Editing Long Distance Call (section)

== Production ==
As ''The Twilight Zone''{{'}}s second season began, the production was informed by [[CBS]] that at about $65,000 per episode, the show was exceeding its budget. By November 1960, 16 episodes, more than half of the projected 29, were already filmed, and five of those had been broadcast. It was decided that six consecutive episodes (production code #173-3662 through #173-3667) would be videotaped at [[CBS Television City]] in the manner of a live drama and then transferred to 16-millimeter film for future syndicated TV transmissions. Eventual savings amounted to only about $30,000 for all six entries, which was judged to be insufficient to offset the loss of depth of visual perspective that only film could offer. The shows wound up looking little better than set-bound soap operas and as a result the experiment was deemed a failure and never tried again.<ref name=Zicree>{{cite web|title=''The Twilight Zone Companion'' Silman-James Press; 2 edition (December 1992)|url=http://www.silmanjamespress.com/shop/pc/Twilight-Zone-Companion-2nd-Edition-64p3448.htm|first=Marc Scott|last=Zicree|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160323181911/http://www.silmanjamespress.com/shop/pc/Twilight-Zone-Companion-2nd-Edition-64p3448.htm|archive-date=March 23, 2016|url-status=dead}} {{ISBN|978-1879505094}}</ref>  "Long Distance Call" was the last of these six episodes to be aired.

The episode originated as a [[spec script]] by [[Maxwell Sanford]] entitled "Party Line" that was submitted to the producers via Sanford's  friend, [[Richard Matheson]] (who in 1953 had written an unrelated short story titled "Long Distance Call," about a woman who receives mysterious telephone calls from a cemetery). [[Charles Beaumont]] offered to undertake revisions and  ended up taking  a joint credit on-screen with a [[Bill Idelson]] instead. Sanford, (full name Maxwell Sanford Miller) was also an entertainment attorney and he successfully contested the credit through the [[Writers Guild of America|Writers Guild]]. Thereafter the writing credit was changed on some prints in strip syndication to [[Maxwell Sanford]].  According to Martin Grams Jr in his book on the series, the episode was subject to at least two separate plagiarism claims regarding the authorship.