| "The Mighty Casey" | |
|---|---|
| The Twilight Zone episode | |
| Episode no. | Season 1 Episode 35 |
| Directed by | |
| Written by | Rod Serling |
| Featured music | Stock |
| Production code | 173-3617 |
| Original air date | June 17, 1960 |
| Guest appearances | |
| |
"The Mighty Casey" is episode thirty-five of the American television anthology series The Twilight Zone . [1] Its title is a reference to the baseball poem "Casey at the Bat". It originally aired on June 17, 1960, on CBS. [1] The episode was written by Rod Serling, [2] and directed by Robert Parrish and Alvin Ganzer.
What you're looking at is a ghost, once alive but now deceased. Once upon a time, it was a baseball stadium that housed a major league ball club known as the Hoboken Zephyrs. Now it houses nothing but memories and a wind that stirs in the high grass of what was once an outfield, a wind that sometimes bears a faint, ghostly resemblance to the roar of a crowd that once sat here. We're back in time now, when the Hoboken Zephyrs were still a part of the National League, and this mausoleum of memories was an honest-to-Pete stadium. But since this is strictly a story of make believe, it has to start this way: once upon a time, in Hoboken, New Jersey, it was tryout day. And though he's not yet on the field, you're about to meet a most unusual fella, a left-handed pitcher named Casey. [3]
"Mouth" McGarry, the manager of a broken-down baseball team called the Hoboken Zephyrs on its last legs, is introduced to Dr. Stillman, an inventor who built a robot named Casey to play on the team. Casey has the ability to throw super-fast balls, super-slow balls, and extreme curveballs that cannot be hit.
Eventually, after Casey is beaned by a ball and given a physical examination, the National League finds out and rules that Casey must be taken off the team because he is not human. Dr. Stillman then installs an artificial heart for Casey.
However, due to his new heart, Casey now possesses human emotions. He refuses to throw his fast balls anymore, saying that he feels empathy with the batter and does not want to ruin the batter's career by striking him out, and quits baseball to become a social worker. With the team sure to fold soon, Dr. Stillman gives McGarry Casey's blueprints as a souvenir. Glancing at them, McGarry suddenly has an idea, and runs after Dr. Stillman to tell him. Rumors later surface intimating that McGarry has used the blueprints to build a world-champion team of Casey robots. [2]
Once upon a time, there was a major league baseball team called the Hoboken Zephyrs, who, during the last year of their existence, wound up in last place and shortly thererafter wound up in oblivion. There's a rumor, unsubstantiated, of course, that a manager named McGarry took them to the West Coast and wound up with several pennants and a couple of world championships. This team had a pitching staff that made history. Of course, none of them smiled very much, but it happens to be a fact that they pitched like nothing human. And if you're interested as to where these gentlemen came from, you might check under 'B' for Baseball - in The Twilight Zone. [3]
According to The Twilight Zone: Unlocking the Door to a Television Classic by Martin Grams, the entire production was originally filmed with Paul Douglas in the manager role. (Douglas previously played a baseball team manager in the 1951 film Angels in the Outfield .) [3] On Friday, September 11, 1959, the day after the episode finished shooting, Douglas died. Douglas had been, unbeknownst to anyone, suffering from an incipient coronary during the production; [3] his performance was adversely affected, as on film, Douglas appeared mottled and out-of-breath.
Writer and executive producer Rod Serling felt that the circumstances of Douglas' death cast a pall over what was supposed to be a light-hearted comedic episode, and decided that a re-shoot was necessary. CBS refused to finance any re-shooting, so consequently, virtually the entire production was reshot at the expense of Rod Serling's Cayuga Productions with Jack Warden in the team manager's role. [2] The other roles were not recast, and as much footage from the original filming was used as possible, including (in the episode's final shot) a scene in which Douglas is seen in the distance, with his back to the camera, as the manager. Original director Alvin Ganzer was not available for the re-shoot, so Robert Parrish was brought to complete shooting; both are credited as directors on the finished episode.
In Serling's original first-draft script (and in his short-story adaptation that appeared in the 1960 anthology, Stories from The Twilight Zone), the team was supposed to have been the Brooklyn Dodgers (their stadium in the original story was "Tebbet's Field"), who, like the fictitious "Hoboken Zephyrs", moved west in 1958 to become the Los Angeles Dodgers. The closing narration refers to the original draft: at the time of broadcast, the Dodgers had beaten the Chicago White Sox to win the previous year's World Series, doing so with a dominant pitching staff featuring Don Drysdale, Johnny Podres and a young Sandy Koufax.
The baseball scenes were filmed at the Los Angeles version of Wrigley Field, an often-used venue for Hollywood films featuring baseball scenes. [2] The TV series Home Run Derby was also filmed at Wrigley, and also aired that summer of 1960. [2] The Wrigley footage, with the stands empty, was supplemented by brief clips of stock-footage crowd scenes, from the Polo Grounds and Fenway Park.
The Twilight Zone is an American media franchise based on the anthology television series created by Rod Serling in which characters find themselves dealing with often disturbing or unusual events, an experience described as entering "the Twilight Zone". The episodes are in various genres, including fantasy, science fiction, absurdism, dystopian fiction, suspense, horror, supernatural drama, black comedy, and psychological thriller, frequently concluding with a macabre or unexpected twist, and usually with a moral. A popular and critical success, it introduced many Americans to common science fiction and fantasy tropes. The first series, shot entirely in black-and-white, ran on CBS for five seasons from 1959 to 1964.
Night Gallery is an American anthology television series that aired on NBC from December 16, 1970, to May 27, 1973, featuring stories of horror and the macabre. Rod Serling, who had gained fame from an earlier series, The Twilight Zone, served both as the on-air host of Night Gallery and as a major contributor of scripts, although he did not have the same control of content and tone as he had on The Twilight Zone. Serling viewed Night Gallery as a logical extension of The Twilight Zone, but while both series shared an interest in thought-provoking dark fantasy, more of Zone's offerings were science fiction while Night Gallery focused on horrors of the supernatural.
Rodman Edward Serling was an American screenwriter and television producer best known for his live television dramas of the 1950s and his anthology television series The Twilight Zone. Serling was active in politics, both on and off the screen, and helped form television industry standards. He was known as the "angry young man" of Hollywood, clashing with television executives and sponsors over a wide range of issues, including censorship, racism, and war.
"Time Enough at Last" is the eighth episode of the American anthology series The Twilight Zone, first airing on November 20, 1959. The episode was adapted from a short story by Lynn Venable, which appeared in the January 1953 edition of If: Worlds of Science Fiction.
"What You Need" is the twelfth episode of the American television anthology series The Twilight Zone, airing on Christmas Day, 1959. It is based on the short story of the same name by Lewis Padgett, which was published in the October 1945 issue of Astounding Science Fiction magazine.
"The Odyssey of Flight 33" is episode 54 of the American television anthology series The Twilight Zone, the 18th episode of the second season. An unlikely break of the time barrier finds a commercial airliner sent back into the prehistoric age and then to New York City of 1939. The tale is a modern telling of the Flying Dutchman myth, and was written by series creator Rod Serling. It originally aired on February 24, 1961 on CBS.
"It's a Good Life" is the eighth episode of the third season of the American television series The Twilight Zone, and the 73rd overall. It was written by series creator/showrunner Rod Serling, based on the 1953 short story "It's a Good Life" by Jerome Bixby. The episode was directed by James Sheldon, and is considered by some, such as Time and TV Guide, to be one of the best episodes of the series. It originally aired on November 3, 1961. The episode was one of four from the original 1959 series which formed the basis of the 1983 film Twilight Zone: The Movie.
"The Midnight Sun" is episode 75 of the American television anthology series The Twilight Zone, first shown in November, 1961.
Wrigley Field was a ballpark in Los Angeles, California. It hosted minor league baseball teams in the region for more than 30 years. It was the home park for the minor league Los Angeles Angels during their run in the Pacific Coast League, as well as for the inaugural season of the major league team of the same name in 1961. The park was designed by Zachary Taylor Davis, who had previously designed both of the Major League Baseball stadiums in Chicago: Comiskey Park and Wrigley Field. The ballpark was also used as the backdrop for several Hollywood films about baseball, as well as the 1960 TV series Home Run Derby.
"The Bewitchin' Pool" is the 156th and last episode of the first incarnation of the American anthology television series The Twilight Zone. It originally aired on June 19, 1964 on CBS.
An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge is a 1961 French short film, almost without dialogue. It was based on the 1890 American short story of the same name by American Civil War soldier, wit, and writer Ambrose Bierce. It was directed by Robert Enrico and produced by Marcel Ichac and Paul de Roubaix with music by Henri Lanoë. It won awards at the Cannes Film Festival and the Academy Awards. The film was later screened on American television as episode 22 of the fifth season of The Twilight Zone on 28 February 1964.
The Twilight Zone is an anthology television series which aired from September 27, 1985, to April 15, 1989. It is the first of three revivals of Rod Serling's acclaimed 1959–64 television series, and like the original it featured a variety of speculative fiction, commonly containing characters from a seemingly normal world stumbling into paranormal circumstances. Unlike the original, however, most episodes contained multiple self-contained stories instead of just one. The voice-over narrations were still present, but were not a regular feature as they were in the original series; some episodes had only an opening narration, some had only a closing narration, and some had no narration at all. The multi-segment format liberated the series from the usual time constraints of episodic television, allowing stories ranging in length from 8-minutes to 40-minute mini-movies. The series ran for two seasons on CBS before producing a final season for syndication.
The Twilight Zone is an American fantasy science fiction horror anthology television series created and presented by Rod Serling, which ran for five seasons on CBS from October 2, 1959, to June 19, 1964. Each episode presents a standalone story in which characters find themselves dealing with often disturbing or unusual events, an experience described as entering "the Twilight Zone", often with a surprise ending and a moral. Although often considered predominantly science-fiction, the show's paranormal and Kafkaesque events leaned the show much closer to fantasy and horror. The phrase "twilight zone", inspired by the series, is used to describe surreal experiences.
Paul Douglas Fleischer, known professionally as Paul Douglas, was an American actor.
"The Long Morrow" is episode 135 of the American television anthology series The Twilight Zone. It originally aired on January 10, 1964 on CBS. In this episode, an astronaut falls in love on the eve of a 40-year-long space voyage. The story focuses on how he and his lover confront the problem that his 40 years in suspended animation will cause a wide age disparity between them by the time he returns.
Twilight Zone is a widebody pinball machine, designed by Pat Lawlor and based on the TV series of the same name. It was first released in 1993 by Midway. This game is part of WMS' SuperPin line of widebody games alongside Star Trek: The Next Generation and Indiana Jones: The Pinball Adventure.
Twilight Zone: Rod Serling's Lost Classics is a 1994 American made-for-television fantasy supernatural horror film consisting of two stories by Rod Serling. The film was co-produced by Serling's widow Carol Serling. Reportedly, she found the two pieces in a trunk in the family's garage.
Twilight Zone: 19 Original Stories on the 50th Anniversary is an anthology of short stories written by various authors and edited by Carol Serling, the widow of series creator Rod Serling. Each story was written with themes or styles similar to The Twilight Zone episodes, including a narrated introduction and conclusion. Authors who contributed stories include Twilight Zone veterans Earl Hamner Jr., Alan Brennert, William F. Wu, and Rod Serling. Reviewers listed some of the better stories as being Kelley Armstrong's "A Haunted House of Her Own", Alan Brennert's "Puowaina" and Mike Resnick and Lezli Robyn's "Benchwarmer".
