The Twilight Zone isn’t exactly something that springs to mind when you think of comedy. Spooky sci-fi stories, yes. Whimsical tales with ironic twists, sure. But aside from some dated special effects, it doesn’t usually make you laugh out loud. That makes it more interesting that series creator Rod Serling chose to cast not one, but several comedians over the course of the show’s run—and distinctly different ones at that. From a silent film legend to a 1960s insult comic, here are four comic actors who thought that traveling through another dimension was an appropriate career choice at one point.
4. Carol Burnett
Five years before her groundbreaking sketch comedy series, The Carol Burnett Show, hit the airwaves, Carol Burnett appeared in the Twilight Zone episode “Cavender Is Coming.” She stars as a clumsy, hapless woman visited by a bumbling guardian angel who sets out to help her turn her life around. The whole thing has an offbeat sitcom feel, and it originally included a laugh track because it was meant to serve as a backdoor pilot (for a series evidently nobody wanted). Rod Serling himself didn’t think highly of the episode and wrote Burnett a letter apologizing for it and offering to buy her a pastrami sandwich to make up for it, which presumably worked for him in the past.
3. Art Carney
“The Night of the Meek” from the second season of The Twilight Zone features yet another comedy icon. Art Carney, best known as Ed Norton on The Honeymooners, takes a dramatic turn as a drunken department store Santa Claus in this heartfelt Christmas-themed episode. Fired for drinking on the job, Henry Corbin (Carney) stumbles upon a magical bag capable of dispensing whatever gift is requested of it. After emptying the bag at the end of the evening, Corbin takes off into the night sky in a sleigh, having seemingly assumed the role of the real Santa Claus—and hopefully having sobered up a little bit beforehand.
2. Buster Keaton
For Season 3’s “Once Upon a Time,” Rod Serling tipped his hat to the silent era by casting Buster Keaton and convincing him to pay tribute to himself. The episode begins in the past, shown in the style of a silent film, complete with sped-up imagery and title cards for the dialogue. Keaton’s character gets his hands on a helmet capable of time travel (as one does) and ends up in the future, where, of course, noises and the ability to move slowly have finally been invented. After temporarily losing the helmet in this strange new world, he finally gets himself back where he came from, but not before dusting off an old gag that Keaton originally performed with Fatty Arbuckle way back in 1920.
1. Don Rickles
Finally, we have Mr. Warmth himself, Don Rickles, in one of the weirdest Twilight Zone episodes ever conceived: Season 2’s “Mr. Dingle, the Strong.” Rickles shows incredible range in a supporting role as—get this—a belligerent loudmouth. He likes to spend his leisure time beating up on poor Mr. Dingle, a fellow bar patron played by a pre-Batman Burgess Meredith. That is, until an invisible two-headed alien gives Dingle superhuman strength, mind you. Rickles gets his comeuppance, but Dingle’s revenge is short-lived, and his powers are eventually stripped from him. And as you probably could’ve guessed, this pretty much immediately prompts Don Rickles to get right back to acting like…well, Don Rickles.
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