Night Gallery

He was actually hugely famous as a TV writer even before that.

He was kind of the Aaron Sorkin of the 1950s and then later on wrote movies like Planet of the Apes and Seven Days in May and another show called Night Gallery.

And so this book is looking at his life, his work, and the ways in which his work was usually inspired by aspects of his life, including his service in World War II.

But it's also looking at his legacy and just the enormous influence the Twilight Zone has had on popular culture.

it.

The lucky thing about doing this is a lot of his stuff is out there.

You can rent Night Gallery or buy it on DVD.

He did a western in between the two shows called The Loner, and that's on DVD, and I think every episode is on YouTube.

That kind of put a heavy burden on Susan Strasberg when she decided to go into acting for herself, and by her own admission, she retreated from that burden by taking a series of unchallenging roles on television, where she wouldn't have to risk putting herself front and center and embarrassing her famous father with a bad performance.

So she was on Dr. Kildare, and The Big Valley, and Bonanza, and Mannix, and Night Gallery.

And although she did have some stage triumphs, like in her role as Anne Frank in the play based on the famous diary, she was nominated for a Tony Award for that one, or her role in the movie The Cobweb, success proved elusive and she wound up in horror movies like Scream of Fear, The Trip, The Manitou, Mazes and Monsters, and Sweet Sixteen just to pay the bills.

She also wrote a couple of tell-all books about Marilyn Monroe and eventually passed away from breast cancer in 1999 at the age of 60.

He fell in love with movies, filmed Facts Magazine, obsessed with studio backlots.

He said, if I could, I would somewhere in time myself onto a Columbo, Kolchak, or Night Gallery set back when Boris Karloff and Glenn Strange were still alive.

I was an avid GGACP listener.

I love Rick Baker, David Scull.

Mm

... uh, training grounds for directors, himself included, when he worked on TV shows like Night Gallery and The Name of the Game.

It's crazy how all of this is connected.

I was just thinking how, uh, I believe 1985 is when there's a Twilight Zone revival.

Which I appreciate.

They're going for the kind of, you know, the, I want to say Hammer House of Horror or Night Gallery or something like that.

A

little bit, yeah.

It's very Night Gallery.

Actually, we kind of called it Hitchcockian at the beginning.

Hitchcock.

And then it's kind of a, on TV, there's a lapse, you know, because in the 70s, it kind of shifts to books because Stephen King and Anne Rice are up and running in the 70s.

But on television, you had Night Gallery, you know, you had Night Stalker, you had the Cold Shake series, but you had very little.

And there's only a few things kind of keeping it going on television, thank goodness.

And Night Stalker not only sort of helped keep it going, it was just so enormously influential on what was going to happen in 20 years.

Uh, best known for his portrayal of Spock, but he did a lot of voice acting and narration.

His credits go back to '51, and his TV credits include The Twilight Zone, The Outer Limits, the original Mission Impossible series, uh, Night Gallery, which he also directed an episode of, the '90s Outer Limits, among others.

He appeared in the 1978 Invasion of the Body Snatchers remake, and as a director, he would take the helm on '84s The Search for Spock and '86's The Voyage Home.

As of this recording, uh, he still holds the record, I believe, as the main cast Trek actor to appear in the most Trek movies.

I'm the lowest of the low at Universal.

The only body who was lower than me was Steven Spielberg because he was directing a 15-minute segment of Night Gallery.

And I was a feature writer.

I was actually higher on the totem pole.