Fritz Weaver starred in "Third from the Sun , " as W i l l iam Sturka, and in "The Obsolete M an , " as the C hancellor.
What was your first experience with The Twilight Zone?
"Third from the Sun" program, and it was my first film, in fact. And I had to learn the hard way; I had assumed it was all the same. I mean, acting is acting, right? It didn't turn out that way. It turned out that what you did on the master shot, you had to repeat on every subse
quent shot, the close-ups. Well, I chose ration
ally, to smoke a cigarette, and so when we fin
ished I had been acting up a storm, blowing out smoke and talking animatedly with my hands.
And they said, "That was great. Okay, let's move on to the medium shot," and I said,
"What medium shot?" And so the script girl came over and kept saying, "No, you lit the cigarette on this word, and then you blew out the smoke on that word," and it drove me absolutely crazy. I couldn't repeat what I had done because I wasn't aware of what I had done. So, we did several takes like that, and finally they decided 'Let's scrub, let's start all over again, let's scrub the cigarette entirely.' So Eddie Andrews, who was in that, sidles over to me and says in that sly way of his, "Why do you think Gary Cooper keeps his hands in his pockets? " So I had learned my lesson, I learned the lesson that if you're going to smoke, you'd better be damned sure when and where you're going to do it. And so that was my baptism by fire. But I loved the episode, with that great, surprise ending.
Fritz Weaver stars as the Chancellor of the State in Serling's powerful episode, "The Obsolete Man."
Did Twilight Zone have a uniqueness that you hadn't dealt with before?
That was the main thing. I mean, first of all, I met Rod Serling, and you know he was in on the set, not often, but he would come in, and what surprised me most about him was that he was like a big kid. He was enjoying himself so much. He was jumping and we'd rehearse something and if he liked something, he'd say,
"Oh! That's great! Keep it in, keep it in! " And it was that enthusiasm that made you realize it was going to be a wonderful series. I saw him several times, talked to him on the set, and my impression was that he was having fun, because he came to Hollywood with some heavy luggage as an important playwright and I think he found something that he really thought was fun. So he would say, "Ah, not so much social commentary," but the odd thing was that he got all that into the series anyway.
"Third from the Sun" was all about the possi
ble nuclear thing, and "The Obsolete Man"
Joseph Elic, playing the Subaltern who then becomes the Chancellor's replacement, looks on as the crowd of followers pulls the Chancellor down the long table in preparation to tear him apart.
was the human condition. It's odd, because at that time I was thinking back on it, and we talked about it a great deal, the phrase
"planned obsolescence" had begun to come into the language. It had to do with the fact that you made your product so it would wear out, and then you would replace it and that would keep the economy going. Planned obso
lescence was considered a very good thing. But Rod picked up on that and said, "Well, what if that was applied to people? " And he really ran with that idea and he loved it.
While filming "The Obsolete Man," did you stop and think about how intense that story was?
Oh boy, did I ever! It was like fascism in the highest degree, and we knew it. Of course, we had a wonderful director, Elliot Silverstein, and he was a madman but with crazy good
A closer shot of Weaver being dragged down the long table.
ideas, and it was he who talked the MGM brass into turning the whole studio into that vast room. You know, broke down all the sections and segments; it was like an airplane hangar when you went in there in the morning. And he had these big ideas - it was sort of like El Greco paintings, with towers that went straight up into the darkness there, and there was the leader. And a long table down which he'd drag the obsolete ones. It was terrific.
Rod was just having the time of his life. That was my impression of him. He felt like, "Well, I don't have to do all these important plays now, I can just relax and have fun with this."
And he did, he ran with it. It's funny, but I said we didn't know it was the Golden Age, but we knew it was something unique. We knew this was unlike most series that you went out there for. And later, I realized to my regret that most of the stuff is just cookie-cut stuff, you know, no real imagination at work.
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The cameraman follows the movements of the crowd during a pivotal scene at the end of the episode.
Did the cast have rehearsal time?
You would have a rehearsal to show the cam
era what was going on with the geography of the place, and then you'd go back while they lit. You had about a week to get this done, or it may have been a couple of days longer. That was good in a way, because it left a lot of room for spontaneity and that's what Rod liked very much.
Did you have any memorable moments working with Burgess Meredith?
I was in awe of Burgess because he was a big stage star, and film as well. We were all stay
ing, as every New York actor did in those days, at the Montecito Hotel, out in Holly
wood, and Elliot was there too. And so we would get together afterward and we'd drive home together, and Burgess would tell stories, and it was just a terrific thing. And Elliot would drive us to the studio, so we got pretty close on that one. I loved working with
While taking a break, Meredith goes over his own handwritten notes for his part in "The Obsolete Man."
Burgess, he was very good. He got impatient with me one time on "The Obsolete Man,"
because I had lost my voice screaming the day before, and my voice had dropped a full octave. He said, "Well, you can't do that with that -" I said, "I'm trying my damnedest."
He said, "You can't do it with the VOice,
you've got to do it with -" And I said, "I'm using what voice I have," and he finally under
stood what it was, it was a physical problem.
But he was great, and I can remember Elliot jumping up and down when Burgess and I did the first long scene together and he came run
ning up and he said, "Would you like some coffee? I'll fill it with gold! It was wonderful! "
Burgess specialized in those strange and rather eccentric roles and loved "The Obsolete Man." I loved working with him - I thought he was great. We would sit with him in the MGM commissary, and the reigning stars of that era would come over to the table, and you got to meet them all, and it was great fun.
Boy, that must have been something.
Yeah, the MGM commissary, everybody ate in there. It got to the point when finally only the crew were in there, but Marlon Brando was sit
ting at the next table and he'd known Burgess, and I guess Burgess didn't know he was there, and Marlon very mischievously took his knife and inserted it between the third and fourth rib of Burgess Meredith, and he jumped up in the air and said, "What the hell!?" Yeah, Burgess had worked on Teahouse of the August Moon onstage, and Marlon did the movie of it. So they got to know each other.
Were you able to work in any of your own ideas for your characters, or were the scripts followed exactly?
Well, there were moments in "The Obsolete Man" where you would think of something, some small piece of business even, and turn away and then suddenly turn back, and if Rod would see that, he'd say, "Oh, that's great! Keep that in. " And Elliot was also like that, he want
ed to really improvise the whole thing.
Although Rod was never a stickler for "I want this, all of my words in the right order," you said them in the right order anyway because
Larry Gates stars in "The Shelter."
they were good. There was a great sense of a fresh flow of feelings as you did a scene more and more times, and so you were improvising in a way. Physically, you'd improvise.
Any anecdotes about "Third from the Sun"?
What I remember was the fear we all were under in those days, about the nuclear threat.
It was in the air! We all thought it was going to happen. I did a movie called Fail-Safe some
where in that period. I think they first discov
ered the Soviets had put missiles into Cuba, and there were daily broadcasts about what should you do when you get the warning sig
nal, and what children should do, and it was very much in the air.
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There's around a half-dozen Twilight Zone episodes that are concerned with the nuclear age and the fear_
Well, you see, Rod came from that school of playwrights in New York who were very much into social commentary, and theirs were plays of social significance, and they were all very talented_ But this is what I mean about Rod coming to this thing - I think he saw a way to do it in a more entertaining way. He's quite a man.
What were your impressions of him as a person?
Well, I got the impression that he was nervous, but full of mischief. I can remember hearing him laugh. He's full of mischief, but he was very shy, too, when you first met him. Then you got more aware of him and, as he was around more, he warmed up. And he was delighted with the whole production side of it, delighted to be on the set and watched the guys working, he loved all that. And he watched the rehearsals and he was pleased.
Was he there for both of your episodes?
Yes, he showed up for both of them, one or two times at least. I do remember his enthusi
asm; I remember that as a cardinal thing I remember about him. He really loved what was going on. Rod would come in, he'd almost start rubbing his hands: "Okay, let's do this one now. Let's get to work now. " So it was fresh, and he'd probably just finished writing it.
So what do you think makes a good Twilight Zone?
Well, mystery is one thing, mysteriousness and the circumstances. Something odd about this man sitting there at the counter drinking his coffee. And it's very stimulating to the imagina
tion, because you wonder what's about to hap
pen. Most of the time you didn't know what the outcome would be - as an audience, I
mean. And I think Rod enjoyed fooling people.
He was like a magician, or like an entertainer, anyway. I remember his laugh. I can't remem
ber the jokes but I remember this kind of shrill laugh that would come out of him.
But one of the reasons why it's called the Golden Age was because television didn't know where it was going. It was a new medi
um and it wasn't geared to the maximum audience. I mean, the very fact that they would go after Rod Serling, nowadays he'd be just a figure off-camera somewhere, in his lit
tle abattoir in the studio turning out plays. that era, they didn't know yet where the medi
um was going, so they brought in people from New York, and good people, who were just as intrigued by the possibilities as they were. Oh, we had such great times in those days.