Trivia / The Time Machine (1960)

• Acting for Two: Not only does Alan Young play David Filby, but he plays James Filby, both young and old as well.
• Cut Song: Singer and lyricist Peggy Lee wrote a song for the film called "The Land Of The Leal" which was not used.
• Dawson Casting: A forty-year-old Alan Young playing an eighteen-year-old James Filby. Also in the Reunion Show, a 70-ish Alan Young plays the fifty-something version of Filby (but the makeup is convincing enough to have him actually look the part.)
• Prop Recycling:
  • The globe in the background when George is listening to the information rings was used in Forbidden Planet as the navigation sphere.
  • The Time Machine itself becomes a plot point in an episode of The Big Bang Theory. (Although it's the original prop in-universe, the Time Machine seen on The Big Bang Theory was, alas, a replica in Real Life.)
  • The air raid wardens in 1966 wear the uniforms from Forbidden Planet.
• Recycled Set: Naturally, since the movie was filmed on the old MGM lot. None of these sets exist today, as the lot was razed after a cash-strapped MGM sold the land to developers in the 1970s.
  • The grand staircase leading up to the great dome was a famous MGM landmark built for the 1944 version of Kismet that showed up in numerous films and TV shows over the years.
  • The set used for George's house later appeared in three episodes of The Twilight Zone (1959). It was redressed to serve as the Sturkas' house in "Third from the Sun", as Professor Samuel Kittridge's house in "Long Live Walter Jameson" and as Sam Conrad's "native habitat" in the Martian zoo in "People Are Alike All Over".
  • The cavern where the V9-Gamma survivors take shelter from a meteor shower and have their meetings in The Twilight Zone (1959) episode "On Thursday We Leave for Home" is a reuse of the Morlocks' lair.
• Stillborn Franchise: George Pal always intended to make a sequel, but he died before it could be produced.
• What Could Have Been:
  • George Pal considered James Mason, David Niven and Paul Scofield for the lead role.
  • George Pal wanted the dish to spin clockwise for travel into the future and counterclockwise for travel into the past. However, getting it to spin in more than one direction was too expensive for their limited budget. In the final film, the dish goes only counterclockwise.
  • Concept art was drawn of the mannequin wearing a Zeerust costume for a futuristic setting that was never used.
  • The script had a scene in which George makes a brief stop in 1959, seeing the mannequin in a swimsuit and a then-contemporany car.
  • The scenes in 1966 were longer in the script, including a scene in which George enters Filby's Department Store and sees many modern products like TV sets, refrigerators and vacuum cleaners. The encounter with the older James Filby would also taken place inside the store rather than outside on the street

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