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Rodman "Rod" Edward Serling (December 25, 1924 – June 28, 1975) was an American screenwriter, most famous for his science fiction TV series, The Twilight Zone. The second of two sons (his brother Robert J. Serling later became a novelist), he was born in Syracuse, New York to Samuel and Esther Serling, but was raised in Binghamton, New York, where he later graduated Binghamton High School. Though born Jewish, Serling became a Unitarian as a young adult.

Military service

Rod Serling served as a U.S. Army paratrooper and demolition specialist with the 511th Parachute Infantry Regiment, U.S. 11th Airborne Division in the Pacific Theater in World War II from January 1943 to January 1946. He was seriously wounded in the wrist and knee during combat and was awarded the Purple Heart and Bronze Star. Due to his wartime experiences, Serling suffered from nightmares and flashbacks for the rest of his life. Though he was rather short (5'4") and slight, Serling was also a noted boxer during his military days.

Early writing career

Upon leaving the military, Serling entered Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio. He graduated in 1950 with a Bachelor's degree in Literature. He got his start as a writer after winning second prize in a contest for the radio show Dr. Christian in 1949, while still a college student. Serling and his wife Carol (married in 1948) moved to Cincinnati, Ohio, where he took a job as a staff writer for WLW Radio. According to his friends who worked with him at 700 WLW, Rod smoked at least five packs of cigarettes a day, which likely contributed to his death in 1975.

Biographers note that through his career, Serling was inspired by legendary radio and TV playwright Norman Corwin. Both men would trace their careers through the WLW broadcasting franchise and eventually find homes at CBS, and both would be honored for weaving pivotal social themes through their scripts.

In 1951, Serling started to break into television by writing scripts for Fireside Theater, Hallmark Hall of Fame, Lux Video Theater, Kraft Television Theater, Suspense and Studio One.

In 1955, Kraft Television Theater presented another of Serling's scripts, the 72nd to make it to air. To the Serlings, it was just another script, and they missed the first live airing. The show was Patterns and it changed Rod Serling's life. Patterns dramatized the struggle for power involving a corporate boss, an old hand running out of ideas and energy, and the bright young executive being groomed to take the older man's place. It was a huge hit, and was even presented again the next week, something nearly unprecedented. It established Serling as a rarity: a TV playwright.

More acclaimed plays for TV followed: The Rack, about a Korean War veteran and the effects of torture, the legendary Requiem for a Heavyweight (from CBS's Playhouse 90 series), plus several more, some of which were adapted as movies. Requiem, like Patterns, was honored as a turning point in TV drama. The installment's producer, Martin Manulis, noted for a PBS biography of Serling that after the live broadcast, CBS chairman William S. Paley called the control room and told the crew that the show had set TV ahead by 10 years.

But tired of seeing his scripts neutered and mangled (removing any political statements, ethnic identities, even the Chrysler Building being removed from a script sponsored by Ford), Serling decided the only way around this interference was to create his own show.

The Twilight Zone

In 1959, CBS aired the first episode of a groundbreaking series, The Twilight Zone. Serling fought hard for creative control, hiring writers he admired (such as Richard Matheson and Charles Beaumont, both television writers known for their science fiction and fantasy stories) and launched himself into weekly television. He stated in an interview that the science fiction format would not be controversial and would escape censorship unlike the earlier Playhouse 90 [2]. In reality the show gave him the opportunity to communicate social messages in a more veiled context.

The show lasted five seasons (four in a half-hour format, one full season as an hour long drama), winning awards for Serling and his writers, as well as critical acclaim. The program, while having a loyal fan base, never had huge ratings and was cancelled twice, only to be brought back. After five years and 156 episodes, 92 of them written by Serling himself, Serling was tired. In 1964, he decided to let the last cancellation be final.

Serling sold his rights to the series to CBS. His wife later stated that he did this partly because he believed the studio would never recoup the cost of creating the show, which frequently went overbudget. In hindsight, this was a costly mistake.

File:Nightgallery3.jpg
Rod Serling, host of Night Gallery.

Night Gallery

In 1969, NBC aired a Serling-penned pilot for a new series, Night Gallery. Set in a dimly lit museum, the pilot film featured Serling (as on-camera host) introducing three tales of the macabre, unveiling canvases that would later appear in the subsequent story segments.

The series, which premiered in December 1970 (its brief first season rotated as one spoke of a four-series programming wheel titled Four in One), focused more on gothic horror and the occult than did The Twilight Zone. Serling, no longer wanting the burden of an executive position, sidestepped an offer to retain creative control of content — a decision he would later regret. Although discontented with some of producer Jack Laird's script and creative choices, Serling maintained his stream of submissions and ultimately wrote over a third of the scripts for the series.

By season three, however, Serling began seeing many of his script contributions rejected. The disgruntled host, his complaints ignored, dismissed the show as "Mannix in a cemetery." Night Gallery lasted until 1973.

Fiction

Serling wrote a number of short stories in the science fiction and horror genres, which were collected into three volumes of Twilight Zone stories (1960, 1961, 1962), two of Night Gallery stories (1971, 1972) and a collection of three novellas, The Season to be Wary (1968). A critical essay on Serling's fiction can be found in S. T. Joshi's book The Evolution of the Weird Tale (2004). Joshi emphasises Serling's moralism and the streak of misanthropy which runs through his work, and argues that, far from being merely re-written scripts, many of Serling's stories can stand as genuinely original and meritorious works of prose fiction.

Later years

Subsequent to The Twilight Zone, Serling moved onto cinema screens. He wrote a number of screenplays that have a highly political bent, including Seven Days in May (1964) about an attempted military coup against the President of the US; Planet of the Apes (1968), which is quite scathing about the human condition; and The Man (1972) about the first Black US President.

Years of stress and heavy smoking caught up with the writer in his final years. In 1975, the 50-year-old Serling suffered two heart attacks before entering a Rochester hospital for heart bypass surgery. He had another heart attack during the operation and died the following day. He is interred at the cemetery in Interlaken, New York, a part of upstate New York featured prominently in episodes of The Twilight Zone. By the same ironic token, cigarettes are featured in many episodes.

Serling is also noted for narrated documentaries featuring French undersea explorer Jacques-Yves Cousteau.

During his lifetime, Rod Serling received six Emmys and his biggest successes in writing include:

He also wrote the pilot episode for a short-lived Aaron Spelling series called The New People in 1969.

He later taught at Ithaca College in Ithaca, New York where he resided for many years.

Subsequent to his death, Serling has had the peculiar feature of also apparently having 'authored' several screenplays, including Rod Serling's Lost Classics (1994), a TV movie based on several unfilmed Twilight Zone scripts; In the Presence of Mine Enemies (1997) set during the Warsaw Ghetto; a science-fiction remake of A Town Has Turned to Dust (1998); and A Storm in Summer (2000).

More than 30 years after his death, Serling was digitally resurrected for an episode of the TV series Medium that aired on November 21, 2005. The episode, which was partially filmed in 3-D, opened with Serling introducing the episode and instructing viewers on when to put on their 3-D glasses. This was accomplished by taking an old Twilight Zone introduction and digitally manipulating Serling's mouth to match new dialogue spoken by an impersonator. The subject matter of the episode, involving paintings coming to life, was also a nod to both Twilight Zone and Night Gallery.The episode of Medium borrowed the introduction from The Twilight Zone Season 3, Episode 10 (Episode 75), titled "The Midnight Sun".

In 1994, the Walt Disney World resort opened its premier free fall attraction titled The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror at the Disney-MGM Studios theme park in Orlando, Fl. The ride puts guests into an unaired episode of the Twilight Zone, where they are introduced to the story by Rod Serling. The story is that at the height of the Hollywood golden age, a famous landmark hotel holding a gala event is struck by lightning during a thunderstorm. Passenger elevators carrying 5 guests mysteriously vanish after plummeting 13 stories, and the tower has stood derelict since that fateful night. Guests board "freight elevators" that carry them upwards and even laterally into the free fall shaft. On the way they visit the "5th Dimension" room which references the opening TV title sequence. The video pre-show is, again, a digital manipulation of original footage of Serling taken from the 1961 episode titled, It's a Good Life. This was then combined with a live action impersonator, Robert Rhine, and the voice-over work of another impersonator (see the external links for an interview with Rhine on the subject). The ride's queue features props from various Twilight Zone episodes. Perhaps due to the family-friendly atmosphere, Serling's trademark cigarette is absent from his hand.

Other filmography

External links

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