Time to give you a little mood video. Scroll down to watch a short clip from the original Rod Serling’s The Twilight Zone: The Rip Van Winkle Caper that aired in 1961. Pay particular attention to the scientific criminal mastermind named “Farwell.” The actor who played him will be coming up a little later.

Allow us to digress from the video for just a moment. In 1938, the picture of a breed called a Komondor appeared in Life Magazine that must have gobsmacked its readers as a truly exotic, if not bizarre dog, and it would have been even more so had the dogs been older and fully corded. That’s the picture you see at the top.

These weren’t just any Komondorok, however.

“Andrashazi Dorka” and “Pannonia Pandur” were the first two Komondorok imported into the United States. They were registered with the AKC in 1937, and their pictures appeared in Life Magazine the following year. As far as we can tell, the occasion warranting their inclusion in the popular magazine may have been the Morris & Essex Dog Show at Madison Square Garden, the photos taken by Alfred Eisenstaedt. Many great photos of different breeds appeared in that issue with Gertrude Lawrence on the cover. We couldn’t believe our good luck in finding the link to those insides pages.

The first AKC champion Komondor, however, was a dog named, “Hattyu” owned by Oscar Beregi, the actor you saw in the Twilight Zone clip, a Hungarian, and the son of a famous Hungarian heart throb and Shakespearian actor. Hattyu’s championship didn’t come until 1965, and two years after that, the first breed club was formed, the Komondor Club of America.

Its first president? Oscar Beregi.