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Every single episode of the 1959 speculative anthology series "The Twilight Zone" was introduced by series creator and head writer Rod Serling. Throughout the show's first season, Serling merely provided a voice narration, but beginning with the second, he appeared on-screen as well, always sporting a nice suit and often smoking a cigarette.

Serling, as it turns out, never wanted to be the narrator for "The Twilight Zone." As previously reported by /Film, Orson Welles was to be hired to provide the show's narration. Welles, of course, had a prolific career on radio in the 1930s, about a decade before he made the jump to films, so his crisp, sonorous voice was well-rehearsed. CBS wanted Welles not just for his fame, but because his presence would invite comparisons to CBS's successful 1955 anthology series "Alfred Hitchcock Presents." That show featured on-screen introductions from Hitchcock himself, so it stood to reason that another...

The Twilight Zone was initially going to be narrated by Hollywood legend Orson Welles, but CBS couldn't afford his salary. The pilot episode of The Twilight Zone was narrated by Westbrook Van Voorhis, known for his voiceovers in newsreels. Rod Serling didn't want to be the narrator, and initially wanted Richard Egan, but ended up taking on the role himself when Egan couldn't be involved.

Before series creator Rod Serling was tapped for the job, The Twilight Zone was going to be narrated by a Hollywood legend. Serling created his classic anthology series The Twilight Zone as a vehicle to explore contemporary social issues through a sci-fi lens, and his opening and closing narrations ended up becoming one of the most iconic aspects of the series. The Twilight Zone ran for 156 episodes across five seasons, and Serling presented all of them (except for the original pilot). But Serling initially didn...

Most people who watch the opening segment of Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane, a faux newsreel called “News on the March,” don’t realize that it is a very precise parody of The March of Time, the innovative documentary short-subject series that played in theaters, while an equally popular radio show of the same name blanketed the airwaves. Both were narrated, in stentorian fashion, by Westbrook van Voorhis, who was imitated almost as often as the public figures whose voices were replicated on the radio series by such versatile actors as Jeanette Nolan, John McIntire, Elliot Reid and, yes, Orson Welles. Unlike…...