Fritz Weaver
Fritz William Weaver was an American actor in television and motion pictures best known for his role as Dr. Josef Weiss in the 1978 epic television drama, Holocaust. In cinema, he is best recognized from his debut film Fail Safe, as well as Marathon Man and The Thomas Crown Affair. Among many television roles, he performed in two seminal projects: the movie The Legend of Lizzie Borden and the mini-series Holocaust, for which Weaver was nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award, he was further known for his work in science fiction and fantasy in television series and movies like The Twilight Zone,'Way Out, Night Gallery, The X-Files, The Martian Chronicles and Demon Seed, narrated educational TV programs. Weaver was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on January 19, 1926, the son of Elsa W. Weaver and John Carson Weaver, his mother was of Italian descent and his father was a social worker from Pittsburgh with deep American roots. His younger sister was art director Mary Dodson. Weaver attended the Fanny Edel Falk Laboratory School at the University of Pittsburgh as a child, followed by Peabody High School.
He served in Civilian Public Service as a conscientious objector during World War II. Following the war, Weaver worked at various jobs before turning to acting in the early 1950s, his first acting role for television came in 1956 for an episode of The United States Steel Hour. Weaver continued to act in television during the next four decades, he appeared in the made-for-TV movies The Legend of Lizzie Borden and Holocaust, earning an Emmy nomination for the latter. Weaver won the Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play and the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Performance for the Broadway play Child's Play, his other Broadway credits included The Chalk Garden, All American, Baker Street, Absurd Person Singular, Love Letters, The Crucible. He appeared in the off-Broadway play Burnt Piano for the HB Playwrights Theatre, with Uta Hagen in a television adaptation of Norman Corwin's play The World of Carl Sandburg. Weaver acted in motion pictures as a supporting player, he appeared in such movies as Marathon Man, Black Sunday and Creepshow.
He had roles in The Day of the Dolphin, Demon Seed, The Big Fix, Sidney Lumet's Power. Beginning in 1995, Weaver worked as a voice actor, providing narration for programs on the History Channel. After making his third guest appearance on Law & Order in 2005, Weaver made a "secret decision to retire". In 2010, Weaver was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame. Shortly thereafter, he came out of retirement to make an uncredited cameo in This Must Be the Place, voicing the deceased father of Sean Penn's protagonist, he went on to give prominent supporting performances in the Emmy-nominated television film Muhammad Ali's Greatest Fight and the theatrically-released We'll Never Have Paris, The Cobbler and The Congressman. Weaver's second marriage was to actress Rochelle Oliver in 1997, his first marriage ended in divorce. He died at his home in Manhattan on November 26, 2016. Fritz Weaver on IMDb Fritz Weaver at the Internet Broadway Database Fritz Weaver at the Internet Off-Broadway Database Fritz Weaver Fritz Weaver at Find a Grave
Nuclear warfare
Nuclear warfare is a military conflict or political strategy in which nuclear weaponry is used to inflict damage on the enemy. Nuclear weapons are weapons of mass destruction. A major nuclear exchange would have long-term effects from the fallout released, could lead to a "nuclear winter" that could last for decades, centuries, or millennia after the initial attack; some analysts dismiss the nuclear winter hypothesis, calculate that with nuclear weapon stockpiles at Cold War highs, although there would be billions of casualties, billions more rural people would survive. However, others have argued that secondary effects of a nuclear holocaust, such as nuclear famine and societal collapse, would cause every human on Earth to starve to death. So far, two nuclear weapons have been used in the course of warfare, both by the United States near the end of World War II. On August 6, 1945, a uranium gun-type device was detonated over the Japanese city of Hiroshima. Three days on August 9, a plutonium implosion-type device was detonated over the Japanese city of Nagasaki.
These two bombings resulted in the deaths of 120,000 people. After World War II, nuclear weapons were developed by the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom and the People's Republic of China, which contributed to the state of conflict and extreme tension that became known as the Cold War. In 1974, in 1998, two countries that were hostile toward each other, developed nuclear weapons. Israel and North Korea are thought to have developed stocks of nuclear weapons, though it is not known how many; the Israeli government has never admitted or denied to having nuclear weapons, although it is known to have constructed the reactor and reprocessing plant necessary for building nuclear weapons. South Africa manufactured several complete nuclear weapons in the 1980s, but subsequently became the first country to voluntarily destroy their domestically made weapons stocks and abandon further production. Nuclear weapons have been detonated on over 2,000 occasions for testing demonstrations. After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the resultant end of the Cold War, the threat of a major nuclear war between the two nuclear superpowers was thought to have declined.
Since concern over nuclear weapons has shifted to the prevention of localized nuclear conflicts resulting from nuclear proliferation, the threat of nuclear terrorism. The possibility of using nuclear weapons in war is divided into two subgroups, each with different effects and fought with different types of nuclear armaments; the first, a limited nuclear war, refers to a small-scale use of nuclear weapons by two belligerents. A "limited nuclear war" could include targeting military facilities—either as an attempt to pre-emptively cripple the enemy's ability to attack as a defensive measure, or as a prelude to an invasion by conventional forces, as an offensive measure; this term could apply to any small-scale use of nuclear weapons that may involve military or civilian targets. The second, a full-scale nuclear war, could consist of large numbers of nuclear weapons used in an attack aimed at an entire country, including military and civilian targets; such an attack would certainly destroy the entire economic and military infrastructure of the target nation, would have a devastating effect on Earth's biosphere.
Some Cold War strategists such as Henry Kissinger argued that a limited nuclear war could be possible between two armed superpowers. Some predict, that a limited war could "escalate" into a full-scale nuclear war. Others have called limited nuclear war "global nuclear holocaust in slow motion", arguing that—once such a war took place—others would be sure to follow over a period of decades rendering the planet uninhabitable in the same way that a "full-scale nuclear war" between superpowers would, only taking a much longer path to the same result; the most optimistic predictions of the effects of a major nuclear exchange foresee the death of many millions of victims within a short period of time. More pessimistic predictions argue that a full-scale nuclear war could bring about the extinction of the human race, or at least its near extinction, with only a small number of survivors and a reduced quality of life and life expectancy for centuries afterward. However, such predictions, assuming total war with nuclear arsenals at Cold War highs, have not been without criticism.
Such a horrific catastrophe as global nuclear warfare would certainly cause permanent damage to most complex life on the planet, its ecosystems, the global climate. If predictions about the production of a nuclear winter are accurate, it would change the balance of global power, with countries such as Australia, New Zealand, China and Brazil predicted to become world superpowers if the Cold War led to a large-scale nuclear attack. A study presented at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union in December 2006 asserted that a small-scale regional nuclear war could produce as many direct fatalities as all of World War II and disrupt the global climate for a decade or more. In a regional nuclear conflict scenario in w
Joe Maross
Joseph Raymond Maross was an American stage and television actor whose career spanned over four decades. Working predominantly on television in supporting roles or as a guest star, Maross performed in a wide variety of series and made-for-television movies between the early 1950s and mid-1980s. Born in Barnesboro, Maross served in the Marine Corps during World War II and was stationed in Hawaii, he attended Yale University after the war and received his theater arts degree there in 1947. Maross's Broadway credits include Ladies Night in The Innkeepers; the first feature film in which Maross was cast is Run Deep. He can be seen in subsequent productions such as Elmer Gantry, Zig Zag, Sometimes a Great Notion, The Salzburg Connection, Rich and Famous. Although Maross worked periodically in films, he achieved greater acting success on television, where he became a familiar face to American audiences during the 1950s and 1960s, he can be seen in episodes of assorted series broadcast during that period.
He has roles in the 1959 episode "A Personal Matter" on Alfred Hitchcock Presents and in three episodes of Perry Mason: "The Case of the Crying Cherub", "The Case of the Lavender Lipstick", "The Case of the Potted Planter". He appears in supporting roles or as a guest star in Behind Closed Doors, Mission: Impossible, The Fugitive, The Outer Limits, Wanted: Dead or Alive, The Invaders, The Virginian, Twelve O'Clock High, The Time Tunnel, Hawaii Five-O, The Rockford Files, the Combat! Episode "A Little Jazz", the Bonanza episode "Escape to Ponderosa". Maross is a central character as well in two episodes of The Twilight Zone: "Third from the Sun" and "The Little People". While the frequency of his work on television began to decline by the late 1970s, Maross continued to perform into the 1980s. He, for example, portrays Captain Mike Benton in the series Code Red, which aired for one season on ABC from 1981 to 1982. Maross was a founding member of "Projects 58", an acting and directing group based in Los Angeles.
He was a voting member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. In November 2009, at age 86, Maross died of cardiac arrest at a convalescent hospital in Glendale, California. Joe Maross on IMDb Joe Maross at the Internet Broadway Database
Denise Alexander
Denise Alexander is an American actress, best known for her role as Lesley Webber on General Hospital, a role she played from 1973 to 1984, 1996-2009, a guest stint in 2013, in honor of the show's 50th anniversary. Alexander returned to General Hospital for two more guest appearances in December 2017 and April 2019, the latter to commemorate the 56th anniversary of the show. Alexander was raised on Long Island, she moved to Los Angeles when her father, Alec Alexander, an agent who handled such notables as Frank Gorshin and Sal Mineo, decided to make the switch from the East to the West Coast. Alexander had appeared on TV and radio by the time she was a junior at UCLA, she made her feature movie debut at age fourteen in the Don Siegel film Crime in the Streets starring John Cassavetes. Alexander first broke into the soap opera genre by playing Lois Adams on The Clear Horizon in 1960, her big break on soaps came via the role of Susan Hunter Martin on Days of Our Lives from 1966 to 1973. In 1973, the character of Susan was written out of the show temporarily during contract negotiations with Alexander.
ABC Daytime rushed to offer her a then-unheard of salary/perks package to join General Hospital. When Susan returned to Days, a new actress, Bennye Gatteys played her. Alexander's role on General Hospital, Dr. Lesley Williams, would become a long-running role, she stayed with the show for eleven years as one of the show's most popular leading ladies, leaving in 1984 after a contract dispute. In 1986, she was offered a big salary to portray Mary, on Another World; when the commute from her home in Los Angeles to Another World's studio in New York City proved to be difficult for her, she left the show, filming her last scene in 1989, but returned for a guest appearance in 1991. In 1996, she returned to the role of Lesley on General Hospital, which she continued playing on a recurring basis until 2009 when the character faded from view, she reprised the role in time for the show's 50th anniversary in 2013 and remains on canvas as a recurring character. Alexander reprised her role on General Hospital in late December 2017 for a short stint.
Alexander is married to television actor Richard A. Colla. In November, 1949, Alexander played Perry Como's daughter on "Perry Como's Chesterfield Supper Club" on NBC, it was a Thanksgiving-themed show with guest Raymond Massey portraying Abraham Lincoln. Denise Alexander on IMDb Denise Alexander at the Internet Broadway Database
Where Is Everybody?
"Where Is Everybody?" is the first episode of the American anthology television series The Twilight Zone. It was broadcast on October 2, 1959 on CBS. A man finds himself alone on a dirt road dressed in a U. S. Air Force flight suit, having no memory of how he got there, he finds a diner and walks in to find a jukebox playing loudly and a hot pot of coffee on the stove, but there are no other people besides himself. He accidentally breaks a clock, upon which the jukebox stops playing; the man walks toward a nearby town. Like the diner, the rest of the town seems deserted, but the man seems to find evidence of someone being there recently; the man grows unsettled as he wanders through the empty town, needing someone to talk to but at the same time feeling that he is being watched. In a soda shop, the man notices an entire spinning rack of paperback books titled The Last Man on Earth, Feb. 1959. As night falls, the lights in the park turn on, leading the man to a movie theater, the marquee of, illuminated.
He remembers he is an Air Force soldier from Battle Hymn. When the film begins onscreen, he runs to the projection booth and finds nobody there becomes more paranoid that he is being watched. Running through the streets in a panic, the man hits a pedestrian call button; the call button is revealed to be a panic button: the man, whose name is given as Sgt. Mike Ferris, is in an isolation booth being observed by a group of uniformed servicemen, he has been undergoing tests to determine his fitness as an astronaut and whether he can handle a prolonged trip to the Moon alone, though the town was a hallucination caused by sensory deprivation. The officiating general warns Ferris that while his basic needs will be provided for in space travel, he will not have companionship: "next time be alone". Ferris is carried from the hangar on a stretcher as he tells the Moon in the sky not to "go away up there", reminding himself of the loneliness he faces. Earl Holliman as Mike Ferris James Gregory as General Garry Walberg as Colonel Serling's original pilot for The Twilight Zone was "The Happy Place", which revolved around a society in which people were executed upon reaching the age of 60, being considered no longer useful.
CBS executive William Self rejected the story, feeling it was too dark. Unlike other episodes, which were filmed at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, "Where is Everybody?" was filmed at Universal. The episode featured Westbrook Van Voorhis as narrator; when Voorhis was unavailable for episodes, Serling re-recorded the narration himself for consistency. Serling notably changed the opening narration to place the Twilight Zone within the fifth dimension, among other alterations. Serling adapted "Where is Everybody?" for a novelization titled Stories From the Twilight Zone. Serling grew dissatisfied with the lack of science fiction content and changed the story to include Ferris discovering a movie ticket in his pocket while on the stretcher. A variation on this plotline was used in the episode "King Nine Will Not Return"; the New York Times praised the episode, saying that Serling proved "that science cannot foretell what may be the effect of total isolation on a human being", though " resolution... seemed trite and anticlimactic.
In the desultory field of filmed half-hour drama, however, Mr. Serling should not have much trouble in making his mark. At least his series promises to be different. Charles Beaumont praised the episode in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science-Fiction, writing that he "read Serling's first script... Old stuff? Of course. I thought so at the time... 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 scene set-ups. And because of this, the story seemed new and powerful. There was one compromise, but it was made for the purpose of selling the series." 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 Full video of the episode at CBS.com "Where Is Everybody?" on IMDb "Where Is Everybody?" at TV.com
Mirror Image (The Twilight Zone)
"Mirror Image" is episode 21 of the American television anthology series The Twilight Zone. It aired on February 26, 1960 on CBS. Millicent Barnes waits in a bus depot in Marathon, New York, for a bus to Cortland, en route to a new job. Looking at a wall clock she notices, she asks the ticket agent when the bus will arrive, he gruffly complains that this is her third time asking. Millicent denies this. While speaking with the ticket agent, she notices a bag just like hers in the luggage pile behind her, she mentions this to the ticket agent. She does not believe this, she washes her hands in the restroom and the cleaning lady there insists this is her second time there. Again, Millicent denies this. Upon leaving the restroom, she glances in the mirror and sees, in addition to her reflection, an exact copy of herself sitting on the bench outside, she meets a young man from Binghamton named Paul Grinstead, waiting for the same bus. Millicent tells Paul about encountering her double. Paul, attempting to calm Millicent, says it is either a joke or a misunderstanding caused by a look-alike.
When the bus arrives and the two of them prepare to board, Millicent looks in the window and sees the copy of herself seated on the bus. In shock, she faints. Millicent lies unconscious on a bench inside the depot while Paul and the cleaning lady attend to her. Paul agrees to wait for the 7:00 bus. While they wait, now coming to, insists the strange events are caused by an evil double from a parallel world - a nearby, yet distant alternative plane of existence that comes into convergence with this world by powerful forces, or unnatural, unknown events; when this happens, the impostors enter this realm. Millicent's doppelgänger can survive in this world only by replacing her. Paul says the explanation is "a little metaphysical" for him, believes that Millicent's sanity is beginning to unravel. Paul tells Millicent he will call a friend in Tully who has a car and may be able to drive them to Syracuse. Instead, he calls the police. After Millicent is taken away by two policemen, Paul begins to settle himself.
After drinking from a water fountain, Paul notices. Looking up towards the doors, Paul notices another man running out the door of the bus depot. Pursuing this individual down the street, Paul discovers that he is chasing his own copy, whose face shows excited delight, his copy disappears as Paul calls out "Where are you?" while looking around in confusion and shock. Vera Miles as Millicent Barnes Martin Milner as Paul Grinstead Joe Hamilton as Ticket agent Naomi Stevens as Washroom Attendant In a short film pitching the Twilight Zone series to a Dutch television station, creator Rod Serling claimed to have gotten the idea for "Mirror Image" following an encounter at an airport. Serling noticed a man at the other side of the terminal who wore the same clothes and carried the same suitcase as himself. However, the man turned out to be younger and "more attractive"; this is one of several episodes from season one with its opening title sequence plastered over with the opening for season two. This was done during the Summer of 1961 as to help the season one shows fit in with the new look the show had taken during the following season.
This episode inspired Jordan Peele's 2019 film Us. 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 "Mirror Image" on IMDb
Time Enough at Last
"Time Enough at Last" is the eighth episode of the American television anthology series The Twilight Zone. The episode was adapted from a short story written by Lynn Venable; the short story appeared in the January 1953 edition of the science fiction magazine If: Worlds of Science Fiction about seven years before the television episode first aired. "Time Enough at Last" became one of the most famous episodes of the original Twilight Zone and has been parodied since. It is "the story of a man who seeks salvation in the rubble of a ruined world" and tells of Henry Bemis, played by Burgess Meredith, who loves books, yet is surrounded by those who would prevent him from reading them; the episode follows Bemis through the post-apocalyptic world, touching on such social issues as anti-intellectualism, the dangers of reliance upon technology, the difference between aloneness and loneliness. Witness Mr. Henry Bemis, a charter member in the fraternity of dreamers. A bookish little man whose passion is the printed page, but, conspired against by a bank president and a wife and a world full of tongue-cluckers and the unrelenting hands of a clock.
But in just a moment, Mr. Bemis will enter a world without bank presidents or wives or clocks or anything else. He'll have a world all to himself... without anyone. Henpecked, far sighted bank teller and avid bookworm Henry Bemis works at his window in a bank, while reading David Copperfield, which causes him to shortchange an annoyed customer. Bemis's angry boss, his nagging wife, both complain to him that he wastes far too much time reading "doggerel"; as a cruel joke, his wife asks him to read poetry from one of his books to her. Seconds she destroys the book by ripping the pages from it, much to Henry's dismay; the next day, as usual, Henry takes his lunch break in the bank's vault, where his reading will not be disturbed. Moments after he sees a newspaper headline, which reads "H-Bomb Capable of Total Destruction", an enormous explosion outside the bank violently shakes the vault, knocking Bemis unconscious. After regaining consciousness and recovering the thick glasses required for him to see, Bemis emerges from the vault to find the bank demolished and everyone in it dead.
Leaving the bank, he sees that the entire city has been destroyed, realizes that a nuclear war has devastated Earth, but that his being in the vault has saved him. Seconds, hours, they crawl by on hands and knees for Mr. Henry Bemis, who looks for a spark in the ashes of a dead world. A telephone connected to nothingness. A neighborhood bar, a movie, a baseball diamond, a hardware store, the mailbox of what was once his house and is now a rubble, they lie at his feet as battered monuments to what is no more. Mr. Henry Bemis on an eight-hour tour of a graveyard. Finding himself alone in a shattered world with canned food to last him a lifetime and no means of leaving to look for other survivors, Bemis succumbs to despair; as he prepares to commit suicide using a revolver he has found, Bemis sees the ruins of the public library in the distance. Investigating, he finds that the books are still legible, his despair gone, Bemis contentedly sorts the books he looks forward to reading for years to come, with no obligations to get in the way.
Just as he bends down to pick up the first book, he stumbles, his glasses fall off and shatter. In shock, he picks up the broken remains of the glasses he is blind without, says, "That's not fair. That's not fair at all. There was time now. There was—was all the time I needed…! It's not fair! It's not fair!" and bursts into tears, surrounded by books he now can never read. The best laid plans of mice and men... and Henry Bemis... the small man in the glasses who wanted nothing but time. Henry Bemis, now just a part of a smashed landscape, just a piece of the rubble, just a fragment of what man has deeded to himself. Mr. Henry Bemis... in the Twilight Zone. "Time Enough at Last" was one of the first episodes written for The Twilight Zone. It introduced Burgess Meredith to the series, he narrated for the 1983 film Twilight Zone: The Movie, which made reference to "Time Enough at Last" during its opening sequence, with the characters discussing the episode in detail. Footage of the exterior steps of the library was filmed several months after production had been completed.
These steps can be seen on the exterior of an Eloi public building in MGM's 1960 version of The Time Machine. John Brahm was nominated for a Directors Guild award for his work on the episode; the book that Bemis was reading in the vault and that flips open when the bomb explodes is A History of the Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus by Washington Irving. Although the overriding message may seem to "be careful what you wish for, you just might get it", there are other themes throughout the episode as well. Paramount among these is the question of solitude versus loneliness, as embodied by Bemis' moment of near-suicide. Additionally, the portrayal of societal attitudes towards books speaks to the contemporary decline of traditional literature and how, given enough time, reading may become a relic of the past. At the same time, the ending "punishes Bemis for his antisocial behavior, his greatest desire is thwarted". Rod Serl
