One thing I enjoy about The Twilight Zone is seeing a lot of actors in their youth who went on to become big names. Shatner and Redford spring immediately to mind.
I was born the very evening that "To Serve Man" aired. Also Wilt Chamberlain scored 100 points in an NBA game in Hershey, PA that evening. I'd like to think of those events as harbingers of my future greatness.
The Twilight Zone was mysterious. Hence, the people (not sure who, as it remains a mystery) responsible for the date decided on that day because nothing related to the Twilight Zone happened on that day. In other words, they were fucking with us. Good for them. 🙂
(On Wikipedia and some other website I was reading yesterday and am too bloody tired to look for again. xx)
I have been puzzling over this date also, as I knew Rod Serling and cannot explain it.
I intially though it may have had to do with this regarding his death...
''Serling was said to smoke three to four packs of cigarettes a day. On May 3, 1975, he had a heart attack and was hospitalized. He spent two weeks at Tompkins County Community Hospital [where I was born] before being released. A second heart attack two weeks later forced doctors to agree that open-heart surgery, though considered risky at the time, was required. The ten-hour-long procedure was performed on June 26, but Serling had a third heart attack on the operating table and died two days later at Strong Memorial Hospital in Rochester, New York He was 50 years old.'' Wikipedia
His funeral and burial took place on July 2 at Lake View Cemetery, Interlaken, (Seneca County), New York. A memorial was held at Cornell University's Sage Chapel on July 7, 1975. Speakers at the Memorial included his daughter Anne and the Reverend John F. Hayward.
I met hom because of my parents. They had friends in Interlaken whom they would occaisionly visit. The Serlings simmered ther for many years. Those friends lived next door to the Serlings: Rod, his wife Carolyn, and their daughter Anne. I actually did not know this for a while, but ine day my parents and I were at a Cornell football game when I was 8, and suddenly Rod came walking up the crescent and waved over to us and said ''hello [my father's name], ehoo [mother's name], and this must be [MY NAME}. Rod Serling knows who I am. Boy did I have a slot to talk aboit at schooll on Monday!
Anyway, fast-forward to years later when I was student at Ithaca College and Rod was teaching there. When I didn't have a class, I would often go and sit in on his classes and we would often talk afterwards. Also, occasionaly, we woule run into each other on the Quad and dependeding how mush time we each had, we might just stand there and talk up to 20 minutes.
Did we talk about his shows? - somewhat at first, but eventually not. He was very much anti-war - anti ALL WARS, and was a big opponent of the Viet Nam War and approved of student uprisings, so we had plenty we could talk about.
An irony was that within a month of him dying, my father also died of a heart attack. In what my mother could not believe was that while Carol Sering was out in California tying up things about the state, she sent a condolance card to my mother about my father (I still have that note in the house). She could not believe that with all things that Carol had mto do that she took to time to send the note to my mother. But THAT was how the entire Serling family was.
Some years later I met both Carol and Anne Serling at an event at IC, and talked with both of them for quite a while. I asked Carol about the note and she basically said that was the way they did things, and after all my parents had sent them a concdolence note.
So what else can I say? I rarely talk about it these days, and most of my friends know about this. The memory that sticks in my mind to this day was when we were on the IC quad just talking about anything a every thing just like real friends do.
I am happy to answer questions as there is time enough at last...
I thought we are already living in some grotesque Twilight Zone world where our rights are being taken away and lunatics are trying to take over the asylum, but not in a good way.
Also the one where Burgess Meredith is a bookworm who survives the end of the world, has all the books and all the time in the world to read them, when...
I like the one where the young woman in a NYC apartment is a painter, and the world is heating up and heating up as it hurtles towards the sun...her neighbor...an intruder...only it's a dream, she wakes up and...
No, that was The Outer Limits. That one was scary. There were a few Twilight Zone episodes that were disturbing like that, but that's what The Outer Limits showed week after week.
Late, but I was always a fan of "An Occurrence At Owl Creek Bridge." It's really surprising how many people know that one. They don't from the title, but if you describe it, they know it.
It was produced from a famous short story that is often anthologized in school textbooks. I expect that is why it may be one folks recognize. It's by Ambrose Bierce.
Also, as Rod Serling pointed out it was a French film which they bought and was not part if the regular way they did things...
An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge (French: La Rivière du hibou, lit. 'The Owl River') is a 1961 French short film, almost without dialogue. It was based on the 1890 American short story of the same name by American Civil War soldier, wit, and writer Ambrose Bierce. It was directed by Robert Enrico and produced by Marcel Ichac and Paul de Roubaix with music by Henri Lanoë. It won awards at the Cannes Film Festival and the Academy Awards. The film was later screened on American television as episode 22 of the fifth season of The Twilight Zone on 28 February 1964.
Since there was very little dialogue they had to dub very few lines in English.
“The Invaders”, where Agnes Moorehead silently battles teeny, tiny human aliens, “The Midnight Sun”, a literal fever dream in a world freezing to death, and of course, “To Serve Man”. Also that one where Roddy McDowall ends up in a human zoo, “People Are Alike All Over”.
I actually do like one of the cheesiest Twilight zone episodes. That's the one where there are these bank robbers and their great brainwave is to go into cryogenic hibernation to wait out the statute of limitations. The special effects aren't that great, essentially large aquariums that they fill with smoke from Chesterfields or whoever they're sponsor was. But the concepts considered we're pretty weighty and it did give an actual decent twist, you know actual irony.
The twist has mid-century panache, All that glitters can indeed be gold and jewels, but it probably won't matter.
Another bullshit Twilight zone episode double dash I am a fan actually double dash is the one that is the sort of space age version of oh Henry's gift of the Magi. You know the one, where he's sent off in a deep space the day after he meets his a new girlfriend, and she's like should I go into stasis and wait for him or should I just grow old gracefully and forget about his ass. Meanwhile in intergalactic space he's like well maybe I should just you know get out of little Stacy's cube and show up nice and wrinkly for when I get back. Yeah that one kind of a pisser.
Quick personal update double dash I broke my hand two weeks ago, hands that is, in a bicycle accident. And now I'm using text to speech, dammit, speech to text, to write these comments. They don't have the same editorial polish and syntactical fluidity for which I am known far and wide. And certainly the idea of standard or even experimental punctuation that adds layer of meaning is not really possible when talking to your phone. I suppose in Future Days I'll fill you in more on my accident, surgery, recovery, and a general investigation of the idea of falling and the effect of falling on the lives of individuals and communities and civilizations. But let me see now that my favorite episode of The Twilight zone is a Burgess Meredith episode. It's not the one where he's the milk toast oh that's good m i l q u e t o a s t. God damn thing. Milk toast bank teller who's most terrible sin according to his awful wife is that he reads.
Rather it's the Burgess Meredith episode where that wonderful actor is the anti-fascist with a backbone of iron and the moral will of millions as he stands up to the depraved torture and humiliations forced on him by an all controlling state. The stylish episode shot in a Stark quote unquote German style unquote., tells a compact story of the individual fight for freedom of conscience. In a wonderful battle of wits with party man Fritz Weaver, Meredith's character takes advantage of an error of hubris to show the fascists how their system quote it's just a tissue of lies and incompetence. Meredith is given the freedom to pick the method of his execution. The free man makes as much as he can out of that strategic error by his fascist bullies.
i am very sorry about your hand. as a year round (commuter) bicyclist, bicycle accident stories are way more scary to me (even scarier than the earwig one...)
Thank you for your kind reply. One notable thing is that I must tell people that I had a bicycle accident and not merely a bike accident. When I say bike they assume motorcycle. I would never ride one of those. I had a bicycle accident on a protected Greenway. It was a beautiful day. Until I came to a sudden stop.
A lot of people think that the Burgess Meredith won where the bomb goes off and he now has lots of time to read Dickens and other dead white male authors is the best. That one just pisses me off. For Christ sakes find a optometry shop. Or just find a copy of the Oxford English dictionary that has the little drawer that includes a magnifying glass. Then you'll be able to read jerk! It's not as bad as you think yeah sure the whole world is destroyed everyone is dead you envy the deceased but at least you're hectaring wife is gone and for some reason the library didn't burn but you've got lots of options when it comes to correcting your vision up to an including taking eyeglasses off of corpses I guess anyway enough said
You're confusing THIS time with THAT time. Optometrists didn't have extra glasses way back when. They were made to order. It's one reason why Leopold and Loeb were captured.
There were no human bodies in the area. Pretty much everything had been poofed. All your answers are there. Just open your imagination. 🙂
Nonsense. The bodies may have been cleanly disintegrated but not their eyeglasses, right? The streets must have been littered in spectacles, watches, keys, etc. Loeb had a frame with a unique hinge. We're talking typical merchandise here.
Plus, being legally blind myself (corrective), I know I can't see a foot in front of me without glasses. Searching for anything in an almost complete obliteration? Not happening unless I crawl on my hands and knees. And like him, I am waaayyyyy too old for that.
Grasping? I'd lol, but I don't use textspeak. Kisses! xx
The bloodless bomb of rod serling's invention was nothing like the real ones that fell on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The comparison is inapt, to see the least. In Japan the American atomic weapons caused firestorms that would have burned every library to ashes. The comparison is inapt. In this fictional story that we are discussing all that was destroyed utterly were the corpses. In that fictional reality there is much that the surviving character could have done to at least restore some sight. Certainly his options were greater than the self-pity he resorted to. I too have limited vision. I have problems with my own eyes. But what I can see with my intellect is that the story was deficient. That was my only point. And I made it in jest. Your pedantic nature is an antidote to my sense of humor. I wish you well.
One thing I enjoy about The Twilight Zone is seeing a lot of actors in their youth who went on to become big names. Shatner and Redford spring immediately to mind.
I was born the very evening that "To Serve Man" aired. Also Wilt Chamberlain scored 100 points in an NBA game in Hershey, PA that evening. I'd like to think of those events as harbingers of my future greatness.
i mean... all the signs *were* there.
I believe you mean ''there's the signpost up ahead...''
Truly, what else could they possibly be?
No one knows because there's nothing to know.
The Twilight Zone was mysterious. Hence, the people (not sure who, as it remains a mystery) responsible for the date decided on that day because nothing related to the Twilight Zone happened on that day. In other words, they were fucking with us. Good for them. 🙂
(On Wikipedia and some other website I was reading yesterday and am too bloody tired to look for again. xx)
I have been puzzling over this date also, as I knew Rod Serling and cannot explain it.
I intially though it may have had to do with this regarding his death...
''Serling was said to smoke three to four packs of cigarettes a day. On May 3, 1975, he had a heart attack and was hospitalized. He spent two weeks at Tompkins County Community Hospital [where I was born] before being released. A second heart attack two weeks later forced doctors to agree that open-heart surgery, though considered risky at the time, was required. The ten-hour-long procedure was performed on June 26, but Serling had a third heart attack on the operating table and died two days later at Strong Memorial Hospital in Rochester, New York He was 50 years old.'' Wikipedia
His funeral and burial took place on July 2 at Lake View Cemetery, Interlaken, (Seneca County), New York. A memorial was held at Cornell University's Sage Chapel on July 7, 1975. Speakers at the Memorial included his daughter Anne and the Reverend John F. Hayward.
I met hom because of my parents. They had friends in Interlaken whom they would occaisionly visit. The Serlings simmered ther for many years. Those friends lived next door to the Serlings: Rod, his wife Carolyn, and their daughter Anne. I actually did not know this for a while, but ine day my parents and I were at a Cornell football game when I was 8, and suddenly Rod came walking up the crescent and waved over to us and said ''hello [my father's name], ehoo [mother's name], and this must be [MY NAME}. Rod Serling knows who I am. Boy did I have a slot to talk aboit at schooll on Monday!
Anyway, fast-forward to years later when I was student at Ithaca College and Rod was teaching there. When I didn't have a class, I would often go and sit in on his classes and we would often talk afterwards. Also, occasionaly, we woule run into each other on the Quad and dependeding how mush time we each had, we might just stand there and talk up to 20 minutes.
Did we talk about his shows? - somewhat at first, but eventually not. He was very much anti-war - anti ALL WARS, and was a big opponent of the Viet Nam War and approved of student uprisings, so we had plenty we could talk about.
An irony was that within a month of him dying, my father also died of a heart attack. In what my mother could not believe was that while Carol Sering was out in California tying up things about the state, she sent a condolance card to my mother about my father (I still have that note in the house). She could not believe that with all things that Carol had mto do that she took to time to send the note to my mother. But THAT was how the entire Serling family was.
Some years later I met both Carol and Anne Serling at an event at IC, and talked with both of them for quite a while. I asked Carol about the note and she basically said that was the way they did things, and after all my parents had sent them a concdolence note.
So what else can I say? I rarely talk about it these days, and most of my friends know about this. The memory that sticks in my mind to this day was when we were on the IC quad just talking about anything a every thing just like real friends do.
I am happy to answer questions as there is time enough at last...
I thought we are already living in some grotesque Twilight Zone world where our rights are being taken away and lunatics are trying to take over the asylum, but not in a good way.
If you knew why...it would not be the Twilight Zone
I loved them all! I watched The Outer Limits also during those younger days, very campy and great.
Also the one where Burgess Meredith is a bookworm who survives the end of the world, has all the books and all the time in the world to read them, when...
I like the one where the young woman in a NYC apartment is a painter, and the world is heating up and heating up as it hurtles towards the sun...her neighbor...an intruder...only it's a dream, she wakes up and...
I confess I have never watched an episode of The Twilight Zone. It seemed too much of a Horror show.
No, that was The Outer Limits. That one was scary. There were a few Twilight Zone episodes that were disturbing like that, but that's what The Outer Limits showed week after week.
I don't think it was as focused on horror as Sterling's later show, "The Night Gallery." But there were definitely some horror stories in there.
Late, but I was always a fan of "An Occurrence At Owl Creek Bridge." It's really surprising how many people know that one. They don't from the title, but if you describe it, they know it.
It was produced from a famous short story that is often anthologized in school textbooks. I expect that is why it may be one folks recognize. It's by Ambrose Bierce.
Also, as Rod Serling pointed out it was a French film which they bought and was not part if the regular way they did things...
An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge (French: La Rivière du hibou, lit. 'The Owl River') is a 1961 French short film, almost without dialogue. It was based on the 1890 American short story of the same name by American Civil War soldier, wit, and writer Ambrose Bierce. It was directed by Robert Enrico and produced by Marcel Ichac and Paul de Roubaix with music by Henri Lanoë. It won awards at the Cannes Film Festival and the Academy Awards. The film was later screened on American television as episode 22 of the fifth season of The Twilight Zone on 28 February 1964.
Since there was very little dialogue they had to dub very few lines in English.
Just found the French one on Vimeo, thanks!
I think I read that in school, now that you mention it!
“The Invaders”, where Agnes Moorehead silently battles teeny, tiny human aliens, “The Midnight Sun”, a literal fever dream in a world freezing to death, and of course, “To Serve Man”. Also that one where Roddy McDowall ends up in a human zoo, “People Are Alike All Over”.
I actually do like one of the cheesiest Twilight zone episodes. That's the one where there are these bank robbers and their great brainwave is to go into cryogenic hibernation to wait out the statute of limitations. The special effects aren't that great, essentially large aquariums that they fill with smoke from Chesterfields or whoever they're sponsor was. But the concepts considered we're pretty weighty and it did give an actual decent twist, you know actual irony.
The twist has mid-century panache, All that glitters can indeed be gold and jewels, but it probably won't matter.
I also love that one.
Another bullshit Twilight zone episode double dash I am a fan actually double dash is the one that is the sort of space age version of oh Henry's gift of the Magi. You know the one, where he's sent off in a deep space the day after he meets his a new girlfriend, and she's like should I go into stasis and wait for him or should I just grow old gracefully and forget about his ass. Meanwhile in intergalactic space he's like well maybe I should just you know get out of little Stacy's cube and show up nice and wrinkly for when I get back. Yeah that one kind of a pisser.
Quick personal update double dash I broke my hand two weeks ago, hands that is, in a bicycle accident. And now I'm using text to speech, dammit, speech to text, to write these comments. They don't have the same editorial polish and syntactical fluidity for which I am known far and wide. And certainly the idea of standard or even experimental punctuation that adds layer of meaning is not really possible when talking to your phone. I suppose in Future Days I'll fill you in more on my accident, surgery, recovery, and a general investigation of the idea of falling and the effect of falling on the lives of individuals and communities and civilizations. But let me see now that my favorite episode of The Twilight zone is a Burgess Meredith episode. It's not the one where he's the milk toast oh that's good m i l q u e t o a s t. God damn thing. Milk toast bank teller who's most terrible sin according to his awful wife is that he reads.
Rather it's the Burgess Meredith episode where that wonderful actor is the anti-fascist with a backbone of iron and the moral will of millions as he stands up to the depraved torture and humiliations forced on him by an all controlling state. The stylish episode shot in a Stark quote unquote German style unquote., tells a compact story of the individual fight for freedom of conscience. In a wonderful battle of wits with party man Fritz Weaver, Meredith's character takes advantage of an error of hubris to show the fascists how their system quote it's just a tissue of lies and incompetence. Meredith is given the freedom to pick the method of his execution. The free man makes as much as he can out of that strategic error by his fascist bullies.
i am very sorry about your hand. as a year round (commuter) bicyclist, bicycle accident stories are way more scary to me (even scarier than the earwig one...)
Thank you for your kind reply. One notable thing is that I must tell people that I had a bicycle accident and not merely a bike accident. When I say bike they assume motorcycle. I would never ride one of those. I had a bicycle accident on a protected Greenway. It was a beautiful day. Until I came to a sudden stop.
i totally assumed you meant regular (real) bike. i'm in chicago and we need more of those protected lanes (tho we are slowly but surely getting more).
TBH though, all my falls have been black ice. ;(
A lot of people think that the Burgess Meredith won where the bomb goes off and he now has lots of time to read Dickens and other dead white male authors is the best. That one just pisses me off. For Christ sakes find a optometry shop. Or just find a copy of the Oxford English dictionary that has the little drawer that includes a magnifying glass. Then you'll be able to read jerk! It's not as bad as you think yeah sure the whole world is destroyed everyone is dead you envy the deceased but at least you're hectaring wife is gone and for some reason the library didn't burn but you've got lots of options when it comes to correcting your vision up to an including taking eyeglasses off of corpses I guess anyway enough said
Good grief.
You're confusing THIS time with THAT time. Optometrists didn't have extra glasses way back when. They were made to order. It's one reason why Leopold and Loeb were captured.
There were no human bodies in the area. Pretty much everything had been poofed. All your answers are there. Just open your imagination. 🙂
Nonsense. The bodies may have been cleanly disintegrated but not their eyeglasses, right? The streets must have been littered in spectacles, watches, keys, etc. Loeb had a frame with a unique hinge. We're talking typical merchandise here.
You're grasping.
See Hiroshima/Nagasaki.
Plus, being legally blind myself (corrective), I know I can't see a foot in front of me without glasses. Searching for anything in an almost complete obliteration? Not happening unless I crawl on my hands and knees. And like him, I am waaayyyyy too old for that.
Grasping? I'd lol, but I don't use textspeak. Kisses! xx
The bloodless bomb of rod serling's invention was nothing like the real ones that fell on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The comparison is inapt, to see the least. In Japan the American atomic weapons caused firestorms that would have burned every library to ashes. The comparison is inapt. In this fictional story that we are discussing all that was destroyed utterly were the corpses. In that fictional reality there is much that the surviving character could have done to at least restore some sight. Certainly his options were greater than the self-pity he resorted to. I too have limited vision. I have problems with my own eyes. But what I can see with my intellect is that the story was deficient. That was my only point. And I made it in jest. Your pedantic nature is an antidote to my sense of humor. I wish you well.
But he's fuckin blind without his glasses so how's he gonna find all that in the rubble that's left? Sheesh
Sense of smell, obviously.
In all that reading you'd expect he'd read about pinhole lenses, which aren't ideal but enough to get started with.