Gary Crosby, son of Bing, was the Rock-a-billy star of “Come wander with me” in the last Twilight Zone to be broadcast on May 22nd 1959. After that, it’s all re-runs. Sixty- two years of reruns to be exact and many redoes. The episode is notable as Gary ends up being the messenger to tell Nashville, rock-a-billy is dead and a new wave of “folk music” is coming to America, and to some degree he is right — it was in the 60’s after folk took hold of America that banjo played Henry Reed came into his own. Floyd was right until the Beatles several years later swept America with Rock and roll and Bob Dylan, himself a folkie went electric at Newport News in 1965.

I set the chart for when the Twilight Zone went on the air at the CBS Building in New York — Eero Saarinen‘s “Black Rock” so nicknamed because it was made of black basalt. It stands on the corner of 52nd Street and the Avenue of the Americas, but the famous building was not yet built, but neither is there any record of where CBS, William Paley’s “Tiffany” network was headquartered prior to its construction, so I’m going with Times Square — it’s close enough at half a mile away..

The pretty girl with her haunting song

Mary Rachel, the sad girl with a haunting sound, shows up on the map at Venus 06 Cancer 07 right near the seventh house where she tantalizes others with its melody. The North Node, exalted in Cancer, is her protection; all the men in the episode die, but not Mary Rachel, she lives on to tell the tale.

The ascendant is 18 Sagittarius 47 showing how the episode would go far and wide, its only aspect is to Neptune, the planet of sings and songs, and perhaps here suggesting a siren’s song taken from the Odyssey, the follow-up to the great Iliad. ¹ Avoid the rest and listen to the Lattimore translation which you can find read here. This one is rather nice as you get to read along as well. where creatures half bird – half woman lure sailors to destruction by the sweetness of their song.

Homer who sang the tune himself, said there were two Sirens on an island between the rocks of Scylla and Charybdis , where on one side a horrible six-headed monster (the Raford Brothers) live on one side of a narrow strait while on the other lies Charybdis a whirlpool, a deadly cross current of tides, somewhat like the anxiety Floyd goes through as he runs around like a chook without a head, that drags sailors and their ships to their death.

The rising symbol, ” the intrusion of man has distressed the pelicans.” Jones writes that this is symbolic on how one always seems to find itself in strange and faraway places while looking for nourishment. Amazing how it fits Floyd’s walk into the Twilight Zone. The preponderance in Taurus in the fifth house indicates Crosby highlighting the new “folk” music sound, he tells us often he’s here to find a “new sound” a “new beat,” and in his luscious tenor sings Mary Rachel’s song himself. He sounds just like the old man, #232 on the Jones hit parade himself.

The end of the series appears at Saturn in Pisces in the second house, showing its longevity and earning potential, which must have stunned everyone then, appears via the opposition at Uranus in Virgo in the eighth.

Here’s the episode. BTW, Liza Minnelli, daughter of Judy Garland, was supposed to do the song but she was overcome with stage fright they found another. Thus Bonnie Beecher, with a lovely voice and an ehtereal manner, got the nod. It’s a haunting tune, much to Floyd Burney’s regret who comes to town because he got a tip that a “new sound” was here.

The episode ended at 10 pm. That chart is here. The part of fortune, perhaps a proxy for the series, is 002 Cancer 35, the symbol which is à propos for the ending of such a beloved series ” through the cold darkening depths of a Northern canyon,” CBS is in the northern part of the island, and the trail blazing happens in the human heart which opens up possibilities of existence. And so too here, in the northern end of the never ending valley, this episode has made me rethink abandoning the project. Catch it when you can.

Footnotes:

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  Avoid the rest and listen to the Lattimore translation which you can find read here. This one is rather nice as you get to read along as well.