1950s – Page 14 – PowerPop… An Eclectic Collection of Pop Culture

Ray Charles – Hallelujah I Love Her So

This is one of those songs where I could listen to it on a loop and be happy. Ray Charles wrote this song with a gospel feel to it. It was released in 1956 and it peaked at #5 in the R&B charts.

He went to a state school for the blind in St. Augustine, Florida. He became a professional musician after leaving there in 1945, after the death of his mother. A piece of advice that Ray’s mother gave to him: “You’re blind, not stupid.”

He moved to Seattle because it was the farthest, he could get from Florida. Jack Lauderdale, one of the first black record label owners, signed Charles to the Downbeat label, for whom Charles had his first hit in 1949, Confession Blues. The recording session for it was noteworthy for another reason…Charles recorded it while there was a musicians’ strike. The union fined him $600, his life savings at that point for the infraction.

Charles’ recording contract was sold to Atlantic Records in 1952, shortly after he moved to LA. He formed his own band in 1954 and started to release records.

This song was in the Quarrymen and early Beatles repertoire and a big influence. The first time I heard this song was on the Live! at the Star Club 1962 album released in 1977. The album was recorded in 1962 in the audience by “King Size” Taylor, lead singer of the Dominos. He claims he asked Lennon if that was alright and John verbally agreed to the group being recorded in exchange for Taylor providing the beer during their performances. It was recorded on a low-grade reel to reel in the audience. The Beatles tried to block the release but were unsuccessful. I for one am glad it wasn’t blocked.

It shows how raw they were in the early days. This was recorded right after The Beatles sacked Pete Best and Ringo was brought in.

The lead singer on the Beatles version was that famous Beatle named Horst Fascher. Actually, Horst was a protector of the band and the only favor he asked was to occasionally sing a song. Fascher meant a lot to the Beatles and he worked at the Hamburg clubs they played in.

According to Mark Lewisohn (author of Tune In)… Hamburg was very important to the Beatles. In their first trip to Hamburg, they accumulated around 415 hours of stage time. The Beatles had to be the most experienced rock group in the world, not just Liverpool. When they got back to Liverpool people were amazed and they were the number 1 band in their hometown from then on.

Eddie Cochran and George Jones made chart versions of this song.

Hallelujah I Love Her So

Let me tell you ’bout a boy (girl) I know
He(She) is my baby and he (she) lives next door
Ev’ry morning ‘fore the sun come up
He (she) brings my coffee in my fav’rite cup
That’s why I know, yes, I know
Hallelujah, I just love him (her) so
When I’m in trouble and I have no friends
I know hel’ll (she’ll) go with me until the end
Ev’rybody asks me how I know
I smile at them and say he (she) told me so
That’s why I know, yes, I know
Hallelujah, I just love him (her) so

Now if I call him (her) on the telephone
And tell him (her) that I’m all alone
By the time I count from one to four,I hear him (her) on my door
In the evening when the sun goes down
When there is nobody else around
He (she) kisses me and he (she) holds me tight
He (And) tells me “Baby, (Daddy) ev’ry thing’s all right”
That’s why I know, yes, I know
Hallelujah, I just love him (her) so

[Repeat]

Twilight Zone – The Gift

★★★ April 27, 1962 Season 3 Episode 32

If you want to see where we are…HERE is a list of the episodes.

This episode is slow moving but at times interesting . It contains elements that could have been a great Twilight Zone but the acting in this one is subdued and the story is slow. I did like the study of human nature at the end but the script was uneven.

A Christ-like alien ventures into a small Mexican village. He comes into a bar after being shot and hurting. He bonds with a little boy named Pedro played by Edmund Vargas. A doctor looks at the alien and by all accounts should have been dead. Everyone was fearful of him and he is referred to as a creature with powers. The alien offers a gift but will the lack of trust in the new comer accept it?

I did like the musical score for this one. The Gift has a guitar score composed and performed by Laurindo Almeida, one of the great classical guitarists.This story was originally written as one of the series’ possible pilots, but was passed over for The Twilight Zone: Where Is Everybody?

This show was written by Rod Serling

Rod Serling’s Opening Narration:

The place is Mexico, just across the Texas border, a mountain village held back in time by its remoteness and suddenly intruded upon by the twentieth century. And this is Pedro, nine years old, a lonely, rootless little boy, who will soon make the acquaintance of a traveler from a distant place. We are at present forty miles from the Rio Grande, but any place and all places can be the Twilight Zone.

Summary

The residents of a small Mexican village, just 40 miles or so south of the Rio Grande, panic when they learn a being from another planet may have crashed near by. As the result of an altercation with local police, one policeman is dead and the alien is severely wounded. A young boy, Pedro, quickly forms a friendship with the alien who says he has come in peace. He also says he has a gift for the people of the Earth, but the villagers’ fear means that mankind will never benefit from the alien’s generosity.

Rod Serling’s Closing Narration:

Madeiro, Mexico, the present. The subject: fear. The cure: a little more faith. An Rx off a shelf in the Twilight Zone.

CAST

Rod Serling … Narrator / Self – Host (uncredited)
Geoffrey Horne … Williams – the Alien
Nico Minardos … Doctor
Cliff Osmond … Manolo
Edmund Vargas … Pedro
Vladimir Sokoloff … Guitarist
Paul Mazursky … Officer
Henry Corden … Sanchez
Vito Scotti Vito Scotti … Rudolpho
Eumenio Blanco … Townsman (uncredited)
Carmen D’Antonio … Woman (uncredited)
David Fresco … Man (uncredited)
Lea Marmer … Woman (uncredited)
Joseph V. Perry … Man (uncredited)

Bill Justis – Raunchy

This weekend will lean toward the 1950’s…we start it off with this instrumental.

Back in 1950s Liverpool a young John, Paul, and George were riding on a bus and Paul was trying to get George Harrison in the Quarrymen. George was much younger and John had his doubts about letting the kid join. Paul asked young George to get his guitar out and play the instrumental Rauncy right there on the bus. John was impressed and the rest…as they say is history.

This was originally called “Backwards.” Justis changed the title when he heard someone enjoying the tune say that it was “raunchy,” which meant “messy” or “dirty” in ’50s teenage slang.

The song was written by Bill Justis and Sidney Manker who played that riff on the song.

Justis landed a job as musical director at Sun Records, run by Sam Phillips. During his time there, he arranged music for acts like Johnny Cash, Roy Orbison, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Charlie Rich. Meanwhile, he got the idea to record his own rock ‘n roll tune and enlisted some jazzmen and rock ‘n roll players for the session that produced “Raunchy.” When the sax player he hired fell ill, Justis stepped in. Although he’d long ago traded his trumpet for sax, he hadn’t played the instrument for a while, which resulted in a distinctive off tone that set the original instrumental apart from its many covers.

This instrumental peaked at #2 in the US Hot 100, #1 in the R&B Charts, and #6 in the Country Charts.

Bill Justis: “I read about how much money he had made out of rock ‘n roll so I said, ‘That’s for me!'” “So, I immediately set out for a record store and bought $80 worth of the all-time rock ‘n roll hits. I studied the stuff and found it was so simple, yet basic and savage, that it was difficult to perform.”

From Songfacts

Ernie Freeman covered this. It was a reversal of the usual process as Freeman was black and Justis was white. Freeman’s version hit #4 while Justis’ hit #2. Although both did extensive session work, “Raunchy” remains each act’s sole Top 40 hit.

George Harrison played this on his guitar for John Lennon when he was auditioning to be a member of The Quarrymen.

While working for his father’s roofing business in his native Memphis, Justis made the rounds in local dance bands as a trumpet player. When the office’s closing left him without a job, Justis decided to pursue music full time as an arranger. An article about Buck Ram, a prolific songwriter and producer who was integral in the vocal group scene of the ’50s, turned him on to rock ‘n roll.

Justis and Freeman weren’t the only performers to have a hit with “Raunchy” in 1957. Billy Vaughn also released a version that went to #10. Several other acts covered the tune, including Santo & Johnny, The Ventures, Duane Eddy, Scotty Moore, Alex Chilton, and Booker T. & The M.G.’s, among others.

Justis recorded this two more times: in 1962 for the album Bill Justis Plays 12 More Big Instrumental Hits and in 1969 for the album Raunchy & Other Great Instrumentals.

This was used in the movies The Loveless (1981), Great Balls Of Fire! (1989), Nowhere Boy (2009), and Camp X-Ray (2014).

Twilight Zone – The Trade-Ins

★★★★1/2 April 20, 1962 Season 3 Episode 31

If you want to see where we are…HERE is a list of the episodes.

This episode is very poignant. The older we get we all start becoming aware of our mortality. Serling offers a way out with a choice. What if one day when we all get old…we can go and get new bodies? You would not just be young again but you pick the body you want. Joseph Schildkraut as John Holt was superb in this role. The show stays realistic through out the episode.

John and Marie Holt visit the New Life Corporation, hoping to transplant their personalities into youthful, artificial bodies. Unfortunately, they can only afford the procedure for one of them…but which one? The episode also touches on mercy from Theodore Marcuse who plays Farraday who ordinairly doesn’t hand it out daily.

Unbeknownst to all but those on the set, something terrible was happening to Schildkraut during the filming of the episode. Director Elliot Silverstein recalls, He was undergoing a tragedy at the time … his own wife was dying. As a matter of fact, in the middle of the three-day schedule, his wife did in fact die. And he insisted that we not stop production for him; the Schildkraut family was a great theatrical family in Europe he would finish the film and then mourn. He was in real tears, off-screen.

This show was written by Rod Serling

Rod Serling’s Opening Narration:

Mr. and Mrs. John Holt, aging people who slowly and with trembling fingers turn the last pages of a book of life and hope against logic and the preordained that some magic printing press will add to this book another limited edition. But these two senior citizens happen to live in a time of the future where nothing is impossible, even the trading of old bodies for new. Mr. and Mrs. John Holt, in their twilight years, who are about to find that there happens to be a zone with the same name.

Summary

John and Marie Holt have been married for a great many years. Age is catching up with them and John is frequently in pain. They visit the New Life Corporation where they have the opportunity to have their consciousness transferred to new, younger bodies. They only have enough money to pay for one transformation however and once complete, a decision on their future life together must be made.

Rod Serling’s Closing Narration:

From Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet: “Love gives not but itself and takes not from itself, love possesses not nor would it be possessed, for love is sufficient unto love.” Not a lesson, just a reminder, from all the sentimentalists in the Twilight Zone.

CAST

Rod Serling … Narrator / Self – Host (uncredited)
Joseph Schildkraut … John Holt
Noah Keen … Mr. Vance
Alma Platt Alma Platt … Marie Holt
Theodore Marcuse … Farraday (as Ted Marcuse)
Edson Stroll … Young John Holt
Terence de Marney … Gambler (as Terrence deMarney)
Sailor Vincent … Gambler (as Billy Vincent)
Mary McMahon … Receptionist
David Armstrong … Surgeon

…

Twilight Zone – Hocus-Pocus And Frisby

★★★★ April 13, 1962 Season 3 Episode 30

If you want to see where we are…HERE is a list of the episodes.

What happens when a man that tells the tallest tales meets aliens that believe every word? I won’t tell you but I wll tell you that it’s a fun episode. Nothing phases this guy.

Andy Devine plays Somerset Frisby…it’s hard not to like Devine. He is a character actor that I have really enjoyed seeing in other shows and movies. He usually brightens up any scene his is in. Frisby is a good natured guy that loves telling tall tales that are fun but obviously not true. This episode is a re-telling of The Boy Who Cried Wolf but you root for Mr. Frisby. The episode is worth watching just for Devine.

Howard McNear is in this one and he plays Mitchell…McNear played Floyd Lawson (Floyd the Barber) on the Andy Griffith Show. Dabs Greer plays Scanlan and he played Mr. Jonas on Gunsmoke and Reverend Robert Alden on Little House on the Prairie.

Clem Bevans who played Pete is the earliest born actor of any Twilight Zone Episode…he was born 10-16-1879.

He has all the drive of a broken camshaft and the aggressive vinegar of a corpse. Rod Serling

This show was written by Rod Serling and Frederick Louis Fox

Rod Serling’s Opening Narration:

The reluctant gentleman with the sizable mouth is Mr. Frisby. He has all the drive of a broken camshaft and the aggressive vinegar of a corpse. As you’ve no doubt gathered, his big stock in trade is the tall tale. Now, what he doesn’t know is that the visitors out front are a very special breed, destined to change his life beyond anything even his fertile imagination could manufacture. The place is Pitchville Flats, the time is the present. But Mr. Frisby’s on the first leg of a rather fanciful journey into the place we call the Twilight Zone.

Summary

Somerset Frisby runs a country store and gas station and loves to tell tall tales to his friends. To listen to him he’s graduated from several universities and his advice to Henry Ford created the auto industry. His friends always have a good laugh but two patrons seem to take a interest in Somerset and his stories. They’re aliens who think they’ve found the perfect human specimen to take back to their home planet. Somerset wants nothing to do with and to his great surprising has the weapon he needs to make his escape in his pocket. It all should give him a good tale for his pals.

Rod Serling’s Closing Narration:

Mr. Somerset Frisby, who might have profited by reading an Aesop fable about a boy who cried wolf. Tonight’s tall tale from the timberlands of the Twilight Zone.

CAST

Rod Serling … Narrator / Self – Host (uncredited)
Andy Devine … Somerset Frisby
Milton Selzer … Alien
Howard McNear … Mitchell
Dabbs Greer … Scanlan
Clem Bevans … Pete
Rest of cast listed alphabetically:
John Albright … Alien (uncredited)
Larry Breitman … Alien (uncredited)
Peter Brocco … Alien (uncredited)
Bartlett Robinson … Alien passenger in convertible (uncredited)

…

Twilight Zone – Four O’Clock

★★ April 06, 1962 Season 3 Episode 29

If you want to see where we are…HERE is a list of the episodes.

First of all…it’s not a great episode but that doesn’t include Theodore Bikel’s acting job in this one…it’s good…maybe a little over the top. The character is an ordinary man with a god complex that borderlines on cartoonish. He conveys very well that this character is insane. I think Bikel does a good job out of what he had…which wasn’t much. Linden Chiles who plays Mr. Hall does a good job as the FBI agent that shows a great contrast to Bikel’s Mr Crangle.

It’s in my top five of least favorite episodes. It’s the story that is weak to me. The origin of this story would be the McCarthy witch hunt of the 50s. Anyone that was different would be labeled a communist, subversive, and or thieves.

I love that Serling highlighted that awful period that but the script doesn’t live up to the outrage. I wish he would have hit the mark of McCarthy with a litte more. This is the lowest I have labeled an episode so far…but this is episode 94 so that is not bad since Serling was involved in writing every episode so far. It’s not the worse episode but it’s not up to Twiight Zone standards… which are very high. The ending…I won’t get into what happens but unlike many Twilight Zones…this one is too predictable.

Theodore Bikel, in real life, was a human and civil rights activist who ardently opposed blacklisting and McCarthyism during the 1950s.

This show was written by Rod Serling and Price Day

Rod Serling’s Opening Narration:

That’s Oliver Crangle, a dealer in petulance and poison. He’s rather arbitrarily chosen four o’clock as his personal Götterdämmerung, and we are about to watch the metamorphosis of a twisted fanatic, poisoned by the gangrene of prejudice, to the status of an avenging angel, upright and omniscient, dedicated and fearsome. Whatever your clocks say, it’s four o’clock, and wherever you are it happens to be the Twilight Zone.

Summary

Oliver Crangle seems to like making other people miserable. He phones a young man’s employer to say that the man is a communist. He phone a school board to tell them a teacher is acting inappropriately with his students. He has a long list of people that he wants to tell on. He even arranges a meeting with an FBI agent and tells him that at 4 p.m. all of the nasty people in the world will undergo a transformation. The agent suggests he seek psychiatric treatment but it turns out he’s right.

Sorry there is not a small clip on youtube of this. Paramount has them locked down.

Rod Serling’s Closing Narration:

At four o’clock, an evil man made his bed and lay in it, a pot called a kettle black, a stone-thrower broke the windows of his glass house. You look for this one under ‘F’ for fanatic and ‘J’ for justice in the Twilight Zone.

CAST

Rod Serling … Narrator / Self – Host (uncredited)
Theodore Bikel … Oliver Crangle
Phyllis Love … Mrs. Lucas
Linden Chiles … Mr. Hall
Moyna MacGill … Mrs. Williams

…

Twilight Zone – The Little People

★★★★1/2 March 30, 1962 Season 3 Episode 28

If you want to see where we are…HERE is a list of the episodes.

The Twiight Zone lesson in this episode is… absolute power can and will almost always corrupt. The best Twilight Zone episodes are the ones that are as thought-provoking and timely today as they were then. This one fits that bill. Claude Akins does a great job as he appears as Commander William Fletcher. He would appear in two Twilight Zones.

Joe Maross plays Navigator Peter Craig who starts off as a simple jerk and then climbs all the way to a megalomaniac. Without giving the ending away…there is justice at the end of the epidsode. The more I watch this episode the more I’ve liked it through the years.

From IMDB The rocket launch depicted was in reality a test flight of a Mercury-Atlas booster. This was quite timely; this episode aired about a month after NASA’s John Glenn became the first astronaut to attain Earth orbit upon such a rocket.

This show was written by Rod Serling

Rod Serling’s Opening Narration:

The time is the space age, the place is a barren landscape of a rock-walled canyon that lies millions of miles from the planet Earth. The cast of characters? You’ve met them: William Fletcher, commander of the spaceship; his copilot, Peter Craig. The other characters who inhabit this place you may never see, but they’re there, as these two gentlemen will soon find out. Because they’re about to partake in a little exploration into that gray, shaded area in space and time that’s known as the Twilight Zone.

Summary

When a spacecraft makes an emergency landing on an unknown planet the commander, William Fletcher, is anxious to get underway again as soon as possible. Not so for his navigator, Peter Craig, who is insubordinate and is fed up taking orders all of the time. While Fletcher makes repairs to the ship Craig explores the area around them and is astonished to find that there are living beings there only a fraction of the size of humans. Soon, he is being recognized by them as a god and refuses to leave when the ship ready. He is to realize that one’s place in the universe is a relative thing.

Sorry there is not a small clip on youtube of this. Paramount has them locked down.

Rod Serling’s Closing Narration:

The case of navigator Peter Craig, a victim of a delusion. In this case, the dream dies a little harder than the man. A small exercise in space psychology that you can try on for size in the Twilight Zone.

CAST

Rod Serling … Narrator / Self – Host (uncredited)
Joe Maross … Navigator Peter Craig
Claude Akins … Cmdr. William Fletcher
Michael Ford … Spaceman
Robert Eaton … Spaceman

…

Twilight Zone – Person Or Persons Unknown

★★★★1/2 March 23, 1962 Season 3 Episode 27

If you want to see where we are…HERE is a list of the episodes.

This is a strong Twilight Zone episode.

David Gurney, played wonderfully by Richard Long, wakes up to find that no one, not his wife Wilma, his fellow workers, his best friend, or even his own mother knows him. The Twilight Zone has touched on this before in “And When the Sky Was Opened” but not this in depth.

This was a well thought out script. I like that Gurney slowly is trying to tie himself to the world he knows. He goes over every detail of his life that could have been missed by this gag or whatever it is… that someone could have missed. He does think of something that no one knows about but him…will it help or not? When he is losing hope…another twist is thrown at Mr. Gurney.

From IMDB: One of the first instances on television to show a couple sharing a single bed, sleeping next to each other. Around this time, TV shows could only portray couples sleeping in separate beds due to television’s strict standards & practices. In season five’s The Twilight Zone: Stopover in a Quiet Town, a very similar situation occurs. In both cases, the man is sleeping on top of the covers, is still fully dressed (even wearing his shoes), and they are hung over from a bout of heavy drinking.

This show was written by Charles Beaumont and Rod Serling

Rod Serling’s Opening Narration:

Cameo of a man who has just lost his most valuable possession. He doesn’t know about the loss yet. In fact, he doesn’t even know about the possession. Because, like most people, David Gurney has never really thought about the matter of his identity. But he’s going to be thinking a great deal about it from now on, because that is what he’s lost. And his search for it is going to take him into the darkest corners of the Twilight Zone.

Summary

David Gurney awakens on his bed fully clothed and realizes he’s late for work. He and his wife Wilma had a few drinks the night before and she is sound asleep. When he can’t find his razor he wakes her but she says he doesn’t know who he is and demands he leave her house. His clothes are nowhere to be found and so heads off to work. He knows everyone there but like his wife, none of his co-workers have any idea who he is. He’s desperate to find one piece of his identity to prove who he is. When all finally seems resolved, he faces another shock.

Sorry there is no preview on youtube

Rod Serling’s Closing Narration:

A case of mistaken identity or a nightmare turned inside out? A simple loss of memory or the end of the world? David Gurney may never find the answer, but you can be sure he’s looking for it in the Twilight Zone.

CAST

Rod Serling … Narrator / Self – Host (uncredited)
Richard Long … David Andrew Gurney
Frank Silvera … Dr. Koslenko
Shirley Ballard … Wilma #1
Julie Van Zandt … Wilma #2
Betty Harford … Clerk
Edmund Glover … Sam Baker (as Ed Glover)
Michael Keep … Policeman
Joe Higgins … Bank Guard
John Newton … Cooper
John Brahm … Winston Churchill (uncredited)
Robert McCord … Man on Steps Eating Apple (uncredited)

…

Twilight Zone – Little Girl Lost

★★★★★ March 16, 1962 Season 3 Episode 26

If you want to see where we are…HERE is a list of the episodes.

This episode had to inspire the 1982 movie Poltergiest. Out of all the episodes I’ve posted…I have had more people ask about this one. It is a scary episode and the special effects were great. I can see how this would freak kids out when it was shown. Fall off of your bed and you might end up in another dimension.

This was a good story and a very good script. Charles Aidman as the physicist Bill turned in a believable performance.

I like how they portrayed the other dimension. They were very clever the way they shot it. They didn’t give much away but show you enough to know this place is not your normal place.

Richard Matheson based this story on a real-life occurrence involving his own daughter. Matheson: “she cried out one night and I went to where she was and couldn’t find her anywhere. I couldn’t find her on the bed, I couldn’t find her on the ground. She had fallen off and rolled all the way under the bed against the wall. At first, even when I felt under the bed, I couldn’t reach her. It was bizarre, and that’s where I got the idea.”

This show was written by Richard Matheson and Rod Serling

Rod Serling’s Opening Narration:

Missing: one frightened little girl. Name: Bettina Miller. Description: six years of age, average height and build, light brown hair, quite pretty. Last seen being tucked in bed by her mother a few hours ago. Last heard: ‘ay, there’s the rub,’ as Hamlet put it. For Bettina Miller can be heard quite clearly, despite the rather curious fact that she can’t be seen at all. Present location? Let’s say for the moment… in the Twilight Zone.

Summary

When he hears his young daughter Tina calling out in the night, Chris Miller go to her room but finds she isn’t there. At first he thinks she fallen off the bed or slid herself under it but despite hearing her call out she’s nowhere to be seen. He gets help from a friend, Bill, who concludes that Tina has slid through a portal into another dimension. They find the portal opening but Tina is lost inside and Chris goes in after her.

Rod Serling’s Closing Narration:

The other half where? The fourth dimension? The fifth? Perhaps. They never found the answer. Despite a battery of research physicists equipped with every device known to man, electronic and otherwise, no result was ever achieved, except perhaps a little more respect for and uncertainty about the mechanisms of the Twilight Zone.

CAST

Rod Serling … Narrator / Self – Host (uncredited)
Sarah Marshall … Ruth Miller
Robert Sampson … Chris Miller
Charles Aidman … Bill
Rod Serling … Narrator / Self – Host (uncredited)
Tracy Stratfor … Tina Miller (uncredited)
Rhoda Williams … Tina Miller (voice) (uncredited)

…

Twilight Zone – The Fugitive

★★★1/2 March 23, 1962 Season 3 Episode 27

If you want to see where we are…HERE is a list of the episodes.

This is a feel good episode with J. Pat O’Malley as Old Ben. Ben is a good friend to the neighborhood kids but with a twist… he is from another planet. He does tricks for the kids like hit a baseball out of site and turn into a martian. Two men are looking for Ben…turns out they are from his home planet and want to take him back.

He is close to Jenny, a girl with braces on her legs, who lives with her aunt. Aunt Agnes (Nancy Kulp) is Jenny’s bitter guardian. Unlike some of the other Twilight Zone “bad” characters…Aunt Agnes shows she does indeed care about Jenny when she was sick.

It’s not a classic episode but is entertaining.

In Jenny’s room you will see a portrait of right-handed White Sox pitcher Monty Stratton. Stratton accidentally shot himself while hunting and lost his leg as a result. He battled back after his injury to pitch in the minor leagues despite having an artificial leg. Monty Stratton would have been an obvious inspiration for Jenny, who had also lost the use of one of her legs. A biopic about him starring Jimmy Stewart was released in 1949 and was titled The Stratton Story.

This show was written by Charles Beaumont, Rod Serling, and Richard P. McDonagh

Rod Serling’s Opening Narration:

It’s been said that science fiction and fantasy are two different things: science fiction, the improbable made possible; fantasy, the impossible made probable. What would you have if you put these two different things together? Well, you’d have an old man named Ben who knows a lot of tricks most people don’t know and a little girl named Jenny who loves him — and a journey into the heart of the Twilight Zone.

Summary

Little Jenny wears a brace on her leg. Her best friend, an old man named Old Ben, brightens her life by performing magic, including turning into anything he wants. One day, two men show up looking for Old Ben and Jenny asks if they are policemen. Not exactly. Old Ben evades them and confesses to Jenny that he’s from another planet – a fugitive but not a criminal

Rod Serling’s Closing Narration:

Mrs. Gann will be in for a big surprise when she finds this under Jenny’s pillow, because Mrs. Gann has more temper than imagination. She’ll never dream that this is a picture of Old Ben, as he really looks, and it will never occur to her that eventually her niece will grow up to be an honest-to-goodness queen — somewhere in The Twilight Zone.

CAST

Rod Serling … Narrator / Self – Host (uncredited)
Susan Gordon … Jenny
J. Pat O’Malley … Old Ben
Nancy Kulp … Agnes Gann
Wesley Lau … Man #1
Paul Tripp … Man #2
Russ Bender … Doctor
Stephen Talbot … Howie Gutliff
Johnny Eimen … Pitcher (as Johnny Eiman)

…

Twilight Zone – To Serve Man

★★★★★ March 2, 1962 Season 3 Episode 24

If you want to see where we are…HERE is a list of the episodes.

This episode may have the most famous of all twists and be the most remembered episode of the Twilight Zone. The Kanamits arrive on Earth with seemingly one purpose in mind: to aid mankind in every possible way using their superior technology. They end famine, supply a cheap power source and provide defensive force fields. Armies become obsolete. Earrth becomes without cold war or hunger worries…sounds great! As the old saying goes…nothing is for free.

Richard Kiel appeared as many of the Kanamits. He would later be better known as Jaws in a couple of James Bonds movies.

This one is a classic. It serves as a commentary on the Cold War mentality of the time and this scfi episode works today. This episode has been parodied in a lot of shows including The Simpson’s first Treehouse of Terror. Watch this one if you get a chance.

Damon Knight (writer): To Serve Man was written in 1950, when I was living in Greenwich Village and my unhappy first marriage was breaking up. I wrote it in one afternoon, while my wife was out with another man. Serling kept the basics of Knights story, but made some changes, the first of which was in the aliens themselves. In the story, the Kanamit (singular: Kanama) look something like pigs and something like people. In his script, Serling made them nine feet tall and essentially humanoid, noting, At the moment, no one knows whether we cast this part, or make it! As they appear in the show, the Kanamits (singular: Kanamit) resemble angels gone to seed, with full-length robes, high-domed heads, and just a hint of corruption about the eyes and mouth. The effect is striking, with seven-foot-two Richard Kiel (later to play the character Jaws in several James Bond films) playing the various Kanamits.

I thought the adaptation was kind of neat it made me famous in Milford, Pennsylvania; suddenly everybody knew who I was. I didnt mind the aliens being acromegalic giants, because I knew they couldnt film my pig-people without making it look like a Disney film. The only thing that bugged me was Serlings treating the alien language as if it were just another kind of code.

This show was written by Rod Serling and Damon Knight

Rod Serling’s Opening Narration:

Respectfully submitted for your perusal – a Kanamit. Height: a little over nine feet. Weight: in the neighborhood of three hundred and fifty pounds. Origin: unknown. Motives? Therein hangs the tale, for in just a moment, we’re going to ask you to shake hands, figuratively, with a Christopher Columbus from another galaxy and another time. This is the Twilight Zone.

Summary

Michael Chambers recounts recent events on Earth after the arrival of a alien space craft. The aliens, known as Kanamit, seem friendly and assure everyone they have nothing to be afraid of. In fact, they offer to share wonderful technology that will provide limitless energy, cure all disease and convert deserts into lush gardens. For the people of Earth, paradise has arrived. Chambers is an encryption specialist and they try their best to decrypt a book the Kanamit left behind. The book’s title seems benign – but it’s not what they think it is.

The COMPLETE EPISODE on Daily Motion

Rod Serling’s Closing Narration:

The recollections of one Michael Chambers, with appropriate flashbacks and soliloquy. Or, more simply stated, the evolution of man. The cycle of going from dust to dessert. The metamorphosis from being the ruler of a planet to an ingredient in someone’s soup. It’s tonight’s bill of fare from the Twilight Zone.

CAST

Rod Serling… Narrator / Self – Host (uncredited)
Lloyd Bochner…Michael Chambers
Richard Kiel…the Kanamits (all of whom appear alike)
Susan Cummings…Patty
Joseph Ruskin…Kanamit voice
Hardie Albright…Secretary General
Theodore Marcuse…Citizen Gregori
Bartlett Robinson…Colonel #1
Carleton Young…Colonel #2 (credited…Carlton Young)
Nelson Olmsted…Scientist

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Twilight Zone – The Last Rites of Jeff Myrtlebank

★★★★ February 23, 1962 Season 3 Episode 23

If you want to see where we are…HERE is a list of the episodes.

This episode has the look of a 1940s movie to me. Jeff Myrtlebank was supposedly dead but he had other ideas. James Best played this character well as did his girl Comfort Gatewood played by Sherry Jackson. It’s set in the 1920s in rural America where Jeff Myrtlebank was pronounce dead. After Myrtlebank popped up out of his coffin, the small community began talk about an evil spirit invading Jeff’s body.

Edgar Buchanan plays Doc Bolton and there is a little “Uncle Joe” (Petticoat Junction) in his performance which works in this episode. Ralph Moody and Ezelle Poule play Pa and Ma Myrtlebank and they are very authentic. I’ve seen this episode as a comedic The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street because of how rumors and ignornace can cause a mob mentality. I do like the ending of this episode…it keeps you guessing.

This show was written by Montgomery Pittman and Rod Serling

Rod Serling’s Opening Narration:

Time, the mid-twenties. Place, the Midwest, the southernmost section of the Midwest. We were just witnessing a funeral, a funeral that didn’t come off exactly as planned, due to a slight fallout from the Twilight Zone.

Summary

Everyone at Jeff Myrtlebank’s funeral service is shocked when he pushes the coffin lid open and steps out, seemingly in perfect health. Old Doc Bolton mumbles some ridiculous explanation and the people there settle down a bit. Obviously his family is happy that he’s back with them and his fiancée welcomes him as he is, with no questions asked. They do notice that he’s a bit different. As time goes on however, rumors begin spread and the locals decide to take action.

Rod Serling’s Closing Narration:

Jeff and Comfort are still alive today, and their only son is a United States senator. He’s noted as an uncommonly shrewd politician, and some believe he must have gotten his education in the Twilight Zone.

CAST

Rod Serling… Narrator / Self – Host (uncredited)
James Best…Jeff Myrtlebank
Sherry Jackson…Comfort Gatewood
Edgar Buchanan…Doc Bolton
Lance Fuller…Orgram Gatewood
Dub Taylor…Mr. Peters
Ralph Moody…Pa Myrtlebank
Ezelle Poule…Ma Myrtlebank
Helen Wallace…Ma Gatewood
Vickie Barnes…Liz Myrtlebank
Jon Lormer…Strauss
James Houghton…Jerry
William Fawcett…Rev. Siddons

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Twilight Zone – A Piano In The House

★★★★ February 16, 1962, 1962 Season 3 Episode 22

If you want to see where we are…HERE is a list of the episodes.

A Piano in the House is not a well known episode but one of my favorites. It flies under the Twilight Zone radar. The episode highlights two things rather well…cruelty and justice. Fitzgerald Fortune played by Barry Morse is a despicable and sadistic theater critic who thinks he is above everyone. He buys a magic player piano that has the ability to reveal peoples inner selves and uses it to humiliate his wife (Joan Hackett) and many of her friends.

This one does show the artificial nature of everyday human interactions. The ways we will go to hide things about ourselves when with other people. I could relate to this one. Working in IT in the early days…I knew people like Fitzgerald Fortune who thought all the end users were idiots.

This show was written by Earl Hamner Jr. and Rod Serling

Rod Serling’s Opening Narration:

Mr. Fitzgerald Fortune, theater critic and cynic at large, on his way to a birthday party. If he knew what is in store for him he probably wouldn’t go, because before this evening is over that cranky old piano is going to play “Those Piano Roll Blues” with some effects that could happen only in the Twilight Zone.

Summary

Theater critic Fitzgerald Fortune is looking to buy a different sort of gift for his wife’s birthday. In a curio shop, he buys an old player-piano. It’s delivered to his home, and when he starts it up, it has a strange effect on his manservant, a normally dour man who breaks into mirthful laughter. When he plays another song, this time for a guest, the man breaks down and admits he’s in love with Fortune’s wife Esther. He decides to have fun with his party guests that evening but Esther decides to turn the tables on him.

Rod Serling’s Closing Narration:

Mr. Fitzgerald Fortune, a man who went searching for concealed persons and found himself in the Twilight Zone.

CAST

Rod Serling… Narrator / Self – Host (uncredited)
Barry Morse…Fitzgerald “Jerry” Fortune
Joan Hackett…Esther Fortune
Don Durant…Gregory “Greg” Walker
Muriel Landers…Marge Moore
Philip Coolidge…Throckmorton
Cyril Delevanti…Marvin (the Butler)

Twilight Zone – Kick The Can

★★★★ 1/2 February 9, 1962 Season 3 Episode 21

If you want to see where we are…HERE is a list of the episodes.

This one is a borderline classic. What I get out of it is the idea that old age is just a state of mind. Being young is more about the willingness to take risks and having a sense of adventure rather than just playing it safe. Ernest Truex plays Charles Whitley who finds the secret of staying young. The pure joy that Truex shows is infectious. He appeared in the earlier Twilight Zone…What You Need.

I find it interesting in the contrasting dynamic between playful Charles Whitley and the stereotypical grouchy old man Ben Conroy played by Russell Collins. Charles moves around care free while Ben worries about everything and is determined to be a “get off my lawn” old man. This one is a little slower to develop but a great episode.

One character actor I do want to mention that appears in this episode is Burt Mustin. He doesn’t have a big part but Mustin seemed to be everywhere on 50s- 70s tv shows.

Kick the Can was remade in the Twilight Zone movie with Scatman Crothers and it was one of the best stories they had in the movie.

This show was written by George Clayton Johnson, Rod Serling, and Richard P. McDonagh

Rod Serling’s Opening Narration:

Sunnyvale Rest, a home for the aged – a dying place and a common children’s game called kick-the-can, that will shortly become a refuge for a man who knows he will die in this world, if he doesn’t escape into – The Twilight Zone.

Summary

Charles Whitley is an elderly resident of Sunnyvale Rest, a home for the aged. It’s not a happy place and Charles’ hopes of moving in with his son David are dashed when he’s told they can’t take him in. He wistfully recalls his youth where they played kick the can and didn’t have a worry in the world. His close friend Ben Conroy begins to worry him when Charles suggests all you have to do is wish it, and you can be young again. Ben is worried his friend will end up in the loony bin but it’s Ben who is in for a surprise.

Rod Serling’s Closing Narration:

Sunnyvale Rest, a dying place for ancient people, who have forgotten the fragile magic of youth. A dying place for those who have forgotten that childhood, maturity, and old age are curiously intertwined and not separate. A dying place for those who have grown too stiff in their thinking – to visit – The Twilight Zone.

CAST

Rod Serling… Narrator / Self – Host (uncredited)
Ernest Truex…Charles Whitley
Barry Truex…Charles’ son
Russell Collins…Ben Conroy
John Marley…Mr. Cox
Burt Mustin…Carlson
Earle Hodgins…Agee
Hank Patterson…Freitag
Marjorie Bennett…Mrs. Summers
Lenore Shanewise…Mrs. Densley
Eve McVeagh…Night nurse
Anne O’Neal…Mrs. Wister

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Twilight Zone – Showdown With Rance McGrew

★★★ February 2, 1962 Season 3 Episode 20

If you want to see where we are…HERE is a list of the episodes.

Showdown With Rance McGrew is a lighthearted episode about a temperamental actor playing a cowboy hero. He is doing impossible stunts that would insult real legendary outlaws if they could see it. That part might just come into play in this one. This episode was made during the golden age of westerns on television. You couldn’t turn a channel on without seeing a western. Bonanza, Gunsmoke, Wanted Dead or Alive, Wagon Train, The Rifleman, and that is just naming a few.

Larry Blyden as Rance McGrew is a whiny, pampered, and coward actor who tries the patience of all the actors and crew. The wonderful character actor Bob Kline plays Jesse James who might have something to say to Rance with him always winning against James and all of his outlaw friends in TV Shows…dead outlaws have their pride also. The episode is fun but far from a classic.

Rod Sering: Fred Fox had an interesting notion, which was quite serious, about a modern-day cowpoke, not a television star, who found himself living in the past. It had no sense of humor in it. It was a straightforward piece. But it struck me that it would be a terribly interesting concept to have a guy who plays the role of a Hollywood cowboy suddenly thrust into the maelstrom of reality in which he has to do all these acts of prowess against real people… . And it just occurred to me, My God, what would happen if the Ranee McGrews of our time had to face this? I used to think this about John Wayne all the time, who had fought most of our major wars. In truth, of course, they were fought on the backlot of Warner Brothers, in which the most deadly jeopardy would be to get hit by a flying starlet. And I always wondered what Waynes reaction would be if he ever had to lift up an M-l and go through a bloody foxhole on attack sometime. But this is the element of humor that I was striving to get.

This show was written by Rod Serling, Frederick Louis Fox, and Richard P. McDonagh

Rod Serling’s Opening Narration:

Some one-hundred-odd years ago, a motley collection of tough mustaches galloped across the West and left behind a raft of legends and legerdemains, and it seems a reasonable conjecture that if there are any television sets up in cowboy heaven and any of these rough-and-wooly nail-eaters could see with what careless abandon their names and exploits are being bandied about, they’re very likely turning over in their graves—or worse, getting out of them. Which gives you a clue as to the proceedings that will begin in just a moment, when one Mr. Rance McGrew, a 3,000-buck-a-week phoney-baloney discovers that this week’s current edition of make-believe is being shot on location—and that location is the Twilight Zone.

Summary

Rance McGrew is the star of a weekly TV western where he plays the town Marshal. He is, to say the least, difficult to deal with. He is frequently late on the set, arrives unprepared and often requests script changes just as they are about to shoot a scene. To top it off, he’s quite inept at handling his gun which he inadvertently tosses into the saloon mirror on more than one occasion. He’s given a dose of reality however when he inexplicably finds himself back in time, coming face to face with the real Jesse James

Rod Serling’s Closing Narration:

The evolution of the so-called ‘adult’ western, and the metamorphosis of one Rance McGrew, formerly phony-baloney, now upright citizen with a preoccupation with all things involving tradition, truth and cowpoke predecessors. It’s the way the cookie crumbles and the six-gun shoots in the Twilight Zone.

CAST

Rod Serling… Narrator / Self – Host (uncredited)
Larry Blyden as Rance McGrew
Arch Johnson as Jesse James
Robert Cornthwaite as Director
Robert J. Stevenson as Bartender
William McLean as Property Man
Troy Melton as Cowboy #1
Jay Overholts as Cowboy #2

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