When was twilight zone on

George Mitchell Dr. Floyd as Dr. Floyd …. Cyril Delevanti Franklin as Franklin …. Jon Lormer Minister as Minister …. John McLiam Cop as Cop …. Bill Erwin Man as Man ….

Lew Brown Lieutenant as Lieutenant …. Rod Serling. More like this. Watch options. Storyline Edit. The Twilight Zone is a place that exists at any moment of time, of space or of mind When you find yourself in this realm of unlimited possibility, be careful what you say or do. The right decisions may help you find your way back out The wrong decisions often lead to madness and death, or an eternity trapped in this dimension.

Did you know Edit. Trivia Rod Serling wanted Richard Egan to do the narration because of his rich, deep voice. However, due to strict studio contracts of the time, Egan was unable. Serling said, "It's Richard Egan or no one. It's Richard Egan, or I'll do the thing myself", which is exactly what happened. Quotes [Opening narration season 1 ] Narrator : There is a fifth dimension beyond that which is known to man.

Alternate versions With the exception of end-of-season episodes, all episodes originally ended with a brief segment in which Rod Serling appeared on camera even during the first season when he only narrated the episodes themselves and told viewers about the next week's episode. These promos were deleted from the syndicated versions of the episodes but were later restored for DVD release, although many now exist only in audio form.

User reviews Review. Top review. The stories were always ironic, briliant, and fascinating, and they often came with a moral lesson.

The entertainment brought on by "The Twilight Zone" was as vast as the Zone itself. Its principal writers, Sterling, Beaumont, and Matheson, were the best of their era. It kicked off this year on December 31 at 6 a. But while tuning in, many folks are wondering why a cult classic show like the Twilight Zone would go off the air after only five seasons.

Before we get into the real reason why the show ended, it's important to note that the original Twilight Zone anthology had episodes.

It aired once a week from September to June during , and was nominated for numerous awards. Because of the niche nature of the show, its run of five seasons was an incredible feat. Believe it or not, the Twilight Zone was canceled more than once — well, sort of. Before the fourth season was set to air in , the show was unable to find a sponsor, according to the book A Critical History of Television's The Twilight Zone.

Aubrey, who, apparently, wasn't a fan of the sci-fi show. The Twilight Zone was then replaced by a comedy series called Fair Exchange. However, in January , Serling was invited back to his original timeslot as Fair Exchange never became popular, and the network needed a show to fill its place.

He was popular and athletic, active at the Jewish Community Center and at Binghamton Central High School, where he was a member of the debate team and a frequent performer in student plays. In Serling joined the U. Standing five foot four, he barely qualified. Assigned to the th Parachute Infantry Regiment, Serling saw action in the Philippines during the fierce closing months of the war. He took part in the Battle of Manila, where American casualties were high.

For years in his dreams he continued to fight the Japanese. Attending Antioch College on the G. After graduating in , Serling worked as a copywriter and, in his spare time, managed to place some of his own rather melodramatic scripts with popular radio serials like Dr. Christian , about a small-town physician. As his skill and confidence improved, Serling turned to television, where an urgent demand for original material allowed a now-legendary cadre of young writers — which also included Paddy Chayefsky and Reginald Rose — to start their careers.

Serling quickly sold television plays to the better New York-based anthology programs. It earned Serling his first Emmy, and would later be adapted into a film. Young and articulate, Serling was widely interviewed and profiled for many leading newspapers and magazines.

Like a good horse, or a swivel-hip halfback, I was the guy to watch. For example, in a essay introducing a collection of four of his scripts, Serling argued that television was ideal for the sort of smart, provocative drama that he, Rose, and Chayefsky, among others, aspired to write. Radio, however, supplied an unfortunate precedent. But almost no one, noted Serling, thought of radio as a medium for literary art.

Serling worried that television would go the way of radio. That it can do it at all is a tribute to mass intelligence and selectivity. F rom the start, however, Serling faced intrusions great and small. Far worse, however, was an incident a few years previous involving a teleplay Serling wrote for a weekly show sponsored by U. The plot concerned a violent neurotic who kills an elderly Jew and then is acquitted by residents of the small town in which he lives….

Steel demanded changes in the script. The town was moved from an unspecified area to New England. The murdered Jew was changed to an unnamed foreigner. A later script for Playhouse 90 , also based on the Emmett Till story — this time retelling it in a Western setting — was altered as well. After Kennedy was assassinated Serling wrote a short documentary for the U.

Information Agency; it was intended to portray — especially for foreign viewers — the new president, Lyndon Johnson, as a gruff but humble man, a paternalistic populist who, with the help of the United Nations, would work to abolish poverty and end war. In short, he was a liberal whose moral convictions influenced the tales he wanted to tell and how he wanted to tell them. But overt stories of social criticism risked raising problems with the sponsors and the network censors.

This was a major motivation for the creation of The Twilight Zon e : allegories, science fiction, and unusual premises not only allowed complicated moral and political stories to be distilled to a potent purity, but they could liberate Serling from some of the limitations of drama on commercial television. Moreover, the network had considerable success with Alfred Hitchcock Presents , which also served up a fairly sophisticated mix of dark irony and suspense.

Although telegenic in his way, Serling was less recognizable than the rotund director. And he looked nothing like the typically nondescript on-camera host. He looked like a well-tailored young rabbi, upright but hip, delivering droll sermons through clenched teeth in a clipped and alliterative style. CBS hedged its bets, scheduling The Twilight Zone against relatively light competition on late Friday nights, the fringe of primetime.

Mike Wallace was also skeptical. In his interview with Serling — conducted just days before The Twilight Zone premiered — Wallace implied that writing about flying saucers and time machines for the new show was something of a comedown for the man whose incisive character studies, realistic in approach, had become touchstones for quality television.

After all, science fiction on television heretofore meant shows like Flash Gordon and Rocky Jones, Space Range r — kiddie stuff made on the cheap. The Twilight Zone belongs in some ways to a golden age of its own. As a result, the live drama showcases disappeared, along with Omnibus and other up-market offerings. But in retrospect, the growing role of Disney, Warner Brothers, and Universal seems inevitable. Moreover, the networks were discovering that filmed series like old movies could rerun on television repeatedly, for years, sold in syndication packages to affiliates across the country and independent stations around the world.

They were well-acted, well-directed and often surprisingly well-written, and, like most Hollywood movies, required a certain amount of concentration to be fully enjoyed. During much of the s, the television networks still assumed that most viewers were probably also readers, not of Henry James perhaps, but of Erle Stanley Gardner or Zane Grey. For such viewers, then, good popular fiction need not be sensational or simplistic, but it did require, even within well-worn genres, compelling characters and reasonably fresh storylines.