The Bard (The Twilight Zone)

Content sourced from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

The Bard (The Twilight Zone)

Plot
The Bard is a Twilight Zone episode about Julius K. Moomer, a desperate screenwriter who has struggled for years to sell his work. To land a pilot, he turns to a book on black magic. After summoning William Shakespeare, Shakespeare agrees to ghostwrite Julius’s script, The Tragic Cycle. Shakespeare grows irritated by Julius’s ego and insistence on sole credit. At a rehearsal, Shakespeare is shocked by the sponsor’s revisions and storms off. For a new project about American history, Julius uses the black-magic book to conjure famous figures—Robert E. Lee, Ulysses S. Grant, Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, Pocahontas, Daniel Boone, Benjamin Franklin, and Theodore Roosevelt—to serve as consultants.

Cast and production notes
- Julius Moomer is played by Jack Weston; Shakespeare is played by John Williams; Rocky Rhodes is played by Burt Reynolds.
- The episode is directed by David Butler and written by Rod Serling, with Fred Steiner composing the music.
- The Bard aired on CBS on May 23, 1963, as the final episode of the fourth season. The season featured hour-long installments, a change CBS made to The Twilight Zone.

What makes it notable
- The Bard is a satire of the television industry, with a meta twist about authorship and credit.
- Burt Reynolds’ performance as Rocky Rhodes parodies Marlon Brando, and Reynolds acted as Brando’s stand-in for the role.
- The episode is one of six Twilight Zone installments that prominently feature a historical figure.

Reception and legacy
- When it first aired, reactions were mixed, with some critics calling it the season’s weakest episode.
- Over time, opinions have varied: some praise the performances of Weston and Williams and view the satire as ahead of its time, while others rank it lower in the series.
- It’s been discussed in lists and essays about The Twilight Zone, with some writers noting its entertaining elements and others criticizing its humor as lacking bite.