Twilight Zone Costume Shirt Themed Display

An elaborate themed display and custom mannequin for a screen used Twilight Zone costume shirt.

This Twilight Zone costume shirt was originally created for a scene in the 1956 sci-fi film Forbidden Planet. However it was not used in the film and was used instead in the Twilight Zone episodes “Death Ship” and “On Thursday We Leave for Home.” One of our clients had recently purchased it and was looking for a unique themed display for this vintage futuristic style costume piece.

We decided to take inspiration for the base from “On Thursday We Leave for Home.” In this episode, the costume is worn by crew members from the rescue party that is sent to retrieve Captain William Benteen played by James Whitmore and the colonists that have been stranded on a desert planet.

Before we begin any building for these costume displays we discuss all of the aspects in depth with each of our clients. We discuss any size restrictions, what their desires are for the display are, and any budget restrictions. Then using all of this information we come up with a design that works best for that client and equally as important one that works for the prop or costume.

We used the planet’s unique rocky desert landscape as the base of the display. We carved the base and individual rocks separately and then coated them for texture and stability. We then painted all of the pieces for a realistic finish and attached the rocks in a pattern similar to the unique, recognizable landscape of the desert planet in the episode.

We also decide that we wanted the back of the display to look like the part of the ship that had been turned in to a memorial plaque by the colonist. We also added the cut out circles which seemed to be a very common element of “space crafts” in 1950’s and 1960’s television and film. Once the back of the base was assembled we gave it a base coat of silver, then we added the lettering and distressed the entire thing so it looked like a crashed same ship.

We finished the display with a customized torso mannequin, which was modified to better support and display the shirt. The display brings some of that classic Twilight Zone feel into the display of this wonderful piece of television wardrobe history!