Rod Serling Paid To Reshoot A Twilight Zone Episode When Its Original Star Died

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"The Twilight Zone" is famous for its twists, but there was a tragic, real-life twist behind-the-scenes that forced creator Rod Serling to pay $27,000 of his own money to reshoot an episode after its star died unexpectedly.

Paul Douglas, who had starred in baseball movies like 1949's "It Happens Every Spring" and the original 1951 "Angels in the Outfield," had a lead role in the baseball-centric "Twilight Zone" episode "The Mighty Casey." He played the manager of a struggling team whose fortunes turn around when an inventor creates a robot pitcher for them. However, when the robot becomes more human, empathy prevents it from striking anybody out.

According to the book "The Twilight Zone Companion," Serling was a fan of Douglas's work, but was worried because the actor had a reputation for his drinking. Even though his agent assured him that Douglas was now sober, the star looked awful when he showed up on the set and struggled to get through filming. At first, Serling assumed the actor was off the wagon, and though they were able to finish shooting the episode, it was reportedly "a disaster."

On September 11, 1959 — the day after they finished filming — Douglas died at age 52. Unknown to them all, he had an incipient coronary condition, which explained why he was in such terrible shape when they were making the episode. "We were watching him literally die in front of us," Serling said.

When Rod Serling watched a rough cut of "The Mighty Casey," which was supposed to be funny unlike the scariest episodes of "The Twilight Zone," he thought it was dreadful. So much so, he assumed that the network would want the episode reshot. "The Twilight Zone Companion" quotes Serling as having told them, "Well, gentlemen, this is the one substantial piece of celluloid you're going to have to eat, because there's nothing funny about this show."

To his surprise, the network executives agreed that it wasn't funny, but didn't want to pay for reshoots. Instead, Serling paid $27,000 of his own money (more than $300,000 today, accounting for inflation) to redo the episode with a new actor. Jack Warden, a future Academy Award-winner who was one of the jurors in "12 Angry Men" a few years earlier, stepped in to play the manager. Serling tried to use as much of the original footage — anything where Douglas wasn't visible — as possible.

"The Mighty Casey," which premiered as Episode 35 of "The Twilight Zone" on June 17, 1960, is not regarded as an especially good episode, even post-reshoots. It contains one of the worst "Twilight Zone" twist endings, in fact. Still, odds are it would've been so much worse had Serling instead subjected audiences to the final performance of an actively dying man.