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.....

To Absent Friends - Joe Garagiola, Ken Howard, and Earl Hamner Jr.

The Grim Reaper has been arriving faster than The Grandstander can keep up.  So let us note the following passings:

 Joe Garagiola

1926 - 2016

Former baseball player turned broadcaster turned all-round television personality, Joe Garagiola died this week at the age of 90.  Garagiola turned a mediocre-to-fair baseball career and a childhood  friendship with Yogi Berra into a career that went far beyond the baseball field and  included being a co-host of the Today Show and a sometimes substitute for Johnny Carson on the Tonight Show.  Perhaps, however, the best thing that Garagiola ever did was found the Baseball Assistance Team (BAT) that helped out destitute and down-on-their-luck former baseball players.  He ended up successful beyond what I am sure were his wildest dreams.  He didn't have to start up BAT, but he did, so good for him.

Ken Howard

1944-2016

Actor Ken Howard, who died this week at age 71, may best be known as the actor who starred in television's "The White Shadow", a show about a white basketball coach at an inner city high school, in the 1970's.  Turns out that Howard actually was a star high school basketball player in Long Island, and was the only white starter on his team.  He was nicknamed, you guessed it, The White Shadow.  He had a long and distinguished acting career, most notably as Thomas Jefferson in both the stage play and movie, "1776".  Since 2009, he served as President of the Screen Actors Guild.

Earl Hamner, Jr.

1923-2016

Earl Hamner, Jr, was best known as the author of the novel "Spencer's Mountain" which led to a 1963 movie of the same name, and more notably, the 1970's TV series, "The Waltons", which ran for nine years and over 200 episodes.  Of course, as is often the case, Hamner's obituary reveals that he did a lot more than that.  As a young man, he befriended Rod Serling and went on to write a number of episodes of Serling's classic, "The Twilight Zone".  His writing credits for both movies and television stretch back to 1953 (and include the creation of "Falcon Crest", another series that ran for nine years), and his obit reveals that he was still having short stories published in various books and magazines when he was age 90.  He was 92 when he died this past week.

RIP Joe Garagiola, Ken Howard, and Earl Hamner Jr.