Turning to the Bard

---

---

I like comedy.

Given a choice, I would prefer to watch a sitcom on TV than any other kind of show. Being a writer myself, I appreciate the well–crafted dialogue that is the hallmark of truly great comedy. But if the show is not a sitcom and it tries to do a crossover, it usually falls flat.

That was the problem for Twilight Zone on a few occasions. It was designed to be a dramatic program, and its comedy episodes generally did not work. A case in point is "The Bard," which first aired 55 years ago tomorrow night.

It was written by series creator Rod Serling and served as the finale for the fourth season. It was also Twilight Zone's final one–hour episode; the fifth season marked a return to the half–hour format. As I have mentioned on this blog, there were some excellent episodes in the one–hour format. "The Bard" was not one of them.

Jack Weston, whose work I usually enjoy, was a streetcar conductor–turned–aspiring TV screenwriter whose efforts kept getting rejected by TV executives. He was a shameless — and talentless — self–promoter who jumped at a chance to write a screenplay about black magic — even though he had no knowledge of black magic.

To make up for this deficiency he went to a bookstore in search of a book about black magic — and one literally flew off the shelves. It was loaded with spells, and Weston took it home with him. With the help of the book, Weston conjured up William Shakespeare (John Williams), who offered his services, and Weston took him up on it, intending to pass off Shakespeare's work as his own.

---

---

Well, that was the plot in a nutshell.

Weston's play was accepted for production on a weekly TV playhouse program, and he was invited to appear on a program that featured all the hottest names in the industry.

But there were problems afoot, chiefly with Shakespeare, who resented not receiving credit for his considerable contributions. He agreed to stay until he had had a chance to assess the performances of the cast in a rehearsal the next day.

One of those cast members was Burt Reynolds.

Reynolds is known today as a movie actor, but in 1963 his experience was exclusively in television. His was not a new face — but it was a somewhat familiar face, having appeared in nearly two dozen TV series, almost always as a guest star.

He was a guest star in "The Bard," playing — fittingly — an actor named Rocky Rhodes, and he kept making noises about his "motivation."

It was all too much for Shakespeare, who decked Rhodes with a right cross and walked out on the rehearsal.

---

---

That was a bit awkward for Weston, who had already been given his next assignment — an extensive program on American history. To meet it he conjured up several figures from American history — folks like Robert E. Lee, Ulysses S. Grant, George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Benjamin Franklin, Pocahontas and others.

A Second Chance at an Imperfect Life

---

---

The original Twilight Zone ran for five seasons, and episodes were 30 minutes long in four of them. But in the fourth season, episodes ran for a full hour.

In September 1962 Twilight Zone was replaced on the CBS schedule by an hour–long program — then Twilight Zone was brought back in midseason to replace the replacement. For the remainder of the 1962–63 season, episodes would have to be one hour in length to fill the time slot, which did not sit well with the writers. Creator Rod Serling said the series was "the perfect half–hour show" and warned that the quality would be adversely affected by the expansion.

The quality of most of the episodes was hurt, but there were exceptions. Such an exception could be found in the episode that heralded the program's return to the prime time schedule 55 years ago tonight, "In His Image" starring an up–and–coming George Grizzard who had appeared on Twilight Zone a few years earlier.

Grizzard's character was returning to his hometown, accompanied by his fiancée. They had known each other for only four days; nevertheless they fell in love and became engaged, and Grizzard was eager to show her his hometown.

The only problem — and it was a doozy — was that nothing was like he remembered — not people, not places, not anything.

His home was occupied by someone he had never seen before, and the occupant claimed to have lived there for several years. People he thought he knew turned out to be names from the distant past; some were dead, including one person with whom he believed he had shared a meal less than a week earlier. The local college where he believed he was employed had never existed.

---

---

Then when he went in search of his parents' graves, he found a different couple buried there.

In an inexplicable homicidal rage, Grizzard ran off his girlfriend — and then he was struck by a car while he stood in the road. That was when he began to discover the truth about himself. He wasn't killed, but the impact caused a cut in his arm that wasn't bleeding. When he peeled back the skin, he found wires and rods, not flesh and bone.

Concluding that the name on the tombstone held the key to his problems, Grizzard looked up the name in the phone book and went to the address he found there. Its occupant looked exactly like him.

That person held the answers that Grizzard was looking for. He had created Grizzard a week earlier, giving him all the qualities that he believed he lacked and sending him out into the world. He had also given him all of his memories of his hometown, but those memories were quite dated. Some of the people were deceased. Some of the buildings no longer existed. Some of the people and places had never existed at all.

The two got into a fight. One survived and left in search of the girlfriend. Turned out that the one who survived was the creator; his creation lay lifeless in his abandoned home.

The creator picked up with the girlfriend where the creation left off — and that may be what I liked best about this episode. For the most part the episode lived up to Twilight Zone's reputation for creepy stories — but at the last minute it became a tale about redemption, loneliness and second chances.

I have always felt that the longer format allowed this story to successfully pull off the old switcheroo. I didn't think it could be done as effectively in 30 minutes.

Perhaps the one false note in the episode came at the beginning when Grizzard encountered — and eventually killed — an old woman who wanted to save his soul. Its relevance to the rest of the story was never clearly established. I got the sense that it was largely there to fill time, the writers not being accustomed to writing hour–long scripts, but it did manage to set the table for the primary character's homicidal urges, perhaps an unintended consequence of the creator's attempts to duplicate human life.

OK, some of the shifts in the story were a little too implausible, but it had the twist ending that Twilight Zone fans had come to expect.

"There may be easier ways to self–improvement," Serling said in his closing narration, "but sometimes it happens that the shortest distance between two points is a crooked line — through the Twilight Zone."

A Conflicted State of Mind

---

---

Causarano (Albert Salmi): What's your pleasure, Lieutenant? How many men have to die before you're satisfied?

Katell (Dean Stockwell): Off hand, all of them. No matter who they are or where they are. If they're the enemy, they get it. First day of the war or last day of the war, they get it.

---

It seems to me that it is in the context of war that the great matters of human existence are addressed, and those stories are particularly soul searching in the artistic efforts in the first couple of decades after a major conflict.

The artists who take on that topic tend to fall into two camps. Both agree that the costs of war are horrific, but one camp tends to see those sacrifices as necessary for the achievement of the ultimate goal while the other tends to see the costs of war as being too high, regardless of the ultimate outcome.

In the case of World War II, that period ran from roughly 1945 to 1965, neatly including the entire run of the first incarnation of the Twilight Zone. Series creator Rod Serling fell into the latter camp, and the episodes of the series that dealt with war, be it World War II or another clash, reflected that conflicted state of mind.

World War II provided particularly fertile ground for such introspection because both camps agreed that not only are the costs of war horrific but also that defeating the Axis powers was vital. It was a conflict within a conflict. Even so there was genuine anguish, it seems to me, in the work by Serling and many of his contemporaries when it dealt with World War II.

The episode of the Twilight Zone that first aired on this night in 1961, "A Quality of Mercy," found the remnants of a World War II U.S. infantry unit watching a cave in the Philippines from their hillside perch. Some Japanese soldiers, most of them apparently wounded, were holed up in the cave, and American shelling had done little to dislodge them.

The date was Aug. 6, 1945, the day that a nuclear weapon was dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, accelerating the end of World War II. That was unknown to anyone in the Twilight Zone episode until later, after the bomb had been dropped. In the meantime, the infantrymen on that hill found themselves under the command of a gung–ho lieutenant played by Dean Stockwell.

This lieutenant had it in mind for the unit to undertake a virtually suicidal assault on the Japanese soldiers who were holed up in that cave.

He was, as the company sergeant (Albert Salmi) said, a "Johnnie come lately" whose desire to demonstrate his efficiency as an officer repelled the war–weary members of the infantry unit.

Then one of those supernatural Twilight Zone moments occurred. The lieutenant dropped his binoculars on the ground, bent over to pick them up — and he was transformed into a Japanese officer on Corregidor in 1942. The situation was similar to the one the lieutenant had just left. Japanese soldiers were watching a cave from a hillside perch. Inside the cave were maybe two dozen American soldiers, most of them wounded.

---

---

And the lieutenant found himself having the same conversation he had been having with that sergeant — only the roles were reversed.

It was a typical Twilight Zone switcheroo — followed by a reverse switcheroo in which Stockwell was back with his infantry unit in the Philippines. As far as his comrades were concerned, no time had passed at all. They were unaware of the game–changing experience he had just had.

He was hesitant to give the order to move out — and during that hesitation word reached the unit of the atomic bomb that had been dropped on Hiroshima.

In a relatively small but pivotal role, future Star Trek star Leonard Nimoy was the one who broke the news to the rest of them. They were told that command expected the Japanese to surrender as a result. The unit was ordered to pull back, wait for a few days and see what happened as a result.

Stockwell was in kind of a daze, and Salmi told him not to worry, that there would be other wars, "other human beings you can knock off."

And Stockwell could only say, "I hope not."

As for Nimoy, Star Trek was still about five years in the future. He had been in movies (sometimes uncredited) and made guest appearances on other TV shows, but he didn't become a household word until Star Trek and Mr. Spock.

Never Underestimate the Obsolete Man

---

---

"I am nothing more than a reminder to you that you cannot destroy truth by burning pages!"

Romney Wordsworth (Burgess Meredith)

---

Burgess Meredith made four separate appearances on Twilight Zone. I'm not sure what the record for appearances is, but that must be close. His co–star in the episode that premiered on this night in 1961, Fritz Weaver, only appeared in half as many episodes.

And most people, when they think of Burgess Meredith on the Twilight Zone, remember his portrayal of the bookworm who survived a nuclear blast because he was reading in the bank vault during his lunch break.

Meredith's Twilight Zone characters were usually bookish, nebbishy types — quite a contrast to the rough–around–the–edges boxing trainer he played in the early "Rocky" movies — and the one I liked best was featured in the episode that first aired on this night in 1961, "The Obsolete Man."

In a then–futuristic world that often seems to be emerging before our very eyes today, Meredith played a librarian who had been deemed obsolete and, consequently, had to be terminated. You see, in this futuristic world, there were no more books. (As a writer, I would not want to live in such a world, anyway.) As a result, there was no demand for the services of a librarian.

And anyone who could not justify his existence, anyone who could make no contribution to the success of the state, had to be terminated.

As is the case in any totalitarian society, it had been decided by a central committee what was true and what was not, what was needed and what was not.

It makes sense, doesn't it? In a twisted kind of way that, under certain circumstances, doesn't seem so twisted. Does it seem familiar? It should.

As Rod Serling said in his opening narration, "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 advances 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."

---

---

Upon being found obsolete, Meredith's character was told he would be liquidated within 48 hours. He was allowed to choose the method for his liquidation and the time it was to be carried out.

Meredith's character asked to be assigned "an assassin" to whom he would disclose his chosen method for execution but no one else was to know. That was an unusual request, but it was granted. Meredith also wanted the execution to be carried out in his room at midnight the next day.

He also wanted to die "with an audience." The chancellor (Weaver) readily agreed. Executions, he said, were often televised. They had an educational effect on the viewers.

The next day the chancellor received a request from Meredith. He wanted the chancellor to visit him in his room. It was a request he honored, even though, as he told Meredith, he might well be the target of an act of vengeance from a condemned man. The chancellor had, after all, been partly responsible for the ruling that had condemned Meredith.

The chancellor told Meredith that he had come to prove something — "that the state has no fears, none at all."

Meredith giggled. "You come to my room to prove that the state isn't afraid of me? What an incredible burden I must be, to have to prove that the state isn't afraid of an obsolete librarian like myself."

Then he said he would tell the chancellor the real reason why he came. Although it wasn't stated in so many words, my best guess is the chancellor came out of a sense of curiosity. That would certainly be what Meredith's words implied: "I don't fit your formulae. Somewhere along the line there's been a deviation from the norm. Your state has everything categorized, indexed, tagged. You are the strength. People like me are the weakness. You control and order and dictate, and my kind merely follow and obey. But something's gone wrong, hasn't it? I don't fit, do I?"

The chancellor disagreed. In a few minutes, he told Meredith, he would be begging for mercy "like they all do."

But then Meredith turned the tables on the chancellor.

---

---

He explained that the method he had chosen for his execution was to have a bomb go off in his apartment.

He also told the chancellor that he had locked the door — and, consequently, the chancellor would also die when the bomb went off.

Meredith asked him how he would use the time he had left — and said that he would spend the time reading his Bible. As the state had determined that God did not exist, possession of a Bible was an offense punishable by death. That made it the only possession he had that mattered to him at all.

Meredith began to serenely quote from the Psalms, and finally, in the last minutes, the chancellor broke down and pleaded for Meredith to let him go "in the name of God." Under those terms, Meredith said, he would unlock the door — and the chancellor dashed from the apartment only seconds before the bomb went off.

Meredith had been calm and accepting of his fate, but the chancellor had shown cowardice during the broadcast of Meredith's execution and was himself judged to be obsolete.

A welcome reminder, I suppose, that he who lives by the sword shall die by the sword.

Silence Is Not Always Golden

---

---

"But the ugly affair has proved two things, hasn't it, Archie? That that boy down there is stronger than you gave him credit for, and you are considerably weaker."

George Alfred (Jonathan Harris)

---

In "The Silence," the episode of the Twilight Zone that first aired on this night in 1961, members of a private men's club were witnesses to the proposal of an unusual wager. A longtime member (Franchot Tone) was annoyed by the unceasing talkativeness of a young nouveau riche member (Liam Sullivan) who was regarded by many as a poseur, primarily because he would speak of fabulous deals that had been proposed to him, then he would make a pitch for a loan from his listeners.

Tone's wager was $500,000 that the young blowhard could not remain silent for one year. If he accepted the wager, he would have to consent to live in the club and be available for any member to observe at any time. He would be furnished with anything he wanted, but he could not speak a single word. He could make his wants and needs known through writing on a tablet of paper.

Tone's character believed the young man could not possibly remain silent for a year. He might remain silent for a few weeks, perhaps a month or two, and then fold under the pressure. In the meantime, Tone's character would have enjoyed a period of "exquisite silence."

He also, apparently, did not expect the young man to accept the bet — but he did. He left the club to make his preparations, vowing to return the following night to begin his year of incarceration. Before he left, Tone's friend and legal adviser (played by Jonathan Harris, who was perhaps best known as Dr. Smith on TV's Lost in Space in the 1960s) told the young man that Tone was serious about the wager. That was when the audience learned the young man's wife had expensive tastes ("She shops at Tiffany's the way other women shop at a supermarket," the young man said) that had left him in need of money.

That was what motivated him.

---

---

The wager began as planned the following evening.

And the audience soon became aware that the young man had lasted far longer than Tone's character ever dreamed he would. At first, that was a source of bemusement — but as the months passed, Tone became more concerned that he would lose the bet so he took to spending time around the glass booth where the young man was living, uttering rumors and gossip about the young man's wife's alleged infidelities while he was out of the picture.

As they got closer to the time when the year would be over, Tone became more desperate, making offers of a few thousand dollars if the young man would give up the bet. But he insisted that the bet would stand.

---

---

So the bet stood, and on the appointed day, the young man emerged from his glass cocoon to the applause of the other club members.

And Tone was forced to admit that he had lost most of his money years before. He could not pay the $500,000. He would have had to go begging in the streets, he said, just to raise a few thousand dollars to pay off the young man for giving up the bet. But he had not given up the bet. Tone said he would resign his membership.

Turned out the young man, knowing he could never keep his end of the wager, had arranged to have his vocal chords severed before beginning his incarceration a year earlier.

Neither one had been entirely honest, and they both paid for their dishonesty.

An interesting side point about the making of this episode.

Tone filmed part of the episode before suffering an injury to the left side of his face. Even now, more than half a century later, the circumstances surrounding the injury are hazy. Sullivan said it happened when Tone fell over a terrace while trying to pick a flower for a female companion. Rod Serling contended that Tone was injured by a romantic rival.

A different actor could have been hired, but that would have required re–shooting scenes that had already been shot. Instead, Tone was filmed in profile after the injury, which kept him from having direct eye contact with Sullivan in the scenes where he tried to persuade Sullivan to call off the bet and at the end when Sullivan demanded to be paid off.

Entirely unintentionally, that made Tone's character more complex.

I wasn't aware of that the first time I saw the episode. But, once I did become aware of it, I decided that I liked it. It was a nice touch.

If You Snooze, You Lose

---

---

"It is one thing, gentlemen, to stop a train on its way from Fort Knox to Los Angeles and steal its cargo. It's another thing to remain free to spend it."

Farwell (Oscar Beregi)

---

When I was a boy, my mother would read to me from a collection of Washington Irving's short stories. One of the stories was "Rip Van Winkle," and it was probably my favorite story in that book. I couldn't tell you why.

I didn't care much for "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow." It probably scared me. I mean, I was only about 5 or 6 at the time. But I remember liking "Rip Van Winkle" so much that my parents bought a record for me of someone (probably someone who was well known at the time, but I'll be damned if I can remember who it was) narrating the story with sound effects and music. (They probably gave me that record so I wouldn't pester them to read the story to me.)

I didn't know it then, but by the time I heard that story for the first time, an episode of the Twilight Zone that was inspired by that story had already been written and aired at least once, probably several times in what passed for syndication in those days.

In the episode of the Twilight Zone that first aired on this night in 1961, "The Rip Van Winkle Caper," a group of criminals carried out what they thought would be the perfect crime.

They robbed a train carrying a cargo of $1 million worth of gold from Fort Knox to Los Angeles.

The leader of the gang was a scientist who had hatched a plan in which all four would be put in states of suspended animation in a desert cave and would "sleep" for a century. At the end of that time, they would wake up, divide the gold and be free to spend it, secure in the knowledge that all the people who had searched unsuccessfully for them were long gone.

(That was a pretty safe assumption. While it is true that today, 55 years after this episode first aired, medical science has extended lives with many discoveries, life expectancy for most people still falls at least 20 years short of the century mark — that is merely an average, of course. Some will die long before they reach the life expectancy age for their generation. Some will exceed it by a few years, but few will make it to their 100th birthdays.

(Some will. I have heard it said that we have more people aged 100 and older than ever before, and I have no doubt that is true. But that still represents a small portion of the population, and I am confident that nearly all of the people living today will be deceased a century from now.

(All of those who are alive today and will still be living on April 21, 2116 are children now, too, not adults. The oldest recorded age of any human was 122. That is considered "maximum life span," and I know of only one person in human history who achieved it — so, in terms of longevity, it is safe to say that anyone who will still be living a century from now is under 21 today — probably well under 21. In 1961, I'm sure the odds were that anyone living at that time who would still be living in 2061 probably hadn't reached his/her teen years, much less his/her 20s.)

It sure seemed like a foolproof plan.

And if the story happened to be true, those criminals would still have 45 years of suspended animation left for them on this date.

Of course, it wasn't true. But it was the kind of thing that Twilight Zone creator Rod Serling liked to use as the launching point for a story. This story wasn't exactly about time travel, but it was related to the concept. It was about overcoming the natural limitations of time.

When they were roused from their Rip Van Winkle–like slumber, the members of the gang went outside the cave and saw no indication of any changes. It all looked like it looked when they went to sleep, and they didn't think the plan had worked. They thought they had been asleep for an hour or two — until they discovered that one of their colleagues was dead and had decomposed to the point where nothing was left but his skeleton. A rock from the ceiling of the cave apparently had come loose and fallen on the glass enclosure in which he lay, breaking the glass and allowing the gas that kept him alive to escape.

They were sorry to lose their colleague, but his death proved that they had been sleeping in that cave for a long time.

(I have often wondered if that scene inspired the scene early in the original "Planet of the Apes" in which a crew member died in a similar fashion.)

The story then became a tale of greed, much as "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre" did.) One of the criminals ran the other one over with the getaway truck — which seemed to operate pretty well for a vehicle that hadn't been started for a century, until the criminal tried to apply the brakes and they didn't work.

He dove out of the truck just before it went over a cliff — so he and the scientist had to walk to the nearest town — which, when they had "gone to sleep," had been about 28 miles away. They had no way of knowing if the town had grown and expanded closer to where they were in a century's time — or if a new town had sprung up between the cave and the old town. Not knowing what to expect, they started walking with a canteen of water apiece and knapsacks filled with as many bars of gold as they could carry. The rest would have to wait until they could come back for them.

---

---

His purpose in killing his colleague, of course, was to have more of the gold for himself. Instead of dividing it up four ways, the gold could now be divided between just two with the other two out of the picture.

And if he did away with the scientist, all the gold would be his.

He was a calculating type, all right, and when the scientist forgot his canteen after a rest stop, the criminal started charging him for swallows of water from his canteen — one bar of gold for one swallow.

That was the going rate initially. The next day the rate went up to two bars per swallow.

"I keep underestimating you," the scientist repeatedly said to the rather enterprising criminal. "You're quite an entrepreneur."

The scientist turned out to be full of surprises himself. At one point the criminal turned his attention away from the scientist — and the scientist struck him in the head with a bar of gold, then repeatedly pounded him as he lay unconscious on the desert floor.

All the gold — and what was left in the canteen — belonged to him — but it couldn't make his feet carry him to civilization any faster, and he collapsed — to be found shortly by someone was riding around in one of those Jetsons–like flying cars.

The scientist handed the man a bar of gold and told him he could keep it if he would take the scientist to town and give him some water. The scientist died a few seconds later, though, so the man decided to return to town and tell the authorities where they could find the body. He had a brief conversation with his female companion and told her about the gold. He said the old man had spoken about it "as if it were really worth something."

Turned out that while the gang had been slumbering in the cave, mankind had discovered how to manufacture gold, and that rendered their loot worthless.

Talk about a hard day's night.

A Paean to Non-conformity

---

---

"What's so terrible about being beautiful? After all, isn't everybody?"

Suzy Parker (Lana)

---

The episode of the Twilight Zone that made its debut 50 years ago tonight almost never shows up on a "Best of" list — yet I often hear it mentioned by Twilight Zone fans as being one of their favorite episodes.

I don't know why it is such a fan favorite. It isn't one of my favorites.

That doesn't mean I didn't admire the talents of the people who appeared in it. Collin Wilcox, who played Marilyn, is probably best remembered for playing the alleged victim of a black rapist in "To Kill a Mockingbird" a couple of years before she appeared on Twilight Zone.

That, of course, was a role she played. It wasn't her — although attendees at a conference of the NAACP had to be reminded of that when she showed up as a participant.

When I saw "Number 12 Looks Just Like You" for the first time (whenever that was), I was familiar with Richard Long from his extensive TV career, and, once in awhile, I have seen him in a movie on television. I knew less of her other co–stars, Suzy Parker and Pam Austin. Most of Parker's career apparently was spent in advertising work as a print model or an actress in TV commercials, although I have seen her in a few movies. Austin apparently guest–starred on several TV shows that I seldom, if ever, watched.

I appreciated the theme of individuality vs. conformity. It was definitely a Twilight Zone theme, but it didn't give me that familiar chill down my spine the way the really good episodes did when I was a child — and still do today.

The premise was simple. In some future time (Rod Serling suggested, in his opening monologue, the year 2000), young people are required to undergo what is called a physical transformation. They choose from a rather limited selection of attractive model types and then have some sort of surgical procedure that changes them into that type.

The procedure didn't appear to alter their personalities (although there was a reference to its influence on an individual's psychological adjustment), but it did seem to extend their lives, slowing the aging process and rendering them immune to disease. They were identifiable as individuals only by the names sewn into their garments.

(Parker, who played Wilcox's mother even though, in reality, she was only a few years older, did not appear to be any older or younger than anyone else who had chosen her model type.

---

---

(There were, of course, model types for men as well, but there was only one that I saw — portrayed by Long, whose primary role in the episode was as Dr. Rex, the man who was to perform Wilcox's transformation.)

Wilcox's character resisted the transformation, though, preferring to hold tightly to the allegiance to individuality that she had been taught by her father. (Her father was deceased, but a picture of him could be seen in the episode, and the image in that picture was the same as Dr. Rex. It also bore a striking resemblance to her uncle.

(I must admit that all those characters who looked and sounded the same was so very Twilight Zone.)

It was a good metaphor for those who resist what they see as a conspiracy to make everyone the same. "When everyone is beautiful," Wilcox's character said, "no one will be." She argued that the powers that be didn't care whether everyone was beautiful, only that everyone was the same.

---

Marilyn (Collin Wilcox): Why are you going to force me to do something I don't want to do? You can't make me do it, can you? Nobody can make me do it.

Dr. Rex (Richard Long): Now, now, my dear child. No one has ever been forced to take transformation if he didn't want it. You see, the problem is simply to discover why you don't want it and then to make the necessary correction.

---

As I say, there was no actual influence that the transformation seems to have had on personalities, but the very act of the physical transformation seems to have affected them to an extent.

When Marilyn finally gave in and had the transformation, she chose the "pattern" her friend Valerie had chosen.

"The nicest part of all, Val," Marilyn said, " I look just like you!"

An interesting — and prophetic — angle of the conformity story was the tendency of the characters to encourage other characters who were sad, melancholy, even pensive to "drink a glass of Instant Smile." Seen from the perspective of half a century later, doesn't that seem to foretell of humans' growing desire to self–medicate?

The Return of the Twilight Zone Marathon

---

---

One of the pleasures I permit myself is the Syfy Channel's Twilight Zone Marathon, traditionally held twice a year — around New Year's Day and around the Fourth of July.

I don't know how long this has been done. When I first became aware of it, the marathon was two, even three days long. It always included the holiday, and it included the day before and/or the day after the holiday as well.

Over the years, the marathon has grown gradually smaller. At some point, it was reduced to two days, and now it is only one day. It makes me wonder if this tradition's days are numbered — so to speak.

A few years ago, Syfy experimented with the format a little. Most of the time, the marathon had been strictly episodes from the original Rod Serling–hosted series, but one year, half of the marathon was devoted to those original episodes and half of the marathon was episodes from the reincarnation of the series in the mid–1980s.

I rather liked that arrangement. It gave me an opportunity to see some episodes I hadn't seen in more than 20 years. But Syfy hasn't done that since.

Anyway, I am writing all this because the Fourth of July Marathon is two weeks from today, and I have been looking at the online schedule to see which episodes are being shown.

I wish I could report that a rarely seen episode will be shown at a certain time, but I saw nothing on the schedule that I haven't seen fairly frequently over the years. The marathon starts at 7 a.m. (Central) on the Fourth of July and wraps up at 5 a.m. the next day.

I've always had a fondness for the Twilight Zone's historical episodes, but my favorites — "Back There," which was about the Lincoln assassination, and "The 7th Is Made Up of Phantoms," which was about Custer's Last Stand — are not scheduled.

Most of the episodes that are considered iconic today are scheduled to be shown, like "Nick of Time," in which William Shatner and his new bride are prisoners of a fortune–telling machine in a diner; "Where Is Everybody," the very first episode in which Earl Holliman hallucinates in a sensory deprivation unit; "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet," in which Shatner believes he sees a gremlin trying to sabotage the plane in which he is traveling; and a couple of Burgess Meredith's best episodes, "The Obsolete Man," about a librarian who is declared obsolete, and "Time Enough at Last," about a voracious reader who survives a nuclear exchange and suddenly finds himself with enough time on his hands to read all the books he has always wanted to read.

(Those last two, incidentally, will be shown back to back.)

---

---

Another classic episode is "To Serve Man," about a group of seemingly generous benefactors from outer space whose only real objective is to fatten the people of earth so they can be a food source for aliens.

That one will be shown on Fourth of July night. You can watch it if you don't have to go to a fireworks display somewhere.

In the absence of any rarely seen episodes on the schedule, I guess I will warn you not to watch certain episodes that I find tedious. (Obviously, you may disagree with me on one, some or all of these so please take my recommendations with the customary grain of salt.)

At noon (Central), the marathon will feature "Number Twelve Looks Just Like You," a futuristic episode in which every person undergoes a transformation into his/her choice of one of several perfect bodies. A girl (Collin Wilcox) who is about to be transformed resists, preferring to hold on to her individual identity.

That would have been a good message — except the character capitulated in the end.

I always skip that one. I also skip the one that is scheduled to follow it, "I Sing the Body Electric," which was about a family without a mother. The father was torn between his duty as a breadwinner and his role as a parent. The solution seems to be a robotic grandmother.

There were some abandonment issues that were raised by the story, but it didn't have the Twilight Zone's usual punchy ending. Written by Ray Bradbury, it was mostly the basis for a short story Bradbury would publish a few years later.

"It's a Good Life," which is scheduled for 3 p.m. (Central), starred Bill Mumy as Anthony, a little boy who could wish things away — and consequently terrorized his little town.

A lot of people regard it as one of the best episodes of the series, but I don't. I suppose I liked it well enough when I first saw it, but it didn't have the staying power with me that it had with others. Some of the episodes I can watch over and over again, but not this one. Maybe Mumy is too solidly entrenched in my memory as the little boy from Lost in Space, one of my TV favorites from early in my childhood.

Whatever the reason, I generally skip that episode. I plan to skip it two weeks from today, too.

Other than that, though, I'm fine with the schedule, and I'll probably spend most of the Fourth of July in the Twilight Zone. As usual.