Rodman “Rod” Serling was born December 25, 1924 and died June 28, 1975 at age 50. He wrote radio plays, screen plays, novels and worked as a television producer. He also narrated films and television programs. He was known as the angry young man of television in its early days.
He spent most of his childhood in Binghamton, New York. His father built a small stage in the basement where his son often put on plays. Once, on an hour long trip to Syracuse, the rest of the family remained silent to see if Rod would talk all the time and whether he would notice the silence from the rest of his family. Rod talked incessantly and did not notice the silence of the rest of his family. Rod was the life of the party, the class clown and a notorious imitator, including his impressions of Jekyll and Hyde, King Kong, and Franklin D. Roosevelt. In high school, he joined the debate club and wrote for the school newspaper. Serling was also interested in sports, excelling in tennis and table tennis, but he was too short to make the high school football team.
Serling wanted to leave high school and enlist to serve in World War II, especially on the German front to fight Hitler as an American Jew. But his civics teacher talked him into finishing high school first. After graduation, he went to Army boot camp at Camp Toccoa, George and served in the 511th Parachute Infantry Regiment in the 11th Airborne Division. Serling competed in Army boxing competitions for 17 bouts. He used a berserk style of fighting and had his nose broken twice. He was not greatly successful at Golden Gloves competitions.
Serling’s unit saw action in November of 1944 on the island of Leyte mopping up the area behind the divisions that had gone ashore. It was hard, slow work because of the terrain and incomplete intelligence information. Serling was transferred to the 511th’s demolition team, called “the death squad” for its high casualty rate. It has been speculated this transfer was the result of Serling having irritated someone above him. Serling was once stuck in a foxhole and didn’t reload any of his magazines before darkness fell. He was reported to have gone off exploring against orders and getting himself lost.
Yet, Serling saw death every day in the Philippines, often in action but also from accidents. In future years, several of his scripts would be set in the Philippines and involve the unpredictability of death.
Serling endured two wounds in Leyte including one to his kneecap, but he was in combat again on February 3, 1945, when the 511th landed on Tagaytay Ridge to march into Manila. There was little resistance until they reached the city, but then there was a month-long, block-by-block battle for control of the city. Serling’s regiment had a 50% casualty rate, and he himself was wounded. For his Army service he received a Purple Heart, a Bronze Star and the Philippine Liberation Medal. These combat experiences haunted Serling with nightmares and flashbacks for the rest of his life. Early in his writing career, around 1950, he wrote a script called No Christmas This Year, which was never produced. In the script, Christmas is no longer celebrated, though no one knows why. Meanwhile, Santa is at the North Pole dealing with elves on strike. The workshop is producing bombs and poison gases rather than toys and candy. Santa has been shot at while on his route, and an elf has been hit by shrapnel!
Discharged in 1946, Serling worked at a rehabilitation hospital while recovering from his wounds, then attended Antioch College, switching majors from Physical Fitness to Literature. He became very active in the campus radio station, where he wrote, directed and acted in many of the radio programs. He converted from Judiasm to Unitarianism in order to mary Carolyn Louise Kramer in 1948. He also earned some extra money by testing parachutes for the Army Air Force. He received $50 for every successful jump, but he garnered $1,000 for the test of a successful jet ejection seat; this was a test he barely survived. Serling later told friends that three other men had been killed before he made his test.
Serling’s professional career started as a voluntreeer at WNYC in New York in 1946 and as a paid intern at Antioch in a work study program. He also took odd jobs at other radio stations in New York and Ohio. Serling created the entire output of scripts for the Antioch college station for the 1948-49 year, including only one adaption from another work.
Still a student, Serling won a script writing contest run annually by the Dr. Christian radio show. Serling won a trip to New York and $500 for his script, To Live a Dream. He also wrote a script about boxing for the radio show Grand Central Station, which rejected the script because it clashed with the romantic character of the show. Martin Horrell of the radio show suggested to Serling that the topic was better for sight as well as sound, and recommended it be submitted to television shows instead. Serling wrote a lighter piece for Grand Central Station called Hop Off the Express and Grab a Local, which was used on the air and became Serling’s first nationally produced script.
Serling began a professional writer doing continuity work at WLW radio in Cincinnati, Ohio. He continued to do freelance writing as well. He submitted an idea of a weekly radio show involving the ghosts of a boy and girl who would look through train windows and comment on life. The idea was rearranged and presented on the air as Adventure Express from October 1950 to February 1951, Serling’s first concept to be aired. Also in 1950, he took Blanche Gaines as an agent and began retuning some of his radio scripts for television. Serling began to sell his scripts to the live dramatic television programs of the day such as Kraft Television Theater, Appointment with Adventure, and Hallmark Hall of Fame. This early work received positive reviews.
In 1955, Serling wrote a seventy-second treatment that was expanded to a Kraft Television Theater program, Patterns. Serling and his wife missed the live telecast because they found a babysitter and went out for the evening. He told his wife, “that no one would call because they had just moved to town. And the phone started ringing and didn’t stop for years!” Patterns involved a power struggle between a corporate boss and a bright young executive being groomed to take his place. Patterns established Serling’s career. The airing received such positive feedback that it was shown again, live, with identical cast, a month later at audience request, virtually creating the television “rerun.”
Serling used the success to sell some of his unwanted scripts. There was some concern that he wasn’t keeping up with his best work, but the next year, 1956, he created Requiem for a Heavyweight for Playhouse 90. He and his family moved to California in 1957, where he was in demand. Serling then wrote A Town Has Turned to Dust, a story about racism and bigotry in which Serling had to fight to keep the script from being altered. Serling decided that the way to avoid meddling with his scripts was to create his own show. He wrote The Time Element and submitted it to CBS as a pilot for his new weekly program, The Twilight Zone. CBS used the script in a new 1958 show, The Westinghouse Desilu Playhouse. The creepy plot involves a man who has vivid nightmares of Pearl Harbor and goes to a psychiatrist about it. The story received so much positive feedback to Desilu that CBS decided to grant Serling his own Twilight Zone weekly program, which premiered in 1959.
Serling intentionally picked a science fiction format to avoid and disguise controversies he wanted to deal with in the scripts. This way his program would escape censorship. The Twilight Zone had a small but loyal audience. It was cancelled twice in its five-year run, only to be revived. Serling himself wrote 92 of the total 156 episodes. During this period, he also adapted the novel Seven Days in May, written by Fletcher Knebel and Charles W. Bailey II, into a screenplay. The film was released in 1964. This was a movie that President John F. Kennedy specifically wanted to see made into a motion picture.
After The Twilight Zone finished its run, Serling wrote an unsuccessful western series called The Loner. The network wanted more action and less character interaction. He also hosted the first version of the game show Liar’s Club briefly in 1969. Also in 1969, Serling narrated and wrote the pilot for a rotating show that appeared once every four weeks in a series called Four in One. The quarter that involved Serling was called Night Gallery. Night Gallery was retained for a second and third season, though Serling sidestepped management and creative control, which he later regretted. Serling wound up writing a third of the total series scripts. In the third season, many of his scripts were rejected or radically changed. The program lasted until 1973. Serling dismissed the show as “Mannix in a cemetery.”
Serling also adapted the Irving Wallace novel, The Man, into a screenplay for the 1972 film, which starred James Earl Jones.
Serling suffered two severe heart attacks in 1975, requiring open heart surgery. He had a third and fatal heart attack during the operation on June 28, 1975.
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