“The Time Element's” success on Westinghouse Desilu Playhouse gave Rod Serling a shot at the science fiction/fantasy series he wanted, but the fight to get it on air was far from over. Besides letting him do stories in the fantastic genres – science fiction, fantasy, and horror – which he loved, Serling thought the show would allow him to sneak the serious and controversial issues he wanted to address past network and sponsor censors by disguising them as what some have called science fiction parables. CBS turned Serling down, not wanting their prestigious and award winning writer associated with “kiddie stuff” which wasn’t worthy of prime time anyway. “The Time Element,” the script Serling intended for the pilot of the rejected series, got used instead on Westinghouse Desilu Playhouse only after Bert Granet and Desi Arnaz over came strong objections. Besides changes which included minimizing and explaining away the fantastic content, Granet and Arnaz had to promise never to ask to do an episode like it again. However, after “The Time Element” garnered a huge and positive response from critics and viewers, CBS changed its mind about allowing Serling to do a SF/fantasy anthology show. He couldn’t simply start creating episodes though. First, he had to create and sell a pilot. If the network and corporate sponsors liked what they saw, Serling could start working on an entire season of episodes. If they didn’t like it, the show would be dead again. That’s the opportunity “The Time Element” gave Serling, the chance to do a pilot, the chance to win approval for a season. What emerged was a cautious trailblazer for the episodes to come. It would be a story whose most obvious theme involved loneliness, but something else, something powerful would be at work in the story as well.
Serling needed a new story for the pilot to replace the already used “Time Element” script. Serling brought in a new script only to have it rejected by William Self, the producer CBS assigned to the project. The script, “The Happy Place,” was about a society which shipped citizens off to a government run death camp when they reached age sixty. Self thought it was a good story but that it wasn’t right for a pilot. It could work further down the line, but the pilot needed to sell the show to corporate sponsors. Many potential sponsors sold products to the elderly. These sponsors could recoil from such a depressing story concerning their target demographic. By Self’s account, Serling didn’t say much. Self wondered if he’d be pushed off the show because Serling’s prestige was such that he could talk the network into giving him a new producer. Instead, Serling simply returned a few days later with another script. Self was amazed at the evident speed with which Serling had written it. Serling said the idea came to him while walking around the empty film set of a town. One peculiarity is that magazines dated October 1958 appear in the script. “The Time Element’s” success didn’t happen until November 1958. There is no date on the first draft script. Did Serling pluck this out of inventory as he did with “The Time Element” or was the date simply a typo or a “speako” considering the way Serling composed his stories? Was Serling aware that the show would air in October 1959 as he wrote the script? In the old days comics and even pulps were often dated in advance. Maybe I'll post about that practice some time. The important thing here is that issues dated for October often didn't show up on the stands in October. They often appeared a few months before. For instance, according to Mike Voiles' Mike's Amazing World of DC Comics, DCs with October 1959 cover dates actually went on sale in August. (Here's an example using a comic I actually have thanks to Mike Bryant, Kimberly and Kari's older brother.
http://www.dcindexes.com/timemachine/comic-details.php?comicid=21232 Apparently, the strategy was to provide a longer shelf life on the newsstands. With references to heat and heat effects, there are many indications in the script and short story that the story takes place in the summer. The telecast, on the other hand, prominently displays a high school sports schedule with game dates in January and February and a book carries a February date on its cover. As for the year 1958 in the script, often times after New Year’s Day, people mistakenly still write the previous year down when they write dates. Given that, it’s understandable that someone would say or write 1958 especially when it was still December 1958 when they wrote their story. (This could have been the typist’s error too.) In that case, Self’s belief that Serling went home and quickly wrote an entirely new script in response to the rejection of “The Happy Place” could still be correct. Otherwise, it would seem Serling had spent time writing an SF/fantasy script even though he had no market for it.
“Where is Everybody?” tracks Mike Ferris, an amnesiac ranging in age from his mid-twenties through mid-thirties depending on which version of Serling’s story you follow, through a town devoid of people. He repeatedly finds evidence of recent human activity, but try as he might, he can’t find the people. He enters a diner where a juke box plays and pies bake. Someone had to have selected the music and started the juke box. The pies have been in long enough to brown, but not long enough to burn. This is a clue to how recently someone was there. Entering the town, Ferris sees no one on the streets or in the buildings he enters. He finds a lit cigar (cigarette in the 1st draft script) which hasn’t had time to burn down to any extent. It’s as if someone just lit it, took a puff, and put it down just before Ferris found it. He finds a shaving brush with fresh lather and a sink running which hasn’t been running long enough to use up all the hot water. Step by step, Ferris rediscovers things about himself, clues to who he is.
There were some hard feelings between Ray Bradbury and Rod Serling over The Twilight Zone. Serling admired Bradbury and wanted him to write for The Twilight Zone. Bradbury set Serling up with Charles Beaumont and Richard Matheson, the author of I Am Legend. Beaumont and Matheson along with Serling were the most important writers on the series. Things didn’t work out with Bradbury though. His first script was rejected. Another was accepted but never produced. Of his efforts, only, “I Sing the Body Electric” was accepted and made. Some believe this was embarrassing for a writer of Bradbury’s stature. While his scripts bounced, Bradbury believed a few episodes written by Serling plagiarized his work. The most famous of these is Serling’s “Walking Distance” which Bradbury claimed Serling lifted from Bradbury’s story “The Black Ferris.” On close examination the charge seems absurd. Bradbury’s story is about carnival criminals who run a Ferris wheel backwards to become younger. Serling’s story is about a man whose car breaks down outside the small town where he grew up. While waiting for a mechanic to fix his car, the man walks into town and meets his boyhood self. Oh, and a carousel appears in the story, but has nothing to do with the man’s time travel. “Where is Everybody,” however, contains glaring similarities to Bradbury’s “The Silent Towns” which was first published in Charm (March, 1949) and then reprinted in Bradbury’s bestselling The Martian Chronicles (1950). Both stories feature men who find themselves alone in abandoned towns, desperate for companionship. Both stories feature similar scenes with telephones. There are important differences between the stories as well. I’ll compare and contrast them in Part II of this article.
Despite his role as the ship’s cook in Forbidden Planet, Earl Holliman wasn’t interested in starring in an SF/fantasy story. Nonetheless, he agreed to look at Serling’s script. He meant to merely scan it, but instead found himself immersed in it, unable to stop turning the pages. He loved the story and the role, and he agreed to play it.
“Where is Everybody” went through at least four different versions between December 1958 and April 1960, all with Serling’s involvement. (Considering that he died in 1975, I’m assuming that other than writing the story on which it was based, Serling had no role in the recent radio adaptation of “Where is Everybody?”) As of this writing, I’ve had access to the first draft of Serling’s script, the original pilot version, the “alternate” broadcast version, Serling’s short story, and the radio adaptation. For now, we’ll leave the radio adaptation out of the discussion.
The script gives a more extensive and otherwise slightly different account of Ferris’s wanderings than the televised and short story versions. It, along with the other Serling versions, starts on a road outside a dinner and follows up with Ferris’s visit to the dinner. In the script and the story the road is a two lane paved road. In both filmed versions, it’s a dirt road leading to the dinner, and paved on the way away from the dinner. Music blares from a jukebox. In all but the “alternate” version of the telecast (a misnomer because it’s the version that’s usually shown), Ferris says something about the volume and turns the jukebox down. Hollis’s portrayal of Ferris gives the character some swagger and more confidence than the script gave him. By the end of the dinner scene, the script has Ferris moving from puzzled to being a little scared. Hollis gives us the feeling that Ferris is still just confused at this point. This is reinforced when the shot of Ferris pounding the counter as scripted is deleted from the “alternate” version. The dialogue slightly changes from version to version. How much was deliberate and how much comes from delivering the lines or rewriting from memory and only getting the jist of the script is uncertain. The biggest deviations come inside the town, called Oakwood in every version except the short story where it’s named Carsville. In the script, Ferris visits a clothing store, a radio store, a radio station, a pool hall, a drugstore, stops in front of the post office, visits a movie theater, looks in the drugstore again, visits a bank, and sits in front of the post office. In the televised versions, Ferris only visits the police station (a set not included in the script), the drugstore and the theater. He peeks in the doors of other buildings, but we see little of the interiors and no action takes place inside them. This saves money in production since fewer sets are needed. It also reduces the time it takes to tell the story. Serling had wanted the episodes to run an hour each, and he was used to writing longer productions. Whether it was deliberate or it was from a lack of feel for what a half hour show could contain, Serling seemed to have included too much. (Within a short time, Serling realized that half-hour shows were perfect for what he wanted to accomplish. A few seasons later when CBS wanted hour long shows, Serling objected, but CBS overruled him.) The reduction in sets actually strengthened the story. It made it less meandering, more focused, and more intense. When Serling changed “Where is Everybody?” into a short story, he mentioned trips to the other buildings along with a trip inside the school, but he only “showed” us events on the street and the three sets used in the telecasts. All the rest is stuff that Serling “tells” us. With the changes, some things were juggled around. The running sink and shaving paraphernalia are moved from the pool hall to the police station. While I’d wonder about straight razors being allowed in modern jails or even 1950s jail cells, I assume this razor belonged to a cop using an open cell to shave. A lit cigarette in the theater ticket booth becomes a cigar in the police station. Two sequences, the mannequin and telephone ones, are moved from a clothing store to the street where they remain in the short story. The shot where Ferris lights up with a hundred dollar bill is cut from the broadcast, but is referenced though not shown in the short story. A shot where Ferris deliberately breaks a window becomes a shattered mirror in the theater, perhaps symbolic of an attempt to break out. Instead of an Air Force recruiting poster near the post office, there’s a movie featuring the Air Force running at the theater complete with a poster for it outside. All of these shots except for the burning cigarette shot come from deleted sets. (Although moving the cigarette/cigar from the booth to the station eliminates the need for a detailed interior of the booth. Note also how the smoker’s character changes. It goes from a lipstick stained cigarette, suggesting a ticket girl, to a cigar, suggesting a burly, rough and tumble 1950s policeman.) These all advance the story, and presumably, that’s why they were salvaged from the deleted sets. For instance, the Air Force poster restores some of Ferris’s lost memory.
A few other changes don’t reflect the reduction in sets. The script called for rock and roll on the jukebox. The drugstore scene called for comic books, especially horror comics and one called The Last Man on Earth. Cartoons were supposed to play in the movie theater. These are replaced by jazz (Serling specifies swing in the short story), paperbacks, and a movie called Battle Hymn. In an earlier day, jazz had been regarded much like rock was in the 50s, and by the 50s, although it had gained stature, culturally, jazz was still not placed on the same level as classical music by many highbrow types. Live action movies were seen as more adult than cartoons, but did 50s sophisticates regard film as seriously as theater? Paperbacks were higher than comics, but they were also associated with their share of lurid fare and weren’t as classy as hard covers. All these changes involved upgrading lowbrow entertainment not to highbrow, but to things arguably middlebrow. Again, in the context of the 50’s. Today, for instance, I think of jazz and classical as equals, and I’m aware that many people will grow indignant in pointing out that comics and cartoons are capable of conveying adult content. I know, I know, I’ve heard the arguments for decades. Most people didn’t think that way in the 50s. They saw comics and rock as juvenile trash. Adults reading comics were regarded as morons. (Although it might surprise people who lived through the 40's, research shows there actually were a lot of adults reading comics during the 40’s.) In each case, something associated with youth (at least in the 50’s) is replaced by something more mature. Why? While cartoons were regarded as children’s fare (even when peppered with jokes, gags and references which adults could appreciate), rock and comic books were held in widespread disrepute and had vehement detractors who saw them as threats to society. Did network or sponsor pressure cause the changes? Were there licensing concerns? Was it harder getting permission for cartoon clips or rock songs compared to the music and the film that was used? Did it cost more to get real comics or make mock ups than it did to use paperbacks? Was it more convenient? Or did Serling, the director, or someone else have artistic reasons for the changes? Whatever the cause, Serling stuck with these changes for the short story with a few adjustments like dropping the movie’s name. While The Last Man appeared to be one of those science fiction digests which replaced the pulps as far periodicals go (it had a February 1959 date in the telecasts) the rest of the paper backs looked more “respectable” by 50s standards. The most visible title besides, The Last Man, is Bread and Wine by Ignazio Silone. For the short story, Serling changed some of these to what were regarded as “trashy” paperbacks, those featuring genre fiction, thus moving back towards the lowbrow. (Understand that I’m not saying Serling called them trashy or lowbrow. That’s how people regarded them.) Serling writes:
“He left the fountain and crossed the room to where there were several revolving pocket-book racks. Titles on the book covers flicked briefly across his consciousness then disappeared. Murder stories, introduced on the covers by blondes in negligees, with titles like The Brothel Death Watch. Reprints of famous novels and gag books. Something called Utterly Mad, with a smiling half-wit face, captioned, 'Alfred E. Neuman says, ‘What, me worry!'”
(Stories From the Twilight Zone, Rod Serling, Bantam, 1960, pg. 120)
In fact, Stories From the Twilight Zone was probably found in spinner racks across America among just the types of paperbacks Serling described. While sticking with the change to paperbacks, Serling reintroduces a heavy dose of genre and, in paperback format, even brings back comics with the Mad book. (Mad Magazine, a large format humor comic was published by E.C., the most famous publisher of horror comics like those Serling referred to in the original script and which spurred the anti-comic book crusade leading to the Comics Code Authority.) The script also called for a football schedule (American football) in the drugstore. The telecast changes this to a basketball schedule. The common perception of football is that it’s brutish and simplistic. This might also reflect the trend from low to middle culture. (Let me add that I disagree with this perception of football. I see it as a kind of physical chess.) Then again, this change becomes practical when January and February dates appear on the schedule. The high school football season traditionally runs from September through November. A problem occurs in the short story though. Serling follows the telecast in using a basketball schedule, but the dates now fall during football season.
In the change from cartoons in the script to a movie in the telecast, an actual movie is used. Battle Hymn starring Rock Hudson was released in February 1957. In those days, it wasn’t unusual to find films playing in theaters long after their initial release, especially in small local theaters. Was there a reason for choosing that particular movie? Did some factor make it easier or otherwise more convenient for CBS to use it? Was CBS trying to promote it? Was there a connection to it from someone involved in The Twilight Zone? Several actors who appeared in Battle Hymn went on to appear in Twilight Zone episodes. Some appeared in important roles and some appeared in very minor roles. Some of these roles were credited, and some weren’t. Bartlett Robinson appears in “Back There” (1962) and “To Serve Man” (1961). Carleton Young also appeared in “To Serve Man.” Robert Brubaker appeared in “The Arrival” (1961). Angie Strickland appeared in “The Monsters are Due on Maple Street” (1960). Most notable though was Dan Duryea who played a Sergeant in Battle Hymn and then starred in the episode “Mr. Denton on Doomsday.” However, that episode was still very much in the planning stages when the pilot was presented to the advertisers. In his intro to the pilot for advertisers, Serling describes plots of upcoming stories. One of them sounds like “Doomsday” as it contains several key elements. However there are major differences meaning it still had considerable revisions ahead. Plus I could be wrong, but I doubt that casting was underway for these episodes yet. The switch to Battle Hymn in place of cartoons advances the story while cutting time and sets from the production. In the script, Ferris sees an Air Force recruiting poster near the post office. It’s then that he remembers that he’s in the Air Force. In the telecast, it’s when he sees the Battle Hymn poster that realizes he’s in the Air Force. Couldn’t any number of other movies involving the Air Force have served here? Couldn’t the crew have simply made up a title and poster? So again comes the question. Was it a business or an artistic decision or both? Battle Hymn is supposed to be the true story of Colonel Dean Hess, an American bomber pilot whose bombs hit a German orphanage during World War II. Haunted by the tragedy, he became a preacher following the war. Ross proved unsuccessful as a preacher and reenlisted in the military. After the Korean War broke out, he trained American and Korean pilots. He saved a group of orphans from Communist forces and established an orphanage for them. At the very least, there’s a similarity between Ross and Ferris. They’re both traumatized pilots. (Except in the short story where Serling changed Ferris from a pilot to an enlisted man.)
Likewise, Bread and Wine by Ignazio Silone was a real book. Silone was a member of the Italian Communist resistance who opposed the Fascists. Silone’s main character disguises himself as a priest and critics believe the novel calls for bringing Christianity and Socialism together. The title itself refers to the Eucharistic bread and the wine, the body and blood of Christ.The protagonist also speaks against “conformism” both in the form of Fascism and in the “conformism” appearing in the Communist Party. Silone would later write an essay published in The God That Failed, an anthology written by disillusioned former Communists. Considering how frequently The Twilight Zone challenged conformity, it’s tempting to think the choice of Bread and Wine was deliberate. Silone worked as an Allied agent in World War II, and the American Army distributed copies of Bread and Wine when they invaded Italy. Unknown to Serling though, Silone was a Fascist informer who spied on his fellow Socialists in the 1920s.
In the script, sound and silence play important roles. Several times, sounds and silences agitate Ferris. There’s the juke box in the dinner. In all except the “alternate” version, Ferris comments on the volume and turns it down. Later, he wishes desperately for someone to make some noise. In the original pilot, Ferris breaks into song, “Coming Through the Rye.” Later in the script, he stops shooting pool because the sound of the balls crashing together irritates him. Trickling water also annoys him. A telephone and a radio station give him false hope and then dashes it. Finally, it’s not a feeling that someone is watching him which drives him to a breaking point in the script. It’s a cacophony of exaggerated sound from the buildings he passes. The importance of sound diminishes in the original pilot and even more in the “alternate” version.
In deciding on “Where is Everybody?” for the pilot, Self and Serling exercised restraint while still choosing a quality story. The story, a very Bradburyesque one, continued to evolve through its filming and on through Serling rewriting it as a short story. Serling may have had reasons both practical and artistic for the changes. In any event, they all strengthened the story.
In Part 2, we’ll look at other changes, compare “Where is Everybody?” with Bradbury’s “The Silent Towns,” and explore the themes and ideas present in “Where is Everybody?”
NOTE: You can watch "Where is Everybody?" here:
http://www.veoh.com/videos/v6258110pjyYcDTa?rank=0&order=oldest
Sources Consulted
Albarella, Tony
“Twilight Time” As Timeless as Infinity: The Complete Twilight Zone Scripts of Rod Serling by Rod Serling, Gauntlet Press, 2004
“Town Without Pity” As Timeless as Infinity: The Complete Twilight Zone Scripts of Rod Serling by Rod Serling, Gauntlet Press, 2004
Bradbury, Ray
The Martian Chronicles, Bantam
Colon, Christopher
“The Many Fathers of Martin Sloan” http://www.rodserling.com/msloan.htm
“Southern California Sorcerers” http://www.rodserling.com/csorcerers.htm
Serling, Rod
As Timeless as Infinity: The Complete Twilight Zone Scripts of Rod Serling, ed. Tony Albarella, Gauntlet Press, 2004.
Stories From the Twilight Zone, Bantam, 1960.
(On DVD) The Twilight Zone Collection Vol. 43, CBS DVD, 1999.
Treasures of the Twilight Zone, CBS DVD, 1999.
Voiles, Mike Mike's Amazing World of DC Comics, http://www.dcindexes.com/about.php
About Ignazio Silone and Bread and Wine
http://bramante.metabarn.com/BreadAndWine.html
http://www.webster.edu/~corbetre/personal/reading/silone-bread.html
Various subjects, e.g. Dean Hess, Battle Hymn, etc., etc., Wikipedia (BLUSH! BLUSH! BLUSH!)
Casting
http://www.imdb.com/
Sunday, December 14, 2008
Sunday, December 7, 2008
Forrest J. Ackerman is Dead
I first heard about this early December 5th, but I wanted to make sure it wasn't just a rumor. There are so few people left from fandom's first generation now.
http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/california/la-me-ackerman6-2008dec06,0,3646064.story?page=1
http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/california/la-me-ackerman6-2008dec06,0,3646064.story?page=1
Saturday, December 6, 2008
Twilight Zone: The Time Element
Some Twilight Zone fans regard “The Time Element” as the show’s unofficial pilot episode although it actually aired on November 24, 1958 as an episode of Westinghouse Desilu Playhouse. The response of critics and viewers finally convinced CBS to allow Rod Serling to have the science fiction/fantasy series he’d pitched. Besides Serling’s involvement and the genre, did “The Time Element” have other links to The Twilight Zone?
Written by Serling, “The Time Element” featured William Bendix as Peter Jenson, the protagonist, along with Martin Balsam (who played a detective in Psycho) as Dr. Arnold Gillespie, a psychiatrist. Other key characters are Ensign Janoski and his wife and a bartender at the Royal Hawaiian Hotel.
Jenson consults Dr. Gillespie about a reoccurring dream he’s having. In Jenson’s dream, he somehow travels through time and space from New York City, 1958 to awake in Honolulu, Hawaii on December 6, 1941, the day before the Japanese sneak attack on Pearl Harbor. Each time Jenson awakes, he suspects he’s the victim of an elaborate gag that everyone else is in on. After creating a stir in the hotel bar by declaring that the Japanese are going to sink the U.S.S. Arizona on December 7, 1941, he realizes that he really has traveled back in time. Probably fearing that people will think he’s crazy, he takes back everything he said and claims he was joking and that he wasn’t feeling good, that he got a bit “whirly.” Jenson decides that since no one will believe him, he’ll just take care of himself. Like some characters in regular TZ episodes, Jenson loves sports and loves betting on them. His memory of notable sporting events goes back a long way. Jensen is the kind of guy who'd do great on ESPN's Stump the Schwab. He begins betting on everything he remembers from December 1941 on. There’s a complication though. Jenson befriends a young newlywed couple. The husband is an Ensign serving in the U.S.S. Arizona’s engine room. Jenson’s earlier declaration that the Arizona would sink rattled Mrs. Janoski. Something about the young couple - just starting out, hopeful for the future ahead - awakens a big brotherly protectiveness in the older Jenson. He decides he has to save them from the impending tragedy. Jenson then races around trying to warn people about the coming attack. In the script Jenson approaches the military. Due to objections from Westinghouse who had military contracts, the broadcast has Jenson warning reporters whom he hoped would alert the military. He’s ridiculed and ignored and finally beaten up by the very people he tries to help. He’s a prophet without honor in his own country. Each time, the dream ends at the same point, a point Jenson believes is a little too early. He thinks one day the dream will go on to the end. Jenson came to Dr. Gillespie’s office because he’s convinced the dream is real. He believes he really is going back to December 6, 1941 and reliving the day over and over again. It seems as if Jenson wants to see if Dr. Gillespie can explain what might cause him to believe this or perhaps to try to prove it isn’t real.
There are some superficial differences between “The Time Element” and an actual Twilight Zone episode. Desi Arnaz rather than Rod Serling introduces the show. Neither Arnaz nor Serling serves as the narrator who provides occasional voiceovers. And, of course, we don’t have one of the classic openings or the theme music.
Other trappings and the story itself were very much in keeping with The Twilight Zone. The characters and the actors who played them fit seamlessly with the kinds of characters and actors one would see in the regular series. In fact, Martin Balsam starred in two episodes, “The New Exhibit,” and “16 Millimeter Shrine.” It’s a shame that William Bendix didn’t go on to further appearances. There are a number of roles that would have suited him though I’m loath to name them because the actors who played them did so well. For instance, Bendix could’ve played the lead character in “The Monsters are Due on Maple Street,” but it’s hard to imagine any one but Claude Atkins in the role now. There are any number of smaller roles he’d have done well in too. And that bartender at the Royal Hawaiian? Haven’t I seen him somewhere else too?
There’s a certain streetwise toughness and rhythm to the clipped dialogue. Deadpan humor also creeps in.
GILLESPIE
Now. Your occupation?
JENSON
Various. Part-time unsuccessful bookie. Card dealer. I tended bar once. Just down the street from here. Couple of doors. Andy’s Place. I was also a butcher. Highly successful. My thumbs weighed twelve pounds. Now how do I stack up? Normal, abnormal, subnormal or just a typical young American Lad?
GILLRSPIE
(grins again)
Family?
JENSON
Father and Mother. Both married. Scranton, Pennsylvania. He was a coal miner.
(From page 2 of the script in As Timeless As Infinity: The Complete Twilight Zone Scripts of Rod Serling Volume One, Gauntlet Publications, Colorado Springs, 2004.)
Along with having Jenson warn reporters about the attack rather than the military, the dialogue quoted above was another thing changed for the broadcast. In the broadcast, Jenson is no longer a former butcher. Instead it’s his father’s job. All mention of his father being a coal miner is dropped. Since the script had Jenson going on to characterize coal mining negatively, I wonder if fear of offending a sponsor or a potential sponsor played a role.
Tension develops between Jenson and the Royal Hawaiian bartender, a former New Yorker. Jenson himself is a former bartender, and he’s also from New York. It’s almost like the story’s bartender serves as an alter ego, showing how Jenson would react to someone else with a crazy story about being from the future. In fact, there are three New York bartenders in this story. Jenson, the Royal Hawaiian bartender, and the current guy at Andy’s Place, the bar where Jenson once worked. The tough talking, “Don’t cause no trouble in here” bartender appears frequently in TZ episodes. Bartenders are stereotypically someone you can pour out your troubles to. They’re a kind of primitive substitute for today’s therapists. But TZ bartenders aren’t much as listeners and tend to be tough, unfriendly, and intolerant of “strange birds.” Add in one or two psychiatrists, possibly including the Army doctor (a civilian doctor in the broadcast), and there are five people in this story whose professions involve listening to people’s problems.
Attitudes toward psychiatric treatment were different than they are today. Stigma may still be attached, but that doesn’t prevent people from sharing the fact that they’ve undergone treatment. Back then, people felt driven to keep it hidden, terrified at the humiliation it’d cause if other people knew. Sure, there are those who still look down on people with mental illness. It was far worse in the 50s though. This affects the reactions of characters in “The Time Element” and in official Twilight Zone episodes. Serling wouldn’t be a good observer of human nature if he didn’t note that people had these reactions. He did, and the characters realistically portray them. Gillespie serves as a balance in this story, trying to demystify his profession. Another thing to keep in mind is that beliefs change. Even if Serling carefully researched and studied the field for this episode to get Dr. Gillespie right, his information is at least fifty years out of date by now. In many fields there are advances, or often mind changing labeled as “advances.” So, even if Serling got everything right concerning Gillespie and psychiatry, there've likely been some sea-changes since then. In the 1941 scenes, a doctor tests Jenson’s sanity by asking him who the President is and who the Vice-President is. Jenson, of course, takes views typical of a working class guy from the 1940s and 50s. He speaks in terms that won’t placate the easily offended in today’s hypersensitive, politically correct society. He uses terms like “nuts” and “forty degrees tilt” and “a leak in the attic.” Like other characters in the official episodes, Jenson assumes (in a rugged, realist way) others will make a reservation at a sanitarium for him because of what he’s experiencing. He and later characters see all kinds of wonders and horrors that they have to keep quiet about due to social expectations. This adds to The Twilight Zone’s challenge to conformity. People are repeatedly held back from telling the truth and not believed if they do because of society’s demand for “normality.” The characters also question their own sanity in a self-aware, tough, leveling way that leaves the audience believing the character must be sane. The characters often grow frazzled by the bizarre situations they encounter just as Jenson does near the end. Ironically, the situation often seems perfectly normal to everyone else. For instance, it really is December 6, 1941 for all the other people in Jenson’s dream.
Bits of this plot resurfaced in official episodes. A man visits a psychiatrist due to an extremely real reoccurring dream in “Perchance to Dream.” Like Jensen he thinks the dream will one day go further. Also, like Jensen, his waking fate is tied to his dream fate. The character in “Perchance to Dream,” dreads the possibility of the dream going farther, but Jenson doesn’t know what will happen. Despite the similarity of these stories, Rod Serling didn’t write “Perchance to Dream.” Broadcast on November 27, 1959, little more than a year after “The Time Element,” it was the first Twilight Zone that Serling didn’t script. The reoccurring dream element reoccurs again in “Shadow Play” one of the most memorable TZ episodes.
Jenson’s abrupt disappearance echoes that of the astronauts in “And When the Sky Was Opened.” Dr. Gillespie seems to be in a position akin to that episode’s main character after his friend disappears leaving no trace that he ever existed. There are traces that Jenson existed though. In fact, he unintentionally leaves evidence supporting his story similar to the evidence left by the three soldiers in “The 7th is Made Up of Phantoms.”
World War II figures in the plots of several official Twilight Zones. Serling served in the war, and it was a major world event which ended only thirteen years prior to “The Time Element's" air date. Episodes like “A Quality of Mercy” and “The Purple Testament,” take place during the war. Others like “Deaths-Head Revisited,” “He’s Alive,” and “The Encounter” tie in to the war although they occur years later.
As in many Twilight Zone episodes, “The Time Element” features a character trying to tell a skeptic about something amazing, unbelievable. Then, often too late, something occurs and proves the character right. For instance there are the previously mentioned episodes “And When the Sky Was Opened” and “Perchance to Dream” as well as “Mirror Image” and “The Howling Man.”
Noting their presence here, it’d be interesting (well for me it would be) to explore TZ attitudes towards bookies, gambling, sports, tough guys, and bartenders.
The most obvious plot element in “The Time Element” is time travel. H.G. Wells’s novel, The Time Machine, is an early example of one of science fiction’s most popular tropes. It became a favorite plot device in The Twilight Zone, reused repeatedly. (Maybe I'll post a list of time travel episodes sometime.) A number of sub-elements and themes related to time travel also appeared during the show’s run. Often there’s a desire to return to some lost golden age, or, in “Once Upon a Time,” to go on to an imagined future one. Another theme involves changing the past. This involves attempted interventions in famous historical events, but sometimes the stakes are personal ones too. Jenson acts on both levels. He tries to prevent the attack on Pearl Harbor, but on a personal level, he’s trying to save the Janoskis. In “Back There,” Peter Corrigan steps back in time and attempts to save Lincoln. That’s an example of public stakes like Jenson’s attempt to warn about the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor. Another example is “The 7th Is Made Up of Phantoms” in which three modern day national guardsmen get involved in Custer’s Last Stand. Personal stakes, such as Jenson’s attempt to save the Janoskis, are on display in episodes like “Walking Distance” when a man tries to relive the happiest summer of his childhood and “Of Late I Think of Cliffordville” when a ruthless tycoon seeks to relive his rise to power and “A Hundred Yards Over the Rim” when a pioneer ends up in the present seeking to save his son who is dying the 19th century. In “No Time Like the Past,” Paul Driscoll, a scientist using a time machine, attempts to change several historical events, including two linked to World War II. These events are Jenson’s public stakes multiple times over. Finally, Driscoll, dejected by where the modern world is headed, decides to travel back and settle in small town 19th century America. (Interesting . . . the protagonist in “A Stop at Willoughby” also seeks solace from modern life in a 19th century small town.) Driscoll falls in love with a teacher, but learns that the she will die soon. Although he’d sworn off trying to alter the past, he again attempts to intervene. In all of these examples, it proves impossible to change the large, well known historical events, but sometimes it’s possible to change the smaller, more personal things. Sometimes.
“The Time Element” has more in common with official Twilight Zone episodes than just Rod Serling’s involvement and tales of the fantastic. It serves as the show’s forerunner not only because its success prompted CBS to accept Serling’s proposal for a continuing science fiction/ fantasy series, but also because it introduced themes, plot elements, and motifs which often appeared in the regular series.
FIN.
Written by Serling, “The Time Element” featured William Bendix as Peter Jenson, the protagonist, along with Martin Balsam (who played a detective in Psycho) as Dr. Arnold Gillespie, a psychiatrist. Other key characters are Ensign Janoski and his wife and a bartender at the Royal Hawaiian Hotel.
Jenson consults Dr. Gillespie about a reoccurring dream he’s having. In Jenson’s dream, he somehow travels through time and space from New York City, 1958 to awake in Honolulu, Hawaii on December 6, 1941, the day before the Japanese sneak attack on Pearl Harbor. Each time Jenson awakes, he suspects he’s the victim of an elaborate gag that everyone else is in on. After creating a stir in the hotel bar by declaring that the Japanese are going to sink the U.S.S. Arizona on December 7, 1941, he realizes that he really has traveled back in time. Probably fearing that people will think he’s crazy, he takes back everything he said and claims he was joking and that he wasn’t feeling good, that he got a bit “whirly.” Jenson decides that since no one will believe him, he’ll just take care of himself. Like some characters in regular TZ episodes, Jenson loves sports and loves betting on them. His memory of notable sporting events goes back a long way. Jensen is the kind of guy who'd do great on ESPN's Stump the Schwab. He begins betting on everything he remembers from December 1941 on. There’s a complication though. Jenson befriends a young newlywed couple. The husband is an Ensign serving in the U.S.S. Arizona’s engine room. Jenson’s earlier declaration that the Arizona would sink rattled Mrs. Janoski. Something about the young couple - just starting out, hopeful for the future ahead - awakens a big brotherly protectiveness in the older Jenson. He decides he has to save them from the impending tragedy. Jenson then races around trying to warn people about the coming attack. In the script Jenson approaches the military. Due to objections from Westinghouse who had military contracts, the broadcast has Jenson warning reporters whom he hoped would alert the military. He’s ridiculed and ignored and finally beaten up by the very people he tries to help. He’s a prophet without honor in his own country. Each time, the dream ends at the same point, a point Jenson believes is a little too early. He thinks one day the dream will go on to the end. Jenson came to Dr. Gillespie’s office because he’s convinced the dream is real. He believes he really is going back to December 6, 1941 and reliving the day over and over again. It seems as if Jenson wants to see if Dr. Gillespie can explain what might cause him to believe this or perhaps to try to prove it isn’t real.
There are some superficial differences between “The Time Element” and an actual Twilight Zone episode. Desi Arnaz rather than Rod Serling introduces the show. Neither Arnaz nor Serling serves as the narrator who provides occasional voiceovers. And, of course, we don’t have one of the classic openings or the theme music.
Other trappings and the story itself were very much in keeping with The Twilight Zone. The characters and the actors who played them fit seamlessly with the kinds of characters and actors one would see in the regular series. In fact, Martin Balsam starred in two episodes, “The New Exhibit,” and “16 Millimeter Shrine.” It’s a shame that William Bendix didn’t go on to further appearances. There are a number of roles that would have suited him though I’m loath to name them because the actors who played them did so well. For instance, Bendix could’ve played the lead character in “The Monsters are Due on Maple Street,” but it’s hard to imagine any one but Claude Atkins in the role now. There are any number of smaller roles he’d have done well in too. And that bartender at the Royal Hawaiian? Haven’t I seen him somewhere else too?
There’s a certain streetwise toughness and rhythm to the clipped dialogue. Deadpan humor also creeps in.
GILLESPIE
Now. Your occupation?
JENSON
Various. Part-time unsuccessful bookie. Card dealer. I tended bar once. Just down the street from here. Couple of doors. Andy’s Place. I was also a butcher. Highly successful. My thumbs weighed twelve pounds. Now how do I stack up? Normal, abnormal, subnormal or just a typical young American Lad?
GILLRSPIE
(grins again)
Family?
JENSON
Father and Mother. Both married. Scranton, Pennsylvania. He was a coal miner.
(From page 2 of the script in As Timeless As Infinity: The Complete Twilight Zone Scripts of Rod Serling Volume One, Gauntlet Publications, Colorado Springs, 2004.)
Along with having Jenson warn reporters about the attack rather than the military, the dialogue quoted above was another thing changed for the broadcast. In the broadcast, Jenson is no longer a former butcher. Instead it’s his father’s job. All mention of his father being a coal miner is dropped. Since the script had Jenson going on to characterize coal mining negatively, I wonder if fear of offending a sponsor or a potential sponsor played a role.
Tension develops between Jenson and the Royal Hawaiian bartender, a former New Yorker. Jenson himself is a former bartender, and he’s also from New York. It’s almost like the story’s bartender serves as an alter ego, showing how Jenson would react to someone else with a crazy story about being from the future. In fact, there are three New York bartenders in this story. Jenson, the Royal Hawaiian bartender, and the current guy at Andy’s Place, the bar where Jenson once worked. The tough talking, “Don’t cause no trouble in here” bartender appears frequently in TZ episodes. Bartenders are stereotypically someone you can pour out your troubles to. They’re a kind of primitive substitute for today’s therapists. But TZ bartenders aren’t much as listeners and tend to be tough, unfriendly, and intolerant of “strange birds.” Add in one or two psychiatrists, possibly including the Army doctor (a civilian doctor in the broadcast), and there are five people in this story whose professions involve listening to people’s problems.
Attitudes toward psychiatric treatment were different than they are today. Stigma may still be attached, but that doesn’t prevent people from sharing the fact that they’ve undergone treatment. Back then, people felt driven to keep it hidden, terrified at the humiliation it’d cause if other people knew. Sure, there are those who still look down on people with mental illness. It was far worse in the 50s though. This affects the reactions of characters in “The Time Element” and in official Twilight Zone episodes. Serling wouldn’t be a good observer of human nature if he didn’t note that people had these reactions. He did, and the characters realistically portray them. Gillespie serves as a balance in this story, trying to demystify his profession. Another thing to keep in mind is that beliefs change. Even if Serling carefully researched and studied the field for this episode to get Dr. Gillespie right, his information is at least fifty years out of date by now. In many fields there are advances, or often mind changing labeled as “advances.” So, even if Serling got everything right concerning Gillespie and psychiatry, there've likely been some sea-changes since then. In the 1941 scenes, a doctor tests Jenson’s sanity by asking him who the President is and who the Vice-President is. Jenson, of course, takes views typical of a working class guy from the 1940s and 50s. He speaks in terms that won’t placate the easily offended in today’s hypersensitive, politically correct society. He uses terms like “nuts” and “forty degrees tilt” and “a leak in the attic.” Like other characters in the official episodes, Jenson assumes (in a rugged, realist way) others will make a reservation at a sanitarium for him because of what he’s experiencing. He and later characters see all kinds of wonders and horrors that they have to keep quiet about due to social expectations. This adds to The Twilight Zone’s challenge to conformity. People are repeatedly held back from telling the truth and not believed if they do because of society’s demand for “normality.” The characters also question their own sanity in a self-aware, tough, leveling way that leaves the audience believing the character must be sane. The characters often grow frazzled by the bizarre situations they encounter just as Jenson does near the end. Ironically, the situation often seems perfectly normal to everyone else. For instance, it really is December 6, 1941 for all the other people in Jenson’s dream.
Bits of this plot resurfaced in official episodes. A man visits a psychiatrist due to an extremely real reoccurring dream in “Perchance to Dream.” Like Jensen he thinks the dream will one day go further. Also, like Jensen, his waking fate is tied to his dream fate. The character in “Perchance to Dream,” dreads the possibility of the dream going farther, but Jenson doesn’t know what will happen. Despite the similarity of these stories, Rod Serling didn’t write “Perchance to Dream.” Broadcast on November 27, 1959, little more than a year after “The Time Element,” it was the first Twilight Zone that Serling didn’t script. The reoccurring dream element reoccurs again in “Shadow Play” one of the most memorable TZ episodes.
Jenson’s abrupt disappearance echoes that of the astronauts in “And When the Sky Was Opened.” Dr. Gillespie seems to be in a position akin to that episode’s main character after his friend disappears leaving no trace that he ever existed. There are traces that Jenson existed though. In fact, he unintentionally leaves evidence supporting his story similar to the evidence left by the three soldiers in “The 7th is Made Up of Phantoms.”
World War II figures in the plots of several official Twilight Zones. Serling served in the war, and it was a major world event which ended only thirteen years prior to “The Time Element's" air date. Episodes like “A Quality of Mercy” and “The Purple Testament,” take place during the war. Others like “Deaths-Head Revisited,” “He’s Alive,” and “The Encounter” tie in to the war although they occur years later.
As in many Twilight Zone episodes, “The Time Element” features a character trying to tell a skeptic about something amazing, unbelievable. Then, often too late, something occurs and proves the character right. For instance there are the previously mentioned episodes “And When the Sky Was Opened” and “Perchance to Dream” as well as “Mirror Image” and “The Howling Man.”
Noting their presence here, it’d be interesting (well for me it would be) to explore TZ attitudes towards bookies, gambling, sports, tough guys, and bartenders.
The most obvious plot element in “The Time Element” is time travel. H.G. Wells’s novel, The Time Machine, is an early example of one of science fiction’s most popular tropes. It became a favorite plot device in The Twilight Zone, reused repeatedly. (Maybe I'll post a list of time travel episodes sometime.) A number of sub-elements and themes related to time travel also appeared during the show’s run. Often there’s a desire to return to some lost golden age, or, in “Once Upon a Time,” to go on to an imagined future one. Another theme involves changing the past. This involves attempted interventions in famous historical events, but sometimes the stakes are personal ones too. Jenson acts on both levels. He tries to prevent the attack on Pearl Harbor, but on a personal level, he’s trying to save the Janoskis. In “Back There,” Peter Corrigan steps back in time and attempts to save Lincoln. That’s an example of public stakes like Jenson’s attempt to warn about the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor. Another example is “The 7th Is Made Up of Phantoms” in which three modern day national guardsmen get involved in Custer’s Last Stand. Personal stakes, such as Jenson’s attempt to save the Janoskis, are on display in episodes like “Walking Distance” when a man tries to relive the happiest summer of his childhood and “Of Late I Think of Cliffordville” when a ruthless tycoon seeks to relive his rise to power and “A Hundred Yards Over the Rim” when a pioneer ends up in the present seeking to save his son who is dying the 19th century. In “No Time Like the Past,” Paul Driscoll, a scientist using a time machine, attempts to change several historical events, including two linked to World War II. These events are Jenson’s public stakes multiple times over. Finally, Driscoll, dejected by where the modern world is headed, decides to travel back and settle in small town 19th century America. (Interesting . . . the protagonist in “A Stop at Willoughby” also seeks solace from modern life in a 19th century small town.) Driscoll falls in love with a teacher, but learns that the she will die soon. Although he’d sworn off trying to alter the past, he again attempts to intervene. In all of these examples, it proves impossible to change the large, well known historical events, but sometimes it’s possible to change the smaller, more personal things. Sometimes.
“The Time Element” has more in common with official Twilight Zone episodes than just Rod Serling’s involvement and tales of the fantastic. It serves as the show’s forerunner not only because its success prompted CBS to accept Serling’s proposal for a continuing science fiction/ fantasy series, but also because it introduced themes, plot elements, and motifs which often appeared in the regular series.
FIN.
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