The Twilight Zone

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Fan of the Twilight Zone? Join me, Rod Serling Memorial Foundation board member Paul Gallagher, for daily quotes and facts from TZ, Night Gallery, and Serling's other works. On X as @TheNightGallery and at thenightgallery.org.

"The long speech I had in the opening was three pages. The day of shooting, Rod asked if I could memorize an additional page of dialogue. I said if he could write that fast, I could memorize it. He went off into a corner and started scribbling." Liam Sullivan, TZ's "The Silence"

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"I did a lot of television at the time. I was Tiger in Hogan's Heroes. But do you think I get more fan mail because of my recurring role on Hogan's Heroes? No. Those few days of filming for Twilight Zone brought me more fan mail than any other." — Arlene Martel, "What You Need"

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"With me, it's mostly something I see in the movies. If it's a lousy movie, I don't leave, which I should, but my mind drifts, and something that I see may just trigger an alternative idea." — Richard Matheson, writer of 14 Twilight Zone episodes, on where he got his inspiration

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"My son was a few years younger than Steve [Perry, who played Henry] and came with me to the set. At lunch, I bought Steve a hot dog, and my son got upset because he thought Steve and Kim [Hamilton] were my new family." — Ivan Dixon, star of Twilight Zone's "The Big Tall Wish"

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"I used wide-angle lenses on every shot. I tilted and cocked every scene to give a sense of uneasiness since the cast was making plans to fly to another planet and avoid an impending H-bomb attack." — Richard Bare, director of "Third From the Sun" and six other Twilight Zones

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“The gopher had hair, and it was truly disgusting. They only used the tail, but maybe that was because it was too disgusting, and they feared repercussions from the viewers.” — Billy Mumy on the gopher prop used for Twilight Zone’s “It’s a Good Life” #S3E8

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Twilight Zone's "The Last Flight" was simply titled "Flight" while in production. As writer Richard Matheson later commented, "I liked 'Flight.' It was his flight from his cowardice, and a flight from the past to the future, and so on. 'The Last Flight' sort of narrows it down."

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"I really thought it was a beautiful job of writing and a marvelous job of production. The garland goes out to Old Man Matheson for doing it again!" — from a letter Rod Serling wrote to Richard Matheson about Twilight Zone's "Death Ship" #S4E6

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"On occasion, an actor's agent would tell our casting director, 'He doesn't do TV.' We'd give him a copy of the script anyway and the agent would call back: 'He'll do this one!' We got a lot of positive effect out of the first-rate scripts by Serling." —TZ producer Buck Houghton

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"When we dream, it's totally real to us—nobody can tell us it's not real until we wake up. Then we say, 'Oh, that was a dream—that wasn't reality.' But when we're dreaming it, it's terribly real, and sometimes it can be absolutely frightening." —Dennis Weaver, TZ's "Shadow Play"

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The Twilight Zone was "filmed in black-and-white, and much of the lighting was a noir type of lighting. There were so many dark fantasy ideas, and so many dark science fiction ideas, [that] the series had the feeling of being composed of mini film noirs." — Richard Matheson

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June 28, 1975: Rod Serling dies. “There is just one thing I would like on my headstone — a line that reads only, ‘He left friends’.” ♥️ He was only 50, but he left behind a body of work that in terms of quantity and quality dwarfs that of many writers who lived much longer.

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Ann Blyth looks here like the rest of us felt when we heard the sad news that she had passed away on June 24 at age 98. Of course, Pamela Morris, her character in Twilight Zone's "Queen of the Nile," lives on ... and on ... 😬🫢

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"When I was a kid, I used to dream episodically—in chapters, with a new chapter each night. It was marvelous. As an adult, I've gotten only a few stories from my dreams, but plenty of bizarre plot twists." —Charles Beaumont, writer of "Elegy" and 21 other Twilight Zone episodes

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"Maybe when you go back, you'll find that there are merry-go-rounds and band concerts where you are. Maybe you haven’t been looking in the right place. You’ve been looking behind you. Try looking ahead." #S1E5 Some Father's Day advice from Twilight Zone’s “Walking Distance” ...

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“I loved the script and the challenge of playing a character who starts off as an old man, then is played as a young man, and ends as an old man, and throughout, young and old, seems to be in a state of delirium." — H.M. Wynant on acting in Twilight Zone's "The Howling Man"

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"When I did 'The After Hours,' the whole soundstage was that department store, and there was an eerie feeling because of the immensity of that stage, and the lighting and the darkness beyond. Ah, I still get the chills. But it was a lot of fun working on that." — Anne Francis

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"The Twilight Zone wasn't just a job. It was fun. It tested your imagination all the time. It had good scripts, and that's what really made it work." — James Sheldon, who directed six episodes, including two Billy Mumy classics, "It's a Good Life" and "Long Distance Call"

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"I loved 'Nick of Time' because I thought that both Bill Shatner and the actress who played his wife — Pat Breslin — were wonderful. It played well, was involving and moving, and had a dandy snapper ending to chill the spine." — writer Richard Matheson

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"They've got one more battle to fight. August 1945, Philippine islands. But in reality, it's high noon — in the Twilight Zone." #S3E15 "A Quality of Mercy" stars Dean Stockwell, Albert Salmi, and Leonard Nimoy. A Memorial Day salute to all who have fallen in battle for us.

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