20 Behind-The-Scenes Stories From The Twilight Zone That Are Stranger Than The Show's Storylines

Black Mirror. American Horror Story. Love, Death and Robots. These shows are all hugely indebted to Rod Serling’s strange masterpiece The Twilight Zone – a spooky anthology series that spoke to the social and political climate of its day. Interestingly, though, some of stories from behind the scenes were even stranger than the on-screen plots. So, from life imitating art to actors cheating death, here are some of the weirdest ones.

20. Rod Serling wasn’t originally intended to be the show’s narrator

Rod Serling’s narration in The Twilight Zone is indelibly etched into the minds of fans. Amazingly, though, he wasn’t the first choice for the gig. According to IMDb, CBS actually hired a voiceover artist named Westbrook Van Voorhis, and he recorded the pilot episode’s narration. But then his schedule got too busy, and Van Voorhis was unable to return.

A perfect fit

Serling temporarily stepped into the breach while CBS searched for a replacement. But after the studio discovered Orson Welles’ wage demands were far too high for its liking, the director suggested he do the job on a more permanent basis. Though CBS was skeptical as he was known to be a writer and not a voiceover actor. But it turned out that Serling knew the show best, so his style suited it to a tee.

19. One episode was actually an Oscar-winning foreign language short film

Have you ever heard the one about how The Twilight Zone presented an Oscar-winning short French film as an episode of the show? No? Well, allow us to explain. During the show’s final season, producer William Froug was reportedly keen on keeping costs as low as possible. He saw director Robert Enrico’s version of the Ambrose Bierce short story An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge, and the staffer had a bright idea.

A big success

CBS bought the rights to air the film twice in America as part of the show, which was cheaper than creating an entirely new episode from scratch. All it required was some editing to make it fit the format. Rod Serling addressed the film’s origins in his opening narration – noting that it was the winner of the 1962 Cannes Film Festival. It then subsequently also picked up an Academy Award two years later.

18. The show re-used props from prominent science-fiction films of the time

The Twilight Zone was never a huge ratings success and therefore always ended up being made on a tight budget. Filming took place at the MGM studios in Los Angeles’ Culver City, which proved to be a godsend for one simple reason. Lots of productions were filmed there – including legendary sci-fi films like Forbidden Planet. This meant that the prop department was filled to bursting with interesting sci-fi gizmos and gadgets.

Finding inspiration in the props department

Rod Serling would reportedly sometimes visit the prop department to look at its various curios – hoping something would give him inspiration for an episode. According to Today, the show repurposed every major prop from Forbidden Planet over the course of its run. For instance, the iconic Robby the Robot found his way into two different Zone tales: “The Brain Center at Whipples” and “Uncle Simon.”

17. One episode was originally conceived as a sitcom pilot

Season three’s “Cavender is Coming” is generally considered one of the worst episodes of The Twilight Zone, and it’s easy to see why. Instead of giving viewers their usual dose of creepiness and social commentary, the episode feels like a sitcom. It even has a laughing track! Bemused fans watched a bumbling angel try to gain his wings for 30 painfully unfunny minutes.

Ulterior motives

It turned out that this episode was intended as a backdoor pilot that was intended to lead to the Cavender character getting his own show. Naturally, it bombed, and this spinoff show never materialized. Yet what’s even more bizarre is that this wasn’t the first time Rod Serling had told the story of a humorous angel helping humans. Season one’s “Mr. Bevis” has basically the same plot. What gives?

16. The show’s iconic theme wasn’t composed by Psycho’s Bernard Herrmann

For the longest time, the world believed The Twilight Zone’s theme music was composed by Bernard Herrmann. This is not the case, though. Yes, Herrmann did record the theme for season one, but it’s not the version most closely associated with the show. That was actually two pieces of music by Romanian composer Marius Constant spliced together. And the musician later claimed that he was paid a paltry $700 for his trouble.

Dodging the royalties

Basically, CBS realized that if they paid a European composer a one-off fee to record a new theme, they wouldn’t have to pay royalties in perpetuity. Also, it took Constant years to even find out his work had been used! In 1984 CBS and Constant settled a lawsuit out of court – granting the composer rights to his music from that year forward. But he had to relinquish any claim over backdated royalties from previous years.

15. Real-life planes have a seat known as William Shatner’s seat

If you’ve ever sat in the middle window seat on either side of a plane, you’ll know that you have a great view of the wing. What you might not have noticed, though, is the small black triangle that is positioned above the window. This is a way of easily identifying what has become known in the business as “William Shatner’s seat.” And, yes, it’s a reference to “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet.” Obviously.

Breaking down the moniker

Aerospace engineer Lee Ballentine posted on Quora to explain. He wrote, “This is the place inside the aeroplane from which you can get the best visual check for ice or other problems.” So, while staff may have attached the legendary Shatner’s name to the seats as an industry in-joke, at least we know it’s not because they actually expect a gremlin to be on the wing. Or maybe they do…

14. Thousands of fans submitted scripts for the show

In a move that would probably never be repeated today, Rod Serling actually let it be known that he wanted script submissions for his major network television show. You read that right: the director said that he’d receive script submissions from anyone – industry writer or not. According to the website Decades, he received 14,000 manuscripts in only five days!

No one made the cut

Unfortunately, of the 500 scripts Serling did manage to read, the vast majority were terrible. He admitted that two were actually good but couldn’t be produced because they didn’t adhere to the show’s format. In the end, no unknown writer got their big break, but it was an admirable thing for Serling to do. Or it was stupid – we can’t quite decide.

13. Rod Serling was accused of plagiarism by show writer Ray Bradbury

When Rod Serling hired sci-fi novelist Ray Bradbury to work on The Twilight Zone, he was legitimately hiring one of his heroes. Unfortunately, their relationship would sour over the years. According to the Literary Hub website, Bradbury’s first script was deemed unfilmable due to budgetary concerns. In the end, then, only one of his stories was actually turned into an episode. Bradbury would later accuse Serling of unknowingly plagiarizing his work.

Only time will tell

Serling, in turn, demeaned Bradbury’s writing in a later interview. Literary Hub notes that he said, “Ray Bradbury is a very difficult guy to dramatize, because that which reads so beautifully on the printed page doesn’t fit in the mouth – it fits in the head.” The latter subsequently wrote, “As for our friendship, it is, of course, now officially over.” He even said Serling was an amateur who would be forgotten over time – unlike real sci-fi writers like he and Charles Beaumont. Yikes.

12. Rod Serling didn’t realize there is no fifth dimension in reality

The classic Twilight Zone opening narration begins with Rod Serling saying, “There is a fifth dimension, beyond that which is known to man.” Though that’s not what he said when the voiceover was originally being recorded for the pilot, according to Mental Floss. Instead, he alluded to a sixth dimension, which caused CBS executive William Self to give him the side eye.

Thank the editor

“Please explain to me what the fifth dimension is,” Self asked. A clueless Serling replied, “Oh, aren’t there five?” The narration was then re-recorded to spare Serling’s blushes. If he had been paying more attention in science class, he’d have known that everything in the world exists in a three-dimensional space, while time itself is the fourth dimension. But no one has agreed on a fifth one yet.

11. William Shatner pranked an episode’s director by faking his death

This behind-the-scenes tale involves Captain Kirk pranking the director of Superman: The Movie by faking his own death. If that’s not stranger than fiction, we don’t know what is! Director Richard Donner told the Archive of American Television that it occurred during the grueling shoot for the “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet” episode. As a result, Donner had encouraged people to have fun while they were working hard. And Shatner’s version of this apparently involved staging a fake fight with actor Edd Byrnes.

Falling to his doom

As the two actors tangled on the wing of the plane they were shooting in, Donner saw Shatner unexpectedly plummet to his doom on the concrete floor below. Then he found out it was just a dummy dressed in Shatner’s clothes. In later years, Donner would joke he was simply relieved that they didn’t have to re-shoot the whole episode because of Shatner’s untimely demise!

10. Season one’s opening narration describes nearly every man as 36 years old

This behind-the-scenes factoid is a weird one. During season one of The Twilight Zone, nearly every male character mentioned in the opening narration is specified as 36 years old. It’s especially weird when you consider that most of the actors hired to play these youthful men were in their 40s. In truth, the performers probably looked even older than they were – and certainly way too old to conceivably be mid-30s.

They don't look their age

Cracked writer Gladstone hilariously spotlighted this oddness in a 2012 article, saying all the men looked “wrinkled and withered to hell.” As for why, Gladstone theorized that it was because Rod Serling was in his mid-30s at the time yet looked considerably older. He didn’t think it was too far-fetched to imagine “that a man unhappy with himself would manifest a world where everyone in their mid-30s looked a decade too old.”

9. Rod Serling’s dreams inspired the plots of many episodes

“Where do your ideas come from?” is one of the most common questions asked of any writer. When Rod Serling was asked this during a series of talks at Ithaca College in 1972, he said, “Ideas come from the Earth. They come from every human experience that you’ve ever witnessed or have heard about, translated into your brain in your own sense of dialogue, in your own language form.”

He kept a tape recorder on the nightstand

This makes sense when you consider that Serling reportedly kept a tape recorder at his bedside every night. That way, if he had an interesting dream, he could immediately recount the vision and then refer to it later. And many of his most out-there dreams wound up inspiring episodes of The Twilight Zone.

8. The sad tale of actor Paul Douglas

“The Mighty Casey” starred Jack Warden as a baseball manager attempting to turn around the fortunes of his team by hiring a robot named Casey. It was one of the funnier episodes of the show, but the behind-the-scenes strife involved in its creation was far from amusing. After all, Paul Douglas – the man who originally played the manager – was dying for the entirety of the episode’s production.

Slowly dying

Douglas passed the day after the shoot wrapped, and it cast his behavior in an entirely new light. He had not seemed well, with most assuming that the actor was dealing with an alcohol problem. According to CBR.com, though, Douglas was having an incipient coronary, which meant he was technically dying of a slow heart attack for the whole shoot. Rod Serling felt the performance needed to be re-shot, so he paid his own money to bring Warden in.

7. The cameras only shot one half of actor Franchot Tone’s face for a peculiar reason

“The Silence” is a unique episode of The Twilight Zone for two reasons. The first is that it contained no science-fiction or horror elements. The second is that one of its stars – Franchot Tone – was shot for most of the runtime with only the right side of his face visible due to a mysterious behind-the-scenes accident. The left side of his face had been badly scarred sometime between the first and second days of production.

Differing theories

There were a few different rumors about what happened to Tone. As per IMDb, co-star Liam Sullivan believed he had fallen off a terrace to a driveway below. Rod Serling heard that he had been on the receiving end of a beating from a romantic rival. Whatever the truth, director Boris Sagal’s clever camera trick wound up being an artistically celebrated element of the episode, as it added an extra layer of menace to Tone’s character.

6. Only Rod Serling was permitted to use the word ‘God’ in scripts

Rod Serling entrusted Twilight Zone scripts to precious few writers. One of the few he did trust was legendary horror/sci-fi scribe Richard Matheson. He is perhaps best known for writing the novels I Am Legend, What Dreams May Come and A Stir of Echoes. Apparently, Matheson wrote 16 episodes of the show in total but confessed he had one bone to pick with Serling.

No questions asked

As per the Orange County Screenwriters Association, if Matheson ever used the word “God” in any of his scripts, Serling would ensure it was changed. The creator himself could use it, but other writers weren’t permitted. Matheson admitted this ticked him off, but he never actually asked what Serling’s reasoning was for enforcing the rule. Weird.

5. Writer Charles Beaumont pushed for Serling to play the main character in an episode

“A Nice Place To Visit” told the story of a small-time criminal named Rocky, who is shot in the opening scene after robbing a pawn shop. He then wakes up unharmed in the company of an elderly man named Pip. Over the course of the episode, Rocky comes to believe he is in heaven. But – spoiler alert – it turns out he’s actually in the one that trades in eternal damnation.

Not their first choice

Rocky was played by Larry Blyden, but he wasn’t writer Charles Beaumont’s ideal choice for the role. According to the TV Tropes website, the production’s first choice was Mickey Rooney. Though when they weren’t able to get him, Beaumont sent a memo to Rod Serling suggesting he play the role himself –despite not being an actor. Serling, obviously, said, “No, thanks.”

4. Charles Beaumont died a mysterious death that mirrored one of his episodes

“Long Live Walter Jameson” is a haunting episode that tells the story of a literature professor cursed with agelessness. In the final moments, Jameson is shot and ages rapidly – his true 2,000 years of life finally catching up with him. He winds up nothing more than a pile of dust amid a crumpled heap of clothes.

The real-life account

The episode was written by Charles Beaumont – a man whose real life demise was eerily similar to that of the character he created. The talent was struck by a mystery brain illness which aged him dramatically and also meant he had to stop writing. Beaumont died at the age of only 38, yet his son said he looked 95. His friend William F. Nolan even said in The Twilight Zone Companion, “Like his character ‘Walter Jameson,’ [Beaumont] just dusted away.”

3. Rod Serling wrongly thought he invented the term ‘twilight zone’

To most people, the term “twilight zone” can only refer to the iconic TV show. To be fair, it’s a super unique pairing of words; eerie, yet fascinating. In The Twilight Zone Companion, Rod Serling was asked how he’d come up with the term, and his answer was amusing. The director thought he’d invented it but, alas, it was already in use by the military.

Part of his subconscious

“I thought I’d made it up,” Serling explained, “but I’ve since heard that there is an Air Force term relating to a moment when a plane is coming down on approach and it cannot see the horizon.” In fairness to Serling, his brother Robert was an esteemed novelist and award-winning aviation writer, so maybe he’d heard him use the term at some point. It may have then found its way into the deepest recesses of his consciousness.

2. Rod Serling’s original Twilight Zone pitch script was filmed as part of a different show

In November 1958 an extremely well-received episode of Westinghouse Desilu Playhouse aired on CBS. “The Time Element” is about a man time-traveling to Honolulu on the day before the fateful Pearl Harbor attack. It then follows his frantic attempts to warn people about the horrors to come. Rod Serling wrote the episode and, interestingly, it was originally created as a pitch script for The Twilight Zone.

Cold feet

CBS had bought the script from Serling in ’58, but he then got cold feet over the viability of a sci-fi anthology series. Desilu’s producer liked it, though, and he felt it would add some prestige to their anthology show. When the rave reviews hit, CBS suddenly felt more confident about Serling’s show idea, and The Twilight Zone got that all-important greenlight.

1. Rod Serling tried to prank show writer Richard Matheson on a real airplane

A few weeks after the “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet” episode aired, Rod Serling claimed that he attempted to play a joke on the show’s writer Richard Matheson on a real-life airplane. He corresponded with Western Airlines in the leadup to a flight both men would be on, with the plan being to put a large poster of the wing gremlin outside Matheson’s window.

Not according to plan...

As Serling explained in The Twilight Zone Companion, though, it didn’t exactly go to plan. He revealed, “We get on the plane, there was the seat, he sits down, the curtains are closed. I lean over and I say, ‘Dick’ – at which point they start the engines, and it blows the thing away.” A rueful Serling added, “He never saw it. And I had spent hours in the planning of it.”