Jimmy Lydon
James J. Lydon is an American actor and television producer whose career in the entertainment industry began as a teenager during the 1930s. Lydon was born in Harrington Park in the fifth of nine children, his family was of Irish heritage. He was raised in Bergenfield. In 1932, Lydon's father, an alcoholic, decided to retire from working; this decision forced all of the other family members to seek employment in the depths of the Great Depression. In 1937, Jimmy Lydon, not knowing, tried his hand at acting, his first role was Danny in the Broadway play Western Waters. He had been allowed to audition for the part after fabricating a list of roles he had portrayed. In the next couple of years, he learned the acting craft while performing in plays such as Sunup to Sundown, Prologue to Glory, Sing Out the News, The Happiest Days. In 1939, he moved with his family to Hollywood to seek film roles. One of his first starring roles was the title character in the 1940 movie Tom Brown's School Days starring Cedric Hardwicke and Freddie Bartholomew.
The film was well received by critics, with Variety praising it in a January 1940 review as "sympathetically and skillfully made, with many touching moments and an excellent cast". Lydon was called "believable and moving in the early portions, but too young for the final moments". Between 1941–1944, under contract to Paramount Pictures, Lydon starred as the screechy-voiced, adolescent Henry Aldrich in the movie series of that title. After completing the Aldrich series, the 21-year-old Lydon signed a contract in 1944 with Republic Pictures, he appeared with William Powell, Irene Dunne, Elizabeth Taylor in the acclaimed 1947 film Life with Father, in the role of college-bound Clarence. Variety called Jimmy Lydon's portrayal "effective as the potential Yale man", he appeared opposite James Cagney in the 1948 movie The Time of Your Life. From 1949-1950, he and Janet Waldo voiced the leading characters in the radio comedy Young Love. Lydon gained roles in the new medium of television, he portrayed Chris Thayer on The First Hundred Years.
The show was CBS' first daytime soap opera. It was performed live for three seasons of three hundred episodes. In 1953, he was cast as Murray in the aviation adventure film Island in the Sky, starring John Wayne, he played Biffen Cardoza on the last six episodes of Rocky Jones, Space Ranger in 1954 and made appearances in Lux Video Theatre and The Christophers. In 1955, he appeared on Sergeant Preston of the Yukon as Johnny Lane plagued by cabin fever in the episode titled "The Williwaw". In 1958, Lydon played the role of Richard in Anne Jeffreys and Robert Sterling's short-lived sitcom, Love That Jill. Lydon appeared in guest roles on Crossroads, Casey Jones, The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp, Wagon Train, The Twilight Zone, Tales of the Texas Rangers, as Lt. Jared Evans in the 1958 episode "Warpath". A year he guest starred on the ABC/Warner Brothers western television series Colt.45, starring Wayde Preston. Lydon played the role of Willy with Paul Picerni cast as Jose. After working in television in the 1950s, he turned to production and helped to create the detective series 77 Sunset Strip, as well as the CBS sitcom M*A*S*H.
He produced the television adaptation of the film Mister Roberts in 1966 and Roll Out in 1973-1974. Lydon played Captain Henry Aldrich on the latter show. In 1963, Lydon was working for Warner Brothers to place on the NBC fall schedule a new western series, Temple Houston, starring Jeffrey Hunter as Temple Lea Houston, an historical figure, a clever lawyer, the youngest son of Sam Houston. On orders from studio boss Jack Webb, episodes were put together in two or three days each, something thought impossible in television production. Work began on August 7, 1963, with the initial airing set for September 19. Lydon recalls that Webb told the staff: "I just sold Temple Houston. We gotta be on the air in four weeks, we can't use the pilot, we have no scripts, no nothing - do it!" Lydon recalls the team having worked around the clock to get Temple Houston on the air. Co-producer William Conrad directed six episodes, two scripts on two different soundstages at Warner Brothers: "We bicycled Jeff and Elam between the two companies, Bill shot'em both in four-and-a-half days.
Two complete one-hour shows!". Though the production challenge was met with much difficulty, Temple Houston never gained popularity in the ratings and ended after twenty-six weeks. At the same time script and cast changes that Webb had imposed on 77 Sunset Strip, with Efrem Zimbalist, Jr. left as the sole character, caused the cancellation of that series before it could finish its sixth season. During the 1980s, Lydon continued to act in television, with roles on episodes of Lou Grant, Simon & Simon, St. Elsewhere. Jimmy Lydon resides in Bonita in San Diego County, with his wife, the former Betty Lou Nedell, whom he married in 1952, they have two granddaughters. FilmShort Subjects: Home Early A Letter from Bataan The Aldrich Family Gets in the Scrap Caribbean Romance The Shining Future Road to Victory Time to Kill Jimmy Lydon on IMDb Jimmy Lydon at the Internet Broadway Database
One for the Angels
"One for the Angels" is the second episode of the American anthology television series The Twilight Zone. It aired on October 9, 1959 on CBS. Lou Bookman is a kindly sidewalk pitchman who sells and repairs toys and trinkets, is adored by the neighborhood children. One day, Bookman is visited by Mr. Death, who tells him that he is to die at midnight of natural causes. Unable to dissuade Death, Bookman instead convinces him to wait until Bookman has made his greatest sales pitch: "one for the angels". Death agrees, Bookman announces he is retiring, smug that he has cheated Death. Death concedes Bookman has found a loophole in their agreement, but warns Bookman that someone else now has to die in his place. Death chooses Maggie, a little girl who lives in Bookman's apartment building and is a friend of his. Maggie falls into a coma. Bookman begs Death to take him instead. Bookman gets out his wares and begins to eloquently boast one item after or another, making the greatest sales pitch of his life—one so great that he entices Death himself.
Death buys item after item and does not remember his appointment with Maggie until it is past midnight, when he has missed it. When Maggie awakens, her doctor leaves the apartment and sees Bookman, assuring him that Maggie will live. Death observes that by making that great sales pitch, Bookman has met the original terms of their deal. Now content and willing to accept his fate, Bookman packs his things and leaves with Death toward Heaven, remarking that "you never know who might need something up there", he looks to Death, adding "Up there?" and Death replies, "Up there, Mr. Bookman. You made it." Ed Wynn as Lewis J. "Lou" Bookman Murray Hamilton as Mr. Death Dana Dillaway as Maggie Polanski Zicree, Marc Scott: The Twilight Zone Companion. Sillman-James Press, 1982 DeVoe, Bill.. Trivia from The Twilight Zone. Albany, GA: Bear Manor Media. ISBN 978-1-59393-136-0 Grams, Martin.. The Twilight Zone: Unlocking the Door to a Television Classic. Churchville, MD: OTR Publishing. ISBN 978-0-9703310-9-0 Sander, Gordon F. Serling: the rise and twilight of television's last angry man.
New York: Penguin Books, 1992. ISBN 0-525-93550-9 "One for the Angels" on IMDb "One for the Angels" at TV.com
The Hitch-Hiker (The Twilight Zone)
"The Hitch-Hiker" is episode sixteen of the American television anthology series The Twilight Zone. It aired on January 22, 1960 on CBS, it is based on Lucille Fletcher's The Hitch-Hiker. It is considered by some to be among the series' greatest episodes. Nan Adams, 27, on a cross-country road trip from New York City to Los Angeles, gets a flat tire on U. S. Route has an accident. A mechanic puts a spare tire on her car, comments that he's surprised she survived the accident, saying "you shouldn't've called for a mechanic, somebody shudda called for a hearse" and directs her to follow him to the nearest town to fix it properly. Just before she leaves, Nan notices a shabby and strange-looking man hitchhiking, but the mechanic doesn't see him when she mentions it. Unnerved, she drives away; as she continues her trip, Nan sees the same hitchhiker thumbing for a ride again in Virginia at several other points on her journey. She grows frightened of him; when she sees him on the other side of a railroad crossing, she tries to drive away but gets stuck on the tracks and is nearly hit by a train.
She becomes convinced. She continues becoming more and more afraid, stopping only when necessary; every time she stops, the hitchhiker is there. Nan gets stranded when she runs out of gas, she reaches a gas station on foot but it's closed, the proprietor refusing to reopen and sell her gas due to how late it is. She gets startled by a sailor on his way back to San Diego from leave. Eager for protection from the hitchhiker, she offers to drive the sailor to San Diego; the sailor persuades the gas station attendant to provide gas. As they drive together and discuss their mutual predicaments, she sees the hitchhiker on the road and swerves toward him; the sailor, who can't see him, questions her driving, she admits she was trying to run over the hitchhiker. The sailor begins to fear for his safety and leaves her, despite her efforts to have him stay offering to go out with him. In Arizona, Nan stops to call her mother; the woman who answers the phone says Mrs. Adams is in the hospital, having suffered a nervous breakdown after finding out that her daughter, died in Pennsylvania six days ago when the car she was driving blew a tire and overturned.
Nan realizes the truth: she never survived the accident in Pennsylvania and the hitchhiker is none other than personification of death and persistently waiting for her to realize that she has been dead all along. She loses all concern, feeling empty. Nan looks in the vanity mirror on the visor. Instead of her reflection, she sees in her place the hitchhiker, who says, "I believe you're going...my way?" Inger Stevens as Nan Adams Leonard Strong as The Hitch-Hiker Adam Williams as Sailor Russ Bender as Counterman Lew Gallo as Mechanic George Mitchell as Gas Station Man Eleanor Audley as Mrs. Whitney In the original radio play by Lucille Fletcher, the character of Nan was a man named Ronald Adams; the Hitch-Hiker was first presented on The Orson Welles Show, Philip Morris Playhouse and The Mercury Summer Theater. All of these radio productions starred Orson Welles as Ronald Adams. Serling named his character "Nan", after one of his daughters. Nan's car is a light-colored 1959 Mercury Montclair four-door hardtop that had the inside rear-view mirror and front door vent windows removed.
However, in the scene where Nan swerved toward the hitch-hiker, the car shown is a black 1957 Ford two-door sedan. When the teleplay was adapted for radio on The Twilight Zone Radio Dramas in 2002, the role of Nan Adams was played by Kate Jackson. DeVoe, Bill.. Trivia from The Twilight Zone. Albany, GA: Bear Manor Media. ISBN 978-1-59393-136-0 Grams, Martin.. The Twilight Zone: Unlocking the Door to a Television Classic. Churchville, MD: OTR Publishing. ISBN 978-0-9703310-9-0 "The Hitch-Hiker" on IMDb "The Hitch-Hiker" at TV.com Suspense — The Hitch-Hiker
Raymond Bailey
Raymond Thomas Bailey was an American actor on the Broadway stage and television. He is best known for his role as wealthy banker Milburn Drysdale in the television series The Beverly Hillbillies. Bailey was born in San Francisco, the son of William and Alice Bailey; when he was a teenager he went to Hollywood to become a movie star. He found it was harder than he had thought and took a variety of short-term jobs, he worked for a time as a day laborer at a movie studio in the days of silent pictures, but was fired for sneaking into a mob scene while it was being filmed. He worked for a while as a stockbroker and a banker. Having no success receiving movie roles of any kind, Bailey went to New York City where he had no better success obtaining roles in theatre, he began working as a merchant seaman and sailed to various parts of the world, including China, the Philippines and the Mediterranean. While docked in Hawaii, he worked on a pineapple plantation, acted at the community theatre and sang on a local radio program.
In 1938, he decided to try Hollywood again. His luck changed for the better when he began getting some bit parts in movies, but after the United States entered World War II he again served in the United States Merchant Marine; when the war was over he returned to Hollywood and began getting bigger character roles. In the early 1950s, Bailey was cast in many character roles in television series, such as Alfred Hitchcock Presents,Tales of Tomorrow, Crusader, My Friend Flicka, Tightrope, State Trooper, Coronado 9, Johnny Ringo. Other appearances were on The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show, Private Secretary, Playhouse 90, The Rifleman, Bat Masterson, The Jack Benny Program, Yancy Derringer, Bourbon Street Beat, 77 Sunset Strip, The Twilight Zone, The Man and the Challenge, One Step Beyond, The Untouchables, Have Gun-Will Travel, The Tab Hunter Show and Gladys, The Donna Reed Show, Bachelor Father, Going My Way, twice on Mister Ed. Bailey made two guest appearances on Perry Mason, playing banker Mr. Hilliard in "The Case of the Caretaker's Cat," and Dr. Bell in "The Case of the Injured Innocent."
During its 1960–1961 season, he had a regular role on My Sister Eileen and guest-starred on Pat O'Brien's ABC sitcom Harrigan and Son. He appeared in the 1962–1963 season as Dean McGruder on CBS's The Many Loves Of Dobie Gillis. Bailey appeared in four Broadway plays, as Howard Haines in Last Stop, playing an unknown man in The Bat, A. J. Alexander in Sing Till Tomorrow, Captain Randolph Southard in The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial, which starred Henry Fonda. Bailey's film roles include playing a member of the board in the comedy/romance Sabrina starring Humphrey Bogart, Audrey Hepburn and William Holden, he played a plantation owner in Band of Angels starring Clark Gable, Sidney Poitier and Yvonne De Carlo. He played in the low-budget horror classic and had a small role in Irwin Allen's Five Weeks in a Balloon. In The Beverly Hillbillies, Nancy Kulp portrayed Bailey's loyal and by-the-book secretary, Miss Jane Hathaway. Banker Drysdale managed the millions of dollars in oil money royalties in the bank account of country gentleman Jed Clampett.
Mr. Drysdale would be required to talk with Clampett about how strange "city life" and "city folk" are. On occasions when Mr. Clampett was considering withdrawing all his funds and returning to the country, the miserly Mr. Drysdale would panic and work to try keep the family in Beverly Hills. Bailey began visibly displaying symptoms of Alzheimer's disease during the final episodes of The Beverly Hillbillies, he made only two film appearances after the show's 1971 cancellation — the Disney features Herbie Rides Again and The Strongest Man in the World — before retiring in 1975 due the effects of the disease. In his final years, Bailey divided his time between a condo and a houseboat in Laguna Niguel, California, he kept in touch with former co-star Nancy Kulp but was a recluse. Raymond Bailey died of a heart attack on April 1980, aged 75, in Irvine, California, his body was cremated and his ashes were scattered at sea. He was survived by his wife, Gaby Aida George, was an uncle of actor William Sylvester.
Film portal Television portal Raymond Bailey on IMDb Raymond Bailey at the Internet Broadway Database Raymond Bailey at AllMovie Raymond Bailey at Find a Grave
Henry Rathbone
Henry Reed Rathbone was a United States military officer and diplomat, present at the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln. Rathbone was sitting with his fiancée, Clara Harris, next to the President and his wife, Mary Todd Lincoln, when John Wilkes Booth entered the president's box at Ford's Theatre and fatally shot Lincoln in the head; when Rathbone attempted to prevent Booth from fleeing the scene, Booth stabbed and wounded him. Henry Rathbone was born in Albany, New York, one of four children of Jared L. Rathbone, a merchant and wealthy businessman, who became Albany's mayor, Pauline Rathbone. Upon his father's death in 1845, Rathbone inherited the considerable sum of two hundred thousand dollars, his widowed mother, Pauline Rathbone, married Ira Harris in 1848. Ira Harris was appointed U. S. Senator from New York after William H. Seward became President Lincoln's Secretary of State. Harris was a widower with four children whose wife Louisa had died in 1845; as a result of this marriage, Ira Harris became Rathbone's stepfather and his daughter, became Rathbone's stepsister.
Although this unusual series of events made them stepbrother and stepsister, they were not related by blood. Rathbone and Harris formed a close friendship and fell in love; the two became engaged shortly before the American Civil War. Rathbone studied law at Union College and worked in a law partnership in Albany before entering the Union Army at the start of Civil War. During the war, Rathbone served as Captain in the 12th Infantry Regiment and was at the Battle of Antietam and the Battle of Fredericksburg. By the war's end, he had attained the rank of major. On April 14, 1865, Major Rathbone and his fiancee Clara Harris accepted an invitation to see a play at Ford's Theatre from President Abraham Lincoln and his wife, First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln; the couple, friends with the President and his wife for some time, were invited after Ulysses S. Grant and his wife Julia, Thomas Eckert, several others had declined Mrs. Lincoln's invitation. During the play, noted stage actor John Wilkes Booth surreptitiously entered the Presidential box and fatally shot Lincoln in the head with a pistol.
As Rathbone attempted to apprehend Booth, Booth slashed Rathbone's left arm with a dagger from the elbow to his shoulder. Rathbone recalled that he was horrified at the anger on Booth's face. Rathbone again grabbed at Booth, he grabbed onto Booth's coat, causing Booth to fall awkwardly to the stage breaking his leg. Booth nonetheless escaped, remained at large for twelve days. Despite his serious wound, Rathbone escorted Mary Lincoln to the Petersen House across the street, where the president had been taken. Shortly thereafter he passed out due to blood loss. Harris held his head in her lap while he lay semiconscious; when a surgeon, attending Lincoln examined him, it was realized that his wound was more serious than thought. Booth had severed an artery. Rathbone was taken home while Harris remained with Mary Todd Lincoln as the President lay dying over the next nine hours; this death vigil lasted through the night, until morning, when Lincoln died at 7:22 a.m. on April 15, 1865. Although Rathbone's physical wounds healed, his mental state deteriorated in the years following Lincoln's death as he anguished over his perceived inability to thwart the assassination attempt.
He married Harris on July 11, 1867, the couple had three children: Henry Riggs, who became a U. S. Congressman), Gerald Lawrence, Clara Pauline. Rathbone resigned from the Army in 1870. After his resignation, he struggled to keep a job due to his mental instability, he became convinced. He resented the attention Harris paid their children and threatened his wife on several occasions after suspecting that she was going to divorce him and take the children. Nonetheless, President Chester A. Arthur appointed Rathbone as the U. S. Consul to the Province of Hanover in 1882; the family relocated to Germany. On December 23, 1883, Rathbone attacked his children in a fit of madness. Rathbone fatally shot and stabbed his wife, attempting to protect the children. Rathbone stabbed himself five times in the chest in an attempted suicide, he was charged with murder but was declared insane by doctors after blaming the murder on an intruder. He was committed to an asylum for the criminally insane in Hildesheim, Germany.
The couple's children were sent to live with William Harris, in the United States. Rathbone spent the rest of his life in the asylum, he died on August 14, 1911, was buried next to his wife in the city cemetery at Hanover/Engesohde. As time passed, the cemetery management, looking over records concerning plots without recent activity or family interest, decided in 1952 that both sets of remains could be exhumed and disposed of. On film and television Rathbone has been portrayed by Lloyd Whitlock in The Prisoner of Shark Island Steve Darrell in Prince of Players John Cooler in The Lincoln Conspiracy Sean Baldwin in The Day Lincoln Was Shot Andy Martin in The Conspirator Joseph Carlson in Killing Lincoln Bruce Falcon in Darkling Darkling The biography of Henry Rathbone, his experience at the Lincoln Assassination and the murder of Clara Harris is covered in the non-fiction book Worst Seat in the House: Henry Rathbone's Front Row View of the Lincoln Assassination by Caleb Step
The Twilight Zone (1959 TV series)
The Twilight Zone is an American anthology television series created and presented by Rod Serling, which ran for five seasons on CBS from 1959 to 1964. Each episode presents a stand-alone story in which characters find themselves dealing with disturbing or unusual events, an experience described as entering "the Twilight Zone," ending with a surprise ending and a moral. Although predominantly science-fiction, the show's paranormal and Kafkaesque events leaned the show towards fantasy and horror; the phrase “twilight zone,” inspired by the series, is used to describe surreal experiences. The series featured both established stars and younger actors who would become much better known later. Serling served as executive head writer, he was the show's host and narrator, delivering monologues at the beginning and end of each episode. Serling's opening and closing narrations summarize the episode's events encapsulating how and why the main character had entered the Twilight Zone. In 1997, the episodes "To Serve Man" and "It's a Good Life" were ranked at 11 and 31 on TV Guide's 100 Greatest Episodes of All Time.
Serling himself stated that his favorite episodes of the series were "The Invaders" and "Time Enough at Last". In 2016, the series was ranked No. 7 on Rolling Stone's list of the 100 greatest shows of all time. In 2002, The Twilight Zone was ranked No. 26 on TV Guide's 50 Greatest TV Shows of All Time. In 2013, the Writers Guild of America ranked it as the third best-written TV series and TV Guide ranked it as the fourth greatest drama and the fifth greatest show of all time. By the late 1950s, Rod Serling was a prominent name in American television, his successful television plays included Patterns and Requiem for a Heavyweight, but constant changes and edits made by the networks and sponsors frustrated Serling. In Requiem for a Heavyweight, the line "Got a match?" had to be struck because the sponsor sold lighters. But according to comments in his 1957 anthology Patterns, Serling had been trying to delve into material more controversial than his works of the early 1950s; this led to Noon on Doomsday for the United States Steel Hour in 1956, a commentary by Serling on the defensiveness and total lack of repentance he saw in the Mississippi town where the murder of Emmett Till took place.
His original script paralleled the Till case was moved out of the South and the victim changed to a Jewish pawnbroker, watered down to just a foreigner in an unnamed town. Despite bad reviews, activists sent numerous wires protesting the production. Serling thought that a science-fictional setting, with robots and other supernatural occurrences, would give him more freedom and less interference in expressing controversial ideas than more realistic settings. "The Time Element" was Serling's 1957 pilot pitch for his show, a time travel adventure about a man who travels back to Honolulu in 1941 and unsuccessfully tries to warn everyone about the impending attack on Pearl Harbor. The script, was rejected and shelved for a year until Bert Granet discovered and produced it as an episode of Desilu Playhouse in 1958; the show was a great success and enabled Serling to begin production on his anthology series, The Twilight Zone. Serling's editorial sense of ironic fate in the writing done for the series was identified as significant to its success by the BFI Film Classics library which stated that for Serling "the cruel indifference and implacability of fate and the irony of poetic justice" were recurrent themes in his plots.
There is a fifth dimension, beyond that, known to man. It is a dimension as timeless as infinity, it is the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition, it lies between the pit of man's fears and the summit of his knowledge. This is the dimension of imagination, it is an area. The Twilight Zone premiered the night of October 1959, to rave reviews. "Twilight Zone is about the only show on the air that I look forward to seeing. It's the one series that I will let interfere with other plans", said Terry Turner for the Chicago Daily News. Others agreed. Daily Variety ranked it with "the best, accomplished in half-hour filmed television" and the New York Herald Tribune found the show to be "certainly the best and most original anthology series of the year"; as the show proved popular to television's critics, it struggled to find a receptive audience of television viewers. CBS was banking on a rating of at least 21 or 22; the series' future was jeopardized when its third episode, "Mr. Denton on Doomsday" earned a 16.3 rating.
Still, the show attracted a large enough audience to survive a brief hiatus in November, after which it surpassed its competition on ABC and NBC and convinced its sponsors to stay on until the end of the season. With one exception, the first season featured scripts written only by Rod Serling, Charles Beaumont or Richard Matheson; these three were responsible for 127 of the 156 episodes in the series. Additionally, with one exception, Serling never appeared on camera during any first-season episode (as he woul
And When the Sky Was Opened
"And When the Sky Was Opened" is episode eleven of the American television anthology series The Twilight Zone. It aired on December 11, 1959, it is an adaptation of the Richard Matheson short story "Disappearing Act". United States Air Force Colonel Clegg Forbes arrives at a military hospital to visit his friend and co-pilot Major William Gart; the two had piloted an experimental spaceplane, the X-20 DynaSoar, on a mission that took them 900 miles beyond the confines of the Earth's atmosphere for the first time. During their voyage the men blacked out for four hours and the craft itself disappeared from radar screens for a full day before reappearing and crash landing in the desert leaving Gart with a broken leg. Gart inquires as to the status of the plane, but Forbes is agitated and asks Gart if he remembers how many people were on the mission, producing a newspaper whose front page shows the likenesses of the two men and a headline stating that two astronauts were rescued from the desert crash.
Gart confirms that only he and Forbes piloted the plane but Forbes insists that a third man – Colonel Ed Harrington, his best friend for 15 years – accompanied them. In the flashback, the previous morning and Forbes are shown joking with Gart as they are discharged from the hospital after passing their physical exams, leaving the Major to recuperate alone; the same newspaper that Forbes would show Gart is present but instead asserts three astronauts were recovered from the crash of the X-20 with a photo depicting a crew of three. The two men visit a bar downtown. While there, Harrington is overcome by a feeling that he no longer "belongs" in the world. Disturbed, he phones his parents who tell him they have no son named Ed Harrington and believe the person calling them to be a prankster. Harrington mysteriously vanishes from the phone booth and no one in the bar but Forbes remembers his existence. Desperate, Forbes searches for any trace of his friend but can find nothing in the bar, his girlfriend, does not remember Harrington, neither does his commanding officer.
Returning to the closed bar, he breaks in calling his name repeatedly. He returns to the hospital the next morning to talk with Gart. Back in the present, Forbes is dismayed by Gart's claim that he doesn't know anyone named Harrington. Forbes glances at a mirror and discovers he casts no reflection, causing him to flee the room in terror. Gart tries to hobble. Calling the duty nurse to ask if she saw where Forbes went, Gart is stunned at the nurse's claim that nobody named Forbes has been in the building and that Gart was the only man, aboard his plane. After getting back into bed, he notices, it now says that Gart was the sole pilot of the X-20 – all mention of Forbes, including his photo, is gone. Horrified, Gart disappears. An officer enters the building and asks the duty nurse if there are any unused rooms available to accommodate new patients; the nurse takes him to the now empty room which hosted the three astronauts, stating that it has been unoccupied. In the hangar which housed the X-20, the sheet that covered the craft is shown lying on the ground.
There is no trace of the plane. Rod Taylor as Lieutenant Colonel Clegg Forbes Charles Aidman as Colonel Ed Harrington Jim Hutton as Major William Gart Maxine Cooper as Amy Sue Randall as Nurse Paul Bryar as Bartender Joe Bassett as Medical officer Gloria Pall as Girl in bar Elizabeth Fielding as Blond Nurse This episode is loosely based on the short story "Disappearing Act" by Richard Matheson; the story was first published in The Magazine of Science Fiction. Rod Taylor and director Douglas Heyes worked together on the TV series Bearcats!. "Remember Me", an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, in which ship's doctor Beverly Crusher undergoes a comparable experience. "Revisions", a Stargate SG-1 episode with a similar plot. "Games People Play", a Eureka episode with a similar plot. DeVoe, Bill. Trivia from The Twilight Zone. Albany, GA: Bear Manor Media. ISBN 978-1-59393-136-0. Grams, Martin; the Twilight Zone: Unlocking the Door to a Television Classic. Churchville, MD: OTR Publishing. ISBN 978-0-9703310-9-0.
"And When the Sky Was Opened" on IMDb "And When the Sky Was Opened" at TV.com And When The Sky Was Opened | John's Twilight Zone Page
