The Eye of the Beholder

"Janet Tyler" redirects here. For the Australian nurse, see Janet Tyler (nurse).

This article is about the original Twilight Zone episode. For the revival series episode, see Eye of the Beholder (2003 The Twilight Zone episode). For other uses, see Eye of the Beholder (disambiguation).

"Eye of the Beholder"
The Twilight Zone episode
Episode no.	Season 2 Episode 6
Directed by	Douglas Heyes
Written by	Rod Serling
Featured music	Bernard Herrmann
Production code	173-3640
Original air date	November 11, 1960
Guest actors
Maxine Stuart Donna Douglas William D. Gordon Jennifer Howard Edson Stroll

"Eye of the Beholder" (also titled "The Private World Of Darkness" when initially rebroadcast in the summer of 1962) is episode 42 of the American television anthology series The Twilight Zone. It originally aired on November 11, 1960 on CBS.

Plot summary

Janet Tyler has undergone her eleventh treatment (the maximum number legally allowed) in an attempt to look normal. The details of the treatment, other than that they are a series of injections, are not given, but Tyler is first shown with her head completely bandaged so that her face cannot be seen. She is described as being "not normal" and her face a "pitiful twisted lump of flesh" by the nurses and doctor, whose own faces are always in shadows or off-camera. The outcome of the procedure cannot be known until the bandages are removed. Tyler pleads with the doctor and eventually convinces him to remove the bandages early. As he prepares, the doctor develops great empathy for Tyler. The nurse verbally expresses concern for the doctor and that she still is uneasy of Tyler's appearance. The doctor becomes displeased and questions why Tyler or anyone must be judged on their outer beauty, the nurse though warns him not to speak so as it is considered treason.

The doctor then removes the bandages, but the reaction of the doctor and nurses are of horror and disappointment. The procedure has failed, and her face has undergone "no change—no change at all!" The camera pulls back to reveal that she is actually attractive (by our standards). At this point, the doctor, nurses and other people in the hospital are revealed to be hideous-looking from our perspective, with large, thick brows, sunken eyes, swollen and twisted lips, and wrinkled, pig-like snouts. Distraught by the failure of the procedure, Tyler runs through the hospital as what is considered normal in this alternate society "state" are revealed. Flat-screen television screens throughout the hospital project an image of the State's despotic leader giving a speech calling for greater conformity.

Eventually, a handsome man (again by our standards) afflicted with the same "condition" arrives to take the crying, despondent Tyler into exile to a village of her "own kind", where her "ugliness" will not trouble the State. Before the two leave, the man comforts Tyler, saying that "beauty is in the eye of the beholder"

Quotations

Opening narration

“

Suspended in time and space for a moment, your introduction to Miss Janet Tyler, who lives in a very private world of darkness. A universe whose dimensions are the size, thickness, length of the swath of bandages that cover her face. In a moment we will go back into this room, and also in a moment we will look under those bandages. Keeping in mind of course that we are not to be surprised by what we see, for this isn't just a hospital, and this patient 307 is not just a woman. This happens to be the Twilight Zone, and Miss Janet Tyler, with you, is about to enter it.

”

Closing narration

“

Now the questions that come to mind: "Where is this place and when is it?" "What kind of world where ugliness is the norm and beauty the deviation from that norm?" You want an answer? The answer is it doesn't make any difference, because the old saying happens to be true. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, in this year or a hundred years hence. On this planet or wherever there is human life – perhaps out amongst the stars – beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Lesson to be learned in the Twilight Zone.

”

Cast

Maxine Stuart as Janet Tyler (under bandages)
Donna Douglas as Janet Tyler (unmasked)
William D. Gordon as Doctor Bernardi
Jennifer Howard as Nurse
Edson Stroll as Walter Smith
George Keymas as The Leader
Joanna Heyes as Nurse #2

Production

The episode was written by Rod Serling, who recycled the theme for a later teleplay "The Different Ones" for his later series Night Gallery. This one takes place in a futuristic world where a disfigured hermit teenage boy is sent on a NASA rocket to a planet where the inhabitants are revealed to look like him. During the transfer he meets a handsome (by our own normal standards) alien youth, who is going to Earth due to his own "disfigurement."

It was directed by Douglas Heyes. His primary concern, when he was casting the show, was to pick actors with sympathetic voices: to achieve this he cast the episode with his back to the performers.^[1]

Heyes had planned to have Maxine Stuart, who spoke all of the lines of the main character Janet Tyler when her head is entirely covered by bandages, dub the single line spoken by Tyler when she is revealed, portrayed by the actress Donna Douglas. However, Douglas had been listening to Stuart's voice as she recorded her part, and was able to imitate her so successfully that she was allowed to speak the line on camera herself.

The original title for this episode was "Eye of the Beholder." Stuart Reynolds, a television producer, threatened to sue Serling for the use of the name because at the time he was selling an educational film of the same name to public schools. Reruns following the initial broadcast featured the title screen "The Private World of Darkness." Because CBS consulted different prints over the years for syndication packages, the closing credits for this episode vary from one title to the other depending on which television station is using which package. In The Twilight Zone's original DVD release the syndicated version was marketed as an "alternate version". Other than the appearance of the title itself in the closing credits, however, there are no differences between the two "versions".^[2]

According to The Twilight Zone Companion this was one of the hardest episodes technically to put on film.^[3]

Legacy

This episode was re-made for the 2002–03 revival of the series using Serling's original script (but discarding Bernard Herrmann's original score), with Molly Sims cast as Janet and Reggie Hayes as the doctor. The make-up was changed to make the faces look more melted, ghoulish and decayed with deep ridges. The re-make follows the original script more faithfully. The projection screens were changed to plasma screens and more of the dialogue from the Leader's monologue was used.

This episode, much like other Twilight Zone episodes such as "Time Enough at Last" and "It's a Good Life", has been referenced and parodied on other television shows. A Saturday Night Live episode hosted by Pamela Anderson (credited as "Pamela Lee") features Anderson as the patient, though in a comic twist she and all the male doctors conclude that she is now "hot", to the ire of the nurse who keeps trying to explain why she is not (i.e., she “hangs a lantern” on the logic and message of the original story). The suspenseful bandage removal sequence has been parodied on three Fox TV animated sitcoms: The Simpsons ("Pygmoelian" and "Gone Maggie Gone"), Family Guy ("He's Too Sexy for His Fat", "Meet the Quagmires"), and Futurama ("The Cyber House Rules"). It was also used in the TV sitcom 3rd Rock from the Sun.

The opening of the program was sampled and used in Dillinja's 1998 track "Hard Noise".

An episode of Dexter's Laboratory called "Sore Eyes" (2003), written by Bill Wray, is loosely based upon this episode.

An episode of SpongeBob SquarePants called "The Two Faces of Squidward" (2007) is based upon this episode.

This episode is also sampled in the 2010 song "Southern Comfort" by Envy on the Coast.

Notes

↑ Zicree, p. 147
↑ Grams, Martin (September 2008). The Twilight Zone: Unlocking the Door to a Television Classic. Otr Publishing. ISBN 978-0-9703310-9-0.
↑ Zicree, Marc Scott (1992). The Twilight Zone Companion. Silman-James. pp. 141–149. ISBN 1879505096.

References

Zicree, Marc Scott. The Twilight Zone Companion. Sillman-James Press, 1982 (second edition).
DeVoe, Bill. (2008). Trivia from The Twilight Zone. Albany, GA: Bear Manor Media. ISBN 978-1-59393-136-0
Grams, Martin. (2008). The Twilight Zone: Unlocking the Door to a Television Classic. Churchville, MD: OTR Publishing. ISBN 978-0-9703310-9-0

External links

"The Eye of the Beholder" at the Internet Movie Database
TV.com episode page
Eye of the Beholder Review at "The Twilight Zone Project"

The Twilight Zone (1959) episodes

Season 1	"Where Is Everybody?" "One for the Angels" "Mr. Denton on Doomsday" "The Sixteen-Millimeter Shrine" "Walking Distance" "Escape Clause" "The Lonely" "Time Enough at Last" "Perchance to Dream" "Judgment Night" "And When the Sky Was Opened" "What You Need" "The Four of Us Are Dying" "Third from the Sun" "I Shot an Arrow into the Air" "The Hitch-Hiker" "The Fever" "The Last Flight" "The Purple Testament" "Elegy" "Mirror Image" "The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street" "A World of Difference" "Long Live Walter Jameson" "People Are Alike All Over" "Execution" "The Big Tall Wish" "A Nice Place to Visit" "Nightmare as a Child" "A Stop at Willoughby" "The Chaser" "A Passage for Trumpet" "Mr. Bevis" "The After Hours" "The Mighty Casey" "A World of His Own"

Season 2	"King Nine Will Not Return" "The Man in the Bottle" "Nervous Man in a Four Dollar Room" "A Thing About Machines" "The Howling Man" "The Eye of the Beholder" "Nick of Time" "The Lateness of the Hour" "The Trouble with Templeton" "A Most Unusual Camera" "The Night of the Meek" "Dust" "Back There" "The Whole Truth" "The Invaders" "A Penny for Your Thoughts" "Twenty Two" "The Odyssey of Flight 33" "Mr. Dingle, the Strong" "Static" "The Prime Mover" "Long Distance Call" "A Hundred Yards Over the Rim" "The Rip Van Winkle Caper" "The Silence" "Shadow Play" "The Mind and the Matter" "Will the Real Martian Please Stand Up?" "The Obsolete Man"

Season 3	"Two" "The Arrival" "The Shelter" "The Passersby" "A Game of Pool" "The Mirror" "The Grave" "It's a Good Life" "Deaths-Head Revisited" "The Midnight Sun" "Still Valley" "The Jungle" "Once Upon a Time" "Five Characters in Search of an Exit" "A Quality of Mercy" "Nothing in the Dark" "One More Pallbearer" "Dead Man's Shoes" "The Hunt" "Showdown with Rance McGrew" "Kick the Can" "A Piano in the House" "The Last Rites of Jeff Myrtlebank" "To Serve Man" "The Fugitive" "Little Girl Lost" "Person or Persons Unknown" "The Little People" "Four O'Clock" "Hocus-Pocus and Frisby" "The Trade-Ins" "The Gift" "The Dummy" "Young Man's Fancy" "I Sing the Body Electric" "Cavender Is Coming" "The Changing of the Guard"

Season 4	"In His Image" "The Thirty-Fathom Grave" "Valley of the Shadow" "He's Alive" "Mute" "Death Ship" "Jess-Belle" "Miniature" "Printer's Devil" "No Time Like the Past" "The Parallel" "I Dream of Genie" "The New Exhibit" "Of Late I Think of Cliffordville" "The Incredible World of Horace Ford" "On Thursday We Leave for Home" "Passage on the Lady Anne" "The Bard"

Season 5	"In Praise of Pip" "Steel" "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet" "A Kind of a Stopwatch" "The Last Night of a Jockey" "Living Doll" "The Old Man in the Cave" "Uncle Simon" "Probe 7, Over and Out" "The 7th Is Made Up of Phantoms" "A Short Drink from a Certain Fountain" "Ninety Years Without Slumbering" "Ring-a-Ding Girl" "You Drive" "The Long Morrow" "The Self-Improvement of Salvadore Ross" "Number 12 Looks Just Like You" "Black Leather Jackets" "Night Call" "From Agnes—With Love" "Spur of the Moment" "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" "Queen of the Nile" "What's in the Box" "The Masks" "I Am the Night—Color Me Black" "Sounds and Silences" "Caesar and Me" "The Jeopardy Room" "Stopover in a Quiet Town" "The Encounter" "Mr. Garrity and the Graves" "The Brain Center at Whipple's" "Come Wander with Me" "The Fear" "The Bewitchin' Pool"

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