Serling Wanted This “Terrifying Tale” for The Twilight Zone, But The Sponsor Rejected It

George Clayton Johnson didn’t notch as many Twilight Zone scripts as Richard Matheson and Charles Beaumont did, yet he certainly left his mark on the series.

“Nothing in the Dark” alone, with Gladys Cooper as the old woman determined to keep Mr. Death out of her home, would cement his legacy among TZ fans. But he also scripted “A Game of Pool,” “Kick the Can,” and “A Penny for Your Thoughts.” Plus he wrote the short stories that Rod Serling adapted as “Execution” and “The Four of Us Are Dying.” Superstar status: Confirmed.

But not everything Johnson wrote for the fifth dimension made it into the end Zone. Consider what he had to say in this 1994 interview quoted in Steven Jay Rubin’s “The Twilight Zone Encyclopedia”:

“Rod loved things that were tense and grim … where the harshest words were said in a whisper … If you could set up a dismal, or a grim, or a dangerous, or a mysterious, or a poetic mood … Rod really loved that.

“So when I started trying to write stories for the series, my intention was to get down and grim, because that’s what he did. And that’s ‘The Four of Us Are Dying,’ and that’s ‘Execution,’ the story of a hanging.

“Light and Shadow”: A Look at Twilight Zone’s Directors

“The Twilight Zone will be directed, written, produced, and acted by television’s elite.” —Serling before TZ premiered

I focus heavily here on the writing of Rod Serling and other talented authors — and rightly so. Their imaginative scripts were the launching pad for some of the most memorable and timeless television ever filmed.

But you need more than that to create a Twilight Zone episode. To truly bring the fifth dimension to life, you need first-rate actors in front of the camera, and a top-notch crew behind it.

I couldn’t help reflecting on the crucial role played by the head of that crew, the director, when I heard that James Sheldon had died on March 12. His many credits include six TZ episodes, three of which are bona fide fan favorites: “A Penny For Your Thoughts”, “Long Distance Call” and “It’s a Good Life“.*

George Clayton Johnson, Writer of “Wisdom Fiction”

I’ve written a blog post about Richard Matheson and his Twilight Zone episodes. I’ve written one about Charles Beaumont. I’ve even written one about Earl Hamner. And Heaven knows I’ve written plenty about Rod Serling.

But I’ve never written one about George Clayton Johnson. And now the news of his death at 86 is making me wish I had done so much sooner.

True, I did spotlight one of his wonderful TZ episodes before now, “A Game of Pool” (twice, in fact – here and here). But no post yet about “Nothing in the Dark”? “Kick the Can”? “A Penny For Your Thoughts”? There’s hardly a Twilight Zone fan out there who doesn’t list at least one of those classics among his favorite episodes.

The Write Stuff

“This is a series for the storyteller, because it’s our thinking that an audience will always sit still, and listen [to], and watch a well-told story.”

That quote by Rod Serling is from a short film made in 1959 to interest potential sponsors in buying ad time on a brand-new series called The Twilight Zone. It’s a telling remark — one that, I believe, offers a key insight into why the show succeeded, even beyond Serling’s expectations. It helps us understand why the show still appeals more than 50 years later.

In short, Serling had the formula correct from the start: tell a good story.

Think of an episode like a wheel. There is acting, directing, music, special effects. All of those elements are important, but they’re like the spokes of the wheel. They won’t work unless they’re attached firmly to something strong and well-structured: a hub.