I’ve watched a lot of Twilight Zone episodes (at least 98 have been documented at this writing, out of 156, I’m sure I’ve seen more). I’m starting to draw some conclusions. One of those is that the people who created Bewitched must have been fans of the show.
Why, you ask? Because every major character was on the Twilight Zone.
Darrin (#1) was in A Penny for Your Thoughts, a Season 2 gem about a bank worker who flips a quarter that lands on edge and he can read the thoughts of others all day, until he knocks it down with another quarter in the afternoon, as well as The Purple Testament, about a soldier who can see death on the faces of his compatriots (before they actually die).
Samantha was in the Season 3 tale Two, an odd post-nuclear war tale where she warily walks through a town with Charles Bronson, the only survivors, and they don’t even speak the same language. Heck, they barely speak.
Season 3 also showed us I Sing the Body Electric, which gave us the tale of a father bringing up three kids, who needed help from a kindly robotic grandmother figure. He would go on to become Larry Tate.
And let’s not forget Endora, who showed up in the bizarre Season 2 tale of The Invaders, where we find an old woman confronted with two tiny visitors from outer space, who in fact are from Earth (apparently she was not). This and Two were perhaps the two half-hours on television with the least amount of spoken dialogue ever.
But they all ended up on Bewitched. While many people starred on the Twilight Zone and later became famous in one way or another, this is easily the highest concentration of them in one place. Anyone know of a connection?
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2 responses to “Bewitched by the Twilight Zone”
There goes my next post (though for what it’s worth, I’m not sure I’d consider Grace Lee Whitney one of the main cast members of Star Trek). 🙂
Actually the series that everyone starred in was Disneyland (more popularly known as “The Wonderful World of Disney”).
Of course, with some 33 seasons, from the 1950s through the 1980s, it had plenty of time to pick up actors…
Hmmm. Star Trek too, perhaps.
Shatner appeared in two great TZ episodes — Nightmare at 20,000 Feet in Season 5 and Nick of Time in Season 2. Younger and handsomer, but still chewing up the scenery.
Leonard Nimoy appears in a Season 3 episode, A Quality of Mercy.
James Doohan appears in Season 4 in Valley of the Shadow.
George Takei is in Season 5 in The Encounter.
On the other hand, DeForest Kelley, Nichelle Nichols, nor Grace Lee Whitney never showed up in TZ.
It’s not surprising, though — as a long-running anthology, and one with a certain Serling cachet, a *lot* of actors across all genres showed up on the TZ over its several years. A lot of these actors were also on Perry Mason, The Rifleman, and 77 Sunset Strip, too.