Posted on 03/24/2008 8:05:28 AM PDT by Behind Liberal Lines
Ithaca, N.Y. -In 1924, in Binghamton, a baby was born who would go on to graduate from high school, serve in the army as a paratrooper and demolition specialist, write television screenplays, have a house on Cayuga Lake and work as a professor at Ithaca College.
He died in 1975, but at the end of this month, his voice will again be heard in the hallways of Ithaca College.
Welcome to the Twilight Zone.
That voice being honored is that of Rod Serling. “The Twilight Zone” always began with Serling staring sternly into the camera, telling a serious tale. As the story unfolded, there were elements of science fiction, fantasy, horror and a wild twist. Symbolism was thrown in as Serling touched on serious issues of the time.
“At the time, he was so frustrated with network censorship and sponsor control he actually came up with the concept of fantasy TV allowing him to say things that he couldn’t otherwise say,” said Gordon Webb, a retired professor of television and radio at Ithaca College and a self-described “Rod Serling authority.”
The work of Serling will be celebrated this week at a conference at Ithaca College, where he taught for many years. The two-day conference will feature academic paper presentations, panel discussions, the results of a nationwide scriptwriting competition and a “Twilight Zone” marathon.
Webb said “The Twilight Zone” is only one thing Serling was notable for in the television industry. By the time the series went on the air, Serling already had more than 100 of his scripts produced on network TV and had won three Emmy Awards. His play, “Patterns,” was known as one of his best, with a review appearing in the New York Times in 1955.
“He was one of the handful of writers who really started network television drama,” said Webb. “I always tried to use his work as an example because it was outstanding writing and, in my opinion, there’s nothing really like it.”
Serling had many ties to upstate New York. After attending high school in Binghamton, he moved to Syracuse and then to a house on Cayuga Lake. The small Seneca County village of Interlaken is featured in many “Twilight Zone” episodes.
“He was kind of a local who made it big,” said Webb. “He wrote many ‘Twilight Zone’ scripts on the porch or sitting in his den.”
Serling died when he was 50 from complications after heart surgery at Strong Memorial Hospital in Rochester.
“He kind of got taken at the prime of his life,” said Webb. “He earned more awards and wrote more scripts than most people do in his lifetime.”
Ithaca College now holds some of Serling’s archives, donated by his wife after he died. Rochester resident Amy Boyle Johnson visited Ithaca and other Serling archives for research for her biography of Serling, set to be published in the spring of 2009 for the 50th anniversary of “ The Twilight Zone.”
“The only writer in all of television’s over-50-year history that’s retained a household name is Rod Serling,” said Johnson.
In the archives of the University of California-Los Angeles, Johnson found a rejection letter from NBC telling Serling that “fantasy is uncommercial.” In the Madison, Wis., archives, Johnson found a folder Serling marked “angry letters” filled with letters he wrote to editors of newspapers where he lived. Ithaca’s archives have some of Serling’s unproduced works, including “Noon on Doomsday,” which will be read at next week’s conference.
Johnson said it’s hard to compare televisions writers of today with Serling. “The problem is now we associate with actors more than the writers,” she said. “In the golden age of television, people knew the storytellers. They treated it like a play.”
The Rod Serling Festival at Ithaca College will be held March 28 and March 29 at the Roy H. Park School of Communications, 953 Danby Road, Ithaca. Pre-registration can be done online at http://www.ithaca.edu/rhp/serling/serling_reg_2008.pdf. Registration is $75. A free “Twilight Zone” marathon will be held at 8 p.m. Friday, March 28 at the Roy H. Park School of Communications Auditorium.
Nowadays, Rod’s living in Willoughby.
Rod came to speak at Penn State when I was there shortly before he died.
Not to self: photoshop the Cornell bell tower into that pic.
HA! Great idea!
Thanks. He was great! I thought he had died of cancer, from smoking of course. At the time, it seemed that everyone that died was caused by cancer, or at least, related as such.
There was a very funny movie called “Saturday the 14th”, a takeoff of the “Friday the 13th” movie.
The TV is on. Every channel has The Twilight Zone.
With Richard Benjamin and Steve Guttenberg. Haven't seen it in years, but remember enjoying it.
Ron Serling was also a paratrooper during WWII.
Even the corniest of the Twilight Zones give me the willies...so it does its job very well even after all these years!
To Serve Man.
Hmmm... and it's lunchtime...
Not surprising - I have friends who live in the upstate NY area, and apparently there are a couple episodes that makes accurate references to local geography, including a town with only a few hundred people. IIRC, the one in the bus station was set somewhere near Ithaca... if anyone local wants to look that up and check it out.
That said, the airplane episode with William Shatner was by far some of the creepiest television I’ve seen - the only other TV show that I can remember coming close to that creepy was the weeping angel episode of the new Doctor Who, and maybe the ‘Hush’ episode of Buffy.
I wish that were true in LA ...at least not on public
airwaves TV....
IMHO, best TV show series ever. I liked them when i was
younger, but greatly appreciated their insight into the
human condition when I got older. Is there ever gonna
be any one writer who can produce that much?
That was a great episode, with a young William Shatner
as the obsessed fortune teller seeker...it makes me
wonder how I would behave if I could find something that
could predict in such detail my queries about the near
future...
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