October 11, 1963: The Twilight Zone, the CBS science-fiction fantasy series created and mostly written by Rod Serling, airs what has become its most popular episode: "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet." It was written by Richard Matheson, who wrote more episodes of the show than anyone but Serling, and also wrote the original version of I Am Legend. It was directed by Richard Donner, who later directed the 1978 film Superman.
It may be the most popular episode because it features William Shatner, later to play Captain Kirk on Star Trek. But it's a riveting story anyway.
It's one of the few pop-culture depictions of mental illness in that era to make the patient appear sympathetic. Shatner plays Robert Wilson, who is flying home with his wife, Julia (Christine White) after 6 months in a psychiatric facility, following a mental breakdown -- on a plane.
His seat is at a window, overlooking the plane's left wing. It is rainy and stormy during the flight, and he sees some sort of creature (referred to in the script as a "gremlin," played by an uncredited Nick Cravat, a stuntman) tearing up an electrical panel on the wing. He knows that if he mentions it, people will think he's crazy, and the authorities on the ground will presume he's had a relapse. He alerts first his wife, then the flight attendant (Asa Maynor), then the flight engineer (Edward Kemmer). None of them sees the gremlin.
Afraid that the plane will crash due to the damaged win, Robert sees a sleeping police officer, takes his gun, straps himself into his seat so he won't be sucked out of the plane due to the difference in air pressure, and opens an emergency exit window. Despite the weather and the speed of the plane, he manages to shoot the gremlin, which falls off.
Safely on the ground, Robert is shown in a straitjacket, strapped to a gurney. He is going back into treatment, yet he is the calmest person on the tarmac. The camera then shows the damage to the plane's engine, meaning that something did damage it. But was it the gremlin? Lightning? The bullets that Robert fired? Or something else? Regardless, he now knows that he no longer has to fear losing his sanity -- even if, for now, he is the only one who knows.
Kemmer was a pilot in real life: He had been a fighter pilot in World War II, shot down and captured alive by the Nazis. He also preceded Shatner as star of a science-fiction TV show, starring on the ABC series Space Patrol from 1950 to 1955. Maynor was then married to Edd Byrnes, who played Kookie on 77 Sunset Strip.
Shatner had previously appeared on The Twilight Zone in another Matheson-panned episode, "Nick of Time," airing on November 18, 1960. He and Patricia Breslin (who, in real life, later married Cleveland Browns/Baltimore Ravens owner Art Modell) played a honeymooning couple seemingly trapped in an Ohio diner by a fortune-telling machine.
Other Trek actors on TZ: Leonard Nimoy had one line in "A Quality of Mercy," December 29, 1961, starring Dean Stockwell as a bigoted soldier in World War II who gets turned into a Japanese soldier, fighting against the Americans; James Doohan played a Mr. Johnson in "Valley of the Shadow," January 17, 1963, about a small town with advanced technology, something Scotty would have appreciated; and George Takei played a Japanese-American gardener who verbally sparred with a WWII vet played by Neville Brand in "The Encounter," May 1, 1964.
When Twilight Zone: The Movie was filmed in 1982, there were 4 episodes re-imagined for it, including "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet" and "A Quality of Mercy." In the latter, Vic Morrow played a bigoted businessman who, the last time we see him, gets put on a cattle car to a Nazi concentration camp, since his anger is at Jews, and blacks, and Asians. Unfortunately, the Asian sequence included a Vietnam War helicopter, and Morrow was among those killed when it crashed. John Lithgow starred in the redo of "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet," with a less fake-looking, and thus a much scarier-looking, "gremlin."
In 1999, Shatner made a guest appearance on the NBC sitcom 3rd Rock from the Sun, playing "The Big Giant Head," the commanding officer of the alien-appearing-as-human Solomon family, led by Lithgow as Dick. The BGH arrives at their local airport, and when asked about his flight he responds, "Horrifying, at first. I looked out the window and... I saw something on the wing of the plane!" Dick says, "The same thing happened to me!"
Rod Serling died in 1975, Nick Cravat in 1994, Ed Kemmer in 2004, Christine White and Richard Matheson in 2013, Richard Donner in 2021. As of October 11, 2022, William Shatner and Asa Maynor are still alive.
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October 11, 1963 was a Friday. Baseball season was over, having ended 5 days earlier, with the Los Angeles Dodgers completing a 4-game sweep of the New York Yankees in the World Series.
The NBA season hadn't started yet. The NHL season had, but no games were scheduled. There were no games in the NFL. There was 1 in the American Football League: The Boston Patriots beat the Oakland Raiders, 20-14 at Fenway Park in Boston.
There were 4 games in college football:
* Number 4 Navy lost to Southern Methodist University, 32-28 at the Cotton Bowl in Dallas. Navy recovered, and rose back to Number 2, before returning to the Cotton Bowl, and losing to Number 1 Texas.
* Virginia Tech beat George Washington University, 22-8 at District of Columbia Stadium (later Robert F. Kennedy Stadium) in Washington. GWU dropped its football program in 1966.
* Louisiana State University (LSU) beat the University of Miami, 3-0 at the Orange Bowl in Miami.
* And Syracuse beat UCLA, 29-7 at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum.
