Episode Notes
This was the first episode aired that was written by Charles Beaumont (and also the first that was not written by Rod Serling). The title of the episode, and the Beaumont-written short story that inspired it, is taken from Hamlet's "to be or not to be" speech.
"Throughout the TV filming, Florey strove for quality. It might have been the most expensive MGM feature. He rooted out the meanings of certain lines, frequently surprising me with symbols and shadings I'd neither planned nor suspected. The set was truly impressionistic, recalling the days of Caligari and Liliom. The costumes were generally perfect. And in the starring role, Richard Conte gave a performance which displays both intensity and subtlety." —Charles Beaumont writing in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science-Fiction, December 1959.
This is one of several episodes from Season One with its opening title sequence plastered over with the opening for Season Two. This was done during the Summer of 1961 as to help the season one shows fit in with the new look the show had taken during the following season.
Screenwriter-director Wes Craven (who filmed several Twilight Zone episodes in the mid-1980's) has been asked whether or not "Perchance To Dream" inspired his creation of the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise. Craven denies that it did, although both productions play heavily upon fear of death in one's sleep.
Read more about this topic: Perchance To Dream (The Twilight Zone)
Famous quotes containing the words episode and/or notes:
“Youth is the period in which a man can be hopeless. The end of every episode is the end of the world. But the power of hoping through everything, the knowledge that the soul survives its adventures, that great inspiration comes to the middle-aged.”
—Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874–1936)
“There are only two or three human stories, and they go on repeating themselves as fiercely as if they had never happened before; like the larks in this country, that have been singing the same five notes over for thousands of years.”
—Willa Cather (1873–1947)