October 2, 1959: The Twilight Zone premieres on CBS. Earl Holliman -- still alive at age 93 -- plays Mike Ferris, a man who walks into a deserted down, sees no people, and yells out the episode's title: "Where Is Everybody?" In the first of the series' many "twist endings," it is revealed that he's an astronaut, going through an experiment to see if man can survive the long journeys of space all alone. It turns out that he can, but the effects are not good.
Series creator, host and main writer Rod Serling was a big sports fan. In the June 17, 1960 episode "The Mighty Casey," filmed at the Los Angeles version of Wrigley Field, a robot pitcher is signed, in what turns out to be a vain attempt to save a fictional team called the Hoboken Zephyrs from being moved.
In the May 26, 1961 episode, "Will the Real Martian Please Stand Up?" some bus passengers, forced into a diner by a washed-out bridge, realizes that, taking the diner's owner and the policemen into account, there's more people in there than were on the bus.
Somebody had seen a "flying saucer," and decided that one of the bus passengers must be a Martian invader. One of them, played by Jack Elam, is asked the kind of question that American soldiers used to ask suspected incognito Nazis in World War II: "Who won the World Series last year?" Elam's character laughs, and correctly says that the Pittsburgh Pirates beat the Yankees in 7 games.
In the May 2, 1963 episode "On Thursday We Leave for Home," set in 1991, a rescue of a spaceship lost in 1963 is made, and one of the rescued astronauts asks a wiseguy question: "What city are the Dodgers in now?" Correctly as it turned out, he is told, "Los Angeles."
In the May 2, 1963 episode "On Thursday We Leave for Home," set in 1991, a rescue of a spaceship lost in 1963 is made, and one of the rescued astronauts asks a wiseguy question: "What city are the Dodgers in now?" Correctly as it turned out, he is told, "Los Angeles."
The October 4, 1963 episode "Steel" is an adaptation of a 1956 short story by noted science fiction writer Richard Matheson, imagining that robots have replaced human boxers, but that a robot's trainer, played by Lee Marvin, has to fill in when his robot breaks down and can't fight, and gets clobbered by the opposing robot. The story would be made into a full feature film, Real Steel, in 2011, set in 2020 and starring Hugh Jackman.
The episode takes place in 1974, and Serling's opening narration says that human boxing was outlawed in 1968. This episode aired a year and a half after Emile Griffith killed Benny "The Kid" Paret in a middleweight title bout on live TV, so it has to be seen in that light.
The October 25, 1963 episode "The Last Night of a Jockey" features 5-foot-2 Mickey Rooney as a disgraced jockey who wishes to be "big," and becomes 8 feet tall. He then gets a phone call, telling him that he's been reinstated. But now, he's too big to ride a horse, the one thing he had a talent for.
Seasons 1, 2, 3 and 5 had half-hour episodes. Season 4, 1962-63, had hourlong episodes. One, airing on January 24, 1963, was "He's Alive." Dennis Hopper plays a young white supremacist, unhappy at the progress of civil rights. He begins to get advice from a figure in the shadows, and becomes influential in the anti-civil rights movement. Then, one night, the figure moves out of the shadows, and it's Adolf Hitler. Serling closes the episode by saying, "He's alive so long as these evils exist." Serling got a lot of hate mail for this episode. But it remained the one he was most proud of.
Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry never wrote an episode. But William Shatner appeared in 2 of them: "Nick of Time," November 18, 1960, as half of a couple that falls under the spell of an alleged fortune-telling machine in a small-town diner; and "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet," October 11, 1963, as a man on a plane, newly released from psychiatric care, who sees a monster on the plane's wing, trying to destroy it, and doesn't know if it's real or his mind acting up again.
Leonard Nimoy had one line, as an American soldier, in the December 29, 1961 episode "A Quality of Mercy." Dean Stockwell plays an officer who hates the Japanese he's fighting, but is forced to imagine himself as a Japanese soldier being fired on by Americans. And George Takei co-starred in the May 1, 1964 episode "The Encounter," as a Japanese-American trapped in a house with a bigoted American veteran of World War II.
Burgess Meredith and Jack Klugman each appeared 4 times, sharing the record. In my opinion, the series' best episode was Meredith's June 2, 1961 appearance, "The Obsolete Man." Spoiler alert for a 60-year-old episode: In a totalitarian "future that might be," Meredith's character dies, but wins anyway. Serling closes: "Any state, any entity, any ideology which fails to recognize the worth, the dignity, the rights of Man, that state is obsolete. A case to be filed under 'M,' for 'Mankind,' in The Twilight Zone."
Serling died in 1975, the result of his constant smoking. He was only 51 years old. The Twilight Zone was revived on CBS from 1985 to 1989, on UPN in the 2002-03 TV season, and on CBS again from 2019 to 2021.
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October 2, 1959 was a Friday. It was midweek for football, and preseason for the NBA and the NHL. So there is only one score on the day.
It is Game 2 of the World Series. The Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Chicago White Sox 4-3 at Comiskey Park in Chicago. Charlie Neal hits 2 home runs, and Chuck Essegian adds another in support of 1955 Game 7 hero Johnny Podres. The Dodgers go on to win the Series in 6 games.