You are about to enter another dimension, a dimension not only of sight and sound, but of mind,

a journey into a wondrous land of imagination. Next stop, the Twilight Song. Introducing Charles Leroy Nut, an ordinary boy obsessed with sport and all of the other typical childhood pursuits until illness and a discovery of fine literature led them down a more creative path.

Add to this an unstable mother who dressed him in girls clothing and on a particular

occasion killed one of his pets as a punishment and you have the makings of the man who would become

Charles Beaumont.

He was described as a magnetic man with a devastating sense of humour and many talents.

He was an illustrator, a piano player and a comic book editor, but most of all a writer.

And Charles Beaumont was second only to Rod Sailing in his

contributions to the Twilight Zone.

The episode that we'll be discussing tonight is the first one to be written by someone other

than Rod Serling.

Certainly Sailing had adapted other people's short stories but he'd always been the one to write the teleplays until now.

Charles Beaumont adapted his own short story perchance to dream that had been previously published in Playboy magazine into the episode of the same name.

Now Beaumont had already become quite successful as a television writer in his own right,

but when he met Rod Serling, he earned his respect in quite a curious way.

Sailing had recently written a story for a show called Playhouse

90 called Velvet Alley and I recalled in 1963, Chuck Beaumont, who I didn't even know,

in a very tasteful way, not offensive in the way you did it, he said, quite honestly I must tell you to your face, it's the worst piece of writing I've ever seen.

I didn't rebel at this at all, but to this day I lay claim that Chuck is absolutely wrong.

Anyway, it put Chuck and me on a very good basis, because I feel now not only the right but the obligation to speak

to Chuck honestly like I say nobody contributed more scripts to the Twilight Zone except

for Rod sailing himself and Beaumont racked up about 22 scripts so you could say that

...