![]() ![]() There were so many creative types, says Linda Gramatky Smith - the daughter of “ Little Toot” creator Hardie Gramatky - that there were regular writer-vs.-artist basketball and softball games. (Which actually happened here the subsequent film led Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward to move to Westport.) Rod Serling wrote the episode when he lived in Westport.įellow residents included novelist Max Shulman, whose Rally ‘Round the Flag, Boys!satirized life in a suburban town when the Army selects it for a missile base. Westport’s role in “The Twilight Zone” was no coincidence. In it, an ad executive on his way home to suburban Westport repeatedly finds himself in a pastoral town called Willoughby - in 1888. “Next Stop: Westport, The Inspiration for 1950’s TV & Film Writers” takes its title from “ A Stop at Willoughby,” one of “Twilight Zone”‘s most memorable episodes. The Westport Historical Society presents 2 exhibits looking back on that golden/scary era. Starting this Sunday (January 29), you can revisit those days. They were drawn by the town’s reputations as an “artists’ colony” - and as each one arrived, more followed. Many were arts-types: novelists, TV writers, playwrights, admen. Every day, it seemed, another family moved in. Kids romped in the woods free from parental worries.Īnd Westport was growing rapidly. We had a real-live Main Street, with actual grocery stores, hardware stores, and merchants who knew your name. ![]() In many ways they were - especially around here. Nike Sites, fallout shelters and elementary school “duck and cover” drills. ![]() ![]() Or perhaps service was slower than usual than night.Īnd about the headline on this story: Mario’s is, of course, located directly opposite the train station. Maybe they thought no one actually read the place mats. She was told that someone had found a few boxes of old place mats, and decided to use them up. The alert reader asked what was up with all the retro stuff. Jewelry Manufacturing when he was killed last December, in a robbery.Īnd more: The warm welcome from the owners told diners, “should you find anything less than perfect, please tell Frank or Mario - one or the other is sure to be on hand.” That elicited fond memories of Yekutiel “Kuti” Zeevi, who owned what had become Y.Z. Yet the eye doctor hasn’t been there since the store changed hands a while ago. The other day, an alert Mario’s place mat reader noticed a Cohen’s Fashion Optical ad for Dr. With its brontosaurus-size steaks and overflowing pitchers of martinis, it evokes a “Mad Men” vibe.Įven the place mats offer a chance to travel back in time. Mario’s can seem like a place from another era. (Hilarity of course ensued - click here.) In the final season of “I Love Lucy” - the #12 series –the Ricardos and Mertzes moved to Westport.Westport has other connections to the Top 101: It would be difficult to find a writer on any current fantasy, horror or science-fiction series who doesn’t count himself or herself as a proud descendant of the creator, host and principal writer of “The Twilight Zone.” “The Twilight Zone” was a series with a social conscience and it was fantasy television that believed there was intelligent life on the other side of the television screen. It’s a stirring testament to the heroic influence of Rod Serling that, almost 54 years after “The Twilight Zone” debuted, so many television writers cite him and his “wondrous land whose boundaries are that of imagination” as inspirations. 1 spot….Submitted for your approval: the real winner of the Writers Guild poll. When you handicap the top three and adjust for short Hollywood attention spans, that’s practically saying “The Twilight Zone” is in a dimension all its own - far beyond the No. Mark Dawidziak of the Cleveland Plain Dealerwrites: Those of us who remember creator/writer/host Rod Serling from his Westport days are not the only ones excited to hear the place “Twilight Zone” holds in America’s heart. That’s right: a half-century-old black-and-white anthology is still called the 3rd best-written TV series ever. The Writers Guild of America recently asked its members to rate the 101 best-written shows in television history. ![]()
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