1960s – Page 50 – PowerPop… An Eclectic Collection of Pop Culture

Chantays – Pipeline

The Chantays, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Dick Dale, Anthrax, and Lawrence Welk. We will tie all of these artists together by the end of the post.

I thought I might as well continue the surf music theme that was started Thursday and ride the wave into the weekend.

This is one cool classic instrumental. Pipeline was originally the B side and the A side was a song called Move It. As with a few other singles through history…the B side took off and the A side became a trivial question.

Dick Dale also recorded this song with no other than Stevie Ray Vaughan in 1987. They really rocked up Pipeline for the movie Back to the Beach. You want variety? This song was covered by Lawrence Welk and Anthrax (video below). I would be willing to bet not many songs would be in that rare club.

I always wondered what “pipeline” meant…being a Tennessee guy I would not know that first hand. The title “Pipeline” refers to a term in surfing slang, in which a wave closes over your head while you ride it horizontally, so it looks like you’re in a rolling pipe made of water. This maneuver is also sometimes called “shooting the tube.”

Some odd trivia about the Chantays…they were the only rock and roll band to perform on The Lawrence Welk Show (something tells me Anthrax would not have been invited if they would have been around then). The Chantays were also honored on April 12, 1996, by Hollywood’s Rock Walk ,that was founded to honor individuals and bands that have made lasting and important contributions to music.

The song peaked at #4 in Billboard 100, #11 on the R&B Charts, and #16 in the UK in 1963.

From Songfacts

This was surf-rock group The Chantay’s only charting Billboard Top-40 hit. However, it is considered today one of the staples of the surf-rock genre. It was actually the B-side of a single; the A-side, “Move It,” never charted.

The unique sound of this track is partly due to its composition, which is inverted from standard practice. The bass and rhythm guitars are at the fore, while the lead guitar, keyboard, and drums are in the background. Also it was recorded in stereo even though it was going to be released in mono as the typical 45-RPM single record of the day.

Perhaps you’ve noticed that surf-rock tends to have a lot of instrumental work? That’s because it started out as strictly an instrumental form, where speed and precision playing was highly valued. In a way, it fathered the speed metal genre. We have The Beach Boys to thank for bringing vocal harmonies to surf music.

Dick Dale, who earned the title “King of the Surf Guitar,” recorded a new version of “Pipeline” with Stevie Ray Vaughan for the 1987 movie Back To The Beach. The movie reunited Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello 24 years after they starred in one of the first beach movies, Beach Party, which featured Dick Dale’s music.

Dick Dale with SRV

Dick Dale – Miserlou

I thought I would continue with the surfing theme of the Beach Boys song yesterday.

Love the beginning to this song…the twangy guitar that Dale plays like a rubber band. When I heard this song in the beginning of Pulp Fiction I knew I was going to enjoy the movie. Miserlou being used in the movie helped revive his career all over the world.

The song is a traditional Mediterranean song dating to the 1920s and originating in Greece. Dick Dale then reworked and beat the song over the head to his surf rock tone and sound…and it works perfectly.

In March 2005, Q magazine placed Dale’s version at number 89 in its list of the 100 Greatest Guitar Tracks.

This song was released in 1962.

Dick Dale: “The sound is a Stratocaster guitar. It’s the solidity of the wood – the thicker the wood, the bigger and purer the sound. It was a Strat. Not the Jaguar, not the Jazzmaster, all these things we created later, for different reasons. Even the reverb – reverb had nothing to do with the surfing sound, and here they got ’em on the cover going ‘That’s the wet, splashy sound of reverb.’ No! We created the reverb because Dick Dale did not have a natural vibrato on his voice. I wanted to sustain my notes while singing. So we copied the Hammond organ, which had a tank in it. We took the tank out, rewired it, and had an outboard reverb! It was for the vocal. Our first album, Surfer’s Choice, sold over 88,000 albums – locally! That’s like more than 4 million today. Dick Dale was already established as King of the Surf Guitar, and that album did not have reverb on it. It wasn’t even invented!”

From Songfacts

Variations of the song have appeared in numerous movies, but when Dick Dale’s version was used to open the 1994 movie Pulp Fiction, it revived both Dale’s career and the Surf Music genre. Dale earned his first appearance on The Late Show with David Letterman a few weeks after the movie came out, and became a popular live act once again. His success in the ’60s was limited to America, but this time he was welcomed in the UK, as well as Australia and Japan, where his sound caught on and he made tour appearances for the first time. Dale’s “Miserlou” was also used in the movies Space Jam and Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle.

Dale included a traditional version of the song on his 1993 album Tribal Thunder as a hidden track (you can thank Nirvana for the hidden track craze of the early ’90s). Dale was showing his producer how the song was done originally, and they decided to include it with the set.

Dick Dale got his start in the late ’50s playing with his band The Del-Tones for surfers at the Rendezvous Ballroom in Balboa, California. With authorities concerned about the mix of young people and guitars, one of the requirements at the Ballroom was that every male patron wear a tie, so the audience was often made up of barefooted guys in surfer garb wearing ties that were handed out at the door.

This was used on Friends when Ross, Chandler, and Joey squared off against Monica, Rachel, and Phoebe in a game of touch football in the 1996 Thanksgiving episode “The One With The Football.”

…

Beach Boys – Don’t Worry Baby

This is my fourth song pick for Hanspostcard’s song draft. The Beach Boys Don’t Worry Baby.

Those who follow my blog and know me…know I like older music than my generation. I was once told by a co-worker that it’s “unnatural” to like music before you were born…which I think is hilarious and totally idiotic. I go through phases with music. When Hans and I talk about The Beatles I tend to listen to them and nothing else for a while…and the same with other bloggers.

I have done this my entire life…I get into something and I’m obsessed. I never really discard anything after my obsession dies down…it keeps coming back and in the case of the Beatles and others… never goes away.

In my senior year of high school I went through a surf music phase. I wore Hawaiian shirts and coco butter everywhere. I was looking forward to the Florida trip my friends and I were planning in spring. I would roll in the high school parking lot with Jan and Dean, Dick Dale, or The Beach Boys blaring out of my Mustang. I had a hell of a stereo system in my car. When Jan and Dean’s “Surf City” can drown out The Scorpions coming from another car…the system is loud.

During this time surf music hit the musical spot in me. The musicians on those surf records were incredible. This song dug deeper…much deeper. I still listen to the song. Don’t Worry Baby is about a girl and a car…when you are an 18 year old boy…a girl and a car are the two most important topics…at least they were to me. It has always stuck with me and I’ll never forget that year. My first serious girlfriend, a 66 Mustang, and Don’t Worry Baby… 1985 was a good year.

We did go on that spring trip to Cocoa Beach Florida. A fifteen-hour drive one way in a Celica Sports Coupe with 4 guys packed in there. We picked the name (Cocoa Beach) because it sounded great…Yep pretty stupid because we could have driven 7 hours to Pensacola instead.

It was written by Brian Wilson and DJ Roger Christian. This was conceived as a follow-up to the Ronettes #2 hit “Be My Baby.” When Brian Wilson heard the Be My Baby on the radio, he wondered aloud if he could match it. Wilson’s wife Marilyn reassured him, saying, “Don’t Worry, Baby.”

This is pop perfection by the Beach Boys.

Don’t Worry Baby

Well it’s been building up inside of me
For oh I don’t know how long
I don’t know why
But I keep thinking
Something’s bound to go wrong

But she looks in my eyes
And makes me realize
And she says “don’t worry, baby”
Don’t worry, baby
Don’t worry, baby
Everything will turn out alright

Don’t worry, baby
Don’t worry, baby
Don’t worry, baby

I guess I should’ve kept my mouth shut
When I started to brag about my car
But I can’t back down now because
I pushed the other guys too far

She makes me come alive
And makes me wanna drive
When she says “don’t worry, baby”
Don’t worry, baby
Don’t worry, baby
Everything will turn out alright

Don’t worry, baby
Don’t worry, baby
Don’t worry, baby

She told me “Baby, when you race today
Just take along my love with you
And if you knew how much I loved you
Baby, nothing could go wrong with you”

Oh what she does to me
When she makes love to me
And she says “don’t worry, baby”
Don’t worry, baby
Don’t worry, baby
Everything will turn out alright

Don’t worry, baby
Don’t worry, baby
Don’t worry, baby

Twilight Zone – Long Distance Call

★★★★★ March 31, 1961 Season 2 Episode 22

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

This one is one of my favorites. It’s dark and it still works today. It’s a great episode and features Bill Mumy as little Billy Bayles who just lost his grandmother or did he? The grandmother played by Lili Darvas tried to live through Billy vicariously in many ways and ignored what the mother of the child said or thought. You can feel the tension between the grandmother and her daughter in law.

This can happen in a family and cause trouble so it made the episode much more relatable. The darkness of the episode is shocking considering the time it was made.

**SPOILERS** below

This show was really heavy. It addressed the loss of a grandparent and two attempted suicides of a five year old boy. Not your average show in the 60s or now for that matter. Who knew a toy telephone could be so damn frightening? That was one determined grandmother…she wasn’t letting go of Billy even in the afterlife.

This episode is videotaped and it benefits from it…adding to eerie feeling.

Bill Mumy would appear in three Twilight Zones. He would later become known in the TV show Lost In Space.

This show was written by Charles Beaumont, Bill Idelson, and Rod Serling

Rod Serling’s Opening Narration:

As must be obvious, this is a house hovered over by Mr. Death, an omnipresent player to the third and final act of every life. And it’s been said, and probably rightfully so, that what follows this life is one of the unfathomable mysteries, an area of darkness which we, the living, reserve for the dead—or so it is said. For in a moment, a child will try to cross that bridge which separates light and shadow, and, of course, he must take the only known route, that indistinct highway through the region we call The Twilight Zone.

Summary

Billy Bayles loves his Grandma Bayles and likes the present she’s given him, a toy telephone which she says will allow them to communicate forever. Grandma Bayles is ill however and soon dies but Billy claims he can speak to her on their special telephone. When he tells his parents that she wants him to join her, wherever she’s gone to, they pay no mind. When he throws himself in front of their neighbor’s car however, it all gets deadly serious.

Rod Serling’s Closing Narration:

A toy telephone, an act of faith, a set of improbable circumstances, all combine to probe a mystery, to fathom a depth, to send a facet of light into a dark after-region, to be believed or disbelieved, depending on your frame of reference. A fact or a fantasy, a substance or a shadow—but all of it very much a part of The Twilight Zone.

CAST

Rod Serling…Narrator
Philip Abbott…Chris Bayles
Lili Darvas…Grandma Bayles
Patricia Smith…Sylvia Bayles
Bill Mumy…Billy Bayles
Jenny Maxwell…Shirley
Reid Hammond…Mr. Peterson
Henry Hunter…Dr. Unger
Lew Brown…Fireman
Arch Johnson…Fireman

…

Twilight Zone – The Prime Mover

★★★★ March 24, 1961 Season 2 Episode 21

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

Buddy Ebsen who plays Jimbo Cobb has always been a favorite of mine. The soon to be Beverly Hillbilly star and the original Tin Man does a great job in this Twilight Zone. It is a good episode and keep an eye out for a car crash near the start…the crash was from the movie 1958 movie Thunder Road. Buddy has a talent (Psychokinesis) of being able to move things with his mind. Jimbo has a level head unlike his greedy friend Ace Larsen.

As Rod says in the closing narration… Some people possess talent, others are possessed by it. When that happens, the talent becomes a curse…which I thought was great.

The Prime Mover was based on an unpublished story by George Clayton Johnson. Explains Johnson… Charles Beaumont could get an assignment, he needed a story, he didn’t have a story, none of his stories seemed suitable. He therefore bought from me my story. He paid me six hundred dollars for it. My name never ended up on the screen, it was an accident of production for which Buck Houghton apologized. I felt bad that my name wasn’t on it, but I thought it was a good show.

The slot machine seen at the first of the show was in the episode The Fever.

This show was written by Charles Beaumont, Rod Serling and George Clayton Johnson (uncredited)

Rod Serling’s Opening Narration:

Portrait of a man who thinks and thereby gets things done. Mr. Jimbo Cobb might be called a prime mover, a talent which has to be seen to be believed. In just a moment he’ll show his friends, and you, how he keeps both feet on the ground, and his head in the Twilight Zone.

Summary

Ace Larson owns a roadside diner. It’s a dreary existence for him, his girlfriend Kitty Cavanaugh, and his friend and employee Jimbo Cobb. Through a serious accident just outside his diner, Ace learns for the first time that Jimbo has telekinetic powers. Ace the gambler sees an easy way to make his fortune, and the three of them set off for Las Vegas. Jimbo has little trouble making roulette balls fall on the right number or making any point with a pair of dice. Ace learns the hard way, however, that there can be too much of a good thing.

Rod Serling’s Closing Narration:

Some people possess talent, others are possessed by it. When that happens, the talent becomes a curse. Jimbo Cobb knew, right from the beginning, but before Ace Larsen learned that simple truth, he had to take a short trip – through The Twilight Zone.

CAST

Rod Serling…Narrator
Dane Clark…Ace Larsen
Buddy Ebsen…Jimbo Cobb
Jane Burgess…Sheila
Christine White…Kitty Cavanaugh
William Keene…Desk clerk
Nesdon Booth…Big Phil Nolan
Clancy Cooper…Trucker
Robert Riordan…Hotel Manager
Joe Scott…Croupier

…

Twilight Zone – Static

★★★1/2 March 10, 1960 Season 2 Episode 20

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

Robert Emhardt as Professor Ackerman does a great job in this. I have watched many shows with this great character actor. Dean Jagger is very good in the pivotal role of Ed Lindsay.

I’ve always liked this episode. The episode plays heavily into nostalgia and someone stuck there. People today would probably not think of old radio shows but it still works and with the radio it gives it a different feeling than an old tv show would. Now with Satellite radio you could live in the past with radio and it would not be strange.

When you watch something you have to keep in mind what time period it was filmed in. It relies on nostalgia a little too much but I did like the episode and it’s worth watching. This one was one of the episodes on videotape and unlike the scarier ones…this one suffers from it.

Static was based on a story by OCee Ritch (I’ve seen his name spelt OCeo and OCee), a friend of Charles Beaumont. The idea for it came from a party given by Richard Matheson attended by both Ritch and a fan of old-time radio who performed bits of radio nostalgia.

This show was written by Charles Beaumont, Oceo Ritch and Rod Serling

Rod Serling’s Opening Narration:

No one ever saw one quite like that, because that’s a very special sort of radio. In its day, circa 1935, its type was one of the most elegant consoles on the market. Now with its fabric-covered speakers, its peculiar yellow dials, its serrated knobs, it looks quaint and a little strange. Mr. Ed Lindsay is going to find out how strange very soon when he tunes in to the Twilight Zone.

Summary

Ed Lindsay has been living in the same boarding house for over 20 years and he has become an embittered old man. He doesn’t like how the world has changed around him and his crotchety behavior has made him certainly the most disliked man there. When he turns on his old radio however, he gets music from the 1940’s on a station that, it turns out, has been off the air for 15 years. There’s a reason he hears the music however, a reason a fellow boarder reminds him of.

Rod Serling’s Closing Narration:

Around and around she goes, and where she stops nobody knows. All Ed Lindsay knows is that he desperately wanted a second chance and he finally got it, through a strange and wonderful time machine called a radio, in the Twilight Zone.

CAST

Rod Serling…Narrator
Dean Jagger…Ed Lindsay
Carmen Mathews…Vinnie
Robert Emhardt…Professor Ackerman
Arch W. Johnson…Roscoe Bragg
Alice Pearce…Mrs. Nielson
Clegg Hoyt…Shopkeeper (the “junk dealer”)
Stephen Talbot…Boy
Lillian O’Malley…Miss Meredith
Pat O’Malley…Mr. Llewellyn
Eddie Marr…Real Estate Pitchman (uncredited)
Bob Crane…the disc jockey (uncredited)
Roy Rowan…the radio announcer (uncredited)

…

Twilight Zone – Mr. Dingle, the Strong

★★★1/2 March 3, 1961 Season 2 Episode 19

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

This is a comedic episode that does have humorous moments. This is another one Serling wrote about human nature. Burgess Meredith plays Luther Dingle, a vaccum salesmen, who is pretty much a human punching bag. He lets people walk over him like the character played by Don Rickles . He is given the gift of strength by aliens and is observed. He then proceeds to over use the gift.

A year before, in an article about The Twilight Zone, a reporter had mistakenly referred to the main character of Mr. Denton on Doomsday as Mr. Dingle. Serling must have liked the name, for he created Mr. Dingle, the Strong. The casting as always is superb… it’s a very entertaining episode.

In this episode and many others like The Twilight Zone: Will the Real Martian Please Stand Up?, a majority of the actors are smoking due to the demand of one of the Twilight Zone’s sponsors, a cigarette company.

This show was written by Rod Serling

Rod Serling’s Opening Narration:

Uniquely American institution known as the neighborhood bar. Reading left to right are Mr. Anthony O’Toole, proprietor, who waters his drinks like geraniums but who stands foursquare for peace and quiet and for booths for ladies. This is Mr. Joseph J. Callahan, an unregistered bookie, whose entire life is any sporting event with two sides and a set of odds. His idea of a meeting at the summit is any dialogue between a catcher and a pitcher with more than one man on base. And this animated citizen is every anonymous bettor who ever dropped rent money on a horse race, a prize fight, or a floating crap game, and who took out his frustrations and his insolvency on any vulnerable fellow barstool companion within arm’s and fist’s reach. And this is Mr. Luther Dingle, a vacuum cleaner salesman whose volume of business is roughly that of a valet at a hobo convention. He’s a consummate failure in almost everything but is a good listener and has a prominent jaw. And these two unseen gentlemen are visitors from outer space. They are about to alter the destiny of Luther Dingle by leaving him a legacy, the kind you can’t hardly find no more. In just a moment, a sad-faced perennial punching bag, who missed even the caboose of life’s gravy train, will take a short constitutional into that most unpredictable region that we refer to as The Twilight Zone.

Summary

Luther Dingle is a meek and mild-mannered vacuum cleaner salesman. He spends some time in a bar but always seems to be in the middle of others arguments and always seems to get the worst of it. Courtesy of visiting – but invisible – aliens, he is given great strength, some 300 times greater than that of a normal human being. Dingle becomes something of a local celebrity but just how long will his powers last?

Rod Serling’s Closing Narration:

Exit Mr. Luther Dingle, former vacuum cleaner salesman, strongest man on Earth, and now mental giant. These latter powers will very likely be eliminated before too long, but Mr. Dingle has an appeal to extraterrestrial notetakers as well as to frustrated and insolvent bet losers. Offhand, I’d say that he was in for a great deal of extremely odd periods, simply because there are so many inhabited planets who send down observers, and also because, of course, Mr. Dingle lives his life with one foot in his mouth—and the other in The Twilight Zone.

CAST

Rod Serling…Narrator
Burgess Meredith…Luther Dingle
Don Rickles…Bettor
James Westerfield…Anthony O’Toole
Edward Ryder…Callahan
James Millhollin…Abernathy
Douglas Spencer…1st Martian
Michael Fox…2nd Martian
Donald Losby…1st Venusian
Greg Irwin…2nd Venusian
Douglas Evans…Man
Phil Arnold…Man
Frank Richards…Man
Jo Ann Dixon…Woman with carriage
Jay Hector…Boy wearing white helmet
Bob Duggan…Photographer
Robert McCord…Customer

…

Twilight Zone – The Odyssey of Flight 33

★★★★★ February 24, 1960 Season 2 Episode 18

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

This one is one of my all time favorite Twilight Zone episodes. It is a time travel episode and this time it gives you a reason for the time travel. After picking up a freak tail wind that accelerates the plane past three thousand knots and through a shock wave, the crew of Global 33 is unable to raise anyone on the radio. Descending below the cloud cover to get a site reading, they see a Manhattan Island devoid of buildings. They are back in time but when?

Something happened to Serling to inspired him to write the episode… There was some mail on his desk at the production company, and on the top was an envelope from American Airlines, and he opened that one first. It was a brochure offering a mockup of a 707 passenger cabin to any studio that was going to film a scene. It was something they used in stewardess training and they decided to build another one. They had this one on the West Coast and they were going to rent it out or sell it. This gave Serling the idea…he even consulted with pilots to get the dialog accurate in the cockpit.

SPOILER

The most expensive piece of film ever shot for Twilight Zone was the dinosaur watching the plane go by..

This show was written by Rod Serling

Rod Serling’s Opening Narration:

You’re riding on a jet airliner on route from London to New York. You’re at 35,000 feet atop an overcast and roughly fifty-five minutes from Idlewild Airport. But what you’ve seen occur inside the cockpit of this plane is no reflection on the aircraft or the crew. It’s a safe, well-engineered, perfectly designed machine. And the men you’ve just met are a trained, cool, highly efficient team. The problem is simply that the plane is going too fast, and there is nothing within the realm of knowledge or at least logic to explain it. Unbeknownst to passenger and crew, this airplane is heading into an uncharted region well off the beaten track of commercial travelers—it’s moving into The Twilight Zone. What you’re about to see we call “The Odyssey of Flight 33.”

Summary

Global Flight 33 is en route from London to New York in what appears to be a routine flight in a modern jetliner. Suddenly however, the jet’s speed increases to an incredible 3000 knots and they arrive in New York rather quickly. Neither the captain or his well-trained crew can explain what happened – a strange tail-wind perhaps – but they are certainly not prepared for what they find as they survey the land below them.

Rod Serling’s Closing Narration:

A Global jet airliner, en route from London to New York on an uneventful afternoon in the year 1961, but now reported overdue and missing, and by now, searched for on land, sea, and air by anguished human beings, fearful of what they’ll find. But you and I know where she is. You and I know what’s happened. So if some moment, any moment, you hear the sound of jet engines flying atop the overcast—engines that sound searching and lost—engines that sound desperate—shoot up a flare or do something. That would be Global 33 trying to get home—from The Twilight Zone.

CAST

Rod Serling … Narrator / Self – Host (uncredited)
John Anderson … Capt. ‘Skipper’ Farver
Paul Comi … 1st Officer John Craig
Sandy Kenyon … Navigator Hatch
Wayne Heffley … 2nd Officer Wyatt
Harp McGuire … Flight Engineer Purcell
Betty Garde … Passenger
Beverly Brown … Janie
Nancy Rennick … Paula
Jay Overholts … Passenger
Lester Fletcher … RAF Man
Robert McCord … Passenger (uncredited)

…

Twilight Zone – Twenty-Two

★★★★ February 10, 1961 Season 2 Episode 17

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

I like how diverse the Twilight Zone was from week to week. The last episode was a good comedic episode Penny For Your Thoughts…and this one is anything but comedic. I know some people who say the Twilight Zone really scares them. This one would fit that bill. It is one of the most frightening episodes of the show. This is one of the videotaped episodes that benefits from it. It gives it an eerie look that only helps the story.

Rod Serling adapted Twenty-Two from a short story in Famous Ghost Stories, edited by Bennett Cerf. In the original, an attractive young New York girl visits the Carolina plantation of some distant relatives. In adapting the story, Serling kept the basics but changed the setting from plantation to hospital and the vision from coach to morgue.

Arlene Martel (credited here as Arlene Sax) plays the nurse in the morgue who taunts Liz Powell with the “room for one more,” line. In order to make her look more sinister, they used makeup to give her a somewhat demonic look, complete with arched eyebrows.

This show was written by Rod Serling and Bennett Cerf

Rod Serling’s Opening Narration:

This is Miss Liz Powell. She’s a professional dancer and she’s in the hospital as a result of overwork and nervous fatigue. And at this moment we have just finished walking with her in a nightmare. In a moment she’ll wake up and we’ll remain at her side. The problem here is that both Miss Powell and you will reach a point where it might be difficult to decide which is reality and which is nightmare, a problem uncommon perhaps but rather peculiar to the Twilight Zone.

Summary

Liz Powell – an exotic dancer – is suffering from exhaustion and is being treated at hospital prior to a scheduled engagement in Miami. She has a recurring nightmare where she takes the elevator down to the morgue and is invited in by an ominous-sounding nurse, who tells her, ‘room for one more’. Her doctor assures her there’s nothing wrong with her physically and she’s just overworked and tired. To Liz, the nightmare’s very real. The doctor suggests she try to break the pattern to see if she can get them to stop. The next time she has the dream, she travels down to the morgue but the dream goes off as before. With her medical issues taken care of, and her Miami engagement a day away, it’s time for Liz to leave. But it’s her nightmare over?

Rod Serling’s Closing Narration:

Miss Elizabeth Powell, professional dancer. Hospital diagnosis: acute anxiety brought on by overwork and fatigue. Prognosis: with rest and care, she’ll probably recover. But the cure to some nightmares is not to be found in known medical journals. You look for it under ‘potions for bad dreams’ – to be found in the Twilight Zone.

CAST

Rod Serling … Narrator / Self – Host (uncredited)
Barbara Nichols … Liz Powell
Jonathan Harris … The Doctor
Fredd Wayne … Barney Kamener
Arlene Martel … Nurse in Morgue (as Arline Sax)
Mary Adams … Day Nurse
Norma Connolly … Night Nurse
Wesley Lau … Airline Agent
Angus Duncan … Ticket Clerk
Carole Conn … Sax Double (uncredited)
Jay Overholts … PA Announcer (voice) (uncredited)
Joseph Sargent … Ticket Clerk (uncredited)

…

Cutting Crew – (I Just) Died In Your Arms ….Power Pop Friday

I hardly ever post #1 songs but when this song came out our radio station liked it. No they LOVED IT. I kid you not it was on every hour. It got to be a running joke with my friends on how many times we would hear this song in an afternoon.

It was either this song or the Outfield song “Your Love”…they were a year apart but they seemed joined at the hip on our rock radio station. The two songs had distinctive openings…Oh I, I just died in your arms tonight and Josie’s on a vacation far away…

Our band was playing in a bar at this time and we would just play the opening line and mock it… Oh I, I just died in your arms tonight It must have been something I ate… everyone applauded and laughed because they were as tired of it as we were.

After a few years I hardly heard it anymore and then something happened…I started to like it…a lot! It is a fun 80s style power pop song that I probably liked when I first heard it but I heard it too many times back then. It was written by Cutting Crew lead singer Nick Van Eede.

They formed in London in 1985 and hit big with their first album Broadcast with two hit singles.

The song was huge…it peaked at #1 in the Billboard 100, #1 in Canada, #4 in Canada, and #50 in New Zealand.

Nick Van Eede:“Yes, I cannot tell a lie. It’s a song written about my girlfriend (who is actually the mother of my daughter). We got back together for one night after a year apart and I guess there were some fireworks but all the time tinged with a feeling of ‘should I really be doing this?’ Hence the lyric, ‘I should have walked away.

I know it sounds corny but I awoke that morning and wrote the basic lyrics within an hour and wrote and recorded the demo completely within three days.”

From Songfacts

Richard Branson started Virgin Records in England in 1972, but it wasn’t until 1987 and the release of Cutting Crew’s Broadcast album that Virgin broke through in America. Nick Van Eede told us about his experience with the record company: “We were signed to Siren records which was part of Virgin so we were always a little bit on the outside but it was the ’80s and they certainly put their money where their mouth was. We were flown to New York for the initial recordings of the album and this is where we got a great recording of ‘I’ve Been In Love Before.’ Then we were flown to Australia to shoot videos… all a bit crazy really. We gave them their first US #1 with ‘(I Just) Died In Your Arms’ but the company soon outgrew us as music stars were changing in the early ’90s. We wrote one slightly veiled song having a pop at US A&R antics in our ‘Between A Rock And A Hard Place’ from The Scattering (1989) album. I sang, ‘I got a brick but I can’t find a window,’ as they continually blocked our album’s release for months making us lose so much momentum.”

Mika used a great deal of this song on his 2007 track “Relax (Take It Easy).” Says Nick: “I know as well as any other song writer that these things can happen and its just the way of the composing world. I am completely confident Mika stumbled in to it accidentally and I am proud to be given the co write… Kerching!!!”

This song has been sampled or interpolated by a number of rap and R&B artists. Jay-Z did a remake of the song, and Amerie used it on her track “I Just Died.”

This was used in the Stranger Things episode “Suzie, Do You Copy?” (2019) and the Cold Case episode “Lonely Hearts” (2006). It also appears in these movies:

The Lego Batman Movie (2017)
Hot Tub Time Machine (2010)
Hot Rod (2007)
Never Been Kissed (1999)

In a 2020 Planters commercial that aired during the Super Bowl in 2020, Matt Walsh and Wesley Snipes are riding the Peanutmobile, singing along as this song plays on the radio. Mr. Peanut is driving. When he swerves to avoid an armadillo, the vehicle goes off a cliff and the three are left hanging by a tree. To save the others, Mr. Peanut plunges to a fiery death. His elegy reads: “Mr. Peanut. 1916-2020.”

(I Just) Died In Your Arms

Oh I, I just died in your arms tonight
It must have been something you said
I just died in your arms tonight

I keep lookin’ for somethin’ I can’t get
Broken hearts lie all around me
And I don’t see an easy way to get out of this
Her diary, it sits by the bedside table
The curtains are closed, the cats in the cradle
Who would’ve thought that a boy like me could come to this

Oh I, I just died in your arms tonight
It must’ve been something you said
I just died in your arms tonight
Oh I, I just died in your arms tonight
It must’ve been some kind of kiss
I should’ve walked away
I should’ve walked away

Is there any just cause for feelin’ like this?
On the surface, I’m a name on a list
I try to be discreet, but then blow it again
I’ve lost and found, it’s my final mistake
She’s loving by proxy, no give and all take
‘Cause I’ve been thrilled to fantasy one too many times

It was a long hot night
She made it easy, she made it feel right
But now it’s over, the moment has gone
I followed my hands not my head, I know I was wrong

Oh I, I just died in your arms tonight
It must’ve been something you said
I just died in your arms tonight
I, I just died in your arms tonight
It must’ve been some kind of kiss
I should’ve walked away
I should’ve walked away

…

Twilight Zone – A Penny for Your Thoughts

★★★★1/2 February 3, 1961 Season 2 Episode 16

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

This one is a comedic episode where everything goes right. It’s well written and acted. The 2000 movie What Women Want is related to this episode. Dick York is fantastic in this episode. One of two consecutive Twilight Zone episodes to star a future Bewitched regular, the previous episode The Invaders starred Agnes Moorehead.

This was the first of George Clayton Johnsons four Twilight Zone scripts and was his lightest story, but the easy tone doesn’t detract from it. The episode is charming and funny, and it does have a point…that people do things without thinking about them and think things without having the slightest intention of doing them.

The title comes from the old English expression “A penny of your thoughts” which dates back to John Heywood’s compilation of proverbs “A Dialogue Containing the Number in Effect of all the Proverbs in the English Tongue.”

George Clayton Johnson: Rod came through with a couple of people, visitors that he had brought on, and he saw me and Lola (wife) and he stopped to introduce us to these people. And his attitude toward me was one of great respect. It wasn’t like, Tm Rod Serling and this is one of the flunkies on the set, it was more like, Look, here’s the man who wrote this absolutely wizard thing that were making right now. It really built my ego and made me feel worthwhile.

This show was written by Rod Serling and George Clayton Johnson

Rod Serling’s Opening Narration:

Mr. Hector B. Poole, resident of the Twilight Zone. Flip a coin and keep flipping it. What are the odds? Half the time it will come up heads, half the time tails. But in one freakish chance in a million, it’ll land on its edge. Mr. Hector B. Poole, a bright human coin – on his way to the bank.

Summary

Bank clerk Hector Poole develops telepathic powers after tossing a coin to a newspaper vendor that miraculously stands on its edge. He discovers the positive and negative effects of listening in on other peoples thoughts, plans and fantasies

Rod Serling’s Closing Narration:

One time in a million, a coin will land on its edge, but all it takes to knock it over is a vagrant breeze, a vibration, or a slight blow. Hector B. Poole, a human coin, on edge for a brief time – in the Twilight Zone.

CAST

Rod Serling … Narrator / Self – Host (uncredited)
Dick York … Hector B. Poole
June Dayton … Helen Turner
Dan Tobin … E.M. Bagby
Cyril Delevanti … L.J. Smithers
Hayden Rorke … Sykes
James Nolan … Jim
Frank London … Driver
Anthony Ray … Newsboy
Patrick Waltz … Brand
Aileen Arnold … Pedestrian (uncredited)
Sig Frohlich … Pedestrian (uncredited)

…

Twilight Zone – The Invaders

★★★★★ January 27, 1961 Season 2 Episode 15

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

It’s so strange because of my age I remember Agnes Moorehead primarily as the Bewitched mother in law Endora. She was a great actress and was in Orson Welle’s stock company long before she was a sitcom star. She stars in this Twilight Zone and does a one woman show with a little help from special effects. I can’t say enough about her acting in this. She plays an old lonely woman and creates all of the suspense and drama to this episode. It’s worth it just to see her work at her craft.

This one is a Twilight Zone classic. The only complaint I’ve heard about this episode is that the special effects could have been a little better. The effects get the point across with no problem…so I see no problem and the episode is great.

When Agnes Moorehead learned she had no dialogue in this episode, she initially refused to do it. Rod Serling and director Douglas Heyes convinced her. Moorhead’s solo performance drew on the mime skills she had developed when, as a young actress, she studied with legendary pantomime artist Marcel Marceau in Paris.

As in other episodes, this one uses the United Planets Cruiser C57D spacecraft from Forbidden Planet , both of which were produced by MGM.

This show was written by Richard Matheson and Rod Serling

Rod Serling’s Opening Narration:

This is one of the out-of-the-way places, the unvisited places, bleak, wasted, dying. This is a farmhouse, handmade, crude, a house without electricity or gas, a house untouched by progress. This is the woman who lives in the house, a woman who’s been alone for many years, a strong, simple woman whose only problem up until this moment has been that of acquiring enough food to eat, a woman about to face terror, which is even now coming at her from – the Twilight Zone.

Summary

An old woman who lives alone in a ramshackle farm house comes face to face with alien invaders. She hears something on her roof and then finds a flying saucer, perhaps six or seven feet across from which emerges two small robots. She fights them as best she can and eventually succeeds in destroying their ship. The nature of the invaders however is not immediately obvious however.

Rod Serling’s Closing Narration:

These are the invaders, the tiny beings from the tiny place called Earth, who would take the giant step across the sky to the question marks that sparkle and beckon from the vastness of the universe only to be imagined. The invaders…who found out that a one-way ticket to the stars beyond has the ultimate price tag…and we have just seen it entered in a ledger that covers all the transactions in the universe…a bill stamped “Paid in Full” and to be found unfiled in the Twilight Zone.

CAST

Rod Serling … Narrator / Self – Host (uncredited)
Agnes Moorehead … Woman

Twilight Zone – The Whole Truth

★★★ January 20, 1961 Season 2 Episode 14

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

This is one of the comedy episodes. Imagine if you will…a car salesman that has to tell the truth. What a great world that would be. The movie Liar, Liar was probably influenced or based on this episode. It was shot on videotape and it unfortunately is very obvious. The outside doesn’t look like outside and it resembles the look of a soap opera. This is the one videotape episode that showed all of the limitations of that format. The only thing it does do is accent the terrible cars that he has to sell.

The casting again is good. Jack Carson plays Harvey Hunnicut the prototypical cheap used car salesman. He buys an old car and the car is haunted…who ever owns it must tell the truth. The acting like always is good but the presentation and some of the plot seems forced.

John F. Kennedy was sworn in as the 35th President of the United States at the Inaugural ceremonies held in Washington the afternoon of the very day this episode originally aired.

This show was written by Rod Serling

Rod Serling’s Opening Narration:

This, as the banner already has proclaimed, is Mr. Harvey Hunnicut, an expert on commerce and con jobs, a brash, bright, and larceny-loaded wheeler and dealer who, when the good Lord passed out a conscience, must have gone for a beer and missed out. And these are a couple of other characters in our story: a little old man and a Model A car – but not just any old man and not just any Model A. There’s something very special about the both of them. As a matter of fact, in just a few moments, they’ll give Harvey Hunnicut something that he’s never experienced before. Through the good offices of a little magic, they will unload on Mr. Hunnicut the absolute necessity to tell the truth. Exactly where they come from is conjecture, but as to where they’re heading for, this we know, because all of them – and you – are on the threshold of the Twilight Zone.

Summary

Harvey Hunnicut is the stereotypical used car salesman: a fast talker who, to put it politely, is prone to stretching the truth about the cars he sells. He buys a used car from an old gentleman paying him far less that it’s worth. After the deal, the old man tells him the car is haunted. Soon, Harvey finds that he can only tell the truth. Not only to customers but even to his wife as well. When he tries to sell the man’s car he finds the perfect customer.

Rod Serling’s Closing Narration:

Couldn’t happen, you say? Far-fetched? Way-out? Tilt-off-center? Possible. But the next time you buy an automobile, if it happens to look as if it had just gone through the Battle of the Marne, and the seller is ready to throw into the bargain one of his arms, be particularly careful in explaining to the boss about your grandmother’s funeral, when you are actually at Chavez Ravine watching the Dodgers. It’ll be a fact that you are the proud possessor of an instrument of truth – manufactured and distributed by an exclusive dealer – in The Twilight Zone.

CAST

Rod Serling … Narrator / Self – Host (uncredited)
Jack Carson … Harvey Hunnicut
Loring Smith … Honest Luther Grimbley
George Chandler … Old Man
Jack Ging … Young Man
Arte Johnson … Irv
Patrick Westwood … The Premier’s Aide
Lee Sabinson … Nikita Khrushchev
Nan Peterson … Young Woman

Twilight Zone – Back There

★★★★ January 13, 1961 Season 2 Episode 13

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

In this episode Russell Johnson makes his second appearance on The Twilight Zone. If you went back in time could you changed fixed events? We will find out in this episode. I like the time travel episodes and this one is no exception. I like the idea they built it around. This episode takes place on April 14, 1961 and April 14, 1865.

It’s not a perfect episode but a fun time travel adventure. This episode is a hard one to rate. It just doesn’t gel like some of the others do.

The character Pete Corrigan mentions HG Wells in relation to his story The Time Machine, which had also just been made into a movie the year before this episode.

This show was written by Rod Serling

Rod Serling’s Opening Narration:

Witness a theoretical argument, Washington, D.C., the present. Four intelligent men talking about an improbable thing like going back in time. A friendly debate revolving around a simple issue: could a human being change what has happened before? Interesting and theoretical, because who ever heard of a man going back in time? Before tonight, that is, because this is—The Twilight Zone.

Summary

After debating with a member of his Washington club whether you could go back in time and change major events, Pete Corrigan seems to go back to April 15, 1865 the night Abraham Lincoln was assassinated. He tries his best to warn the authorities of what will happen in a few hours time but it all falls on deaf ears. One person seems interested in what he has to say, but that person may have his own reasons for his behavior.

Rod Serling’s Closing Narration:

Mr. Peter Corrigan, lately returned from a place ‘back there’, a journey into time with highly questionable results, proving on one hand that the threads of history are woven tightly, and the skein of events cannot be undone, but on the other hand, there are small fragments of tapestry that can be altered. Tonight’s thesis to be taken, as you will—in The Twilight Zone.

CAST

Rod Serling … Narrator / Self – Host (uncredited)
Russell Johnson … Pete Corrigan
Paul Hartman … Police Sergeant
Bartlett Robinson … William
John Lasell … Jonathan Wellington
Jimmy Lydon … Patrolman (as James Lydon)
Raymond Bailey … Millard
Raymond Greenleaf … Jackson
John Eldredge … Whittaker
James Gavin … Policeman
Jean Inness … Mrs. Landers
Lew Brown … Lieutenant
Carol Eve Rossen … Lieutenant’s Girl (as Carol Rossen)
Nora Marlowe … Chambermaid
Pat O’Malley … Attendant
Fred Kruger … 1865 Attendant (uncredited)

Twilight Zone – Dust

★★★★ January 6, 1961 Season 2 Episode 12

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

The characters do a good job of showing the listlessness of the town. It’s set in a miserable ghost town that doesn’t know it’s one. The townspeople have no future and they know it. Sun and dust are the only two things these people have and will ever know.

This is a powerful episode all about context. To break it down…a drunk young man (Gallegos) driving a horse and wagon accidently kills a child. Normally under Rod Serling he would be an automatic villain but in this episode the context is different. There is a gray area in this forsaken town. The twist comes suddenly and the episode is over and leaves you thinking.

The acting was superb in this… Thomas Gomez plays Peter Sykes…a despicable man. The worse kind of opportunist you can imagine. John Larch plays the sheriff who sees things for what they are and is one of the few sympathetic characters in this episode. He is depressed by the thought of Gallegos being hanged and believes that he does not deserve to be hanged but knows he has to do his job.

This show was written by Rod Serling

Rod Serling’s Opening Narration:

There was a village. Built of crumbling clay and rotting wood. And it squatted ugly under a broiling sun like a sick and mangy animal wanting to die. This village had a virus, shared by its people. It was the germ of squalor, of hopelessness, of a loss of faith. With the faithless, the hopeless, the misery-laden, there is time, ample time, to engage in one of the other pursuits of men. They began to destroy themselves.

Summary

In a dusty old-western town, a man’s scheduled to be hanged, after having been found guilty of accidentally killing a child while drunk. His father begs for mercy, but the marshal, has no choice but to proceed with the sentence. Sykes, an odious salesman takes advantage of the situation by selling the desperate father ‘magic dust’, which he says will make the townsfolk take pity upon his son. Soon, the events provide for an unexpected conclusion.

Rod Serling’s Closing Narration:

It was a very small, misery-laden village. On the day of a hanging. And of little historical consequence. And if there’s any moral to it at all, let’s say that in any quest for magic, and any search for sorcery, witchery, legerdemain, first check the human heart. For inside this deep place is a wizardry that costs far more than a few pieces of gold. Tonight’s case in point – in the Twilight Zone.

CAST

Rod Serling … Narrator / Self – Host (uncredited)
Thomas Gomez … Peter Sykes
John Larch … Sheriff Koch
Vladimir Sokoloff … Gallegos
John A. Alonzo … Luís Gallegos (as John Alonso)
Paul Genge … John Canfield
Dorothy Adams … Mrs. Canfield
Duane Grey … Rogers
Jon Lormer … Man (as John Lormer)
Andrea Darvi … Estrelita Gallegos (as Andrea Margolis)
Doug Heyes Jr. … Farmer Boy (as Douglas Heyes)
Nick Borgani … Townsman (uncredited)
Alphonso DuBois … Townsman (uncredited)
Richard LaMarr … Townsman (uncredited)
Frances Lara … Townswoman (uncredited)
Robert McCord … Lawman (uncredited)
Daniel Nunez … Townsman (uncredited)
Paul Ravel … Townsman (uncredited)
Armando Rodriguez … Townsman (uncredited)
Theresa Testa … Townswoman (uncredited)
Dan White … Man #2 (uncredited)