In the November 7, 1959 issue of TV Guide, Rod Serling commented, “Here’s what The Twilight Zone is: It’s an anthology series, half-hour in length, that delves into the odd, the bizarre, the unexpected. It probes into the dimension of imagination but with a concern for taste and for an adult audience too long considered to have I.Q.s in negative figures. The Twilight Zone is what it implies: that shadowy area of the almost-but-not-quite; the unbelievable told in terms that can be believed. Here’s what the program isn’t: It’s not a monster rally or a spook show. There will be nothing formula in it, nothing telegraphed, nothing so nostalgically familiar that an audience can usually join actors in duets.”

For more than fifty years, The Twilight Zone has become an established landmark on the map of television history. The premiere episode, “Where is Everybody?” established what the television viewers were in for every week. Having read an article in the May 26, 1958 issue of Time magazine about isolation experiments on astronaut trainees, Serling was inspired to write a script he titled “Where is Everybody?” The story concerned a man wandering the empty streets of a town, completely devoid of human life, with suggested impressions that the occupants were in hiding. The mystery is rationalized with various theories, until the solution is revealed. The protagonist is an Air Force trainee suffering a nightmare, the result of side effects from an isolation experiment.

“I read Serling’s first script. It was, or seemed to be, an end-of-the-world story,” recalled Charles Beaumont. “Resisting the impulse to throw the wretched thing across the room, I read on. A man is alone in a town that shows every sign of having been recently occupied. He finds cigarettes burning in ashtrays. Stoves are still warm. Chimneys are smoking. But no one is there, only this one frightened man who can’t even remember his name . . . Old stuff? Of course. I thought so at the time, and I think so now. But there was one element in the story which kept me from my customary bitterness. The element was quality. Quality shone on every page. It shone in the dialogue and in the scene set-ups. And because of this, the story seemed fresh and new and powerful. There was one compromise, but it was made for the purpose of selling the series.”

“Where is Everybody?” was filmed at the back lot of Universal-International (formerly Universal Studios). By 1958, MCA’s television subsidiary, Revue Productions, had outgrown its production facility, which was the former Republic Studio lot, so MCA head Lew Wasserman purchased the entire Universal-International lot as a wise move for expansion. Universal-International would use and reuse the back lot for a number of motion pictures such as It Came From Outer Space (1953), Tarantula (1955) and The Monolith Monsters (1957), all of which may appear familiar when viewed consecutively with these movies. (I recommend you watch these movies and then “Where Is Everybody?” just for comparison.) The pilot also features the famed Courthouse Square, which had been featured in numerous motion pictures including Gremlins (1984), Back to the Future (1985) and Batman and Robin (1997).

Hired to narrate only the pilot film was Westbrook Van Voorhis, perhaps best known as “the Voice of Doom,” and for his popular catchphrase, “Time . . . marches on!”

“Before we decided on Rod, there was a lot of effort to find the right narrator,” recalled William Self. “We actually went to Orson Welles and we went to Westbrook Van Voorhis, the voice of the March of Time films. But they all sounded a little pompous, like they were talking down to this audience that might not understand what the show was about – which a lot of people didn’t [understand]! . . . Meanwhile, Rod kept saying, ‘Y’know, I’d like to narrate this . . .,’ and we – ‘we’ being CBS – kept saying, ‘Well, we’re lookin’ for somebody.’ And then we finally settled on Rod, which was a lucky decision. Rod brought to it a kind of an ‘everyman quality.’”

“I forget the date that my friend Charles Beaumont and I first went to CBS Studios to view the pilot film of The Twilight Zone and meet its creator Rod Serling,” recalled Richard Matheson in the introduction to Rod Serling’s Other Worlds, published in March 1978 (with no stories written or adapted by Serling). “It was a momentous day for Chuck and myself, for it led not only to five years of most enjoyable writing assignments for us but to many more pleasurable years knowing and working with Rod, one of the most talented craftsmen the television medium has ever produced and one of the kindest, most feeling men I have ever known.”

“I got the idea walking through an empty village set at the back lot of a movie studio,” Rod Serling recalled. “There was all the evidence of a community . . . But no people. I felt at the time a kind of encroaching loneliness and desolation and a feeling of how nightmarish it would be for a man to wind up in a city without inhabitants.” Serling admitted a number of times over the years that scenes for this episode also stemmed from a moment when he trapped himself in a phone booth at an airport and reading an article in Time about isolation experiments conducted on astronaut trainees. Earl Holliman had previously co-starred in the Playhouse 90 production of “The Dark Side of the Earth,” and months later, Serling met up with him on a parking lot at the M-G-M Studios. After a brief conversation, Serling promised to send the actor a script for the pilot of a television series he was working on. He fulfilled his promise and Holliman was secured. “Bob Stevens, who directed that episode, was a good friend of mine,” Holliman recalled. “But he never gave me any direction. He was busy doing something with someone. I was left to myself to decide how to play the character.”


(Earl Holliman)
Filmed at Universal-International Studios, the entire production took longer than intended for a variety of reasons. Toward the end of the first day of filming, it was discovered that a mistake was made, so all the film was never developed, and the scenes had to be re-shot. Being the pilot, extra care was taken for the set decorations, lighting, and camera work. The smashed clock that Holliman taps in the isolation booth was foreshadowed a number of times, including the opening scene in the diner – revealing the intricate detail put into the production.

When filming was completed, Westbrook Van Voorhis was hired as narrator for the series. The unaired pilot shown to potential sponsors (and the network) features Van Voorhis in the opening sequence, panning across the stars and galaxies in the universe, and commenting that “There is a sixth dimension . . .”

Replacing Van Voorhis’ narration, Serling’s off-screen voice for the pilot was recorded on May 19, 1959. For the newly recorded voice-overs, and title screen sequence, Serling had changed the opener to “There is a fifth dimension . . . .” Serling also recorded off-screen narration for the opening of the second act, which would have been seen by the television audience immediately after mid-commercial. The narration was never put into the finished film.

Serling’s original draft contained two major sequences that were written out during script revisions. One was of Mike Ferris entering an empty bank and setting off the alarm; realizing not even the police are coming to answer the call, he rips out the wires to the alarm to stop the loud ringing. Ferris then steals a large amount of cash and uses one of the bills to light a cigar. Another scene was the phone booth. Rather than figure out he was supposed to pull instead of push, Ferris broke out of the booth by breaking the glass, cutting his hand. (A similar scene managed to find its way into a later first-season episode, “Execution,” in which Caswell smashes through the phone booth by breaking the glass.)

The movie theater named “The Savoy” is referenced throughout The Twilight Zone series, including “The Trouble with Templeton” and “The Dummy.” Serling’s constant reuse of names (both places and people) was not so much a lack of creativity, but for legal purposes. If the name of a movie theater matched a real one in existence, legal issues could arise. After researching to discover there was no “Savoy” in the United States (there was one in England), Serling later used the name again to continue avoiding legal issues. Most television viewers would not be observant enough to catch the repeated theater name simply because it was prominently used only once each season.

Variety magazine, which carried more weight than any of the other trade papers at the time, reviewed this episode. “Obviously these flights of imagination can only be as good and as ingenious as the writer. . . . Since the zinger lies in the denouement, it is here where Serling lets down his audience by providing a completely plausible and logical explanation. Somehow the viewer can’t help but feel cheated, even though Serling gives it a topicality attuned to the current human experimentations in preparation for space travel. A science fiction ending would be more in the realm of the imagination. . . . Everything about Twilight Zone suggests solid production values, with director Robert Stevens extracting maximum performance in this one-man (almost right up to the end) journey into shadow.”

On October 21, 1959, Serling wrote a thank-you letter to Earl Holliman, saying, “your performance was outstanding, full of dimension, shading and a fantastic believability. In short, Holliman, you’re one hell of an actor! Some rich and gracious producers send wristwatches and things like that as expressions of appreciation. Gracious I am – rich I ain’t, so accept these few clippings as evidence of my thinking about you.”

In 1989, an organization called “Cable in the Classroom” was founded, assisting the cable television industry in providing educational content to public and private schools. It allows educators to record the filmed presentations, and later play them back as learning tools for students. This episode of The Twilight Zone, among a few others, was chosen for use with the program. Like most courses offered to school systems, a suggested lesson plan was submitted to classroom teachers. Social deprivation and isolation are key factors in the lesson plan, and it was hoped it would help students who might have been affected, psychologically, at home.

Martin Grams Jr. is the author of The Twilight Zone: Unlocking the Door to a Television Classic (2009, OTR Publishing). Martin has also contributed audio commentary for the Twilight Zone Blu Ray releases of Seasons Two to Five.