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The Only Twilight Zone Episode That Got Its Start on the Radio
One of the best episodes of The Twilight Zone has its roots in a 1940s radio broadcast.
Seminal sci-fi horror anthologyseries The Twilight Zone (which airs regularly on SYFY) took inspiration from a wide variety of sources, pulling episodes from famous short stories, original ideas, and even an Oscar-winning short film once upon a time. But there's only one Twilight Zone episode that got its start on the radio.
Though he's remembered as a groundbreaking titan of American television, Twilight Zone creator Rod Serling was, of course, born before the medium had ever taken root, which meant that his first exposure to genre stories came from books, movie theaters, and the radio, back when radio plays were one of the standard-bearers for genre storytelling in the United States. So, it's no wonder that, when searching for ideas for the show's first season, Serling looked back to a radio drama he'd heard nearly two decades earlier, and ended up with a classic episode of television.
The radio origins of The Twilight Zone episode "The Hitch-Hiker"
In "The Hitch-Hiker," a woman named Nan (Inger Stevens) gets caught up in what's now a very familiar kind of horror story. While making a road trip, she keeps noticing the same mysterious hitchhiker (Leonard Strong) on the road, and grows increasingly paranoid and anxious when it appears that he's not just targeting her, but haunting her. The episode's ability to build tension, as well as its twist resolution, makes it one of the greatest Twilight Zone episodes ever, one that's been haunting viewers for nearly 65 years at this point.
Though the teleplay for the episode was written by Serling himself, "The Hitch-Hiker" was not an original idea. It was an adaptation, not of a short story, but of a radio play of the same name by Lucille Fletcher. According to Marc Scott Zicree's The Twilight Zone Companion, Serling first heard the story back in 1941, when no less a titan of radio storytelling than Orson Welles produced and starred in a production of Fletcher's play. The story stuck in Serling's head to such an extent that, when it came time to make The Twilight Zone, he reached out to Fletcher about the rights to the story. Along the way, he also made some changes, keeping the basic narrative but changing the main character from a man to a woman. The woman's name, Nan, is even inspired by Serling's daughter Anne, who was nicknamed "Nan" by the Serling family. Anne Serling, it turned out, was a bit chilled by having her name used in such an eerie tale.
As for Fletcher, she lamented Serling's changes to her work, though she did have kind words for the episode's lead actress.
"I was not asked to adapt the play to television," Fletcher said in Zicree's book, "nor was I asked about the change of gender in the main character. If I had been, I would never have approved of it, for good though Inger Stevens's performance was, I don't think a female in the part added anything to my play. In fact, I think that the dramatic effect was minimized."
Despite Fletcher's concerns, though, "The Hitch-Hiker" has gone on to become one of the best-loved and most acclaimed episodes of The Twilight Zone ever, so much so that the story's origins are often forgotten by fans.
The Twilight Zone airs regularly on SYFY. Check out the Schedule for more details.
