Janet Tyler has undergone her eleventh treatment in an attempt to look normal. Tyler is first shown with her head completely bandaged so that her face cannot be seen. Her face is described as a "pitiful twisted lump of flesh" by the nurses and doctor, whose own faces are always in shadows or off-camera. The outcome of the procedure cannot be known until the bandages are removed. Unable to bear the bandages any longer, Tyler pleads with the doctor and eventually convinces him to remove them early. As he prepares, the doctor develops great empathy for Tyler. The nurse expresses concern for the doctor and admits she still is uneasy about Tyler's appearance. The doctor becomes displeased and questions why Tyler or anyone must be judged on their outer beauty. The nurse warns him not to continue in that vein, as it is considered treason. The doctor removes the bandages. The procedure has failed, and her face has undergone no change. The camera pulls back to reveal that, by the contemporary viewer's standards, she is beautiful; by those same standards, the doctor, nurses and other people in the hospital are ugly, with large, thick brows, sunken eyes, swollen and twisted lips, and wrinkled noses with extremely large nostrils. Distraught by the failure of the procedure, Tyler runs through the hospital as what is considered normal in this alternate society "State" is revealed. Flat-screen televisions throughout the hospital project an image of the State's leader giving a speech calling for greater conformity. Eventually, a handsome man named Walter Smith arrives to take the crying, despondent Tyler into exile to a village of her "own kind", where her "ugliness" will not trouble the State. Before the two leave, Smith comforts Tyler, saying that she will find love and belongingin the ghetto, and that "beauty is in the eye of the beholder", meaning that even though the people from the State and their society might find Tyler "ugly", others will find her beautiful.
Closing narration
Cast
Maxine Stuart as Janet Tyler
Donna Douglas as Janet Tyler
William D. Gordon as Doctor Bernardi
Jennifer Howard as Nurse
Edson Stroll as Walter Smith
George Keymas as The Leader
Joanna Heyes as Nurse #2
Production
Because of the complex makeups and camera angles, this was one of the most difficult episodes of The Twilight Zone to film. The director, Douglas Heyes, wanted the show to feature actors with sympathetic voices. To achieve this, he cast the episode with his back to the performers. Heyes had planned to have Maxine Stuart, who spoke all the lines of the main character Janet Tyler, when her head is entirely covered by bandages, dub the single line spoken by Tyler when she is revealed. However, Douglas had been listening to Stuart's voice as she recorded her part, and was able to imitate her so successfully that she was allowed to speak the line on camera. The original title for this episode was "Eye of the Beholder." Stuart Reynolds, a television producer, threatened to sue writer/producer Rod Serling for the use of the name. At the time, Reynolds was selling an educational film of the same name to public schools. Reruns following the initial broadcast featured the title screen "The Private World of Darkness". Because CBS consulted different prints over the years for syndication packages, the closing credits for this episode vary from one title to the other, depending on which television station is using which package. In The Twilight Zones original DVD release the syndicated version was marketed as an "alternate version". Other than the appearance of the title in the closing credits, however, there are no differences between the two "versions". Serling, who wrote the episode, reused the theme for a later teleplay, "The Different Ones", for his series Night Gallery. "The Different Ones" takes place in a futuristic world where a disfigured hermit teenage boy is sent on a NASA rocket to a planet where the inhabitants are revealed to look like him. During the transfer he meets a handsome alien youth, who is going to Earth because of his own "disfigurement."
2003 remake
This episode was remade for the 2002–03 revival of the series using Serling's original script, with Molly Sims as Janet Tyler, Reggie Hayes as Dr. Bernardi and Roger Cross as the Leader. The make-up was changed to make the faces look more melted, ghoulish and decayed with deep ridges. The remake follows the original script more faithfully. The projection screens were changed to plasma screens and more of the dialogue from the Leader's monologue was used.
