The Robercon That Was

Image of actor of Bill WalkerThis past weekend, I attended the first day of the third annual Robercon – the heartwarming science fiction convention at the Roberson Museum in Binghamton, NY. “Let Your Geek Flag Fly” is their motto, and people do. And that’s heartwarming.

I sat in the audience of a panel discussion of “The Masks” episode of The Twilight Zone. The moderator screened the segment but turned the show off just before the closing credits – always, for me, one of the best parts of any production! The discussion was of Rod Serling and his writing but the panel did reveal a couple of wonderful facts about the cast that I didn’t know (or had forgotten): The lead actor, Robert Keith, is actor Brian Keith’s father; the hypochondriac daughter, actress Virginia Gregg, was the voice of Norman Bates’ mother.

Image of actress Maidie Norman
Actress Maidie Norman

Had they run the closing credits I would have pointed out for discussion that Bill Walker – who had a substantial role in the small cast as the butler and whose body of work is enormous – wasn’t even credited. Nor was Maidie Norman whose role in the tight cast was much smaller but whose body of work is large and widely encompassing. They are two of the most familiar faces in vintage TV and filmdom – and no credit this time. This is probably due to two factors.

Factor 1: The closing credits of TV shows used to give much more screen time to the names than is given in current times when each name may receive less than a full second of exposure! But they credited far fewer production members.

Factor 2: Maybe a little racism? Maybe just a little?
Highly principled Rod Serling would have hated factor two. I wonder if he, as executive producer of the show, knew? But, guess what – Virginia Gregg was also uncredited in Psycho as the voice of Mrs. Bates. I think it was jazzman Fats Waller who said, “See how they do you?”.

~ FW

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