The Twilight Zone: Season 1, Episode Eleven “And When The Sky Was Opened”

Original Air Date: December 11, 1959
Writer: Rod Serling (based on “Disappearing Act” by Richard Matheson)
Director: Douglas Heyes

Loosely based on Richard Matheson’s short story called “Disappearing Act” published in 1953 in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, The Twilight Zone episode “And When The Sky Was Opened” deals with a popular series theme: the connection between space exploration and altered reality. In this episode, both time and memory are erased as a crew of three astronauts are isolated and driven insane before they ultimately disappear from all records.

“Her name: X-20. Her type: an experimental interceptor. Recent history: a crash landing in the Mojave Desert after a thirty-one hour flight nine hundred miles into space. Incidental data: the ship, with the men who flew her, disappeared from the radar screen for twenty-four hours. But the shrouds that cover mysteries are not always made out of a tarpaulin, as this man will soon find out on the other side of a hospital door.”
-Rod Serling

A three-man crew piloting an experimental spacecraft called the “X-20 DynaSoar” suddenly disappears from radar during a test flight. They vanish before being discovered following a crashed in the Mojave desert which sends one of the crew members, Major William Gart (played by Jim Hutton) to the hospital with a broken leg. While in the hospital he is visited by his friend and co-pilot Lieutenant Colonel Klegg Forbes (played by the Hollywood rising star, Rod Taylor, who later appeared in numerous films ranging from Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds to Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds).

“When you walked out of here yesterday morning, you walked out alone! There’s never been three beds in this room, only two. Yours and mine.“

Colonel Forbes interrogates Gart about their third crew member: Ed Harrington (played by Charles Aidman) but there is no official record of Harrington and Gart has no memory of him either. The episode flashes back to Harrington and Forbes in a bar after the crash wherein Harrington suddenly starts feeling strange. He drops his beer in a dramatic moment and abruptly calls his parents, but they say they have no son. Suddenly, Ed Harrington disappears entirely and Forbes looks at the photo that now has Harrington removed. The bartender claims Forbes entered the bar alone, there is also no spilled beer on the floor. Ed Harrington has mysteriously vanished from the face of the Earth and only Forbes seems to remember.

After hearing Forbes’s story, Gart still claims not to remember anyone named Ed Harrington. They start to suspect that their ship had crossed over a forbidden boundary. In fact, Forbes starts feeling unusual just like Harrington. He looks in the mirror but sees no reflection of himself. He screams running out of the room, but just when Gart tries to follow him, the noise stops and Forbes disappears from all records. Gart sees a photo in a newspaper but shockingly it only shows Gart, the newspaper reads: “Lone Astronaut Returns From Space.” Stricken with fear he lays down.

In an epilogue, a military man comes to the hospital asking the nurse for an empty room. She leads him to where Gart and Forbes were once recovering only to reveal a totally empty room. The experimental “X-20 DynaSoar” craft had actually disappeared and never returned. In the episode we bear witness to 1950s anxieties about space travel, brain-washing, memory loss, and the puzzling notion of non-being.

“Once upon a time, there was a man named Harrington, a man named Forbes, a man named Gart. They used to exist, but don’t any longer. Someone – or something- took them somewhere. At least they are no longer a part of the memory of man. And as to the X-20 supposed to be housed here in this hangar, this, too, does not exist. And if any of you have any questions concerning an aircraft and three men who flew her, speak softly of them – and only in – The Twilight Zone.”
-Rod Serling

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My Thoughts on “And When The Sky Was Opened”

A central question posed by this episode is: what if reality is fluid rather than static? Knowledge demands consistency, however modern theories of multiple realities beg certain uncomfortable questions about relativism and the futility of human endurance. As another pre-space travel episode, “And When The Sky Was Opened” speculates about what horrors we might accidentally stumble upon as humanity goes venturing out beyond the bounds of earth. If people can simply be erased from history, then civilization is hopeless. Nothing is more scary than the prospect of being completely erased by everyone we love. In some ways, it brings to mind efforts by the Soviets to wholly erase people from photographs and records –a sobering thought from another compelling episode in this series.

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Credits

• Director: Douglas Heyes
• Written by: Rod Serling based on ” Disappearing Act” by Richard Matheson (a short story which was originally published in the March 1953 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction)
• Music: Leonard Rosenman
• Director of Photography: George T. Clemens
• Production Manager: Ralph W. Nelson
• Art Directors: George W. Davis and William Ferrari
• Film Editor: Fred Maguire
• Assistant Director: Edward Denault
• Set Decorations: Henry Grace and Rudy Butler
• Sound: Franklin Milton and Jean Valentino
• Casting Director: Mildred Gusse
• Cast:
  • Rod Taylor…..Lieutenant Colonel Clegg Forbes
    • Rod Taylor(1930-2015) was born in Australia and arrived in the U.S. five years prior to filming this episode. He appeared in more than 50 feature films, including Young Cassidy (1965), Nobody Runs Forever (1968), The Train Robbers (1973), and A Matter of Wife… and Death (1975). He decided to become an actor after seeing Laurence Olivier in an Old Vic touring production of Richard III and made his feature film debut in the Australian Lee Robinson film King of the Coral Sea (1954). He soon started acting in television films, portraying several different characters in the 1950s anthology series Studio 57. He gained popularity after starring in The Time Machine (1960), as “H. George Wells.” He later voiced the dog Pngo in Disney’s One Hundred and One Dalmatians (1961). In one of his most famous roles, he played Mitch Brenner in Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds (1963). By the late 1990s, Taylor had moved into semiretirement. His final film role was in Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds (2009), in which he portrayed Winston Churchill. He was married three times and had one daughter, Felicia Taylor, who became a CNN correspondent. She died in 2023 at the age of 59.
  • Charles Aidman…..Colonel Ed Harrington
    • Charles Aidman (1925-1993) appeared in various television shows like The Virginian, Gunsmoke, The Dick Van Dyke Show, The Andy Griffith Show, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, All in the Family, M*A*S*H, and Little House on the Prairie. He appeared in two Twilight Zone episodes “And When the Sky Was Opened” and “Little Girl Lost.” Notably, Charles Aidman stepped into Serling’s role of narrator for the 1985-1987 rebooted Twilight Zone television series (he was later replaced by Robin Ward).
  • Jim Hutton…..Major William Gart
    • James “Jim” Hutton (1934-1979) grew up in Binghamton, New York like Rod Serling. He served in the U.S. military before turning to acting. He was best remembered for his role as Ellery Queen in the 1970s TV series of the same name, and his screen partnership with Paula Prentiss in four films, starting with Where the Boys Are. He was the father of actor Timothy Hutton who appeared in an episode of the 1980s reboot of The Twilight Zone.
  • Maxine Cooper…..Amy
    • Maxine Cooper (1924-2009) was perhaps best known for her film debut in the role of private detective Mike Hammer’s secretary Velda in the 1955 film noir classic Kiss Me Deadly. She was also a photographer and an activist who helped organize civil rights marches in support of Martin Luther King Jr.
  • Sue Randall…..Nurse
    • Marion Burnside “Sue” Randall (1935-1984) spent her seventeen year acting career primarily working in television. Her best-known role was the kindly Miss Alice Landers, Theodore “Beaver” Cleaver’s elementary-school teacher on the sitcom Leave It to Beaver. She appeared in two episodes of The Twilight Zone –“And When the Sky Was Opened” and “From Agnes – With Love.”
  • Paul Bryar…..Bartender
    • Paul Bryar (1910-1985) started his career in the silent era, making his debut in the Harold Lloyd comedy Professor Beware. He appeared in three movies directed by Alfred Hitchcock, including Vertigo (1958), where he had an uncredited role as the friendly Police Captain who accompanies Jimmy Stewart to the coroner’s inquest, the other two Hitchcock films were Notorious (1946) and The Wrong Man (1956). He also appeared in a 1955 episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents. He was often typecast as a policeman, as in Rebel Without a Cause (1955). He also appeared in the opening scene of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969). He appeared in television shows like The Twilight Zone, Bonanza, Batman, Little House on the Prairie, Emergency!, Bewitched, The Andy Griffith Show, The Beverly Hillbillies, Leave It to Beaver; Kung Fu and Hart to Hart. He was married to Claudia Bryar who played Emma Spool in the film Psycho II (1983). They had three children together.
  • Joe Bassett…..Medical officer
    • Joe Bassett (1910-1997) was known for appearances in Down Three Dark Streets (1954), The Twilight Zone (1959) and Have Gun – Will Travel (1957).
  • Gloria Pall…..Girl in bar
    • Gloria Pall (1997-2012) was an American model, showgirl, actress, author, and businesswoman. Prior to acting, she attended the Casey Jones School of Aeronautics to learn to be an aircraft mechanic during World War II. She was employed by the USO headquarters office on the 56th floor of the Empire State Building in NYC when a U.S. Army B-25 Mitchell bomber crashed into the 79th floor in 1945 killing fourteen people (she narrowly escaped). She then worked as a showgirl in both Reno and Las Vegas, and dated Howard Hughes for a time, before embarking on an acting career in television shows like Sky King and The Twilight Zone, as well as feature films like Ma and Pa Kettle on Vacation (1953), Abbott and Costello Go to Mars (1953), The French Line (1954), 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954), The Night of the Hunter (1955), Jailhouse Rock (1957), The Brothers Karamazov (1958), The Crimson Kimono (1959), and Elmer Gantry (1960). She was a two-time centerfold in Esquire and developed a racy television show called “Voluptua” which was cancelled after seven weeks. Gloria then turned to real estate in 1962, opening her own office on the Sunset Strip (she kept a prominent sign that read “Call Pall”). Funnily enough, her fellow actor in this episode, Jim Hutton, later became one of her real estate clients. They went out driving together and she got a ticket for speeding. Jim Hutton told her he would take care of the ticket, but apparently he never did. Gloria was married and divorced twice and she had one son.
  • Elizabeth Fielding…..Blond Nurse
    • Elizabeth Fielding, or simply Lisabeth Field (1923-1996), was known for appearances in Mannix (1967), The Invaders (1967) and The F.B.I. (1965). She was married to fellow actor Logan Field.
  • Oliver McGowan…..officer
    • Oliver McGowan (1907-1971) was known for Star Trek (1966), One Step Beyond (1959), and Mannix (1967). In Star Trek, he appeared in the classic episode “Shore Leave.”
  • S. John Launer…..Mr. Harrington
    • Saul John Launer (1919–2006) was an American television actor (often uncredited) best known for his role as a criminal court judge on Perry Mason. He was badly injured in a stagecoach accident on the set of Laramie in 1960. His co-actor, Bert Spencer, was harmed to the point that one of his legs required amputation.
      

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The Twilight Zone Trivia:

• In the original script, Rod Serling wrote about a crashed spacecraft but it was deemed too expensive. Also in the original script, Rod Serling suggested that transportation to another world would be a painful experience but Rod Taylor and Douglas Heyes argued it would be more of a euphoric experience.
• This episode was only a vague thematic adaptation of Richard Matheson’s short story “Disappearing Act” which was a writer’s epistolary account of how everyone and everything around him continues to erase itself from existence. The story ends with a sentence abruptly cut-off as the writer himself has now ceased to exist. Serling kept the premise but constructed an entirely new plot.
• When Richard Matheson initially sent this short story to a reading agent for review, it was returned to him, torn into pieces.
• This episode title is a parody of a line from the children’s nursery rhyme “Sing a Song of Sixpence;” “When the pie was opened, The birds began to sing; Wasn’t that a dainty dish, To set before the king?”
• The scene of Forbes busting through the bar’s glass door was encouraged by Rod Serling and director Douglas Heyes, though it was not in the script.
• The hospital room number in this episode is #15.
• In the Blu-Ray audio commentary, Rod Taylor fondly remembered this episode. He said they didn’t do too many takes for each scene and he mentioned that Doug Heyes was also a talented artist in addition to being a smart director.
• This was Jim Hutton’s television debut.
• Rod Taylor and Jim Hutton went on to do many movies together.
• Charles Aidman later became the narrator of The Twilight Zone reboot series in the 1980s.
• Same business manager
• Director Douglas Heyes became good friends with Rod Taylor around the time of this episode. They both later did the television special “Powderkeg” together to kick off a new show called Bearcats!
• As with the episode “Time Enough At Last,” in “And When The Sky Was Opened” the featured newspaper is the “Daily Chronicle.” Some of the headers include “Board of Education Submits New School Bonds Issue” and “Contests Delay Choice of New City Chairman” and “Spacemen Safe in Crash on Mojave.”
• The most expensive set for this episode was the bar which cost $450.
• Apparently this episode was initially titled “The Aftermath.”
• The initial script featured an X-6 but this was later changed to an X-20 Dyna-Soar (short for “Dynamic Soarer”), a vehicle designed by the U.S. Air Force for various military missions.

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