’s definitely not without flaws. If it is didacticism that Serling strives for then he loses his audience almost from the start. The world he creates here pushes the tolerance of the audience. It is ominous simply for the sake of being ominous. A world populated by mindless, monotone citizens absolutely devoted to a callous, faceless government. The audience never really gets the sense of what the structure of this imagined future is supposed to accomplish, or what exactly constitutes a person or idea as being “obsolete.” Serling simply fills his dystopia with any restriction of personal freedom that allows him to get his point across which is simply that totalitarianism is bad and a lack of free will is never fun. His plot is also littered with implausible circumstances, the most notable of which is that the Chancellor diligently accepts Wordsworth’s invitation to join him in his room on the night of his execution. Why doesn’t the Chancellor bring any kind of entourage or security with him? What if he doesn’t show up at all? This would spoil Wordsworth’s plan and would end Serling’s script rather abruptly. But despite all of these limitations this episode still manages to work quite well and, in many ways, still evokes in the audience the moral dread that Serling intended.

            Now that I have pointed to the flaws in this episode and probably given the impression that it’s basically celluloid garbage I can move on to why I think it’s great.

            He may over-indulge the message here but Serling saves “The Obsolete Man” by filling it with sharp, powerful dialogue between Fritz Weaver and Burgess Meredith. The dialogue works so well because its focus is not on Serling’s message but simply on the difference of ideals between two characters, which is why the tension between these two men seems completely natural instead of forced in order for Serling to make his point. Both characters have lengthy, carefully sculpted monologues saturated with the type of rhetoric that makes Serling’s work memorable.           

           Casting was a key element in this episode. While Serling’s dialogue is amazing it could have been worthless in the hands of lesser actors. So Silverstein and the producers turned to familiar faces as a safety net to assure great performances. Making his third of four appearances on the show is veteran actor Burgess Meredith. All of the characters that Meredith has portrayed thus far on the program have been lowly, bookish types in varying degrees of seriousness. Although some may feel that “Time Enough at Last” is his best effort on the show I have always enjoyed him best in this episode. Making his second and final appearance on the show is Fritz Weaver. In Season One’s “Third from the Sun” Weaver plays a quiet family man trying to keep things afloat while he and his family attempt to leave their planet in the face of a looming nuclear holocaust. Here he plays the complete opposite: a boisterous, unforgiving authority of the State. He displays an impressive range of emotions in this episode and the result is one of the most interesting characters to ever appear on the show. His monologue in the opening scene has always been one of my favorites.

            But the hero of this episode is director Elliot Silverstein. This is his first of four episodes for the show. It’s interesting to point out that his other three episodes (Season Three’s “The Passerby” and “The Trade-Ins” and Season Five’s “Spur of the Moment”) are all episodes that also focus on dialogue and acting rather than story. And like “The Obsolete Man” most would have worked well on the stage (with the exception of “Spur of the Moment,” which features a chase scene on horseback in which the audience isn’t supposed to see the pursuer’s face). Silverstein had a background in theater and began his career as a television director in the live dramas of the fifties. “The Obsolete Man” features only two sets, which are radically different from one another. The first and last acts take place in a large, open courtroom which features sharp, expressionistic shadows reminiscent of the German horror movies of the 1920’s. There are only two pieces of furniture in this room: a long, narrow table in the center of the room and the Chancellor’s tall, obnoxious podium at the far end of the table. The only other visible set piece is a twenty-five foot double door that opens into the courtroom. The walls are covered in black velvet and an off-screen light fixture placed above the door appears to be only source of light inside the courtroom. The government officials, there are about a dozen of them places randomly around the large room, are all dressed in drab, colorless uniforms and stand expressionless behind Wordsworth. The room is cold and unwelcoming. This set is highly effective to both the scene and the story and gives the audience an immediate idea of what this future society is like.

            Act Two takes place in Wordsworth’s apartment. A tiny studio apartment consisting of a single room cluttered with furniture and lined wall-to-wall with overflowing bookshelves, it is a striking juxtaposition to the lifeless courtroom in the other two scenes. The cozy, cluttered room feels immediately warm and welcoming and it gives the audience a better understanding of Wordsworth’s personality. In many ways these two sets are the unspoken stars of the episode.

            While it has some sore spots, “The Obsolete Man” is still a remarkable episode and a good choice for the season finale. The final scene, in which the Chancellor is judged and then presumably ripped apart by his comrades, was an extremely bold choice for the show, especially for 1961. It’s weird and vague and doesn’t really make sense but it somehow works perfectly. It closes out the season on a high and shocking note and leaves the audience talking all summer long while they wait with anticipation for the start of the third season.

            If The Twilight Zone started on a high note with Season One, then it’s safe to say that it hit its stride both creatively and commercially with Season Two. Season Two produced many of the show’s best including “Eye of the Beholder,” “The Howling Man,” “Nick of Time,” and “The Invaders” to name a few. While not every episode is a masterpiece (“A Thing about Machines” and “The Man in the Bottle” among the sore spots), and don’t forget the experiment with videotape that proved unpopular with nearly everyone, the show began to grow into its own during this season. The viewership had grown and the pacing was faster. The producers settled on an opening theme which would become one the show’s trademarks and one of the most well-known pieces of popular culture to ever exist. Serling began to appear onscreen during his opening monologues (also one of the show’s trademarks that has become a universally known and often mimicked phenomenon) and the monologues themselves grew shorter and tighter and were officially given the “…in the Twilight Zone” closing tagline. Also important in Season Two were writers Richard Matheson, Charles Beaumont, and George Clayton Johnson. All three made contributions to the first season but their personalities and writing styles became known to the audience and became part of the personality of the show. When accepting the Emmy for Outstanding Writing Achievement in Drama that summer, Serling held up the award and shared its credit with all three men and stated that they could “carve it up like a turkey.” Director of Photography George T. Clemens also nabbed an Emmy for his work on Season Two. The show also won the Hugo Award for this season.

Unfortunately, the show would begin to unfold toward the end of the next season for numerous reasons. But for now, with two groundbreaking seasons and sixty-five episodes under its belt, The Twilight Zone drifted quite comfortably into its third season.

Grade: B

Notes:

--As mentioned, director Elliot Silverstein also directed Season Three’s “The Passerby” and “The Trade-Ins” and Season Five’s “Spur of the Moment.” He would go on to direct feature films including 1965’s Cat Ballou with Jane Fonda and Twilight Zone alumni Lee Marvin. His last work in television was as the director of four episodes of HBO’s seminal anthology show Tales from the Crypt.

--Burgess Meredith also appears in Season One’s “Time Enough at Last,” Season Two’s “Mr. Dingle the Strong,” and Season Four’s “Printer’s Devil.” He appeared in two episodes of Rod Serling's Night Gallery, "The Little Black Bag" and "Finnegan's Flight."

--Fritz Weaver also appears in Season One’s “Third from the Sun” and in the episode of Rod Serling's Night Gallery titled "A Question of Fear." Weaver also recorded a reading of Rod Serling's prose adaptation of "The Mighty Casey" for Harper Audio in 1992.

--“The Obsolete Man” was adapted into a Twilight Zone Radio Drama starring Jason Alexander.
--This marks the second of three Rod Serling appearances on screen at the end of an episode (excluding promotional material). The first time was the Season One closer "A World of His Own" and the third and final time was the third season episode, "The Fugitive."

-Brian Durant

George Clayton Johnson (1929-2015)

George Clayton Johnson passed away on December 25, 2015. He was 86 years old. If you are a fan of The Twilight Zone or a reader of this blog then you know his importance both to the show and to us personally. He was a highly gifted writer and delivered some of the most enduring episodes of The Twilight Zone. Johnson had 8 total credits on the show, four for story and four more for story and teleplay. Despite his relatively low volume of output, however, his contributions to the show are of such high quality that his presence looms equally large as those of his personal friends and professional colleagues Richard Matheson and Charles Beaumont, writers who amassed 16 and 22 credits on the series, respectively. Below are George Clayton Johnson's credits for The Twilight Zone: 

Stories:
"The Four of Us Are Dying" (adapted by Rod Serling)
"Execution" (adapted by Rod Serling)
"The Prime Mover" (adapted by Johnson and Charles Beaumont, credited solely to Beaumont)
"Ninety Years Without Slumbering" (as "Johnson Smith," adapted by Richard de Roy)

Teleplays:
"A Penny For Your Thoughts"
"A Game of Pool"
"Nothing in the Dark"
"Kick the Can"

"A Game of Pool," "Nothing in the Dark," and "Kick the Can" are among the most artistic, well-written, and memorable episodes of the series. Johnson broke into writing for television through The Twilight Zone. After selling three of his stories to the series, Johnson's friend, The Twilight Zone writer Charles Beaumont, challenged Johnson to not only sell a story to the series but to also write the teleplay. Johnson used the leverage gained when a fourth story sold to the series, "Sea Change," was subsequently rejected by the series sponsor General Foods, who found the story's subject matter too grisly. Series producer Buck Houghton requested that Johnson buy the story back, so that Johnson could sell the story elsewhere and the series could recoup the expenditure. Johnson agreed to do so if he were also allowed the opportunity to write a script for the series. The resulting episode, the delightful "A Penny for Your Thoughts," was a success and Johnson launched his career as a freelance television writer. The Twilight Zone was his steadiest outlet and he contributed exceptional episodes over the following two seasons. Rod Serling acknowledged Johnson's contributions to the series by name when delivering his acceptance speech for The Twilight Zone's second Emmy Award for writing. Rod Serling accepts Emmy Awards for Twilight Zone.

George Clayton Johnson co-wrote (with William F. Nolan) the 1967 novel Logan's Run, adapted for film in 1976, a television show (1977-1978), and two comic book series. He wrote the story that became the 1960 film Ocean's 11, starring Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, and Sammy Davis, Jr., which was remade in 2001 starring George Clooney and Brad Pitt. He also wrote the first broadcast episode of Star Trek, "The Man Trap." Johnson wrote memorable episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Route 66, Honey West, and Kung Fu. He assisted Ray Bradbury in scripting Bradbury's 1956 short story "Icarus Montgolfier Wright" for the Academy Award nominated animated short film. View the short film.

Johnson credited Ray Bradbury and Theodore Sturgeon as two of his mentors as a developing writer. His short stories can be found in the books Twilight Zone Scripts and Stories (Streamline, 1996) and All of Us are Dying and Other Stories (Subterranean Press, 1999). A book length profile, George Clayton Johnson: Fictioneer, by Vivien Cooper, was released by Bear Manor in 2013.

Below are photos from Johnson's set visit for the filming of arguably his best episode, "Nothing in the Dark," filmed during the second season but not broadcast until the third season. Below that, follow the links to Johnson's episodes we've covered here in the Vortex. 

We already miss you, George. Thanks for the stories.

Robert Redford and George Clayton Johnson on the set of "Nothing in the Dark"

George Clayton Johnson and Gladys Cooper on the set of "Nothing in the Dark"

"The Four of Us Are Dying"
"Execution"
"The Prime Mover"
"A Penny For Your Thoughts"
"A Game of Pool"
"Nothing in the Dark"
"Kick the Can"

-Jordan Prejean and Brian Durant

Playboy Fiction Anthologies of the 1960s and 1970s

Cover by Jack Gregory

Beginning in 1966 with The Playboy Book of Science Fiction and Fantasy, Playboy Press, the book publishing arm of the popular men's magazine, began publishing a series of book anthologies which mined the magazine's accumulated collection of short-form horror, crime, and science fiction. The magazine's fiction editor at the time was Ray Russell (1924-1999), a noted writer of novels and stories (Sardonicus and Other Stories, The Case Against Satan, Unholy Trinity) and films (The Premature Burial; X: The Man With the X-Ray Eyes), whose tastes shaped the fiction featured in the magazine and who had, since the magazine's beginnings, bought fiction from the finest genre writers of the time.

Cover by Richard Tyler

Playboy was a high paying market which allowed its writers to produce works free of the restraining components of genre magazines and of a more violent and sexually exploratory nature than was acceptable to the mainstream "slick" magazines. The result was the accumulation in a single market of some of the most outstanding horror, crime, and science fiction of the time. In a relatively short number of years the magazine had assembled a wealth of high quality genre material with first book publication rights held on nearly all of it. Once Playboy Press was created to compete in the book publishing industry, it became obvious how to use that store of quality genre fiction. 

Cover by Gilbert Stone

The Playboy Press anthologies arrived slowly. 1966 saw the release of The Playboy Book of Science Fiction and Fantasy and The Playboy Book of Crime and Suspense in hardcover. It was followed the next year with the hardcover release of The Playboy Book of Horror and the Supernatural. 1968 saw all three books reprinted in paperback editions. Playboy's Stories of the Sinister & Strange, a paperback, followed in 1969. These titles are still highly sought after items, notable for the quality of the fiction. 

After a quiet 1970 in which Playboy Press published no genre anthologies, nine paperbacks appeared in 1971, most of them under the banner title Playboy Science Fiction, under which additional science fiction novels and single author collections appeared. Many of the stories contained within the anthologies combined elements of science fiction and horror, a type of genre mash-up that was particularly popular at the time. Stories of psychological alienation and of man's diminishing importance in the face of an infinite universe proliferated. A self-consciously modernized form of the horror story matured in the pages of the magazine, as well. These stories were set in a recognizable urban or suburban middle-class milieu, where monstrosity, murder, and mutation were as likely as after-dinner cocktails. 

The anthologies were occasionally themed ("10 Stories of Space Flight," etc.) and usually took the book title from that of the lead story within. A partial list of notable authors represented in the anthologies includes J.G. Ballard, Arthur C. Clarke, Charles Beaumont, Frederik Pohl, Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., Robert Sheckley, Robert Bloch, Algis Budrys, Gerald Kersh, Ray Bradbury, William F. Nolan, Dennis Etchison, Anthony Boucher, Theodore Sturgeon, Norman Spinrad, Henry Slesar, Richard Matheson, Fredric Brown, Avram Davidson, William Tenn, Damon Knight, Italo Calvino, and Arthur Porges. 


After the fruitful year of 1971, the production of this type of book from Playboy Press abruptly slowed down. 1974 saw an anthology of crime stories, Murder, My Love, but Playboy Press began to concentrate efforts on works of original fiction and on non-fiction books consisting of reprint material, such as Beyond Reason: Playboy's Book of Psychic Phenomena (1973).  

There was a brief resurgence of the horror anthology from Playboy Press beginning in 1979 with Nightmares, compiled by noted horror writer and editor Charles L. Grant. This anthology, and those which followed, were unlike the preceding anthologies in that the stories were not first published in the magazine. Grant's work with Playboy Press continued with the paperback edition of the initial volume of his celebrated Shadows series in 1980, followed by Horrors in 1981, and Terrors in 1982. Stuart David Schiff, creator of Whispers magazine (1973-1983), delivered the horror anthology Death in 1982. The contents of these anthologies were a combination of established masters (Fritz Leiber, Robert Bloch, William F. Nolan, Joseph Payne Brennan) and younger writers, many of whom were on the verge of fueling the emerging horror publishing "boom" of the 1980's. These horror anthologies from Playboy Press, along with excellent horror anthologies compiled by literary agent Kirby McCauley between 1975-1980 (Night Chills, Beyond Midnight, Frights, Dark Forces), were a significant part of the foundation upon which the horror publishing boom was built, pushing horror into the mainstream of the publishing industry.  

In 1980, Playboy Press published the retrospective volume Galaxy: Thirty Years of Innovative Science Fiction in hardcover. It is a celebration of the best from Galaxy Science Fiction Magazine with stories from the magazine's archives and memoirs from the writers that contributed to the magazine. It was also a selection of the Science Fiction Book Club.

Ray Russell was succeeded by Alice K. Turner as Playboy fiction editor in 1976. Fortunately, Turner also had a taste for science fiction, fantasy, and horror. She compiled a hardcover volume in 1999 titled The Playboy Book of Science Fiction, about half of which is from her tenure as fiction editor of the magazine.

Checklist:

-Most of the anthologies were compiled by Playboy fiction editor Ray Russell and credited only as by "The Editors of Playboy." It is noted below where Russell was not the editor. Paperback publication for books which originally appeared in hardcover are noted. Cover art credits are given for covers featured in this post. 

1966:
-The Playboy Book of Science Fiction and Fantasy (cover by Jack Gregory; paperback - 1968)
-The Playboy Book of Crime and Suspense (paperback - 1968)

1967:
-The Playboy Book of Horror and the Supernatural (paperback - 1968; paperback cover by Richard Tyler)

1969:
-Playboy's Stories of the Sinister & Strange (cover by Gilbert Stone)

1971:
-Transit of Earth (cover by Shelly Canton)
-Last Train to Limbo (cover by Shelly Canton)
-From the "S" File
-The Dead Astronaut (cover by Pompeo Posar) 
-The Fiend
-Masks (cover by George Suyeoka)
-The Fully Automated Love Life of Henry Keanridge (cover by Don Punchatz)
-Weird Show (cover by Skip Williamson) 
-The Future is Now (cover by Bill Arsenault; edited by William F. Nolan; originally appeared in hardcover in 1970 from Sherbourne Press)

1974
-Murder, My Love (edited by Eric Corder)

1979
-Nightmares (edited by Charles L. Grant)

1980
-Galaxy: Thirty Years of Innovative Science Fiction (edited by Frederik Pohl, Martin H. Greenberg, and Joseph D. Olander; paperback, 2 vols, 1981)
-Shadows (edited by Charles L. Grant)

1981
-Horrors (edited by Charles L. Grant)

1982
-Death (edited by Stuart David Schiff)
-Terrors (edited by Charles L. Grant)

1998
-The Playboy Book of Science Fiction (edited by Alice K. Turner; paperback - 1999)

-JP

"Will the Real Martian Please Stand Up?"

Morgan Jones and Barney Phillips ponder the stranger in their midst

"Will the Real Martian Please Stand Up?"

Season Two, Episode 64

Original Air Date: May 26, 1961

Cast:

Trooper Dan Perry: Morgan Jones

Trooper Bill Padgett: John Archer

Ross: John Hoyt

Haley: Barney Phillips

Avery: Jack Elam

Olmstead: Bill Kendis

Ethel McConnell: Jean Willes

Peter Kramer: Bill Erwin

Rose Kramer: Gertrude Flynn

George Prince: Ron Kipling

Connie Prince: Jill Ellis

Crew:

Writer: Rod Serling (original teleplay)

Director: Montgomery Pittman

Producer: Buck Houghton
Production Manager: Ralph W. Nelson

Director of Photography: George T. Clemens
Art Director: George W. Davis and Phil Barber
Set Decoration: Henry Grace and H. Web Arrowsmith
Assistant Director: Darrell Hallenbeck
Editor: Leon Barsha
Sound: Franklin Milton and Bill Edmondson

Music: Stock

Makeup: William Tuttle

And Now, Mr. Serling:

"It's been said that singularly the most difficult feat of all mankind is to find a needle in a haystack. On the Twilight Zone next time, we do it one better. We pose a problem of finding a Martian in a snow bank. It all adds up to a kind of extraterrestrial who's who with a couple of laughs and more than a couple of tangents. We recommend this to the space buffs and the jigsaw puzzle addicts. Next time on the Twilight Zone, our story is called "Will the Real Martian Please Stand Up?"

Rod Serling's Opening Narration:

"Wintry February night, the present. Order of events: a phone call from a frightened woman notating the arrival of an unidentified flying object. And the check-out you've just witnessed with two State Troopers verifying the event but with nothing more enlightening to add beyond evidence of some tracks leading across the highway to a diner. You've heard of trying to find a needle in a haystack? Well, stay with us now and you'll be part of an investigating team whose mission is not to find that proverbial needle. No, their task is even harder. They've got to find a Martian in a diner. And in just a moment you'll search with them because you've just landed in the Twilight Zone."

Summary:

            On a snowy February night, two state troopers respond to a call to check out an unidentified flying object which has taken off the tops of some trees and landed in Tracy's pond at Hook's Landing. The troopers find evidence that something did indeed land in the pond and, unbelievable as it seems, tracks in the snow appear to indicate that something crawled out of the pond and walked across the highway to a secluded diner. After getting a radio warning about a nearby bridge being too dangerous to pass upon, the troopers follow the tracks in the snow to the diner.

            The troopers find nine people within the diner, seven passengers on a bus line, the bus driver, and the counterman running the diner. After telling the bus driver about the impassable bridge, to the particular disdain of one of the passengers, a grouchy businessman named Ross, the troopers question the bus driver about how many passengers were on the bus. Though the driver does not have any information on the individual passengers, he is certain that there were six passengers on the bus. There are, however, seven passengers within the diner.

            The troopers explain the situation to the people in the diner and set in motion a situation in which each person attempts to exonerate themselves from suspicion of being the outsider. The group of passengers includes an old couple, a young couple, a pretty young woman, the grouchy businessman, and an energetic old coot. The passengers admit that with all the snowfall it is possible that an extra person could have slipped into the diner with the others as they unloaded the bus. None of the passengers are certain about who else was on the bus. 

            Strange phenomena begin to occur in the diner, including the overhead lights blinking on and off and the jukebox playing on its own before even more violent action occurs as the glass sugar containers burst open upon each table. The tension slowly rises as everyone waits for the bridge to open so the bus can go on its way. When the call finally comes that the bridge is now passable, the troopers have no choice but to allow all the passengers onto the bus, as they have no real cause to prevent anybody from leaving.

            Some minutes later Ross, the grumpy businessman, returns to the diner. When Haley, the counterman, asks him what happened, Ross replies that the bridge wasn't passable and that the bus and the state trooper car both went down into the river. No one survived. No one, that is, except Ross. And he isn't even wet. When Haley points this out, Ross is ignorant of the term "wet" and suddenly reveals a third arm from beneath his coat and explains that he is a Martian scout sent ahead to clear the Earth for invasion. Haley seems unperturbed. He nods and agrees that Earth is indeed a great place for an alien settlement but that it won't be coming from Mars. Haley is revealed to be from Venus and informs Ross that his alien friends have been overtaken by Venusians. Haley removes his cap to reveal a third eye.

Rod Serling's Closing Narration:

"Incident on a small island, to be believed or disbelieved. However, if a sour-faced dandy named Ross or a big, good-natured counterman who handles a spatula as if he'd been born with one in his mouth, if either of these two entities walks onto your premises, you'd better hold their hands, all three of them, or check the color of their eyes, all three of them. The gentlemen in question might try to pull you into the Twilight Zone."

Commentary:

            "Will the Real Martian Please Stand Up?" is certainly one of the most clichéd, predictable, ludicrous, derivative, and outlandish episodes of the Twilight Zone's first two seasons. That said, it is also certainly one of the most purely enjoyable episodes in the show's entire run. It effectively functions as the cumulative success of all Rod Serling's previous efforts to combine humor, fantasy, and suspense into a workable mix for the show, bettering the substantial failures of previous episodes "The Mighty Casey," "Mr. Dingle, the Strong," and "The Mind and the Matter." Though Serling borrowed from previous sources, including one of his own first season scripts, he produced a fun, fast paced thriller that is fondly remembered as one of the most recognizable and enjoyable episodes of the show.

            Nearly three years prior to the airing of the episode, on October 12, 1958, Serling wrote a story treatment while the show was still in development. The treatment was titled "The Night of the Big Rain," the basics components of which would eventually become "Will the Real Martian Please Stand Up?" For the filmed episode, Serling's switched the heavy rainfall which strands the group inside the diner to snowfall instead, a wise choice as the snowfall adds a distinct atmosphere to the episode. Also in his original treatment, Serling had the alien being revealed as the cafe owner's new pet dog. This ending proved too absurd and unworkable even for an episode with the premise of "find the alien in the diner." Serling wisely chose to change the ending and also the title, first to "Nobody Here But Us Martians," the title used during the filming of the episode, and finally to "Will the Real Martian Please Stand Up?," a play on the catchphrase of the television game show To Tell the Truth, which began airing on CBS in 1956.

            The sources for the episode outside of Serling's initial treatment are not terribly difficult to discern. The first is certainly Agatha Christie's 1939 million copy bestseller And Then There Were None. In Christie's novel, a group of people are coerced into visiting a secluded island only to be killed off one by one. The killer is eventually revealed to be one among the company. This work virtually created the modern "a killer among us" fictional template. The second literary source is probably science fiction writer and editor of Astounding (later Analog) John W. Campbell's 1938 short story "Who Goes There?" Campbell wrote the story under the name Don A. Stuart. It concerns a group of scientists in Antarctica who inadvertently release an alien being that can change its form and image into almost anything, including members of the group. The story was famously filmed as The Thing From Another World in 1951 by director Christian Nyby (at the helm for a pair of Zone episodes) and producer Howard Hawks. It has since been filmed two additional times, once in 1982 by John Carpenter, as The Thing, and again in 2011 as a prequel to the Carpenter film, also titled The Thing. The idea of an isolated group of people against an alien menace was surely an appealing concept to writers working in the science fiction field in the wake of Campbell's story and Hawks’s popular film version.

            Serling also has the character Avery, the eccentric old man, make a reference to Ray Bradbury. Though no Bradbury work directly correlates to the plot of "Will the Real Martian Please Stand Up?” (the closest may be Bradbury’s 1947 short story, “Zero Hour”), Serling was illustrating the level of reverence and respect he held for Bradbury's work. According to an introduction to John Collier's story collection Fancies and Goodnights (New York Review Books, 2003), Serling came to Bradbury's California home in the late 1950's to seek the writer's advice on how best to develop The Twilight Zone. This makes it all the more unfortunate that Bradbury was only able to contribute a single episode to the show, the third season's "I Sing the Body Electric." Bradbury was unable, or perhaps unwilling, to provide scripts which reasonably met budgetary restraints for the show. Combined with a bit of communication error, Bradbury took the subsequent rejection of his work by Serling as a personal slight, doing much to sour the relationship, both personal and professional, between the two men. Marc Scott Zicree, author of the The Twilight Zone Companion (Bantam, 1982; second revised ed. 1989), tells the story of the relationship between the two men and their work on The Twilight Zone here.

            "Will the Real Martian Please Stand Up?" is ultimately informed mostly by Serling's own work, as it directly parallels his grim Cold War masterpiece, "The Monsters Are Due On Maple Street," even including an absurd but somehow thematically perfect ending. With its cast of excellent character actors portraying recognizable American stereotypes in an episode heavy on dialogue, it also resembles a number of Serling's other episodes, including "The Shelter" and "It's a Good Life," the latter taken from the Jerome Bixby short story. The difference here is that Serling is obviously having fun with "Will the Real Martian Please Stand Up?" and this difference is what makes the episode an unqualified success. To adopt the same grim approach used on "The Monsters Are Due On Maple Street" or "The Shelter" would have doomed the episode laughable for the wrong reasons, much like that suffered by the deadly serious episodes "The Rip Van Winkle Caper" or "A Thing About Machines."

            The production wisely used the three most talented character actors in the three prime roles on the show, that of the grouchy businessman Ross, the counterman Haley, and the red herring Avery, played perfectly by John Holt, Barney Phillips, and Jack Elam, respectively. As it played out, these three characters were the only ones that could have possibly been the alien as Serling's script virtually eliminated the remainder of the cast characters. The couples were eliminated because of their pairing of two in a situation where the outsider is a single being. The bus driver was eliminated because, obviously, he was driving the bus. The young woman was eliminated because she was the only person the bus driver noticed. Then you have the two state troopers and the short order cook. What remains is that Ross and Avery are the only possible suspects. One is an obvious red herring in that he behaves in an exaggerated way which draws attention to his eccentricity and tendency for instigation. Ross is left as the grumpy businessman who is the most eager to leave the situation even when doing so requires driving an old bus on a shaky bridge in the middle of a snowstorm. Figuring out which of the people in the diner was the alien is not difficult nor is it really the point of Serling's script. Serling wanted to examine how each of us has little eccentric aspects of our personality which can, when perceived the wrong way, make us an attractive scapegoat in a paranoid situation. We are also, Serling points out, terribly unreliable as observers of the world around us.

            The two special effects in the episode were achieved cheaply and efficiently. Jack Hoyt, as Ross, is to have three arms. This was achieved by having a second person, whose right arm was clothed in the same manner as Hoyt's costume, reach around Hoyt and interact with Hoyt's own two arms. A coat was draped over the actor's shoulders to finish the effect and a bit of rehearsal was required to manage a believable fluidity of motion between the three arms. William Tuttle applied the third eye to the forehead of actor Barney Phillips. Tuttle ran a thin wire from the eye (which could cause the eye to roll) through Phillips's hair to be manipulated by a technician situated behind Phillips. The initial idea for the third eye was to use double exposure photography, but this looked even less convincing that the kitschy fake eye applied to Phillips's forehead. However unconvincing the effect was then or now, it remains one of the more memorable images from the show.

            There are a few other interesting aspects of the episode. The first is that the bus, when seen in the exterior of the diner, is labeled on the side as Cayuga Bus Lines. Cayuga is, of course, the name of Rod Serling's production company which produced The Twilight Zone. It is also interesting to note how Serling slyly hints at Ross being the alien. At one point in the episode, in the midst of strange occurrences within the diner (lights dimming, jukebox playing on its own, etc.), Ross looks at the telephone on the wall two seconds before it starts ringing, in an attempt to make the viewer believe Ross caused the phone to ring when in fact an actual call was coming through for the state troopers. After the bridge is ruled passable and the diners are paying for their tickets, Ross is charged for drinking fourteen cups of coffee. Now, that's an excessive amount of coffee by any standard. It also reminds one of The Outer Limits episode "Controlled Experiment" in which a pair of Martians (Barry More and Carroll O'Connor) are very fond of coffee. There is also a constant, shameless plug for cigarettes in the episode, with the brand finally revealed to be Oasis cigarettes during the final encounter between Ross and Haley. Ross even utters that the cigarettes "taste wonderful" as though he were actually performing in a cigarette commercial. That line was not in Serling's script but added last minute. The constant product placement, according to Martin Grams, Jr.'s book, The Twilight Zone: Unlocking the Door to a Television Classic (OTR, 2008), was planned from the beginning.

            "Will the Real Martian Please Stand Up?" is a highly enjoyable and entertaining episode that has a surprisingly high re-watch value. It comes highly recommended as it might be the most successfully episode of the show that also includes a broad amount of comedy. It is successful because, unlike in previous comedic episodes of the show, Serling spices the script with enough suspense and atmosphere to render a sort of fun, spook house sort of an episode. With its quick pace and fun makeup effects, it is an especially effective episode to introduce younger viewers to the series. 

Grade: B

Illustrations by Kim Zimmerman from the Feb, 1986 issue of Rod Serling's The Twilight Zone Magazine, which presented Serling's teleplay for "Will the Real Martian Please Stand Up?" :

Notes:

-Montgomery Pittman also directed the third season episodes "Two," "The Grave," "The Last Rites of Jeff Myrtlebank," and "Dead Man's Shoes."

-Barney Phillips is also in the first season episode "The Purple Testament," the second season episode "A Thing About Machines," and the exceptional fourth season episode "Miniature."

-John Hoyt was previously in the second season episode "The Lateness of the Hour."

-"Will the Real Martian Please Stand Up?" was adapted as a Twilight Zone Radio Drama, starring Richard Kind.
-Bill Erwin also appeared in the Twilight Zone Radio Drama episode "Ninety Years Without Slumbering." 

--JP