The Bard (The Twilight Zone)

Infobox Television episode
Title = The Bard
Series = The Twilight Zone


Caption = Scene from "The Bard"
Season = 4
Episode = 120
Airdate = May 23, 1963
Production =4852
Writer = Rod Serling
Director = David Butler
Guests = Jack Weston : Julius Moomer
John Williams : William Shakespeare
Burt Reynolds : Rocky Rhodes
Henry Lascoe : Gerald Hugo
Music = Fred Steiner
Episode list = List of Twilight Zone episodes
Prev = Passage on the Lady Anne
Next = In Praise of Pip

"The Bard"is an episode of the American television anthology series "The Twilight Zone".

Opening narration

ynopsis

A bumbling screenwriter, Julius Moomer, is in desperate need of brilliant scripts, so he conjures up the spirit of William Shakespeare by use of black magic. Shakespeare produces a riveting screenplay for the writer, but is horrified at all the revisions laid on by the sponsor, the sponsor's wife and the leading man. Eventually, the poet becomes so cross that he punches the leading man and then storms out for good. Moomer's next assignment, a TV special on American history, seems doomed to failure until he remembers his book on black magic and uses it to conjure up a new writing staff.

Closing narration

Trivia

*An excerpt from Hal Erikson's article “Censorship: Another Dimension Behind the Twilight Zone”, published in the October 1985 edition of "The Twilight Zone Magazine":

*In the book "The Twilight Zone Companion" Serling is quoted as saying that things were so bad with the overcautious ad executives that "one could not ford a river if Chevy was the sponsor."

*Moomer's later staff mainly comprises a who's who of celebrities rather than writers.
*A scene from this episode was featured on the series finale of the HBO original series "The Sopranos".

ee also

*The Twilight Zone (1959 TV series)
*Episode List
*

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 978-1593931360
*Grams, Martin. (2008). "The Twilight Zone: Unlocking the Door to a Television Classic". Churchville, MD: OTR Publishing. ISBN 978-0970331090

External links

*imdb title|id=0734630|title=The Bard
* [http://www.tv.com/the-twilight-zone/the-bard/episode/12705/summary.html TV.com episode page]