A Visit to the Twilight Zone

The Grandstander recently noted the death of writer Earl Hamner, Jr., the creator of, among other things, the television series, "The Waltons".

http://www.grandstander.blogspot.com/2016/03/to-absent-friends-joe-garagiola-ken.html

I had read in Hammer's obituary that as a young man he befriended another young writer, Rod Serling, and that that friendship led to Hamner writing scripts for eight episodes of Serling's landmark television series, "The Twilight Zone".  The internet made it very easy to find out which episodes Hamner wrote, and a walk to my DVD box set of "The Complete Twilight Zone" gave me the opportunity to once again enjoy these show and these episodes in particular.

Here were the shows that Hamner wrote and when they first aired:

Season Three

The Hunt (1962)

A Piano in the House (1962)

Season Four

Jesse-Belle (1963)

Season Five

Ring-A-Ding Girl (1963)

You Drive (1964)

Black Leather Jackets (1964)

Stopover in a Small Town (1964)

The Bewitchin' Pool (1964)

It was most interesting and entertaining viewing.  Three of the stories, The Hunt, Jess-Belle, and The Betwitchin' Pool contained settings among country folk, similar to the kind of people Hammer wrote about in "The Waltons".  Some were in contemporary settings, some had real science fiction overtones, and some were spooky, and almost all of them had some real message to deliver.

The star of Jesse-Belle was one of my favorites, Anne Francis, who also starred in a more famous TZ episode called The After Hours.  Other notable actors in these shows included Edward Andrews, Barry Sullivan, and Mary Badham.  Badham is famous for her role of Scout in "To Kill A Mockingbird" and her role in The Bewitchin' Pool was one of only five other roles that she did after Mockingbird, and The Bewitchin' Pool was, in fact, the final episode of "The Twilight Zone" series.

More remarkable was observing how good these episodes - and most episodes of "The  Twilight Zone" -  were and how well these shows hold up over fifty years after they were initially produced and aired.  The production values, and by that I mean the sets and scenery, may appear cheap and chintzy by the television standards of 2016, but the stories, the acting, and, above all, the excellent writing all make these shows still good and still worth watching all these years later.  This makes that TZ boxed set one of the highlights of my own personal  DVD library.

Submitted for your approval.....

Lt. Columbo and Anne Francis

Readers who are also Facebook Friends of mine know that I have been on a recent kick of watching old episodes of the "Columbo" TV series that starred Peter Falk.  Last week I watched an episode from 1973 that starred the lovely Anne Francis, upon whom I had a crush in my younger teen years, as did, I suspect, many male teen aged viewers of "Honey West" back in the mid-sixties.  I say this with some conviction because my Facebook post on the topic elicited a huge response.  Okay, so maybe it was only a half dozen or so responses, but still a trend in my book.

Before I proceed, let me post a gratuitous picture of the lovely Miss Francis in her role as private detective Honey West:

Yeah!

Anyway, the response prompted me to dig out an episode from 1972, Season One, of Columbo called "Short Fuse".  This one starred Roddy McDowell, who shamelessly overacted throughout the entire episode, while wearing absolutely preposterous 1970's era hipster fashions.  Miss Francis played his girlfriend who he ended up treating rather shabbily.   James Gregory played the role of Roddy's victim in this one.  William Windom also had a semi-key role, and the "Special Guest Star" was Ida Lupino.

(An aside.  I was also a big reader of Mad Magazine in my teen years, and they once did a satire on some movie that McDowell was in.  In their satire, Mad called him "Roddy McTowell", and ever since,  cannot watch anything that features Roddy McDowell that I don't think of him as "Roddy McTowell".  Make of that what you will.)

The show followed the typical Columbo formula.  We know who did it, the killer underestimates the (seemingly) bumbling Lt. Columbo, and practically spells out what he did for the dim bulb police lieutenant, only to be out-witted brought down in the end.

Anne Francis would have been 41 years old when this one was made.  She looked good, but seemed to be just a bit old for the part that she played. Still, there was just something about that mole below and to the right of her lower lip.

I do enjoy watching these old episodes.  Despite the fashions of the era, they hold up pretty well.  I also can't help but noticing how incredibly cheap looking the sets are or these shows.  Really bad. But the stories are good, the writing can be hokey at times, but for the most part it's not bad, and Falk is terrific in his signature role.  It is also interesting to see how the series provided employment for TV stars whose own series had been canceled (Gene Barry, Leonard Nimoy, Windom) and old movie stars whose primes were long past (Ray Milland, Myrna Loy, Ida Lupino).  All actors really want to do is work, and shows like Columbo provided it for them back in the seventies.

Before closing, how about I throw in another gratuitous cheesecake picture of Anne Francis.  I'm guessing that this photo was circa mid-1950's.