It's true that the TWA aircraft of that vintage had the overhead switches reversed as they treated the overhead panel as a vertical panel much as one would view the FE panel. There was former VP Flight Ops who, I forget his name now, that was responsible for this. Maybe Apster recalls that individual as he was around for quite a while.
This design crept over to the Lufthansa fleets of that era as well since TWA was providing some technical assistance back in those early days. Clearly recall flying a former Lufthansa 727-100 with that design. Don't see any killer issues as this was limited to things like the landing light and seat belt signs as I recall.