During its original run, The Twilight Zone was known for its many scary and creepy episodes. From 1959 to 1964, the Rod Serling-narrated science fiction horror anthology terrified viewers with episodes such as “The Dummy,” “The Hitchhiker,” and “The Howling Man.”
One of the frightening episodes of The Twilight Zone was “Living Doll,” which aired on CBS one day after Halloween on Nov. 1, 1963.
Collider listed the episode as the “scariest” of the series’ original 156 episodes, and horror director Jordan Peele, who later rebooted the series, told Entertainment Weekly the “Living Doll” episode “scared the s—” out of him as a child.
The episode, about an abusive stepfather who is taunted and later killed by a possessed doll, starred Telly Savalas, Mary LaRoche, and Tracy Stratford. June Foray provided the voice of the doll, Talky Tina, who spit out phrases such as “I’m Talky Tina, and I hate you… I’m Talky Tina, and I’m going to kill you.”
The script for “Living Doll” was credited to Charles Beaumont, the horror fiction writer responsible for nearly two dozen Twilight Zone episodes. But Beaumont didn’t actually pen the script—and the reason is very sad.
Beaumont, who was known as one of the greatest writers for The Twilight Zone, began to experience health issues in the final two years of the series, according to SyFy. While the writer was only in his mid-30s, those close to Beaumont noted that he appeared to be aging prematurely. His writing began to suffer, and by 1964, Beaumont was diagnosed with early-onset dementia.
Three scripts credited to Beaumont were actually ghostwritten by Jerry Sohl during this time: “The New Exhibit,” “Queen of the Nile,” and the iconic “Living Doll.” Beaumont died of the degenerative disease in 1967 at age 38.
Sohl later explained why he agreed to write the scripts under Beaumont’s name.
“The trouble with Chuck Beaumont was that he was ill and his wife needed the money, so for nothing I did the teleplays for him, so that she would get the money and the residuals,” he once explained, per Bradley On Film. “He was going downhill at the time, so what he said was some kind of title, let’s say, and I just took it from then on. You know, I was perfectly familiar with the format, so there was no problem in getting [them] done.”
The actors later brought the script to life, and it was terrifying to them, too. Stratford, who played little girl Christie Streator in the episode, told Noblemania in an interview that she was “really” scared of Savalas, who played her mean stepfather Erich. “He was intense to act opposite and pretty intimidating!” she shared in the 2018 interview. “And the fact that he was playing a bad guy didn’t much help. I believe he really ‘lived his role’ while he was working.“
Foray, who was the original voice of the Chatty Cathy doll from the early 1960s, told Archive of American Television she got a call to do The Twilight Zone with her Chatty Cathy voice. ‘Talky Tina, who kills Telly Savalas, “she said. “But she was evil.”
‘She would always say ‘My name is Talky Tina and I’m going to kill you,” Foray added. “And in the end, when she does kill him, the wife picks up the doll, and the doll says, ‘My name is Talky Tina and you better be nice to me.’ …Very threatening.”