ALL SCI-FI Forum Index ALL SCI-FI
The place to “find your people”.
 
 FAQFAQ   SearchSearch   MemberlistMemberlist   UsergroupsUsergroups   RegisterRegister 
 ProfileProfile   Log in to check your private messagesLog in to check your private messages   Log inLog in 

The Twilight Zone (1959 — 1964)
Goto page Previous  1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7
 
Post new topic   Reply to topic    ALL SCI-FI Forum Index -> Sci-Fi on Television from 1950 to 1969
View previous topic :: View next topic  
Author Message
Pow
Galactic Ambassador


Joined: 27 Sep 2014
Posts: 3400
Location: New York

PostPosted: Sat Jan 02, 2021 8:13 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

"Time Enough At Last": November 20, 1959.

TEAL began as a six-page short story by Lynn Venable in the January 1953, issue of "If" magazine.

Director of photography George Clemens had the inside set of the bank vault constructed on springs, so that the camera and the set would shake at the same time for the nuclear attack scene.

The set with the enormous flight of steps leading up to the library were standing on the MGM backlot.

These steps would also be seen in TTZ episode "A Nice Place to Visit," as well as in George Pal's SF classic film "The Time Machine."
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
Pow
Galactic Ambassador


Joined: 27 Sep 2014
Posts: 3400
Location: New York

PostPosted: Tue Jan 05, 2021 6:02 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

"Nightmare at 20,000 Feet" Trivia.

Playing the gremlin on the plane wing is Nick Cravat. Nick was a close friend of Burt Lancaster. They were an acrobatic team as young men. Once Lancaster became an actor, he would have Nick with him in some of Burt's films.

You can see how skilled both were as they perform some incredible acrobatics together in "The Crimson Pirate," and "The Flame and the Arrow."

In both films, Nick plays a mute because his thick NYC accent did not fit his character's background.

Writer of this episode Richard Matheson wasn't thrilled by the look for the gremlin.
He felt the gremlin looked like a panda bear.

The logistics for filming this episode were enormous.

The set was the interior of an airline passenger cabin with the left airplane wing attached for the scenes with the gremlin.

This was all suspended above a huge water tank that could contain the water from the rain effect.

A man wearing a harness and connected to wires, wind, rain, smoke, and lightning effects all contributed to the difficulty of this shoot.

These machines used to create the weather effects were very loud.

Several weeks after filming the show, Rod Serling attempted to pull a prank on Richard Matheson.

The two were flying to San Francisco.

Rod had set it up with Western Airlines to have Matheson placed in a passenger seat right next to the window.

Rod then had a large, blowup poster of the gremlin stuck on the outside of the window that would be looking at Matheson after he opened the curtains.

Unfortunately it was an old prop plane, so once it started up the backwash from the propeller blew the poster away.

Matheson never saw it.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
Pow
Galactic Ambassador


Joined: 27 Sep 2014
Posts: 3400
Location: New York

PostPosted: Mon Apr 05, 2021 2:16 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

A very cool, fan made CGI original story for TTZ titled "Reap What You Sow" is on Youtube.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
ralfy
Mission Specialist


Joined: 23 Sep 2014
Posts: 488

PostPosted: Thu Jun 03, 2021 7:45 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I just saw "On Thursday We Leave for Home." According to IMDB trivia, it's set in 2021.

It also reminds me of Sands of the Kalahari.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
Pow
Galactic Ambassador


Joined: 27 Sep 2014
Posts: 3400
Location: New York

PostPosted: Sat Oct 16, 2021 2:29 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

"Walking Distance" October 30, 1959.

Written by Rod Serling. From The Twilight Zone Companion Book by Marc Scott Zicree.

Thirty-six year old Martin Sloan is a vice-president at an ad agency, in charge of media. He is world-weary and sad.
He takes a drive in the country one Sunday to escape his suffocating life.

He leaves his car at a gas station and sets off on foot to his home town, only to discover it is precisely the way it was when he lived his happy childhood there. He meets people that are deceased, including his beloved father. And then he meets himself as a young boy.

"Martin Sloan, age thirty-six, vice-president in charge of media. Successful in most things, but not in the one effort that all men try at some time in their lives---trying to go home again. And also like all men perhaps there'll be an occasion---maybe a summer night sometime---when he'll look up from what he's doing and listen to the distant music of a calliope, and hear the voices and the laughter of his past. And perhaps across his mind there'll flit a little errant wish, that a man might not have to become old, never outgrow the parks and the merry-go-rounds of his youth. And he'll smile too then because he knows it is just an errant wish, some wisp of memory not too important really, some laughing ghosts that cross a man's mind---that are a part of the Twilight Zone."

"I think probably 'Walking Distance' was as good as any we made," Twilight Zone producer Buck Houghton.

"I was walking on a set at MGM when i was suddenly hit by the similarity of it to my home town. Feeling an overwhelming sense of nostalgia, it struck me that all of us have a deep longing to go back---not to our home as it is today, but as we remember it. It was from this simple incident that I wove the story 'Walking Distance.' Rod Serling.

Trivia: Houses originally built on MGM's Lot 3 for the classic Judy garland movie Meet Me in St. Louis were transformed into the homes of Martin Sloan's town of Homewood where he spent his idyllic childhood.

Ron Howard plays a neighborhood child.

"This episode was certainly Serling's most personal and undoubtedly one of the series' most finely crafted." Marc Scott Zicree.

~ I recall watching this episode a number of times over the years. The acting by everyone---especially Gig Young---is wonderful, so I could enjoy it on that level.

The theme to this episode was one I could not truly relate to as a kid, teenager, or even in my twenties or thirties.

It was interesting because we see a man walk back into time and his life as a kid. The actual profound meaning of why Sloan did this escaped me when I was younger because I had yet to experience the world as deeply as he did.
However, as I've grown older I now can fully grasp Rod's script. The longing for our past, wanting to be with loved ones no longer here with us, escape from daily pressures all around us.

Author Marc Scott Zicree notes how Rod will return to these themes in his later TV show, The Night Gallery with the episode "They're Tearing Down Tim Riley's Bar from January 20, 1971.

"That episode addresses Serling's struggle with middle-age, his disillusionment in a career with fewer and fewer personal rewards, and his desperate hunger for days long past," Scott Skelton & Jim Benson: Rod Serling's Night Gallery, An After Hours Tour.

"This episode of The Night Gallery is, in essence, the third panel of a triptych, with Patterns and Walking Distance being the first and second panels," Marc Scott Zicree.

"The bittersweet nostalgia in every line came from some deep part of the man [Serling] as he expressed an aching desire to return to the security of his cherished youth. Walking Distance & Tim Riley's Bar episode both mourn a past innocence and now replaced by a growing cynicism." The Night Gallery.

Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
Display posts from previous:   
Post new topic   Reply to topic    ALL SCI-FI Forum Index -> Sci-Fi on Television from 1950 to 1969 All times are GMT - 5 Hours
Goto page Previous  1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7
Page 7 of 7

 
Jump to:  
You cannot post new topics in this forum
You cannot reply to topics in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum
You cannot delete your posts in this forum
You cannot vote in polls in this forum


Powered by phpBB © 2001, 2005 phpBB Group