(In this volume, you will read about a baseball pitcher wi...)
In this volume, you will read about a baseball pitcher with magical powers; a self-centered hypochondriac; a nostalgic journey back to childhood; a self-righteous domineering husband getting his comeuppance; the panic of a man with no memory finding himself alone in an empty town; and the destructive combination of fear and mob mentality.
(In this volume, you will read about a convict sentenced t...)
In this volume, you will read about a convict sentenced to a lifetime of solitary confinement seeking companionship to avert the nightmare of perpetual loneliness; a failure of a man given elusive magical powers; another story of magic, a little boy, and his hero, a boxer at the end of his rope; an over-worked executive seeking solace in a place where he can "live his life full measure;" an airplane journey back in time; and a story of love, hate, magic and forgiveness.
(The Season To Be wary is unique in that it is one of the ...)
The Season To Be wary is unique in that it is one of the first examples of Rod Serling publishing stories he created first in narrative form. This collection of three novellas provides poignant insights into the human condition with all its’ moral and ethical dilemmas.
(Based on the original screenplay for Planet of the Apes b...)
Based on the original screenplay for Planet of the Apes by The Twilight Zone’s Rod Serling. On the road to making the landmark science-fiction classic, 20th Century Fox commissioned Rod Serling to adapt the source material.
Rodman Edward Serling was an American screenwriter, producer and narrator. He was mostly known for his science-fiction anthology TV series The Twilight Zone.
Background
Rodman Edward Serling was born on December 25, 1924, in Syracuse, New York, United States. He spent most of his childhood years in the small city of Binghamton in upstate New York, where he lived with his parents Samuel Lawrence Serling and Esther (Cooper) Serling, and his brother, Robert.
Education
Serling graduated from Binghamton Central High School in 1943. In 1946 he began taking classes at Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio. At first, he majored in physical education, but he soon changed his emphasis to literature and began writing stories. He also wrote, directed and acted in many productions for the campus radio station. In 1950 Serling received his Bachelor of Arts degree. While this provided Serling with a valuable learning experience, he later claimed that his work from this period was “pretty bad stuff”.
In 1971 Serling got an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree from Emerson College. Next year he earned the same degree from Alfred University. He also got an honorary Doctor of Letters degree from Ithaca College in 1972.
Serling joined the United States Army 11th Airborne Division paratroopers. He fought in the Pacific during World War II. In some ways, Serling felt that his wartime experience contributed to his becoming a writer.
Serling took a job at WLW radio in Cincinnati, where he performed a variety of menial writing tasks—from scripts for a country musical-comedy duo to advertisements for high-alcohol-content patent remedies. In the meantime, Serling worked on his own stories every evening and collected forty rejection slips. Since he had a wife and family, he hesitated to take the financial risk of quitting his job to try to make a living as a freelance writer. Eventually, however, Serling realized that writing was not something he could do part-time.
Serling moved his family to Connecticut and began writing full-time. He had some success in selling scripts to the live “anthology” shows that dominated television in the 1950s, such as Kraft Television Theater and Hallmark Hall of Fame. On the whole, his writing seemed more thoughtful and relevant than typical television dramas at the time.
Serling’s first major success came in early 1955, when his play Patterns was broadcast on Kraft Television Theater. The public’s reaction to Patterns was overwhelming, and the show became the first ever to be repeated by popular demand. He received numerous requests for interviews, as well as offers to write television shows, movies, Broadway plays, and novels. In what he later looked back upon as a mistake, Serling took advantage of this newfound popularity to sell many of his old, lower-quality scripts and stories. After a couple of disappointing shows that led some critics to question whether Serling could duplicate what he had accomplished with Patterns, Serling came through in 1956 with Requiem for a Heavyweight, originally broadcast on Playhouse 90. The play tells the tragic story of a declining prize fighter whose devious manager pressures him to keep boxing so he can make money by betting against him.
During the 1950s—when Serling was gaining prominence as a writer of realistic television dramas—the content of programs was largely determined by corporate sponsors. The result, according to Serling, was that the most meaningful portions of many of his stories were changed or deleted. The censorship he experienced ranged from trivial changes, such as deletion of the line "Got a match?" from Requiem for a Heavyweight at the request of sponsor Ronson lighters, to reworking of some scripts beyond recognition.
The final straw for Serling occurred during production of his story The Arena, about the inner workings of the United States Senate, for the anthology show Studio One.
In 1957 Serling submitted a script to Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) with the title “The Time Element," which he intended to be the pilot episode for a weekly science fiction-fantasy series called The Twilight Zone. Network executives, as well as fans of Serling’s earlier work, were initially dismayed at his decision to “step down” from realism to science fiction. Many of Serling’s friends, however, understood his belief that science fiction would allow him to continue his social commentary without fear of censorship.
CBS did not commit to The Twilight Zone at first, but the network did produce “The Time Element” for the Westinghouse Desilu Playhouse in 1958. “The Time Element” is the eerie story of a man who sees a psychiatrist to help him deal with vivid dreams about the bombing of Pearl Harbor. In the first of Serling’s trademark twist endings, it turns out that the patient was actually killed at Pearl Harbor, and the psychiatrist is the one having the vivid dreams. The show received more viewer mail than any other episode of the Westinghouse Desilu Playhouse, which prompted CBS to let Serling proceed with a pilot for The Twilight Zone.
Popular reaction to the pilot convinced CBS to give Serling the go-ahead for the first season of The Twilight Zone. He began by hiring a producer, Buck Houghton, to handle all the production details in order to free himself up for writing. (Although Serling was deeply committed to the series and had the final say in most matters, he trusted Houghton to smooth out the daily problems.) Next, Serling and Houghton hired several prominent directors, some with film backgrounds, to provide the show with its memorable camera work and eerie atmosphere. The duo also decided to film the series at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studios, since MGM offered access to the sets from hundreds of different movies. The familiar, haunting theme music for the show was composed by Marius Constant, although a different piece by Bernard Herrmann was used for most of the first season.
Serling’s contract with CBS specified that he would provide eighty percent of the scripts for The Twilight Zone. For the other twenty percent, he at first decided to accept submissions from aspiring writers all over the country. When he received fourteen thousand manuscripts in the first week, he instead relied upon a few, well-known writers with a style and vision similar to his own. Richard Matheson and Charles Beaumont provided scripts for the majority of the remaining episodes of the series, although the show’s contributors also included Montgomery Pittman, Earl Hamner, Jr., and Ray Bradbury.
Serling and Houghton auditioned a number of well-known actors to narrate the show, including Orson Welles, but had so much difficulty settling on one that Serling finally decided to try it himself. Eventually Serling’s voice and presence became a trademark of The Twilight Zone. The writer’s appearances also transformed Serling into a popular television personality in addition to his position as a writer.
When the first episode of The Twilight Zone finally aired in 1959, reactions were positive from critics and viewers alike. On top of the critical acclaim, the series generated over five hundred letters per week from viewers. After the first season, Serling released a book of short stories based on the series, Stories from the Twilight Zone, which became a smash hit. He also authorized production of a board game, comic book and record album based on the show.
Although each episode of The Twilight Zone was different, they all drew a fine line between reality and fantasy and featured an intriguing twist ending. In addition—largely due to Serling’s influence—the series often dealt with serious, current issues. Another of Serling’s favorite themes involved people encountering death or the devil. Serling also wrote a number of Twilight Zone episodes about aliens and space travel, and he often used these stories to make a statement about human nature. Another favorite theme of Serling’s was time travel, which he often mixed into an otherwise plausible situation.
Fatigue started to take a toll on Serling during the third season. In addition, CBS had problems finding a sponsor, and for a while it looked like the series would not be renewed for 1963. As a result, Houghton accepted an attractive job offer from a movie production company and left the show. He continued to provide scripts and narration for The Twilight Zone, but the extent of his involvement was considerably less than before.
The Twilight Zone was expanded to an hour per episode during the fourth season, although everyone involved found it difficult to adapt the show to this format. During the fifth season the show returned to a half-hour format. Many of the episodes from these years shared the eerie mood and clever plot twists of the early series, although some were of considerably lower quality. CBS officially cancelled The Twilight Zone in January, 1964, after production of 156 episodes, ninety-two of which had been written by Serling. The president of the network claimed he cancelled the show because it was over budget and had begun to slip in the ratings.
Serling stayed active following cancellation of The Twilight Zone. He wrote a number of television scripts and screenplays, hosted and narrated television and radio shows, appeared in commercials. He also taught dramatic writing at Ithaca College in New York and made frequent public appearances to speak out about political issues. Serling took a one-year teaching position at Antioch College, as well.
In 1969 Serling participated in the creation of the television series Rod Serling’s Night Gallery, which included short dramas with a slightly greater emphasis on horror than The Twilight Zone. The series ran until 1972. Serling also created The Loner, a western with an emotional rather than action-oriented flavor, but the series was cancelled after Serling entered into a dispute with CBS executives who wanted to make it more conventional. In 1969 Serling co-wrote the screenplay for the popular film Planet of the Apes, based on the novel by Pierre Boulle.
Serling was converted from Judaism to Unitarianism.
Politics
In his series The Twilight Zone, Serling often dealt with the persecution of suspected Communists during the Cold War, the war in Korea and racism.
Views
Quotations:
"Writing is a demanding profession and a selfish one. And because it is selfish and demanding, because it is compulsive and exacting, I didn’t embrace it. I succumbed to it".
"I don’t want to fight anymore. I don’t want to have to battle sponsors and agencies. I don’t want to have to push for something that I want and have to settle for second best. I don’t want to have to compromise all the time, which in essence is what a television writer does if he wants to put on controversial themes." - about censorship
"Now the questions come to mind. Where is this place and when is it, what kind of world where ugliness is the norm and beauty the deviation from that norm? The answer is, it doesn’t make any difference. Because the old saying is true. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder."
"It makes you wonder, doesn’t it? Just how normal are we? Just who are the people we nod our hellos to as we pass on the street?"
Membership
National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences
,
United States
1956 - 1957
Writers Guild of America West
,
United States
1965 - 1967
National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences
1959
National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences
1965 - 1966
Personality
Serling was attractive, outgoing, and imaginative even as a child, and this helped make him popular in the neighborhood. A favorite pastime in his youth was reading “pulp” magazines, such as Amazing Stories and Weird Tales. Serling also enjoyed going to the movies, and afterward acted out various parts with his brother.
Quotes from others about the person
"Serling did not shrink from the social criticism which had characterized his previous work in television; he rather embodied his examination of American society in fantasy. Of course, his messages were not entirely explicit, and less sophisticated viewers, enthralled by the fantastic plot, might not always perceive its significance, yet his narrations before and after each episode often made his themes more obvious or at least pointed to the intention behind the fantastic surface ... Even though television censorship moved Serling to give up his commitment to social realism, The Twilight Zone shows that he did not surrender his conception of the responsible writer’s function in society." - Lawrence Venuti
"The fact that Rod Serling was a uniquely talented writer with extraordinary imagination is not our real loss. These merely describe his tools and the level of his skill. Our loss is the man, the intelligence and the conscience who used these things for us. No one could know Serling, or view or read his work, without recognizing his deep affection for humanity, his sympathetically intense curiosity about us, and his determination to enlarge our horizons by giving us a better understanding of ourselves." - Gene Roddenberry
"If, in his darkest moments, Rod Serling felt his accomplishments on The Twilight Zone were of a transient nature, these were only the passing fears of every writer that his life’s work has been of no consequence. The shining product of his imagination still flourishes, reborn each time a person turns on a television and sits before the glowing screen, caught in the spell. To those already acquainted, each new meeting is a reunion filled with delight. To those coming at it fresh, it is a revelation full of wonder and mystery and awe." - Marc Scott Zicree
Connections
Serling married Carolyn Kramer on 31 July 1948. The couple eventually had two daughters - Jodi and Anne.