The fact that parents had complaints about “The Twilight Zone” isn’t all that surprising. The 1959 anthology series was genuinely scary, particularly, one would imagine, for those with tots running around. It wasn’t the Season 3 episode where a young boy terrorized his entire town or the Season 5 episode in which two neglected children abandoned their parents forever that inspired the show’s most notable parental complaints, however. According to producer Archible Ernest “Buck” Houghton Jr., parents were mostly upset that the series aired so late.
“The appeal to children was a complete surprise to us,” Houghton said in an interview for Marc Scott Zicree’s 1982 book “The Twilight Zone Companion.” “We never thought of that. I don’t think CBS did, either; it was on at 10 o’clock. We got a lot of nasty notes from parents saying, ‘You’re keeping the kids up!'” While that’s a valid gripe, it’s hard to fault the kids in question for wanting to “unlock [a] door with the key of imagination,” behind which lay one of the best TV shows of the 1960s.
Parents also complained when The Twilight Zone content aired too early
It wasn’t just the anthology’s original late nighttime slot that raised parents’ hackles. In 1961, a mother wrote an angry letter to “The Twilight Zone” creator Rod Serling when frightening images from the series — specifically from the episodes “Eye of the Beholder,” “The Howling Man,” and “Nick of Time” — showed up in a commercial that played during an unrelated kids’ show. “As a result of viewing this macabre presentation, [my son] has had various nightmares involving these horrible faces and is frightened in his room at night with the lights off,” Lynn Anderson’s letter read, according to Martin Grams Jr.’s 2008 book, “The Twilight Zone: Unlocking the Door to a Television Classic.”
The letter evidently affected Serling, so much so that he sent Anderson a direct response. “I deeply regret that this has been the case but unfortunately have no control whatsoever over the networks [sic] promotional planning and programming,” he wrote, according to Grams’ book. Serling went on to explain that he’d forwarded Anderson’s letter to CBS in the hope that the network would nix the commercial.
Luckily, parents and children alike can now watch “The Twilight Zone” at whatever time works best for them. The series’ original 1959 – 1964 run, including episodes that everyone should watch at least once, are currently available to stream on Paramount+, Fandango, Pluto TV, and more.
