Writer Panel

August 24, 2002 – 3:00 pm – Beverly Garland Hotel Theater

Note: These are in order of speaker and just briefly summarize each person’s comments. The duration of this panel discussion was roughly 60 minutes. Some details may be outdated.

Christopher Conlon (host): Christopher introduced each panelist and talked a bit about his book “California Sorcery,” about the group of Southern California writers including George Clayton Johnson, Charles Beaumont, and John Tomerlin, among many others. He also discussed a bit about a book in progress written by Jerry Sohl (writer of TZ episodes “Living Doll”, “The New Exhibit, and “Queen of the Nile”), which will contain Sohl’s stories as well as two TZ scripts that were cancelled after producer William Froug took over during the fifth season. Chris then asked, collectively, one question, “How did each of you get into “The Twilight Zone?” and let each panelist take it from there.

George Clayton Johnson: “Rod Serling had a monumental task. He was required by contract to write about two-thirds of the scripts for each season, so he needed help with the other third. The first thing he did was to get the two best writers in town, Richard Matheson and Charles Beaumont.” Because of his friendship with Beaumont, George had an ‘in’ to “The Twilight Zone”. Beaumont was an inspiration to literally dozens and dozens of writers at that time, George included. They became friends in the late 1950s and around 1958, George wrote the story “All of Us Are Dying”. He submitted it to Jay Richards of Famous Artists Agency (today known as ICM, International Creative Management). Mr. Richards was not George’s agent, but he agreed to submit material that George had written that he thought looked promising. Before submitting “All of Us Are Dying” to Cayuga Productions, he changed the title to “Rubberface” (since the story is about a man who can change his face into the faces of other people). Rod Serling bought it and kept most of the original title, “The Four of Us Are Dying.” George watched the original broadcast on New Year’s Day, 1960, and was absolutely terrified. His doubts and disbeliefs vanished instantly when he saw how Rod Serling took his “little story” and molded it into such a classy episode of television. This was his first television credit.

Beaumont, Johnson, Bill Idelson, O’Cee Ritch (all of whom are known for their “Twilight Zone” work) among several others, were a very close group of friends. They hung out together nearly every other day for a period of several years. All were in their late twenties and all were intent on becoming big-name writers. Beaumont taught George a great many things, including a lot about world history and classical music. Rod Serling, later on, was part of their gatherings. Rod was not a conversationalist, but instead, a world-class storyteller who was content to relax with gin and cigarette in hand and tell stories. Rod was always interested in what everyone else was doing and what they were going to do next….of course, everyone was more interested in what Rod (by then the ’emperor’ of TV) was doing.

Buck Houghton was known in those days as “the producer’s producer” and usually Rod Serling left all the big decisions to Buck. Neither Buck nor Rod cared to do any rewriting; if a story idea was good, they figured, why mess with it? However, on more than one occasion, Rod objected to parts of storylines and would work with these problems on his own. During the filming of “The Intruder”–the great Roger Corman feature film written by Beamont starring William Shatner, in which George also had a part–he got a call from Buck Houghton. He and the rest of the cast were shooting in Missouri and Buck called to say that Rod didn’t like the ending to “A Game of Pool” and that it would be changed (so that Fats Brown, the retired pool champ, loses the game). The original ending was changed to the one we know today, much to George’s consternation. However, this was one of only a few minor difficulties George had.

Director Lamont Johnson (no relation to George) was an influential figure and added much to his scripts, in particular “Nothing in the Dark”. At the beginning of “A Penny for Your Thoughts”, Hector B. Poole was supposed to be hit by a car, which in turn was supposed to cause his telepathy. Instead, it was agreed that a special effect of the coin landing on its edge (accomplished by hooking the coin up to a wire and pulling it smartly), would be more interesting. Later on in the discussion, George followed up a comment by Marc Zicree about Rod having to write “Twilight Zone” much more universally (instead of focusing so directly on specific historically dark events such as the hanging of black man Emmett Till, which Rod wrote about twice and both times it was rejected). George mentioned something to the effect of, “You can easily write about robots being deprived of their ‘civil rights’, because everyone’s heart in America will go out to a robot!” In response to a question from the audience regarding George Clemens, George Johnson spoke of Clemens with high regard. “That guy gave Twilight Zone its look. You could look at one episode, and then another, and another … and you could tell they all came from the same desk.”

When asked what series he’d like to write for today, if he had a choice, George Clayton Johnson said he’d like to write for “The Simpsons.”

Earl Hamner, Jr.: Earl Hamner met Rod Serling in the late 1940s when they won the Dr. Christian Writing Competition. Later on, Earl held a job in Cincinatti at a radio station, which he eventually vacated and went to Arkansas to write a book. Rod took this job, which he desperately needed at the time. Much later, after they were both in Hollywood, Rod always credited Earl with being “the man who gave me my first job.” Earl was a journalist prior to moving his family to California in the early 1960’s, and was hoping to break into writing for television and film. He used all the money he had just on transportation and minimal living costs and his wife’s family supported them for the first few, difficult months. Rod then gave Earl his first job, writing for “Twilight Zone”. Earl was not sure he was up to the task of writing for such a distinguished show, but drafted his first episode, “The Hunt”, which pleased Rod and Buck Houghton. They encouraged Earl to do more and kept asking what he’d like to try next. He then did “A Piano in the House”. Later on, after Herbert Hirschmann and William Froug took over the producing chores, he faced a few problems, but they continued to accept all the scripts he wrote for the show. Chris Conlon commented on Earl’s soon-to-be-released book of “Twilight Zone” scripts, with commentaries written by Tony Albarella. Earl also made the comment that he felt Buck and Rod were indeed with us in spirit at the convention. He credits them with giving him the opportunity to write for TV, something he didn’t know if he could do or not. Later, Earl would create and write for, and narrate “The Waltons”, which everyone today knows him for. When “The New Twilight Zone” was in production in the mid 80’s, Earl met up with Rockne O’Bannon (series writer/producer) and told him that if the higher-ups wanted a new script, he’d be happy to provide. Unfortunately, the ‘higher-ups’ didn’t want anything to do with the old writers!

John Tomerlin: John Tomerlin, like George Clayton Johnson, got into “The Twilight Zone” through his friendship with Charles Beaumont. His involvement with TZ was ever so brief; he wrote one script, “Number Twelve Looks Just Like You”, in the fifth season. It is credited to both Tomerlin and Beaumont, alhough it was an entirely solo script written by Tomerlin. The script was overdue at the time, and the writing job was given over by Chuck because he had numerous projects at the time and simply couldn’t do them all. John read from some memoirs he’d written up regarding his friendship with Beaumont (excerpted briefly here):

When John Tomerlin and Charles Beaumont were just twenty years old when they worked together at the California Motor Express. Beaumont wanted to direct motion pictures and John wanted to get into radio. John soon after got a job at a small job at a radio station in Corona. Like Beaumont, Tomerlin was a radio fanatic and even to this day, vastly prefers radio to TV. Chuck turned to drawing cartoons, and soon after, to writing. His first story (or one of the very first published) was “Printer’s Devil”, which John remembers well because the villain was named Tomerlin. He’d written some episodes of “Lawman,” “Maverick,” “77 Sunset Strip” and done some rewrites for those and other shows, and decided he wanted to do a novel. Chuck and John had already done the novel “Run from the Hunter” under the pseudonym Keith Grant (an agglomeration of their two sons’ first names). In 1963, Chuck was enjoying tremendous success as a writer. He’d done “The Seven Faces of Dr. Lao,” “The Intruder,” “The Wonderful World of The Brothers Grimm” (all features) and had contracts to do even more. He was also balancing his feature film writing chores with chores involving TV episodes. Late that year, Chuck and John took a train trip to New York, and were planning on collaborating on another novel. John rented an apartment in Greenwich Village. After conducting some business, Chuck soon left and went back to California unexpectedly and called John to say that he didn’t think he was going to make it back out to New York for awhile. Somehow, John knew that Chuck would not ever be returning. Meanwhile, John had started work on a book for young adults; the second book they were to write never quite came to pass. They would see each other again during John’s brief trips back to California, and it was clear to John that Chuck was not well. He had started farming out much of his work to others; many thought this was a result of alcoholism. Chuck asked him to write a “Twilight Zone” episode for him, and “Number 12 Looks Just Like You” was completed in just three days. In the spring of 1964, John went to Nice, France and rented an apartment there, to start work on another book called “Challenge the Wind”, about automobile racing. Shortly thereafter, he received a letter from writer friend William F. Nolan stating that Chuck had been admitted to UCLA Medical Center and diagnosed with Alzheimer’s Disease. He didn’t die until three years after, but John and others had said their goodbyes long before in some form or other. Had Beaumont survived, today he would undoubtedly still be working hard and inspiring everyone he came into contact with.

When asked if he thought “Number Twelve” was a good piece of television, John admitted that he has not yet seen the episode on TV. He has not purposefully avoided it and if it ever came on TV, he’d watch it and sometime he will. However, the genesis of his having to write the episode was associated with the demise of Beaumont, which was of course a difficult event in his life. Truth be told, some TV writers never do get a chance to see all their episodes in finished form, especially if they’ve written a lot of them!
When asked if he would write for the “Newest Twilight Zone”, John said he definitely would if the producer’s objective was a good one and if they were really out to get some quality segments on the air. However, the philosophy and production values would have to be intact.

Marc Scott Zicree : Marc Zicree is, of course, best known for his book “The Twilight Zone Companion.” Over the last twenty years, it has become the bible of “Twilight Zone”. However, getting it onto the shelves was not easy. Marc’s first TZ memory started when he was around six years old. He was up past his bedtime and the episode “Death Ship”, written by Richard Matheson, came on. As he grew up, he watched “Twilight Zone”, “The Outer Limits” and later “Star Trek”. In 1977, two years after Rod Serling died, Marc was an art major in college and had never taken any journalism courses. He met George Clayton Johnson at a convention and told him of his wish to write a book on “Twilight Zone.” Around the same time, Carol Serling had rejected a number of writers who had expressed interest in doing the same thing. Thanks to the recommendations of George and Buck Houghton, Carol Serling gave Marc access to her entire attic full of Rod’s old scripts, stories, memorabilia. For Marc, this experience was much like crawling through Rod’s brain (!). He wrote the “Companion” over a period of five years and after over twenty rejections by publishers, it eventually was bought by Bantam. However, the sale was made with the stipulation that all the information about the writers be deleted. They didn’t want any information about Rod Serling, George Clayton Johnson, Earl Hamner, Richard Matheson, or any of the others who wrote for the show. The reasons for this are unclear but seem to point towards wanting to keep the book as short as possible, to serve as a viewer’s guide to TZ. However, Marc insisted that this not be changed, and instead, told them that they could choose whatever production photos they wanted to put in the book. They consented, and published the book’s first edition in 1982.

When asked why the original series was so good and why the 1983 movie was so bad, Marc had an easy answer: the producers relied on gimmicks instead of “the heart” and the sentimental. The writers who re-vamped the segments into movie format did not care much about preserving the original flavor of the old series. And in many ways, the movie was a mistake. He also pointed out that writers have to “write who they are”. Many of his colleagues, fellow TV writers, often turn to “Twilight Zone” episodes for inspiration. Not for copying the ideas in the stories, but because everyone knows that those episodes are really and truly quality material. And so much TV today is so poor as a result of this lack of ‘writing from an authentic self.’

George Clayton Johnson and Earl Hamner

Acclaimed author Chris Conlon, panel moderator

Director Panel

August 24, 2002 – 4:00 pm – Beverly Garland Hotel Theater

From left to right: James Sheldon, Ben Cooper, Elliot Silverstein

Note: These are in order of speaker and just briefly summarize each person’s comments. The duration of this panel discussion was roughly 60 minutes. Some details may be outdated.

Gary Shusett (host): Gary let each person introduce themselves and discuss their “Twilight Zone” work, posing various questions to each as the hour progressed. Two more directors were scheduled to attend but did not, so Gary replaced them with actors Ben Cooper and Susan Gordon.

James Sheldon: Mr. Sheldon directed many old TV shows, which included a number of episodes of “Twilight Zone”. The most memorable one, and his best, was “It’s a Good Life” which starred Bill(y) Mumy. Today he often gets the question ‘why were some of the Twilight Zone’s shot on videotape?’ The answer, of course, was that with tape there could be no photography done by George T. Clemens, who had established the way “Twilight Zone” appeared on television sets, so ultimately CBS stuck with film. He recalls “Long Distance Call”, also done with Mumy, and “The Whole Truth” which were done on tape. He remembered using Mumy overtime, against child labor laws, in order to get the final shot of the picture; this was fine with Bill Mumy’s mother but had the network found out, it would have been curtains for him. A year or so later, he got the assignment to direct Ray Bradbury’s story “I Sing the Body Electric”. While he liked Bradbury’s story, he never liked the finished product of the episode and doesn’t to this day … mainly because of the poor casting of Josephine Hutchinson as the granny. He also recalled “A Penny For Your Thoughts” and George Clayton Johnson being on the set during the shooting, just to be helpful. In his opinion, the marvelous scripts were what made TZ work as well as it did, but another large and much-overlooked factor was the extraordinary casting by a man named Jim Lister from the Stalmaster-Lister casting agency. There was a new and completely different story done every week, and that’s mainly what kept the show going and kept the interest level high. A drama one week, a comedy the next, and so forth. The writers each had different styles, each of which presented its own share of challenges. After “Twilight Zone”, Jim did “My World and Welcome to It,” “M*A*S*H,” “MacMillan and Wife” and more. He had done “Route 66” and “Naked City” around the same time as “Twilight Zone.” Mr. Sheldon’s career as TV director began at NBC. He was a guide, then was transferred to the news department. He learned that the director of radio was leaving, and soon after started getting jobs in the radio department (this was around 1948). In the fifties, he started directing television. He worked with both Ben Cooper and Susan Gordon during their days as young actors and made mention of what wonderful parents each had, and how good parents are always the precursor to good kid actors … and vice versa.

Ben Cooper (actor): Ben appeared in the third season episode “Still Valley” with Gary Merrill, with whom he had done several-hundred radio shows in the forties and early fifties. “Still Valley”, coincidentally, was directed by his old friend Jim Sheldon! “Actors always felt comfortable working with Jim,” Ben commented. “I have known Jim for about 60 years, ever since he came to see me in a Broadway play with Ruth Hammond when I was eight years old!” Ben recalled that the extras used for the street scene in “Still Valley”, where everyone was required to stand perfectly still, were fabulous. “They were so incredibly professional. They could go out for coffee or a cigarette and come back and remember exactly how they were standing!” Jim Sheldon had Ben tone down his performance. Ben wanted to act dramatically, in the same style as Gary Merrill, but the character he was playing (the young soldier) didn’t call for it. Ben did “Perry Mason” and “Gunsmoke” around the same time as “Twilight Zone”. His career started in radio at around age eight. He subsequently went on to do over 3200 radio shows and later on at Columbia University he wrote a thesis about radio. In 1960, Ben was working on “Wagon Train”, where the episode that week was a remake of “Great Expectations”. He was – as he put it – “forced to do a love scene with a sponge!” The actress who he was working with was no good, and he complained to Ward Bond about it. Ward then replaced the bad actress with a young girl named Pamela who was visiting the set that day. Five minutes after meeting her, Ben decided he was going to marry her, and twenty-seven days later they were engaged. Pamela was already engaged to Ward Bond’s best friend at the time they met, but broke the engagement!! Forty-two years later, Ben and Pamela are still going strong. Ben has always been thankful to that “lousy” actress (he doesn’t remember her name, unfortunately!) Ben made a pilot in Greece in 1967 for Herbert Leonard, which CBS liked and was prepared to make into a series that called for the cast to travel to exotic locations frequently. This was cancelled when Leonard got into a brawl with the network. This was particularly disheartening to Ben because it would probably have meant big bucks for a LONG time. He’s since gotten over it … and done a hundred times better for himself than that one series ever could have … but whenever someone has a sob story for him, he’ll tell about ‘The Series That Never Was’!! Ben spent seven years on the board of Screen Actors Guild and five years on the board of directors of the SAG pension plan. During this time he decided he did not want to rely on the pension and formed his own business, which has branches in all parts of the world.

Elliot Silverstein: Mr. Silverstein got his start in TV after starting out as faculty member of the Theater Department at Brandeis University. He later directed the films “Cat Ballou” and “A Man Called Horse” and was president of the DGA (Directors Guild of America). He claims his break into TV and film came “purely by accident and as a result of coincidences.” “Twilight Zone” remains one of the single most important aspects of his career, because it led to changing the so-called ‘Bill of Rights’ of directors in TV. During production of the episode “The Obsolete Man” (the last episode aired in the second season of “Twilight Zone” in the spring of 1961), Elliot was working with the film editor in the cutting process. They came to the last scene, with the state officials closing in on the chancellor, but the editor would not cut it the way he wanted. Elliot went to the DGA to find out what rights he had as far as this issue was concerned. At that time, it had been established for many years (since the early 1940’s) that the director could only view the “first rough cut” of the film, and any suggestions he had were to be relayed to the Associate Producer…and that was IT. Elliot, single-handedly (but backed by many industry directors of the day) changed all of that, and developed certain ‘Thou Shalts’ and ‘Thou Shalt Nots’.

He remembers doing “The Passersby” with Joanne Linville and James Gregory, and also “Spur of the Moment” with Diana Hyland. He recalled that he asked Diana if she could ride a horse. Not wanting to be fired or replaced, the actress said ‘Yes, of course’ but when the time came for her to ride, she didn’t even know what side of the animal to climb up on. During “The Trade Ins”, Joseph Schildkraut’s wife was dying and in between takes he cried like no tomorrow. Elliot offered him the option of cancelling production, but Schildkraut refused and insisted on finishing the assignment. Elliot spoke highly of Buck Houghton with the remark, “Buck Houghton was a Producer in the preferred sense of the word…the supremo of producers. He knew what he knew, and he expected that you knew what you knew. He never said ‘no’ to anything I wanted, and I was always very free to do my own thing.” The shooting schedule was three days’ preparation for three days’ shooting. No rehearsal time was designated; the actors rehearsed between takes. He emphasized that a particular director was hired to do a certain episode, and that they were hired “to solve the problems of that particular storyline”. On “Twilight Zone”, he never had problems with actors, but on other shows he’d occasionally have one who refused to play a certain scene a certain way. “Part of a director’s job is to guide actors who come from all different schools of acting.” “We got the *completed* scripts about a week ahead of time on Twilight Zone…other shows usually did not give the director completed scripts. You walked in and they said, ‘Here’s the first three pages, don’t worry, it WILL END!'” Elliot echoed Jim Sheldon’s comment, that “Twilight Zone was always many cuts above all the rest. It was a class act all the way.”

Susan Gordon (actor): Susan Gordon played Jenny, the young girl with the bad leg, in Charles Beaumont’s episode “The Fugitive”, with veteran character actor J. Pat O’Malley (who plays Old Ben, the fugitive from another world) . Even as a child, she liked “Twilight Zone” and found it ‘magical’ to work on. During the same period she did nearly all the shows that were on TV at the time (“Gunsmoke”, “My Three Sons”, and countless others). “Twilight Zone” was one of, if not ‘the’ most enjoyable of all the roles she played because the story gave her the opportunity to transform into a twin and run off with royalty. Of Nancy Kulp, who played Mrs. Gann (her lemon-sucking guardian!) she says, “I have foggy but warm memories of her; in a child’s eyes, she was someone to respect.” On the first day of shooting, she came down ill during the outdoor scene and was carried off on a stretcher just as Rod Serling was coming in; she never got to meet him. After high school, Susan stopped acting for awhile and decided she wanted an uninterrupted college career. After college, she moved to Japan and met her husband, with whom she had six children. During her 13 years in Japan, she found community theater, which allowed her to continue acting. After she returned to the US and made her home in New Jersey, she also continued doing community theater. Susan made the interesting observation about shooting schedules, “You really had to get your character developed and in order and had to be prepared for the schedule. For instance, sometimes we’d shoot the last scene first, and the first scene last, and it made you work accordingly…’okay, how am I going to be acting at the beginning as opposed to the end?’ Susan did movies with Danny Kaye, Alan Ladd, Zsa Zsa Gabor, and many others, some of which had nine week long shooting schedules, and she found it all enjoyable. She has recently gotten back into acting and was re-discovered by a well-known director who cast her in an off-Broadway play, which has opened up some doors for her. Her greatest accomplishments, are her children, and she married off her oldest child the week before the convention.