How a Twilight Zone Episode Required a Policeman for an Unexpected Reason, TVLine Reports

A restricted prop on set

“The Fever,” the 17th episode of The Twilight Zone, centers on a slot machine. California had outlawed gambling machines, so the production could not simply obtain one from a prop house.

Producer Buck Houghton said the show borrowed impounded machines from the police department. He explained that an officer stayed on set to ensure nobody took a machine away and set it up elsewhere.

A Las Vegas experience

Serling wrote most of The Twilight Zone’s episodes, often drawing on personal observations and social criticism. According to the biography Serling: The Rise and Twilight of TV’s Last Angry Man, he had recently agreed to write 90 percent of the show’s scripts when he and his wife, Carol, traveled to Las Vegas to celebrate. Carol had luck at the slot machines, while Serling lost heavily but found it difficult to stop playing. He used that experience as inspiration for “The Fever.”

The story beyond television

Serling later adapted “The Fever” into a short story for the 1960 collection Stories From the Twilight Zone, alongside a couple of other episodes. The written version adds a scene set a year after the gambler’s death.

At a church event, his widow sees a slot machine and is deeply distressed. The story says three of her friends from the Women’s Alliance had to stop her screaming and get her home to bed.