2/25/2015 The Twilight Zone (1959 TV series) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia The Twilight Zone (1959 TV series) From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia The Twilight Zone is an American science- fiction[1]/fantasy[2] anthology television series created The Twilight Zone by Rod Serling, which ran for five seasons on CBS from 1959 to 1964. The series consists of unrelated stories depicting paranormal, futuristic, Kafkaesque, or otherwise disturbing or unusual events; each story typically features a moral and a surprise ending. The series is notable for featuring both established stars (Joan Blondell, Ann Blyth, Buddy Ebsen, Jack Elam, Buster Keaton, Burgess Meredith, Ed Wynn) and younger actors who would become more famous Original 1959 title card later on (Bill Bixby, Lee Van Cleef, Robert Duvall, Dennis Hopper, Elizabeth Montgomery, Leonard Genre Science fiction Nimoy, Robert Redford, Burt Reynolds, Don Rickles, Fantasy William Shatner, Telly Savalas). Rod Serling served Mystery as executive producer and head writer; he wrote or co- Suspense wrote 92 of the show's 156 episodes. He was also the Created by Rod Serling show's host and narrator, delivering monologues at the beginning and end of each episode. Serling's opening Presented by Rod Serling and closing narrations usually summarize the Composer(s) Bernard Herrmann (also season episode's events encapsulating how and why the main 1 theme) character(s) had entered the Twilight Zone. Marius Constant (theme from season 2 forward, uncredited) In 1997, the episodes "To Serve Man" and "It's a Good Life" were respectively ranked at 11 and 31 on Jerry Goldsmith Fred Steiner TV Guide's 100 Greatest Episodes of All Time;[3] Leith Stevens Serling himself stated that his favorite episodes of the series were "The Invaders" and "Time Enough at Leonard Rosenman Franz Waxman et al. Last".[4] In 2002, The Twilight Zone was ranked No. 26 on TV Guide's 50 Greatest TV Shows of All Country of United States Time.[5] In 2013, the Writers Guild of America ranked origin it as the third best-written TV series ever[6] and TV No. of seasons 5 Guide ranked it as the fifth greatest show of all No. of episodes 156 (List of episodes) [7] time. Production Executive Rod Serling Contents producer(s) Producer(s) Buck Houghton (1959–62) Herbert Hirschman (1963) 1 Development Bert Granet (1963–64) 2 Overview of seasons William Froug (1963–64) 2.1 Season 1 (1959–1960) Cinematography George T. Clemens 2.2 Season 2 (1960–1961) Running time 25 min. (seasons 1–3, 5) 2.3 Season 3 (1961–1962) 51 min. (season 4) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Twilight_Zone_(1959_TV_series) 1/14 2/25/2015 The Twilight Zone (1959 TV series) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia 2.4 Season 4 (1963) 2.5 Season 5 (1963–1964) Production Cayuga Productions company(s) CBS Productions 3 Casting 4 Music Distributor CBS Television Distribution 5 Broadcast history Broadcast 6 Primetime Emmy Awards Original channel CBS 7 In media Audio format Mono 7.1 Syndication Original run October 2, 1959 – June 19, 1964 7.2 DVD releases Chronology 7.3 Radio Followed by The Twilight Zone (1985 TV 7.4 Online distribution series) 8 Revivals 9 See also 9.1 Related series 10 References 11 Sources 12 External links Development By the late 1950s, Rod Serling was a regular name in television. His successful teleplays included Patterns (for Kraft Television Theater) and Requiem for a Heavyweight (for Playhouse 90), but constant changes and edits made by the networks and sponsors frustrated Serling. In Requiem for a Heavyweight, the line "Got a match?" had to be struck because the sponsor sold lighters; other programs had similar striking of words that might remind viewers of competitors to the sponsor, including one case in which the sponsor, Ford Motor Company, had the Chrysler Building removed from a picture of the New York City skyline.[8] But according to comments in his 1957 anthology Patterns, Serling had been trying to delve into material more controversial than his works of the early 1950s. This led to Noon on Doomsday for the United States Steel Hour in 1956, a commentary by Serling on the total lack of repentance and defensiveness he saw in the Mississippi town where the murder of Emmett Till took place. His original script closely paralleled the Till case, then was moved out of the South and the victim changed to a Jewish pawnbroker, and eventually watered down to just a foreigner in an unnamed town. Despite bad reviews, activists sent numerous letters and wires protesting the production.[9][10] Serling thought that a science-fictional setting, with robots, aliens and other supernatural occurrences, would give him more freedom and less interference in expressing controversial ideas than more realistic settings.[11] "The Time Element" was Serling's 1957 pilot pitch for his show, a time travel adventure about a man who travels back to Honolulu in 1941 and unsuccessfully tries to warn everyone about the impending attack on Pearl Harbor. The script, however, was rejected and shelved for a year until Bert Granet discovered and produced it as an episode of Desilu Playhouse in 1958.[12] The show was a huge success and enabled Serling to finally begin production on his anthology series, The Twilight Zone. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Twilight_Zone_(1959_TV_series) 2/14 2/25/2015 The Twilight Zone (1959 TV series) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Overview of seasons Season 1 (1959–1960) There is a fifth dimension, beyond that which is known to man. It is a dimension as vast as space and as timeless as infinity. It is the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition, and it lies between the pit of man's fears and the summit of his knowledge. This is the dimension of imagination. It is an area which we call the Twilight Zone. —Rod Serling The Twilight Zone premiered the night of October 2, 1959 to rave reviews. "...Twilight Zone is about the only show on the air that I actually look forward to seeing. It's the one series that I will let interfere with other plans", said Terry Turner for the Chicago Daily News. Others agreed. Daily Variety ranked it with "the best that has ever been accomplished in half-hour filmed television" and the New York Herald Tribune found the show to be "certainly the best and most original anthology series of the year." Even as the show proved popular to television's critics, it struggled to find a receptive audience of television viewers. CBS was banking on a rating of at least 21 or 22, but its initial numbers were much worse. The series' future was jeopardized when its third episode, "Mr. Denton on Doomsday" earned a 16.3 rating. Still, the show attracted a large enough audience to survive a brief hiatus in November, after which it finally Serling working on his script with a surpassed its competition on ABC and NBC and convinced its dictating machine, 1959 sponsors (General Foods and Kimberly-Clark) to stay on until the end of the season. With one exception ("The Chaser"), the first season featured scripts written only by Rod Serling, Charles Beaumont and Richard Matheson, a team that was eventually responsible for 127 of the show's 156 episodes. Additionally, with one exception ("A World of His Own"), Serling never appeared on camera during any first season episode (as he would in future seasons), and was present only as a voice-over narrator. Note that Serling did appear on screen in Twilight Zone promotional spots plugging the following week's episode – just not in the episodes themselves. These promo spots were unseen for several decades after their initial airings; while many have been released in the DVD and Blu-ray releases of The Twilight Zone, a few are lost completely and some survive only as audio tracks. Many of the season's episodes proved to be among the series' most celebrated, including "Time Enough at Last", "The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street", "Walking Distance" and "The After Hours". The first season won Serling an unprecedented fourth Emmy Award for dramatic writing, a Producers Guild Award for Serling's creative partner Buck Houghton and the Hugo Award for best dramatic presentation. Bernard Herrmann's original opening theme music lasted throughout the first season. For the final five episodes of the season, the show's original surrealist "pit and summit" opening montage and narration was replaced by a piece featuring a blinking eye and shorter narration, and a truncated version of Herrmann's theme. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Twilight_Zone_(1959_TV_series) 3/14 2/25/2015 The Twilight Zone (1959 TV series) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Note: some first-season episodes were available for decades only in a version with a pasted-on second- season opening. These "re-themed" episodes were prepared for airing in the summer of 1961 as summer repeats; the producers wanted to have a consistent opening for the show every week. During the original 1959/60 run, Herrmann's theme was used in every first season episode. The first season openings for these episodes have since been restored to recent DVD and Blu-ray reissues.[13] Season 2 (1960–1961) 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. That's the signpost up ahead—your next stop, the Twilight Zone. —Rod Serling The second season premiered on September 30, 1960 with "King Nine Will Not Return", Serling's fresh take on the pilot episode "Where Is Everybody?" based on a real-life 1958 news story of the discovery of a crashed World War II B-24 bomber in the Libyan desert.