TV Guns: Twilight Zone

[Doug.38PR]

Hello S&W fans.
Over the past few years, I have become a big fan of the Twilight Zone being the Sci-Fi buff that I am. Being also a gun enthusiast, I have noticed that while most other shows of the period like The Untouchables, Dragnet and Naked City seem to favor Colt .38 revolvers, Twilight Zone seemed to favor Smith & Wesson.
The show is littered with S&W .38 DA revolvers of different models and barrel lenghts. For instance a 5 inch barreled .38 Special M&P with an old style late 48s and early 50s hammer and diamond magna grips is what William Shatner used to shoot the Gremlin off the wing in the famous episode "Terror at 20,000 ft" Gangsters and street thugs are frequently seen using 3 inch barreled 5 shot Chief Specials and 2 inch Model 10s. Police and state troopers are always seen using 4 or 5 inch M&Ps.
I think in the entire series...I think I've only seen one Colt DA which was seen in the episode "The Midnight Sun" in which a lonely woman tries to protect herself and her apartment from a man scavenging for water in an abandoned NYC.

 

[MacGuffin]

Interesting catch.

I'll start looking myself. I wish I would have seen this post before the New Year's Twilight Zone Marathon on the Sy-fi Channel. One thing though regarding Dragnet... I'm a big fan... while the earlier black and white episodes featured Jack Webb using a Colt Detective Special, the later episodes in the 1960s showed him carrying a S&W model 10 snub. Apparently, that is what the LAPD detectives were preferring at the time, and he wanted to reflect an accurate depiction.

In any event, it sounds like many of us enjoy picking out the various firearms used in classic TV and films. Hey... nothing wrong with that!

 

[Doug.38PR]

Yeah the NYD marathon would have been perfect. I always just kind leave the tv there for noise in the house if nothing else on NY eve and day. I happen to have all five seasons on DVD uncut (you'd be surprised how much is cut from episodes on Sci-Fi)
I recall one of the 4th season full hour episodes where a reporter, is trapped in a strange town off the beaten path that is determined to keep him there so he doesn't reveal their secretly advanced technology. He uses a computer that creates anything at a command kinda like the Replicator in Star Trek TNG. Thumbs through the command file looking for a weapon. Comes upon a file tab labeled ".38 Police Special" Sticks the paper into the machine and a Smith & Wesson M&P 5 inch barrel with Magna grips appears in the tray. Good up close shot too. He even checks it opening the cylinder.

Look also for a street thug burgler trying to kill the jovial gentlemanly Sebastian Cabot with a 5 shot 3 inch chief's sepcial.

Look for that same kind of gun being used by the Professor from Gilligan's Island to try to stop on outlaw from the old west that he has pulled from a hangman's noose and 50 years into the future using a time machine he invented.

Take a walk in "dead man's shoes" and you'll find S&W all over the place

btw, regarding dragnet, Joe's partner kinda did the same thing. In the 1950s version Frank Smith used a 6 inch Colt Official Police, in the 1960s version Bill Gannon used a 4 inch S&W Model 19 (or could have been M-15, hard to tell in the 1st season episode The Big Explosion)

 

[bennettfam]

It was Hutch's Python that drove me to pick one up eventually, though I got a 4" instead of a 6".

Eddie Murphy used a Browning Hi-Power in Beverly Hills Cop. Interesting since I've never heard of US cops ever using a single-action 9mm.

You gotta love Magnum's 1911 GI .45 on his show.

I recognized the Colt Detective Special from its grip on Barney Miller's hip.

Oops, kinda got off topic from S&W revolvers. Sorry.

 

[Memphis]

Speaking of Dragnet, did you know that show showcased the Smith and Wesson .38 Chiefs Special? And did you further know that a Model 39 was presented to Jack Webb at the S&W factory with serial number "714" in reference to Sgt. Joe Friday's badge number. I found this out after reading Roy Jinks excellent book "Images of America, Smith & Wesson" (page 46.). It shows a pic of Friday and Gannon at the factory receiving the gun. I love S&W's on TV.
Check it out.

Roger

 

[GyMac]

Hello S&W fans.
Over the past few years, I have become a big fan of the Twilight Zone being the Sci-Fi buff that I am. Being also a gun enthusiast, I have noticed that while most other shows of the period like The Untouchables, Dragnet and Naked City seem to favor Colt .38 revolvers, Twilight Zone seemed to favor Smith & Wesson.
The show is littered with S&W .38 DA revolvers of different models and barrel lenghts. For instance a 5 inch barreled .38 Special M&P with an old style late 48s and early 50s hammer and diamond magna grips is what William Shatner used to shoot the Gremlin off the wing in the famous episode "Terror at 20,000 ft" Gangsters and street thugs are frequently seen using 3 inch barreled 5 shot Chief Specials and 2 inch Model 10s. Police and state troopers are always seen using 4 or 5 inch M&Ps.
I think in the entire series...I think I've only seen one Colt DA which was seen in the episode "The Midnight Sun" in which a lonely woman tries to protect herself and her apartment from a man scavenging for water in an abandoned NYC.

Exactly so! on that S&W in "Terror at 20,000 Feet." I pointed it out to my wife and kids who, of course, could not have cared less. I do seem to remember an episode with a state trooper armed with a Colt OP. He goes out to assist a woman who has an alien spacecraft land in her yard.
Chris

 

[Jst1mr]

A S&W also gets much exposure in the 2009 movie "The Road"...the Model 10 plays a prominent role in the story.

 

[s&wchad]

I saw an episode of the Outer Limits last weekend where Robert Culp was a robot with a glass computer hand, charged with saving all of humanity. Aliens from the future were trying to kill him and get the hand. The aliens traveled thru a mirror from a thousand years in the future… armed with S&W .38/44 H.D.'s!

 

[walnutred]

The aliens traveled thru a mirror from a thousand years in the future… armed with S&W .38/44 H.D.'s!

Well of course! One would expect aliens with that kind of technology to have excellent taste in firearms.

 

[Doug.38PR]

Exactly so! on that S&W in "Terror at 20,000 Feet." I pointed it out to my wife and kids who, of course, could not have cared less. I do seem to remember an episode with a state trooper armed with a Colt OP. He goes out to assist a woman who has an alien spacecraft land in her yard.
Chris

That was the episoe "The Fear" and it was not an Official Police, but in fact another S&W 5 inch M&P .38 spl. It was a woman's retreat cabin in the mountains of upstate New York. She was commenting on strange happenings and sightings in the woods at night and the trooper decided to come up one night and investigate.

 

[Doug.38PR]

Speaking of Dragnet, did you know that show showcased the Smith and Wesson .38 Chiefs Special? And did you further know that a Model 39 was presented to Jack Webb at the S&W factory with serial number "714" in reference to Sgt. Joe Friday's badge number. I found this out after reading Roy Jinks excellent book "Images of America, Smith & Wesson" (page 46.). It shows a pic of Friday and Gannon at the factory receiving the gun. I love S&W's on TV.
Check it out.

Roger

Hmmm...I thought Joe had a M-10 2 inch with a round grip. Everytime it shows the front if his gun I seem to remember 6 chambers instead of 5. Furthermore he unloads it and shows it to a woman who is trying to describe a gun a kidnapper is using in the episode "The Kidnapping". He then reloads all six rounds and "whacks" the gun shut hollywood style (yikes)

 

[Doug.38PR]

I saw an episode of the Outer Limits last weekend where Robert Culp was a robot with a glass computer hand, charged with saving all of humanity. Aliens from the future were trying to kill him and get the hand. The aliens traveled thru a mirror from a thousand years in the future… armed with S&W .38/44 H.D.'s!

cool! I I have all three seasons of Outer Limits on DVD now. I'll have to find that episode. Outer Limits, to me, isn't as good as Twilight Zone...can't quite put my finger on it. I enjoy them but they are either missing something or try to do to much.

Something in my mind is telling me that episode resulted in some kind of legal trouble when James Cameron released The Terminator in 1984. I know the Terminator seemd to take a lot of it's story from two episodes of Outer Limits

 

[Old cop]

My wife got me the Twilight Zone set on DVD some time ago, but I do watch it every New years Day (she thinks I'm nuts). I'll now pay more attention to the "roscos" being carried in the different episodes.

 

[Gulf Coast Snapperhead]

TV guns

I find myself missing the action because I am trying to ID what gun is being used. DVR helps.

 

[Muley Gil]

"Interesting since I've never heard of US cops ever using a single-action 9mm."

One of my LTs at the PD in Alabama carried a 9mm High Power.

 

[Allen-frame]

Just an interesting tid-bit... my uncle Vic Perrin was the 'control voice'
on the original Outer Limits series.
He is also in some very early episodes of Dragnet, and was the protagonist in the Dragnet movie.

Vic Perrin - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Vic Perrin - Biography

His brother Lloyd was my father.

Regards
Allen Frame

 

[Doug.38PR]

Interesting, he was also, I noticed, in Twilight Zone episode "People are Alike All Over"
That's interesting. And one of those links says your dad was a news reporter in Los Angeles.
Never connected the actor with the Outer Limits voice

 

[Doug.38PR]

My wife got me the Twilight Zone set on DVD some time ago, but I do watch it every New years Day (she thinks I'm nuts). I'll now pay more attention to the "roscos" being carried in the different episodes.

The two State Troopers in "Will the Real Martian Please Stand Up" were carrying S&W M-10 4 inch barrels

 

[Chubbs103]

"Interesting since I've never heard of US cops ever using a single-action 9mm."

One of my LTs at the PD in Alabama carried a 9mm High Power.

I believe the FBI's HRT originally carried High Powers.

 

[Uncle Billy]

The Detriot Police never authorized single action pistols for duty use; including the Browning or Colt at the time the movie was released