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Rod Serling's Very Specific Reason for Making The Twilight Zone's Legendary Christmas Episode
The Twilight Zone has a Christmas episode because of one item on Rod Serling's wish list.
The anthology format of The Twilight Zone (airing regularly on SYFY) meant that the show could go anywhere and do just about anything that creator Rod Serling and his writers decided upon. That meant that Serling, who already had the creative reins, could indulge in any particular idea he found interesting enough to pursue for a full-length episode. Sometimes those ideas were broad, and sometimes they were very specific.
In the case of The Twilight Zone's famous Christmas episode, Serling's one wish for the show was very specific indeed.
How The Twilight Zone gifted us the Christmas episode, "The Night of the Meek"
Broadcast two days before Christmas in 1960, "The Night of the Meek" follows a drunk, out-of-work man who's just been fired from his temporary job as a department store Santa Claus. Still in his Santa suit, he comes across a magic bag that can produce any gift that anyone wishes for. Overjoyed with his find, the man starts to give out presents, while wishing for nothing for himself, and eventually finds a holiday bliss unlike anything he'd ever dreamed.
According to producer Buck Houghton, the episode grew out of one very specific idea in Serling's arsenal, and it wasn't the magic Santa bag. It was a casting choice.
"Once in a while, Rod would have an enthusiasm," Houghton recalled in Marc Zicree's The Twilight Zone Companion. "He'd say to himself or to me or to Carol or whomever, that he particularly liked somebody. There was a Christmas show that we did just because he wanted to see Art Carney play Santa Claus."
A gifted comedian and actor, Carney was best known at the time for his role as Ralph Kramden's best friend, Ed Norton, on the hit 1950s sitcom The Honeymooners. Already two decades into his career at that point, Carney was the perfect blend of earnest and hilarious in Serling's eyes, and so he became the episode's would-be Santa Claus, Henry Corwin.
Serling's intuition was correct. Carney's instincts for playing the character as both an out-of-luck drunk and a benevolent gift-giver proved spot-on, and "The Night of the Meek" became not just a Twilight Zone favorite, but a perennial holiday favorite that fans still seek out and watch every December. And it didn't just come through onscreen. According to production designer Lillian Gallo, the whole set was alight with cheer when, just weeks before Christmas, the episode was produced as one of the six Season 2 episodes shot on videotape.
"There were more children performing on that show as extras than the other tape shows, and I remember their excitement and their joy," Gallo said, according to The Twilight Zone Companion. "Sometimes, it was difficult to contain themselves during the times that you have to be quiet during the show. There was a different atmosphere throughout that shooting schedule."
The Twilight Zone airs regularly on SYFY. Check the Schedule for more details.
