The Twilight Zone: Season 1, Episode One “Where Is Everybody?”

Original Air Date: October 2, 1959
Writer: Rod Serling
Director: Robert Stevens

“There is a fifth dimension, beyond that which is known to man. It is a dimension as vast as space and as timeless as infinity. It is the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition, and 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 which we call The Twilight Zone.” - Rod Serling

A truly brilliant, eerie, psychological, Cold War-influenced, pre-space travel story, “Where Is Everybody?” kicks off the series with an unsettling science fiction debut. Written by television’s great man of letters, Rod Serling, and directed by notable Hitchcockian, Robert Stevens, “Where Is Everybody?” combines some incredible talents, both on and offscreen, among them includes the legendary composer Bernard Herrmann who delivered an engrossing atmospheric score for this episode (this was the first of six Twilight Zone episodes featuring original compositions by Bernard Herrmann). “Where Is Everybody?” tells a horrifying tale about a man who strangely finds himself complete alone with no idea who he is or how he got himself into such a predicament. The episode begins with the show’s signature introduction script (faithfully copied above) amidst a backdrop of murky shots over a lagoon. Suddenly, we see a man stumbling down a dirt road wearing either U.S. Air Force coveralls or perhaps a mechanic’s outfit. He steadily approaches a nearby cafe.

“The place is here. The time is now.
And the journey into the shadows that we are about to watch, could be our journey.“
-Rod Serling

The unnamed man is played by American television actor, Earl Holliman. He enters into the cafe and calls out for a meal only to find that the whole restaurant is empty. A jukebox is playing loudly in the background. Coffee is brewing on the stove. But where are all the people? Have the Soviets dropped the bomb? If so, why are all the buildings still standing? Is this merely a cruel joke? Is it all a dream? The man barges into the kitchen and demands food, but again no one is there. He decides to pour himself a cup of coffee but he accidentally breaks a small cooking clock at the same moment that the jukebox stops playing. Is someone there? Who turned off the music? Where is everybody?

The man wanders away into a nearby town square, typically a symbol of safety and security in American culture (the town square set in this episode was filmed at Universal’s famed “Courthouse Square” where To Kill A Mockingbird and Back to the Future were filmed among other classics). A church bell rings out over the town square. Suddenly, the man spots a woman seated in a car. At last! Another living person! Relieved, he starts talking aloud to her, but when he approaches, he is horrified to find she is merely a mannequin (from “Resnick’s Store Mannequins”). We quickly learn he is suffering from severe amnesia –he doesn’t even remember his own name. So how did he get here? Is this town playing an elaborate joke on him? He looks around. He is sweaty and begins to feel an eerie sensation; like he is being watched. His paranoia grows.

“I wish I could shake that feeling… That crazy feeling of being watched… listened to…”

Suddenly, the phone rings in a nearby telephone booth. He dashes across the street but the line goes silent. He hangs up the phone and tries to call the operator but there is only a pre-recorded message playing on the other end. A phonebook inside the booth reveals the name of the town: “Oakwood.” As he scans the town, there are no people anywhere, and despite this being a small town –typically a safe place in the American psyche– the man realizes he is completely vulnerable.

He frantically enters the police station and uses the radio to broadcast a message “calling all cars… calling all cars…” but there is no response. He spots a fresh cigar smoldering in an ash tray. Who lit the cigar? And where did he go? In a nearby prison cell, someone has recently shaved. The man starts to feel as if he’s in a dream. He wanders into a nearby “soda shop” where he scoops some ice cream for himself and talks to himself in the mirror –“I’m sorry old buddy but I don’t recollect your name,” he tells himself. He compares his situation to Scrooge’s assessment of Jacob Marley in Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol –his current circumstance is perhaps nothing more than a strange biological hiccup, an old scrap of dinner that was poorly digested, a phantasm of his imagination. In the shop, he thumbs through stacks of pulp fiction novels on display –one is entitled The Last Man on Earth by Richard Matheson, dated Feb. 1959 (Matheson was, of course, one of the great Twilight Zone writers).

Anxious, he runs out of the empty shop. Night falls and lights start to flash at the local movie theater. A 1957 war film, Battle Hymn, is playing. Suddenly the man recalls his employment: he is in the Air Force! Notably, it is not books, but rather movies that have helped him realize his true identity. He runs up to the projection room in the movie theater –but once again it is empty. In a panic, he dashes down the stairs and crashes into a floor-length mirror in the theater. The shattered glass immediately ends his fantasy. The illusion of his dream, or at least his isolated existence in this small town, has been destroyed.

Next, we see him bloodied, stumbling out into the street. His madness and paranoia seem untamed as oddly angled shots reminiscent of German Expressionist cinematography convey his unhinged state. Apparently, on his last straw, this fellow comes upon a cross-walk. He emphatically begins pushing the pedestrian button over and over begging for help, screaming for someone to hear him.

We (in the audience) are then pulled out of this horrific fantasy and we discover that this man is actually named Sergeant Mike Ferris. He has, in fact, been sitting alone in an isolated booth under close observation by his military superiors. Sgt. Ferris is pushing a panic button inside his booth while undergoing a test of his mental and physical fitness as part of his training to become an astronaut. He has been prepping for a solo voyage to the moon. His isolation lasted 484 hours and 36 minutes, strapped to various wires, alone and enclosed within a booth. Here, we see a broken clock on the wall, much like the clock he dropped earlier in his fantasy. In isolation, his mind fabricated a whole nightmarish dreamland, but the one thing he could not recreate was human companionship. There are few things more terrifying than loneliness. A sweaty and disheveled Sergeant Ferris is then carried away on a stretcher while the moon shines high in the night sky above him. The episode ends as he ominously gazes upward, talking to the moon with a delirious smile: “Hey don’t go away up there, next time it won’t be a dream or a nightmare, next time it’ll be for real, so don’t go away…. we’ll be up there in a little while…”

“The barrier of loneliness: The palpable, desperate need of the human animal to be with his fellow man. Up there, up there in the vastness of space, in the void that is sky, up there is an enemy known as isolation. It sits there in the stars waiting, waiting with the patience of eons, forever waiting…
in The Twilight Zone.“
-Rod Serling

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My Thoughts on “Where Is Everybody?”

The debut episode of The Twilight Zone forces us to confront the troubling reality of modern space exploration. In it, bureaucrats are shown to be testing the sheer limits of the human condition on poor Sgt. Ferris as he is driven mad with loneliness. Can a human being actually survive for hundreds of hours isolated inside an enclosed box? Or will such isolation permanently harm his psyche? Should we even consider such an experiment? What profit is it to land on the moon but risk our sanity? “Where Is Everybody?” reminds us there are natural limits to the human experience. Loneliness is a serious problem, and it remains a troubling cultural dilemma for us living in our modern post-industrial techno-utopian society, but it is especially acute for Sgt. Ferris who seems to be entirely alone but, like a lab rat, he realizes he is being watched. He’s being observed, but he’s not sure why or by whom. It creates a unique element of horror to this episode. Confusion, disorientation, isolation –all classic ingredients for awe-inspiring terror. But perhaps nothing is more horrifying than being secluded in outer space.

At the time of this episode’s airing, humans had not yet landed on the moon, but the prospects were growing ever closer, and many wondered what we might discover out in the vast silence of space. In many ways, it was still an undiscovered country. Would we find unimaginable horrors, the face of God, or perhaps most terrifying of all, a boundless vaccuum of emptiness? On September 13, 1959, the Luna 2 Russian spacecraft crashed into the moon marking the first ever human contact with our satellite neighbor. Three weeks later, The Twilight Zone’s pilot “Where Is Everybody?” aired, though humanity was still about a decade away from officially landing on the moon. Today, many decades later, the prospect of space travel only continues to fascinate us. The ‘optimistic’ techno-futurist titans of industry are now pushing for manned voyages to Mars as they hail a supposedly new era of humanity evolving into a multi-planetary species. Of course, none of this has yet come to fruition, but it brings to mind the troubling words of Sgt. Ferris, in his delirium, as he peers up into the night sky and shouts, “We’ll be up there in a little while!”

Sometimes television can be considered somewhat inferior to the more serious and enduring medium of novel-writing or feature-filmmaking, however Rod Serling’s Twilight Zone wonderfully challenges this stereotype. The Twilight Zone shakes us out of our comfortable armchair view of the world. Even sixty years after its initial release, The Twilight Zone offers a cerebral show that mines the depths of the modern condition through a lens of infinite possibilities –it is science fiction at its finest and fantasy at its most bewitching. Each episode offers a little masterpiece; the stories are often simple but the ideas are immensely complex. In truth, there is no such thing as a bad episode of The Twilight Zone and “Where Is Everybody?” is no exception. I often return to it again and again with new eyes and new possibilities.

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Credits:

• Director: Robert Stevens
  • Robert Stevens (1920-1989) was a director, producer, and writer. He was a friend of CBS network executive William Dozier and was primarily active throughout the 1950s and 1960s on classic anthology TV shows like Suspense for which he directed many episodes. He won an Emmy Award for his directing work on Alfred Hitchcock Presents (he directed a total of 44 episodes). He directed two classic episodes of The Twilight Zone (“Where Is Everybody?” and “Walking Distance“). In 1987, Steven Spielberg hired him to direct “Moving Day,” an episode of Amazing Stories, which turned out to be his final screen credit. In 1989, Stevens was robbed and beaten in his rented Westport, Connecticut home where he had retired in 1987. The culprit turned out to be a young man named John Doherty. Stevens died shortly thereafter of cardiac arrest on August 7, 1989 at the age of 68.
• Written by: Rod Serling
• Music: original score by Bernard Herrmann
• Cinematography: Joseph LaShelle
  • Notably, the pilot episode was shot not by George T. Clemens but by veteran cinematographer and Academy Award-winner Joseph LaShelle (1900-1989).
• Art Direction: Alex Golitzen and Robert Clatworthy
• Set Decorations: Russell A. Gausman and Ruby Levitt
• Assistant Director: Joseph E. Kenny
• Makeup: Bud Westmore
• Sound: Leslie I. Carey and Vernon W. Kramer
• Edited by: Roland Gross
• Starring:
  • Earl Holliman…..Mike Ferris
    • Henry Earl Holliman (1928-2024) was one of the last surviving lead cast members from The Twilight Zone prior to his death in 2024. He appeared in numerous films like the science fiction classic Forbidden Planet (1956) which had such a heavy influence on The Twilight Zone, as well as television shows like Gunsmoke and Murder, She Wrote. He also appeared in Rod Serling’s classic Playhouse 90 episode “The Dark Side of the Earth,” which was about the Hungarian Revolt (it was Holliman’s television debut alongside actors Van Heflin, Dean Jagger, and Kim Hunter). In 1957, he won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role in The Rainmaker which also starred Burt Lancaster, Katharine Hepburn, Wendell Corey, and Lloyd Bridges. Alongside acting, he enjoyed a successful singing career and was an animal rights advocate. He lived in Paris for much of his life. Upon his death in November 2024 at the age of 96, he was revealed to have had a male spouse (he had never spoken publicly about his sexuality).
  • James Gregory…..Air Force General
    • James Gregory (1911-2002) appeared in films like Al Capone (1959), The Manchurian Candidate (1962), and Beneath the Planet of the Apes (1970), the second installment in the Planet of the Apes series of films. He was a semi-regular on the television series Barney Miller in which he played Deputy Inspector Frank Luger, and he played Senator Yerkes Iselin in The Manchurian Candidate (1962). “Where Is Everybody?” was the first instance of Earl Holliman and James Gregory appearing together onscreen. They later performed together in various feature films. James Gregory appeared in a total of two episodes of The Twilight Zone (“Where is Everybody?” and “The Passerby“). He died of natural causes on September 16, 2002, in Sedona, Arizona at the age of 90.
  • James McCallion…..Reporter #1
    • James McCallion (1918-1991) was born in Derry, Ireland and became a character after emigrating to the United States. He appeared in shows like Gunsmoke, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Zane Grey Theatre, The Andy Griffith Show, Mission: Impossible, Bonanza, and others. He played Dr. Tremaine in The Outer Limits episode “The Man With the Power.” In total, he appeared in over a hundred television programs from the 1950s through the early 1980s. McCallion was married to actress Nora Marlowe from 1943 until her death in 1977, they had two children together. James McCallion died on July 11, 1991 in Van Nuys, California after struggling with kidney failure and suffering a heart attack.
  • Jay Overholts…..Reporter #2 (his first of eight appearance in the series)
    • Jay Overholts (1922-1966) holds the record for the most number of credited appearances in The Twilight Zone (of course, this does not include Rod Serling’s role as narrator nor Bud McCord’s numerous uncredited background appearances). Overholts didn’t have much of an acting career beyond his eight episodes of The Twilight Zone. He was in two episodes of Playhouse 90 in 1959 and then in a single episode of Gunsmoke as an unnamed character. He was previously a cast member for many of Rod Serling’s radio programs in Ohio. His final acting credit was an uncredited performance in the 1962 feature film Incident in an Alley. In 1966, according to various fansites, Overholts was tragically killed in a head-on car crash. The driver was charged with vehicular homicide. “Where Is Everybody?” marks his first of many appearances in The Twilight Zone though his name was amusingly misspelled in the credits as “Jay Overholt.” Two other cast members had their names misspelled in this episode’s credits.
  • Garry Walberg…..Reporter #3 (credited as Gary Walberg)
    • Garry Walberg (1921-2012) appeared in a variety of television shows like Perry Mason, Peyton Place, Lassie, and Gunsmoke. He was perhaps best known for his role as LAPD Homicide detective Lt. Frank Monahan in Quincy, M.E which ran from 1976-1983 and which starred his close friend and fellow Twilight Zone star, Jack Klugman. Walberg previously appeared alongside Klugman in the show The Odd Couple. He played the minor role of Hansen in the classic Star Trek episode “Balance of Terror.” He died in 2012 of chronic pulmonary disease and congestive heart failure at the age of 90.
  • Paul Langton…..Doctor
    • Paul Langton (1913-1980) was perhaps best known for his role as Leslie Harrington in the television series Peyton Place. He appeared in shows like Playhouse 90, The Lone Ranger, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Gunsmoke, Wagon Train, Perry Mason, The Untouchables, and many others including two episodes of The Twilight Zone (“Where Is Everybody?” and “On Thursday We Leave for Home“). Langton, a Mormon, died in 1980 at the age of 66.
  • John Conwell…..Colonel
    • John Conwell (1922-1994) was a casting director who worked on such films as The Fugitive (1963), The F.B.I. (1965), and Barnaby Jones (1973). He appeared in over eighteen Twilight Zone episodes. He and his wife had two children, he died in 1994 in Santa Barbara, California of cancer.
  • Carter Mullally Jr……Air Force Captain (credited as Carter Mullaly)
    • Carter Mullally Jr. (1924-1992) also appeared in shows like How to Marry a Millionaire (1957) and Dallas (1978). He died in Oklahoma City in 1992. His only child is Megan Mullally (1958-present), an actress best known for her role on Will & Grace. She is the spouse of Nick Offerman.
  • Jim Johnson…..Air Force Staff Sergeant
    • Jim Johnson (birthdate unknown) also appeared in television episodes of Perry Mason and Alfred Hitchcock Presents.

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The Twilight Zone Trivia:

• Rod Serling’s original pilot script for The Twilight Zone was called “The Happy Place.” It was a story about a society in which older people are executed upon reaching the age of 60 because they lack utility. CBS executive William Self rejected the story feeling it was too dark and would scare away advertisers. Serling eventually relented and after a summer vacation spent brainstorming, he wrote a new script entitled “Where is Everybody?” which was a more acceptable substitute for CBS, however, as would sometimes be the case, “Where Is Everybody?” was also met with accusations of plagiarism (including by legendary science fiction author Ray Bradbury). According to Rod Serling biographer Joel Engel, Ray Bradbury privately accused Serling of stealing this episode from his story “Here There Be Tygers,” though the episode bears little resemblance to the story.
• Rod Serling’s original ending for this episode had Mike Ferris discover a movie ticket stub in his pocket, leaving the audience to question whether his hallucination in the movie theater was more than just a nightmare. In fact, actor Earl Holliman suggested his own alternative ending for the episode –he wanted it to conclude with his character holding a page out of a phone book that he ripped during his hallucination. A similarly styled twist ending that blurs the line between fiction and reality would later be employed in the first episode of the second season “King Nine Will Not Return.”
• Rod Serling later addressed how he developed the idea for this episode: “This particular show I got from a Time magazine article that they were putting guys in isolation booths in preparation for extra-terrestrial travel.” Earl Holliman also remembered that Rod Serling developed part of this episode from an incident in which he got trapped in a telephone booth at the airport. Rod Serling confirmed this in a 1975 interview.
• Rod Serling was not originally intended to be the narrator for the show. Instead, announcer Westbrook Van Voorhis was slated for the job (the narrater for the notable “March of Time” radio and newsreel announcements). When it became known that Van Hooris would be unavailable for future episodes (and Orson Welles was found to be too expensive), Serling opted to record the narration himself and would continue to do so for the sake of consistency throughout the series. Serling later recorded second act narration off-screen that never made it into this episode, such as his quotes: “The barrier of loneliness. The palpable, desperate need of the human animal to be with his fellow man.”
• Apparently, Rod Serling initially recorded his introductory narration stating “there is a sixth dimension” but this was later revised to be more accurate (“fifth dimension”). This amusing anecdote was recounted by Marc Scott Zicree in his audio commentary on the Blu-Ray edition of The Twilight Zone collection.
• Rod Serling’s original script for this episode also featured a scene of Mike Ferris entering the bank and accidentally tripping the alarm.
• The first season of The Twilight Zone features an opening intro for most episodes with a series of lagoon graphics developed by United Productions of America (UPA). This animation was created by Sam Clayberger at UPA (which had completed lots of animated television shows, such as “Mr. Magoo”). In a 2007 interview, Clayberger remembered: “CBS didn’t want it to be science fiction. They wanted something a little broader than that. Something weird, very strange, maybe a little touch of science fiction. But not much –because it wasn’t going to be any one of those. They wanted something a little spooky and scary. The cave might have something to do with my claustrophobia.”
• Unlike other episodes, which were filmed at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, “Where is Everybody?” was filmed at the Universal Studios backlot, using the Courthouse Square set which was featured in a number of shows and movies throughout the years including To Kill A Mockingbird and Back To The Future. The set was initially constructed for the noir film An Act of Murder (1948). In fact, “Where is Everybody?” is the only episode in the series not to be filmed at MGM aside from Season 5’s “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” which used outside source material.
• This episode was shot in nine days at a budget of approximately $75,000 –which was considered very expensive for a thirty minute pilot episode in 1959. It was screened in New York for prospective sponsors on March 8, 1959. General Foods signed on as the series’s main sponsor with Klimberly-Clark kleenex as a secondary sponsor.
• Robert Stevens was also the director of various Alfred Hitchcock Presents and The Alfred Hitchcock Hour episodes and he later directed what many fans consider the greatest Twilight Zone episode: “Walking Distance” (Season 1, Episode 5).
• In The Twilight Zone Blu-Ray audio commentary, Earl Holliman said he initially bumped into Rod Serling in the CBS parking lot where they discussed Serling’s new television series. At the time, Earl Holliman was disappointed with his current role on Playhouse 90 and he was not eager to appear in another science fiction movie like Forbidden Planet, but the script gave him goosebumps so he agreed to sign on.
• Holliman had the flu during the filming of this episode (he had a fever of over 100 degrees) and the first day of filming was said to be a cold day. Rod Serling later described Holliman’s sickness while delivering a lecture at Sherwood Oaks College in Los Angeles. In the audio commentary for this episode, Earl Holliman recalls one day of filming where there was a problem and no shots were captured so he went home sick. In his early scenes, you can hear his hoarse voice. Holliman was fairly critical of his performance in this episode though he admitted he was thrilled to appear in the show.
• At one point, Earl Holliman’s character says he has $2.85 “American money” in his pocket but he doesn’t know his identity. Everything for sale in the bakery/cafe appears to be listed for less than a dollar.
• The oil containers in this episode read “Capitol Oil” on the sides. The sign on the side of the car with a female mannequin reads “Resnick’s Store Mannequins.” Resnick’s was the name of a popular department store in downtown Binghamton, New York where Rod Serling grew up. It has since become a Boscov’s.
• In the audio commentary, Earl Holliman reveals that the shattered mirror effect was actually filmed in separate cuts –one in which he runs down the stairs and into the mirror, and then a separate take wherein a man with a sledgehammer smashes the mirror to create the shattering effect.
• The telephone directory header reads “Oakwood,” the name of the town (Oakwood is also visible on several buildings in the town including the High School).
• The names Holliman’s character reads in the telephone book include: “Abel, Adams, Allen, Altman… Baker, Bargman, Blod, Belmont.”
• Actor Tony Curtis (1920-2010) was initially offered the lead role for this episode but he asked for too much money so his involvement was scrapped. According to director Robert Stevens, one of the other actors under consideration for the lead role was Richard Egan (1921-1987), but he was unavailable.
• Although Buck Houghton is often listed as the producer for The Twilight Zone, in actuality the producer at the time this pilot aired was William Self. However, Self declined to continue with the series after the pilot and Buck Houghton stepped in as producer. Houghton was Self’s former script editor on the anthology show Schlitz Playhouse of Stars.
• The novels displayed on the shelves inside the drugstore in this episode include a book called The Last Man on Earth, which was written by frequent Twilight Zone writer and legendary science fiction author Richard Matheson (famous for his novel I Am Legend among other classics). Other titles I spotted on these shelves include: The Green Odyssey, The Mystery of the Dead Police, The Viking, Grand Mesa, Miss Pinkerton, Lester Del Rey, Bread and Wine, The Town (this might be Conrad Richter’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of the same name), Susie Wong, The Temple of Gold, Home Before Dark, No Time for Sergeants, and I Want To Live. There are others but I could not make out their titles.
• The film playing at the movie theater in the town is Battle Hymn (1957), a war film and true story about a U.S. Air Force pilot rescuing orphans from the Korean Peninsula during the Korean War. It was directed by Douglas Sirk and starred Rock Hudson and Anna Kashfi (Martha Hyer’s name is listed as top-billing alongside Rock Hudson’s on the film poster in this episode).
• Some of the buildings around the town square in Oakwood include: the Oakwood Post Office, a shop called “Millers,” Carsons Book Store, a hardware and appliance store, “J.M. Meyer M.D. and Richard Roy M.D. Room 204,” “Vladimear Solchrasky ARTIST Room 206,” “O.C. Clayborn Attorney Room 208,” a bakery, Resnick’s Store Mannequins, an auto service shop, a Savoy movie theater, Oakwood Police Department, Oakwood High School, a church, an optometrist, and lastly Park Drugs Store (where razors are sold for 27 cents, soda for 30 cents, a banana split for 40 cents, a malted milk for 35 cents, and a fresh strawberry sundae for 30 cents).
• The Oakwood High School basketball roster is listed prominently inside the drugstore for the 1958-1959 year. Other schools on the schedule include Corinth High, Allerton, Clarion, Manchester, and Plainville.
• The song playing on the jukebox inside the cafe is Eric Cook’s “Turkish Delight” which was available as CBS stock music and appears in various other episodes of The Twilight Zone.
• Bernard Herrmann’s orchestration for this episode included: 6 violins, 4 horns, 2 violas, 2 celli, 2 clarinets, 2 harps, 2 basses, 1 flute, 1 oboe, 1 English horn, 1 bass clarinet, and 1 vibe.

Click here to return to my survey of The Twilight Zone series.

Click here to read my review of Rod Serling’s short story “Where Is Everybody?”