Episode no. Season 4
Episode 18 Written by Rod Serling Production code 4852 | Directed by David Butler Featured music Fred Steiner Original air date May 23, 1963 | |
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"The Bard" is an episode of the American television anthology series The Twilight Zone. It was the final episode of The Twilight Zone to be one hour long.
Contents
Plot
A bumbling screenwriter, Julius K. Moomer, is in desperate need of brilliant scripts. His agent suggests that he does some research, and he finds a book with a black magic spell that he uses to bring William Shakespeare to life. Shakespeare produces a riveting screenplay for the writer, but is so horrified at the revisions by the sponsor that he assaults the leading man and storms out for good. Moomer's next assignment, a TV special on American history, seems doomed to failure until he remembers his book on black magic—and uses it to conjure up a new writing staff, including Robert E. Lee, Ulysses S. Grant, Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, Pocahontas, Daniel Boone, Benjamin Franklin, and Theodore Roosevelt.
Production history
The episode was likely written by Rod Serling as a reaction to the advertising executives he dealt with regularly while producing for television. In the book The Twilight Zone Companion Serling is quoted as saying that things were so bad with the overcautious executives that "one could not ford a river if Chevy was the sponsor." The actor portrayed by Burt Reynolds satirizes Marlon Brando's way of method acting.
The episode was also featured in the final episode of The Sopranos, in 2007, "Made in America". Tony Soprano, the protagonist of the series, is seen watching this episode while in hiding from his enemies in a safe house.