THE TWILIGHT ZONE: SEASON 4
See Videography 7 for an explanation of the rating system for Serling’s Twilight Zone episodes.
“The Thirty-Fathom Grave”
*
Air Date: January 10, 1963
Directed by Perry Lafferty
Cast: Mike Kellin: Chief Bell; Simon Oakland: Captain Beecham; David Sheiner: Doc Mathews; John Considine: McClure; Bill Bixby: Officer on Deck; Tony Call: Lee, Helmsman; Derrick Lewis: Helmsman; Conlan Carter: Ensign Marmer
The One Where: In the South Pacific, a US Navy destroyer discovers an American submarine on the ocean floor. Though it had been sunk twenty years earlier, a persistent noise emanates from the sub, as if a survivor were still alive inside, tapping on the hull with a hammer. Aboard the destroyer, Chief Boatswain Bell is in the midst of a breakdown and has begun hallucinating. Ghosts of dead seamen appear to him, beckoning him to join them below.
It Turns Out: Bell served aboard the sunken sub during World War II. While on patrol, he failed to filter the sub’s lights with infrared, enabling Japanese destroyers to spot and sink the sub. Bell, the only survivor, holds himself responsible for the incident. With the identity of the sub confirmed, a delirious Bell jumps overboard to be with his dead former shipmates. His body is never found. A rescue team finally reaches the sunken submarine and finds the remains of its crew, one of whom is holding a hammer.
**
Air Date: January 24, 1963
Directed by Stuart Rosenberg
Cast: Dennis Hopper: Peter Vollmer; Ludwig Donath: Ernst Ganz; Paul Mazursky: Frank; Howard Caine: Nick; Barnaby Hale: Stanley; Jay Adler: Gibbons; Curt Conway: Adolf Hitler
The One Where: A neo-Nazi’s rabble-rousing grows more effective after he starts taking advice from a shadowy apparition.
It Turns Out: The apparition is the ghost of Adolf Hitler.
Notes: Serling’s script (and the initial footage filmed) suggested that “He’s Alive” might go over length and need significant cuts. Serling particularly liked this script, so he suggested making two versions of the film—one for broadcast, and a longer version to be released as a feature film. This idea was not pursued, however, likely for monetary reasons. After Serling viewed the finished product, he was probably relieved that his idea had not come to fruition. Years later, he reflected, “I thought it was one of the best-written scripts, completely pissed away by the performance of Dennis Hopper. It was the most uncontrolled, undisciplined performance; [the role] took considerably more thespic talent than the young man had at the time. It needed a very restrained performance and Dennis started to cry in reel one, and there was simply emotionally no place to go” from there.1
“No Time Like the Past”
*
Air Date: March 7, 1963
Directed by Justus Addiss
Cast: Dana Andrews: Paul Driscoll; Robert F. Simon: Harvey; Malcolm Atterbury: Professor Eliot; Patricia Breslin: Abigail Sloan; Marjorie Bennett: Mrs. Chamberlain; Robert Cornthwaite: Hanford
The One Where: In the late twentieth century, a misanthropic man, disgusted with the state of humanity, makes three trips back in time in the hopes of altering key historical events that might lead to a better future. He first visits Hiroshima in 1945, hoping to warn the inhabitants in time to evacuate the city. He then visits Germany in 1939, planning to assassinate Adolf Hitler. And finally he boards the Lusitania in 1917, hoping to convince the ship’s captain to alter course before it is torpedoed and sparks the World War I. All of these attempts fail, and he returns to his present convinced that the past is inviolate. If he cannot change history to improve the present, he decides, then he will escape by living in a more innocent past. He travels to a town that he has researched, Homeville, in the year 1881.
It Turns Out: His knowledge of the future makes it impossible for him to remain in Homeville without being tempted to try to change history. When he tries to stop a devastating fire at a schoolhouse, he instead causes it. He finally returns to the present, vowing to forget the yesterdays and try to do something about the tomorrows.
“The Parallel”
**
Air Date: March 14, 1963
Directed by Alan Crosland Jr.
Cast: Steve Forrest: Major Robert Gaines; Jacqueline Scott: Helen Gaines; Frank Aletter: Colonel William Connacher; Paul Comi: Psychiatrist; Shari Lee Bernath: Maggie Gaines; Morgan Jones: Captain; William Sargent: Project Manager; Philip Abbott: General Stanley Eaton
The One Where: After his spacecraft disappears from radar and he blacks out for several hours, Major Robert Gaines returns to Earth to find that the world has changed in minor, inexplicable ways: there is a picket fence around his house that he does not remember; no one has ever heard of President Kennedy; and everyone insists that he is not a major but a colonel. He believes that he has somehow crossed into a parallel dimension and landed on an Earth that is nearly but not entirely identical to the one he knows. But no one believes him.
It Turns Out: When he manages to return to his own Earth, no one believes his theory there either—until they receive a distress call from Colonel Robert Gaines, who has made the opposite journey.
“Of Late I Think of Cliffordville”
**
Based on Malcolm Jameson’s short story, “Blind Alley”
Air Date: April 11, 1963
Alternate titles/productions/publications:
1. Malcolm Jameson, “Blind Alley,” short story in Greenberg, Matheson, and Waugh, Twilight Zone
Directed by David Lowell Rich
Cast: Albert Salmi: William Feathersmith; Julie Newmar: Miss Devlin; John Anderson: Sebastian Deidrich; Guy Raymond: Mr. Gibbons; Wright King: Hecate; John Harmon: Clark; Christine Burke: Joanna Gibbons; Hugh Sanders: Mr. Cronk
The One Where: With no way to further expand his massive business empire, a ruthless tycoon, William Feathersmith, yearns to revisit the town of his youth so that he can relive the pleasure of accumulating his fortune. The devil, in the form of Miss Devlin, grants his wish in exchange for his current fortune. As promised, Feathersmith is transported to Cliffordville, circa 1910, looking exactly as he did then, with fourteen thousand dollars in his pocket and with all his future knowledge intact.
It Turns Out: Feathersmith’s memory proves faulty. He blows all his money buying a plot of land that he knows has oil on it, forgetting that the machinery to drill for it will not be invented for decades. And he won’t be able to wait around until then—he discovers that Devlin has tricked him: although he looks like a young man, he has the physiology of a seventy-five-year-old. Summoned, Devlin agrees to return him to his proper time. He returns to a present in which he is a custodian and his former custodian, who was raised in Cliffordville and ended up owning the oil-rich land, is now a wealthy man.
“On Thursday We Leave for Home”
***
Air Date: May 2, 1963
Directed by Buzz Kulick
Cast: James Whitmore: Captain William Benteen; Tim O’Connor: Colonel Sloane; Lew Gallo: Lieutenant Engle; Paul Langton: George; Russ Bender: Hank; James Broderick: Al; Mercedes Shirley: Joan; Jo Helton: Julie
The One Where: Having fled Earth to escape humanity’s problems, a group of people lives on a barren and perpetually hot planet far away. After thirty years of struggling to survive in their new home and desperately regretting their decision, they receive contact from an Earth ship on its way to bring them home.
It Turns Out: The group’s leader, Captain Benteen, is distressed by the idea that their community will fracture once they return to Earth and cannot bear the idea of relinquishing his authoritarian role. He tries to convince the members to stay together on their adopted planet, but they refuse. Having become delusional, Benteen decides to stay behind alone. As the ship prepares to leave, he regains his senses, but it is too late. The ship departs while Benteen reaches for the sky and tearfully pleads for it to return and bring him home.
“The Bard”
**
Air Date: May 23, 1963
Directed by David Butler
Cast: Jack Weston: Julius Moomer; John Williams: William Shakespeare; John McGiver: Mr. Shannon; Henry Lasco: Gerald Hugo; Judy Strangis: Cora; William Lanteau: Dolan; Howard McNear: Mr. Bramhoff; Burt Reynolds: Rocky Rhodes; Doro Merande: Sadie Polodney
The One Where: A hopelessly untalented wannabe writer, Julius Moomer, uses black magic to summon William Shakespeare, who agrees to write a script that Moomer sells to a television series. The show is a hit, and Moomer is suddenly a star writer. But although the show was a success, the sponsor and the network’s executives meddled with the script so drastically that Shakespeare has departed in disgust, leaving Moomer alone to handle his next assignment, a two-and-a-half-hour spectacular on American history.
It Turns Out: After casting a few more spells, Moomer marches into his agent’s office with a whole new “staff of consultants” to help him with his script, including Robert E. Lee, George Washington, Pocahontas, and Abraham Lincoln.
Trivia: The character of Julius Moomer (though his last name was not specified) first appeared in Playhouse 90’s “The Velvet Alley.” Coincidentally, Burt Reynolds appeared as an actor in both “The Velvet Alley” and “The Bard.”
Rod Serling had initially proposed The Twilight Zone as a one-hour series. Though he did not strongly oppose the decision to produce it at a half-hour length, he never completely gave up on the idea of having a bigger canvas on which to create. For this brief fourth season, he got his wish. It did not turn out well. Serling once pointed to “On Thursday We Leave for Home” as the only successful episode of the season. On another occasion he was slightly more generous, estimating that the season’s eighteen episodes could be broken down as “four good, four medium, and ten bad.”2 Just how widely this season had missed the mark is debatable, but the season is widely considered a creative failure.
Serling wrote seven of The Twilight Zone’s season 4 episodes, but for the first time since the series began, he was not on hand to oversee day-to-day production. He flew from Ohio to Los Angeles to film his on-camera introductions, and he discussed scripting issues with the series’s new producer, Herbert Hirschmann, by telephone. In December 1962, production manager Ralph W. Nelson wrote to Serling, “Twilight Zone is no longer Twilight Zone with you gone.”3
The finest one-hour teleplays that Serling wrote during this period were produced not on Twilight Zone but on a largely forgotten dramatic anthology series, Bob Hope Presents The Chrysler Theatre, to which he contributed five scripts. Four of Serling’s scripts aired during Twilight Zone’s fifth season, including “A Killing at Sundial,” which was The Chrysler Theatre’s debut. Cecil Smith, television critic for the Los Angeles Times, called the show “a unified, disciplined melodrama, beautifully made and a pleasure to watch.” Noting that it was Serling’s first play outside of The Twilight Zone in five years, Smith added, “It’s good to have him back on earth.”4 Serling’s second script for The Chrysler Theatre, an adaptation of John O’Hara’s short story, “It’s Mental Work,” earned Serling his final Emmy Award.
Fourth-Season Twilight Zone Episodes Not Written by Rod Serling
“In His Image,” written by Charles Beaumont based on his short story,
“The Man Who Made Himself,” January 3, 1963 **
“Valley of the Shadow,” written by Charles Beaumont, January 17, 1963 *
“Mute,” written by Richard Matheson based on his short story, January 31, 1963 *
“Death Ship,” written by Richard Matheson based on his short story, February 7, 1963 **
“Jess-Belle,” written by Earl Hamner Jr., February 14, 1963 **
“Miniature,” written by Charles Beaumont, February 21, 1963 **
“Printer’s Devil,” written by Charles Beaumont based on his short story,
“The Devil, You Say?” February 28, 1963 **
“I Dream of Genie,” written by John Furia Jr., March 21, 1963 *
“The New Exhibit,” written by Jerry Sohl based on Charles Beaumont’s idea (credited to Beaumont), April 4, 1963 ***
“The Incredible World of Horace Ford,” written by Reginald Rose, April 18, 1963 **
“Passage on the Lady Anne,” written by Charles Beaumont based on his short story, “Song for a Lady,” May 9, 1963 **
Fourth-Season Recap
*** 2
** 11
* 5
