Alcoa Presents One Step Beyond

Alcoa Presents One Step Beyond
Created by	Merwin Gerard
Directed by	John Newland
Starring	John Newland (Host)
Theme music composer	Harry Lubin
Opening theme	"Fear"
Composer	Harry Lubin
Country of origin	United States
No. of seasons	3
No. of episodes	97
Production
Producer	Collier Young
Running time	25 min.
Production companies	World Television Programming, Inc., in association with Joseph M. Schenck Enterprises and ABC
Original release
Network	ABC
Release	January 20, 1959 – July 4, 1961

One Step Beyond is an American television series created by Merwin Gerard. The original series ran for three seasons on ABC from 1959 to 1961 and remains syndicated to this day. Because the copyright has lapsed on at least some of the episodes, several distribution companies have released episode packages using 16mm syndication prints rather than the 35mm originals, resulting in uneven audio and video.

John Kenneth Muir's book An Analytical Guide to Television's One Step Beyond, 1959–1961 presents the history of this TV series including a synopsis and analysis of the episodes.

History

Created by Merwin Gerard and produced by the prolific producer Collier Young, the program was hosted by John Newland, "your guide to the supernatural" (also credited as "Our guide into the world of the unknown"). Newland presented tales that explored paranormal events and various situations that defied "logical" explanation. Unlike other anthology programmers, the ABC network series episodes were presented in the form of straightforward thirty-minute docudramas, all said to be based on true events. Initially, the program included the corporate name of sponsor Alcoa as part of its full title.

One Step Beyond filled the time slot at 10 p.m. Tuesday vacated by the crime/police reality show, Confession.

Topics

Among its varied tales, One Step Beyond dealt with premonition of death ("The Lincoln Assassination") and disaster ("Tidal Wave", "Night of April 14th"); astral projection ("The Long Call"); the existence of ghosts ("The Last Time"); and wildly improbable coincidence ("The Glider", "Death on the Mountain", etc.).

Appearing actors

Many not-yet famous actors appeared in these productions, including Elizabeth Montgomery, Charles Bronson, Yvette Mimieux, Warren Beatty, Christopher Lee, Beverly Washburn, Robert Blake, Cloris Leachman, Mike Connors and Pernell Roberts. A total of ninety-six episodes were filmed.

Reruns

Following its first run cancellation in 1961, the series continued to be shown throughout the United States in syndication until the early 1980s. It was revived by Gerard and Young, this time for first-run syndication in 1978, as The Next Step Beyond, once again hosted by Newland (who also directed most of the episodes). It ran for one season.

Then, for its re-release to television on the Sci-Fi Channel in the 1990s, the opening and end titles were brought up to date with new theme music and graphics designed for the time, as if the show had continued into the 1990s. These episodes were also edited for time from 25 minutes to 22 minutes.

Despite the public domain status on most episodes, the series is now copyrighted by Worldvision Enterprises (the successor to the original distributor, ABC Films), the series' syndicated distributor that is known today as CBS Television Distribution.

Music

Harry Lubin composed the music for the series with a soundtrack album ("Music from 'One Step Beyond'") released by Decca Records in 1959. The most well known tracks of the series were Weird (originally composed by Lubin for the score of an April 1955 Loretta Young Show episode, "Feeling No Pain"), usually played when the supernatural aspect of the episode was being discussed and Fear that became the musical theme of the series.

The Ventures included a cover version of the show's main theme Fear on their highly acclaimed 1964 Dolton Records release The Ventures in Space. It was also covered by the Finnish surf-revival band Laika & the Cosmonauts on their compilation album Gravity. The second season of The Outer Limits used a variation of Fear for the end titles.

The avant-garde metal band Fantômas' song of the same name from the album The Director's Cut was inspired by the show's opening theme.

Episodes

Season 1: 1959

22 episodes

Episode #	Title	Director	Writer(s)	Original AirDate	Production Code
1	"The Bride Possessed"	John Newland	Merwin Gerard	January 20, 1959 (1959-01-20)	2900
A bride begins to predict features of an area she's never seen.
2	"Night of April 14th"	John Newland	Collier Young / Larry Marcus	January 27, 1959 (1959-01-27)	2903
A woman has a nightmare that her fiancé dies by drowning. The next day he announces that the couple will honeymoon aboard the Titanic.
3	"Emergency Only"	John Newland	Collier Young	February 3, 1959 (1959-02-03)	2901
Coming out of a hypnotic trance, Ellen Larrabee predicts a dangerous train trip for a skeptical witness.
4	"The Dark Room"	John Newland	Francis Cockrell	February 10, 1959 (1959-02-10)	2905
A woman photographer on assignment in the south of France is almost strangled by one of her subjects.
5	"Twelve Hours to Live"	John Newland	Merwin Gerard	October 30, 1959 (1959-10-30)	2902
After an argument with his wife, a man drives away in a storm and she suddenly receives signs that he is in danger.
6	"Epilogue"	John Newland	Don M. Mankiewicz	February 24, 1959 (1959-02-24)	2906
Carl Archer, a recovering alcoholic travels to Nevada to try to patch things up with his wife. His wife Helen and son Stevie visit a nearby silver mine when the mine collapses.
7	"The Dream"	John Newland	John Dunkel	March 3, 1959 (1959-03-03)	2907
Herbert Blakely is on night patrol in the coastal town on lookout for Nazis when he dreams about bombs destroying his home where his wife is.
8	"Premonition"	John Newland	Paul David	March 10, 1959 (1959-03-10)	2904
Lisa Garrick has everything including a premonition of her own death. Skip Young of The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet guest stars as Martin.
9	"The Dead Part of the House"	John Newland	Michael Plant	March 17, 1959 (1959-03-17)	2909
After the death of her mother, a haunted nursery and three dolls help a young girl reconnect with her dad.
10	"The Vision"	John Newland	Larry Marcus	March 24, 1959 (1959-03-24)	2908
French troops stop fighting and desert their trenches during World War I.
11	"The Devil's Laughter"	John Newland	Alfred Brenner	March 31, 1959 (1959-03-31)	2910
Authorities are having trouble with convicted killer John Marriott: they can't seem to execute him.
12	"The Return of Mitchell Campion"	John Newland	Merwin Gerard	April 7, 1959 (1959-04-07)	2914
A man is known by everyone on a small Mediterranean island he has never visited. Soon, he too remembers being there before, but he was in the hospital at the time of the supposed visit.
13	"The Navigator"	John Newland	Don M. Mankiewicz	April 14, 1959 (1959-04-14)	2913
A stowaway sends a ship off course to the China Seas and refuses to say why.
14	"The Secret"	John Newland	Michael Plant	April 21, 1959 (1959-04-21)	2915
An unhappy woman is befriended by a man who lived and died long before she was born.
15	"The Aerialist"	John Newland	Jack Mills / Larry Marcus	April 28, 1959 (1959-04-28)	2917
A distraught and depressed circus performer is protected from a fall by an unlikely savior.
16	"The Burning Girl"	John Newland	Catherine Turney	May 5, 1959 (1959-05-05)	2921
Wherever teenager Alice Denning goes, fires start.
17	"The Haunted U-Boat"	John Newland	Larry Marcus	May 12, 1959 (1959-05-12)	2921
A German U-boat attempts to evade detection from the sonar of the American and British ships. But their location is repeatedly betrayed by the noise of a rhythmic banging sound coming from the submarine.
18	"The Image of Death"	John Newland	Larry Marcus	May 19, 1959 (1959-05-19)	2919
A French nobleman kills his wife but he can't get rid of her ghost, who's haunting his new lover.
19	"The Captain's Guests"	John Newland	Charles Beaumont	May 26, 1959 (1959-05-26)	2920
A married couple from New York rent an old house along the New England coast that the locals consider a very unhappy place.
20	"Echo"	John Newland	Merwin Gerard	June 2, 1959 (1959-06-02)	2918
A man is found innocent of his wife's murder. Her brother arrives from New Zealand and precipitates the real culprit's capture.
21	"Front Runner"	John Newland	Don M. Mankiewicz	June 9, 1959 (1959-06-09)	2924
With the death of his rival during a race, a jockey is stricken with an unknown ailment as revenge reaches out from beyond the grave.
22	"The Riddle"	John Newland	Larry Marcus	June 16, 1959 (1959-06-16)	2923
An irrational hatred in an American tourist on the Bombay-Calcutta Mail Railroad train is considered in terms of metempsychosis -- the transmigration of souls.

For full listing of the 96 episodes see One Step Beyond episodes.

A complete list of episodes, with links to cast lists and synopses, is available at TV.com.

Official DVD release

CBS Home Entertainment (distributed by Paramount) released what they called The Official First Season on DVD on September 15, 2009.

One Step Beyond is the first pre-1973 in-house production of ABC to get a DVD release from CBS/Paramount. Other shows once distributed by ABC Films (which became Worldvision Enterprises) were either released by CBS/Paramount because the company owns the libraries of the actual producers of the shows (such as The Fugitive or The Mod Squad), or were released by different companies because ancillary rights are owned by other entities (such as George of the Jungle).

In any event, this new release contains all the first season episodes in new prints (most of them edited from their original network airings, as CBS says in a disclaimer) with all the original music as broadcast. While it includes the generic syndicated opening, among the extras are the original main title sequence (with sponsor tags by Alcoa), an expanded version of the series pilot, and the aforementioned revised main title sequence created for a Sci-Fi Channel run in the 1990s.

There is also a 4 disk set released by Mill Creek Entertainment titled "The Very Best of One Step Beyond". It contains 50 episodes and the video quality is low.

External links

• One Step Beyond at IMDb
• An interview with John Newland, host of One Step Beyond
• Watch old episodes of One Step Beyond
• Watch One Step Beyond Intro YouTube
• Watch One Step Beyond at www.archive.org

See also

• The Outer Limits
• The Twilight Zone
• Night Gallery
• Twin Peaks
• The X-Files
• The Hunger (TV series)
• Masters of Horror
• Masters of Science Fiction
• Science fiction on television