Original Air Date: December 25, 1959
Writer: Rod Serling (based on “What You Need” by Lewis Padgett)
Director: Alvin Ganzer
“Serenity, peace of mind, humor -the things you need most, I can’t supply.”
“What You Need” was based on the 1945 short story of the same name by spouses Henry Kuttner and C.L. Moore under their joint nom de plume “Lewis Padget.” The Twilight Zone episode was actually not the first on-screen depiction of the story, in fact there was an earlier show called Tales of Tomorrow (1951-1953) with an episode that was perhaps more true to the original story (in which an old man possesses a unique scientific machine rather than a vague fantastical power) but this does nothing to diminish the greatness of the interpretation portrayed in The Twilight Zone. An earlier science fiction anthology show Tales of Tomorrow aired a version of this story. Tales of Tomorrow was a live program that ran on ABC and featured many top-billed actors during its run including Lon Chaney Jr., Paul Newman, James Dean, Boris Karloff, Leslie Nielsen, and many others.
“You’re looking at Mr. Fred Renard, who carries on his shoulder a chip the size of the national debt. This is a sour man, a friendless man, a lonely man, a grasping, compulsive, nervous man. This is a man who has lived 36 undistinguished, meaningless, pointless, failure-laden years and who at this moment looks for an escape- any escape, any way, anything, anybody- to get out of the rut. And this little old man is just what Mr. Renard has been waiting for.”
-Rod Serling
A curious old man named “Pedott” (played by Ernest Truex) has the uncanny ability to offer people exactly what they need (not necessarily what they want). The implication is that Pedott possesses clairvoyance. He demonstrates his ability in a cafe by offering a vial of cleaner to a woman, and he delivers a former Chicago Cub’s pitcher a bus ticket to Scranton, Pennsylvania. When the phone rings, a minor league coaching job is offered to the pitcher in Pennsylvania, but before he leaves he suddenly realizes he has a stain on his suit coat. The woman with the vial helps him clean his shirt and they depart together. Their needs have been met thanks to Pedott.
Meanwhile a shady man at the bar has been watching the situation unfold. His name is Fred Renard (played by Steve Cochran), and he follows Pedott outside demanding to be given what he needs. Pedott hands him a pair of scissors which he later finds useful when his scarf is caught in an elevator, very nearly killing him by strangulation.
After surviving the event in the elevator, ever the exploiter, Fred once again tracks down the gentle Pedott and threatens him unless he plays into Fred’s schemes. Fred is a down-on-his luck guy who has been struggling all his life and he wants some security for the future. As he grows increasingly belligerent, Pedott hands him a pair of shoes while cautiously backing away. The shoes cause Fred to slip in front of an oncoming car and he dies upon collision. In a world where Pedott may be killed, perhaps death is what he truly needed.
“Street scene. Night. Traffic accident. Victim named Fred Renard. Gentleman with a sour face to whom contentment came with difficulty. Fred Renard, who took all that was needed, in the Twilight Zone.”
-Rod Serling
My Thoughts on “What You Need”
Once again the cinematography of George T. Clemens is brilliant in this episode as we find a uniquely rainy, dark, and hazy MGM backlot made to look something like the streets of Chicago. The brilliance of The Twilight Zone often lies in its simplicity and subtly as well as its remarkable world-building atmosphere. Nothing is ever truly out of place, but the show retains a level of mystery and intrigue along with a coherent conclusion that often leaves its audience in a state of wonder. The folkloric “What You Need” operates under the assumption that every person has a deprivation, whether they know it yet or not.
Credits:
- Director: Alvin Ganzer
- Written by: Rod Serling based on “What You Need” by Lewis Padgett (the joint pseudonym of the science fiction authors and spouses Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore, taken from their mothers’ maiden names). It was originally published in the October 1945 issue of Astounding Science Fiction.
- Music: Nathan Van Cleave
- Director of Photography: George T. Clemens
- Production Manager: Ralph W. Nelson
- Art Directors: George W. Davis and William Ferrari
- Film Editor: Joseph Gluck
- Assistant Director: Edward Denault
- Set Decorations: Henry Grace and Rudy Butler
- Sound: Franklin Milton and Jean Valentino
- Casting Director: Mildred Gusse
- Cast:
- Steve Cochran…..Fred Renard
- Robert Alexander “Steve” Cochran (1917-1965) was rejected for military service in World War II because of a heart murmur, but was later brought to Hollywood by Sam Goldwyn. He acted in a variety of films and television shows but gained notoriety for his habit of womanizing and trouble with the police. He had well-documented affairs with numerous starlets and actresses, was married three times, and had one daughter. In 1965, Cochran recruited two “young women” and a 14-year-old girl to accompany him on a sailing trip from Acapulco to Costa Rica, ostensibly to take part in an upcoming film. The yacht lost one of its two masts in a storm a few days into the trip. Then Cochran fell ill and died two days later at the age of 48, of what was later determined to be an acute lung infection. The women who were accompanying him did not know how to sail the boat and were trapped with his decomposing body for ten days before being rescued at sea. The boat, still carrying his corpse, was later found drifting off the coast of Guatemala
- Ernest Truex…..Pedott
- Ernest Truex (1889-1973) began his career as a child actor performing at age five and later touring through Missouri at age nine as “The Child Wonder in Scenes from Shakespeare.” He later made his way into film and television. He starred in two Twilight Zone episodes “Kick the Can” (with his son Barry) and “What You Need.”
- Arline Sax…..girl in the bar
- Arlene Martel (1936-2014) was frequently billed as “Arline Sax” or “Arlene Sax” prior to 1964. She was called “Martel the Chameleon” because her appearance and her proficiency with accents and dialects allowed her to portray characters of a wide range of races and ethnicities. Her most notable roles were as T’Pring on Star Trek and Tiger on Hogan’s Heroes. She appeared in minor roles in two Twilight Zone episodes “What You Need” and “Twenty-Two.” She later stated that she gets almost all of her fan mail from her few lines she spoke in “What You Need” in The Twilight Zone rather than any other show she did.
- Read Morgan…..Lefty
- Read Morgan (1934-2022) was best known for playing Sergeant Hapgood Tasker in the second season of the American western television series The Deputy.
- Bob McCord…..silent paramedic
- Robert “Bob” McCord III (1915-1980) appeared in a variety of Westerns in addition to The Twilight Zone. He set a record for appearing on The Twilight Zone 75 times (mostly uncredited). He was known as “Bud McCord.”
- Frank Allocca…..waiter
- Don Anderson…..man in the bar
- Dick Barber…..man in the street
- Robert Barry…..man in the street
- Evelyn Coner…..woman in the street
- Paul Cristo…..man in the bar
- Paul Denton…..man exiting the bar
- Doris Karnes…..the woman customer
- Kenner G. Kemp…..man in the bar
- Fred Kruger…..man on the street
- Dale Logue…..min in the bar
- Beryl McCutcheon…..woman in the bar
- Ron Nyman…..man in the street
- John Pedrini…..man in the street
- Norman Sturgis…..the night clerk
- Mark Sunday…..the photographer
- Steve Cochran…..Fred Renard
The Twilight Zone Trivia:
- This story was previously featured in an episode of Tales of Tomorrow, a science fiction anthology show that ran from 1951-1953. The series covered such stories as Frankenstein starring Lon Chaney Jr., 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea starring Thomas Mitchell as Captain Nemo, and many others. Rod Serling was a contributed to
- Buck Houghton initially selected the short story on which this episode is based. He described it in a phone call to Rod Serling.
- The original short story “What You Need” appeared in a collection of Lewis Padgett’s stories called Line of Tomorrow. It initially was published in the October 1945 issue of Astounding Science Fiction.
- The original story featured a machine that could foretell an individual’s future. Serling replaced this science-fiction element with a fantasy story about a street peddler who could perform a similar act without the machine. In the original story the man owns a shop where he has a machine, and gives people what they need for the best possible outcomes. Also, the Renard character is killed not by a car, but by falling off a subway platform while a train is coming in to the station.
- Writer Henry Kuttner was a literary influence on early Twilight Zone writers like Ray Bradbury and Richard Matheson. Bradbury compiled a compendium of Kuttner’s short works in 1975, and Matheson dedicated his most famous novel I Am Legend to Kuttner.
- During the scene in Mr. Renard’s hotel room a bellhop brings him a newspaper. Renard then opens it and spreads it out on the floor. The movement is quick, but the front page of the newspaper is visible, indicating that it is the same “Daily Chronicle” front page used in another Twilight Zone episode, “Time Enough at Last“. The headline reads “H-Bomb Capable of Total Destruction.” Once Renard opens the paper and looks at the racing page, several in-jokes are apparent in the names of the listed jockeys, which include “Serling”, “Clemens” (referencing director of photography George Clemens), “Houghton” (referencing producer Buck Houghton), “Butler” (referencing set decorator Rudy Butler) and “Denault” (referencing assistant director Edward Denault).
- Almost all the cars featured in the first season of The Twilight Zone were Ford automobiles since Ford gave Cayuga Productions free use of its vehicles. Interestingly, the car that ran over Renard in this episode was not a Ford so as not to risk the free product placement offered by Ford to Cayuga Productions. If you carefully, you can see the stuntman driving the car wearing protective padding underneath his jacket.
- The racing sheet listing jockeys and their horses is filled with repeating inside jokes about crewmembers for Cayuga Productions –Boyle, Serling, Hagar, Clemens, Denault, Houghton, Gallegly, Swain, Williams, Van den Ecker, Butler, and Ryan.
Click here to return to my survey of The Twilight Zone series.