Considered an actor’s director, Lamont Johnson had made a smooth enough transition from acting (Tarzan, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Gunsmoke) to directing.
When an offer came in, it was only standard for the director to read the script, no matter if the show was Have Gun Will Travel or Peter Gunn.
After all, Johnson wanted to work, but didn’t want his name to be on a stinker. There was, however, one exception to this rule: The Twilight Zone. So, when an offer came in from the Zone, Johnson’s agent knew to say yes no matter the script.
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| Johnson (right) with James Hilton and Elizabeth Taylor, recording a radio drama, ‘West of the Hills’, in 1950 |
Rod Serling felt that Johnson was one of only a handful of directors who understood the look and feel of The Twilight Zone that he was aiming for: the highly theatrical mixed with an illusion of heightened reality, where nightmarish things were real and were happening to you as the viewer.
Thanks in part to his having moved from actor to director, Johnson’s direction of actors was sympathetic, something that appealed to no one more than Serling himself.
Pushed by the network and sponsors into becoming the face of the show by introducing each episode, Rod Serling wasn’t comfortable delivering the lines, only writing them. What became such an iconic element of the show was actually something Serling truly hated doing each and every time.
It was obvious to Johnson from the beginning that Serling was a bundle of nerves. The chain-smoking, the sweating, these thing told Johnson that he had to approach directing Rod Serling in a much different way. Immediately, Johnson developed some tricks.
Before a take, he would tell Serling to do a dry run-through of his lines while the crew was setting up.
Assuming the cameras were off, Serling would deliver his lines in a more improvisational, natural way. When he found a delivery he liked, Johnson would react favorably, “That’s it! We’ve bought it.”
A more confident and relaxed Serling would ask when they would actually go ahead and shoot the lead in. Serling always seemed surprised and caught off-guard with Johnson’s answer, “We just did it.”
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| “I’m uncomfortable doing these intros. Under this table, I’m not wearing any pants.” |
At Serling’s behest, Johnson went on to direct many lead-in’s for episodes he wasn’t even director on.
Serling knew the benefit of being at ease with someone and took advantage of it whenever he had the opportunity, whether that was behind the camera, in the writers room or at the studio office. Serling knew that it was the combination of talents, like his own writing and Johnson’s impeccable direction, that produced a good episode—and it would always be a good episode that kept the audience coming back.
Lamont Johnson directed eight episodes of The Twilight Zone. Two of his most famous were Five Characters in Search of an Exit and Kick the Can.
The entirety of Five Characters takes place in a giant cylinder where five strangers, including a clown, a ballerina and a hobo, find themselves trapped and with no idea how they got there or who they were.
Kick the Can is remembered as the ultimate story of yearning for one’s youth. A man deposited in a retirement home believes he can return to his youth by playing children’s games such as kick the can.
Throughout his career, Lamont Johnson was nominated for eleven Emmy Awards and eight Directors Guild of America Awards. Of those, he won two Emmy Awards and four Directors Guild.
Before passing away in 2010, Johnson described his working on The Twilight Zone and with Rod Serling as, “…a turn on. It was always a delightfully refreshing kind of experience,” and “…I know that everybody’s imagination and all of their reflexes were considerably more alert – you were on a kind of good adrenaline, a happy adrenaline that created a lot of imaginative stuff.”
Johnson’s last job as director was for J.J. Abrams. Abrams, who idolized Rod Serling, did an entire episode of Felicity as homage to The Twilight Zone. Johnson directed Help The Lovelorn, an obvious nod to Five Characters in Search of an Exit.
