Buck Houghton

Archible Ernest Buck Houghton Jr is chiefly remembered as producer of The Twilight Zone 1959 during its first three seasons more than a hundred episodes in total his influence palpable in all facets of production from script selection to renting production facilities to casting scoring and editing Houghton had graduated from UCLA with majors in English and economics He was at that time known as Arch The origin of his nickname Buck may have been the result of buck teeth as a child His career began in Hollywood as back stage help on films by Cecil B DeMille then as reader for Val Lewton and story editor to David O Selznick Via subsequent stints at Paramounts casting and budget departments the Office of War Information where he worked on short propaganda films and four years as executive assistant at RKO Houghton worked his way up to television producer by the early 1950s He served as associate producer on an excellent early action series Yancy Derringer 1958 which is sadly almost forgotten today William Self who preferred to remain in his executive position with CBS offered Houghton the job of producing The Twilight Zone and Houghton enthusiastically accepted having perused the first two scripts He became popular with many of the directors for example Douglas Heyes usually put in charge of more characterdriven assignments like The Invaders who regarded him as the best producer he ever worked with Most importantly Houghton complemented the creative genius of Rod Serling by his expertise in all minutiae of production Houghton left Twilight Zone at the end of season three having raised objections about extending the show to the as it turned out much less suitable onehour format Few of his subsequent appointments proved entirely satisfactory Houghton more often found his style cramped clashing with stars he regarded as autocratic The Richard Boone Show 1963 Hawaii FiveO 1968 or executive producers he disliked Lost in Space 1965 There were several more production credits to his name in the 80s mostly Bgrade madeforTV films before his retirement in 1994