The peculiar characteristics of Twilight Zone tales often presented challenges specific to each episode during production, encompassing visual effects, tough settings, and unusual items. However, an early episode of Twilight Zone was plagued by a different type of problem – casting – not for one main character, but for four.
Before SYFY’s yearly July 4th marathon of The Twilight Zone (don’t forget to check the schedule!), let’s delve into one of the show’s first episodes and explore how its fundamental concept posed several challenges for the production team in terms of casting.
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How The Twilight Zone episode “The Four of Us Are Dying” cast its stars
In “The Four of Us Are Dying,” Arch Hammer (played by Harry Townes) is a unique individual with an extraordinary talent: the ability to transform his face to exactly resemble another person. Throughout the story, created and adapted by Rod Serling from an original, unpublished work by George Clayton Johnson, Arch Hammer exploits this skill by impersonating a musician to steal his girlfriend, a mobster to extort money, and a boxer to elude pursuing gangsters.
In classic “Twilight Zone” style, the plot ultimately leads to Hammer’s demise at the end of the episode. The boxer’s father, played by Peter Brocco, seeks revenge on Hammer for ruining their family and betraying a girl who loved him. This twist is well-executed, but it presented a challenge for the production team, as they had to find a way to convincingly portray one character as four different men throughout the episode.
Instead of opting for a single actor and altering their appearance through makeup, the team found that the amount of time needed for each makeup transformation would be impractical within television production constraints. As a result, they decided to recruit four actors who resembled one another closely, but even this choice presented its own set of difficulties.
Producer Buck Houghton recounted in Marc Scott Zicree’s “The Twilight Zone Companion” that it was challenging enough to manage two identical-looking individuals, but when four appeared, it became a nightmare. In the end, we ended up with three blondes at once and couldn’t find a fourth who resembled them sufficiently, leaving three men without work.
As a gamer, I’d rephrase it like this: Instead of going for four blonde actors, the production team decided to focus on actors with dark hair and brown eyes, opting for an unusual audition process. We, the actors, were organized into quartets, all donning similar dark suits, and seated together against a room’s wall. Rather than reciting lines, we were given the freedom to ask questions about the story we were trying out for, allowing the team to observe our speaking styles and mannerisms closely. This approach helped them make their final decisions, ultimately casting Harry Townes as Hammer, Ross Martin as the musician, Phillip Pine as the mobster, and Don Gordon as the boxer.
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2025-06-25 20:17