Posted on 12/29/2003 3:22:04 PM PST by PJ-Comix
Known primarily for his role as the host of televisions THE TWILIGHT ZONE, Rod Serling had one of the most exceptional and varied careers in television. As a writer, a producer, and for many years a teacher, Serling challenged the medium of television to reach for loftier artistic goals. The winner of more Emmy Awards for dramatic writing than anyone in history, Serling expressed a deep social conscience in nearly everything he did.
Born in Syracuse, New York in 1924, Rod Serling grew up in the small upstate city of Binghamton. The son of a butcher, he joined the army after graduating from high school in 1942. His experiences of the working-class life of New York, and the horrors of World War II enlivened in him a profound concern for a moral society. After returning from the service, Serling enrolled as a physical education student at Antioch College, but before long realized that he was destined for more creative endeavors.
Changing his major to English literature and drama, Serling began to try his hand at writing. As a senior, after marrying his college sweetheart, Carolyn Kramer, he won an award for a television script he had written. Encouraged by the award, Serling started writing for radio and television. Beginning in Cincinnati, he soon found a home for his unique style of realistic psychological dramas at CBS. By the early 1950s he was writing full-time and had moved his family closer to Manhattan.
Serling had his first big break with a television drama for NBC, called PATTERNS. Dealing with the fast-paced lives and ruthless people within the business world, PATTERNS was so popular it became the first television show to ever be broadcast a second time due to popularity. Throughout the 1950s he continued to write probing investigative dramas about serious issues. He was often hounded by the conservative censors for his uncompromising attention to issues such as lynching, union organizing, and racism. Television dramas including REQUIEM FOR A HEAVYWEIGHT and A TOWN HAS TURNED TO DUST, are still considered some of the best writing ever done for television.
Fed up with the difficulties of writing about serious issues on the conservative networks, Serling turned to science fiction and fantasy. Through an ingenious mixture of morality fable and fantasy writing, he was able to circumvent the timidity and conservatism of the television networks and sponsors. Self-producing a series of vignettes that placed average people in extraordinary situations, Serling could investigate the moral and political questions of his time. He found that he could address controversial subjects if they were cloaked in a veil of fantasy, saying "I found that it was all right to have Martians saying things Democrats and Republicans could never say."
The series was called THE TWILIGHT ZONE and was incredibly popular, winning Serling three Emmy Awards. As the host and narrator of the show, he became a household name and his voice seemed always a creepy reminder of a world beyond our control. The show lasted for five seasons, and during that time Serling wrote more than half of the one hundred and fifty-one episodes. But for Serling, television was an inherently problematic mediumrequiring the concessions of commercials and time restrictions.
For much of the 1960s and into the 1970s Serling turned to the big screen, writing films that included a remake of REQUIEM FOR A HEAVYWEIGHT (1962), THE YELLOW CANARY (1963), and ASSAULT ON A QUEEN (1966). His most famous, however, was the classic PLANET OF THE APES (1968), co-written with Michael Wilson. Similar to his early work on THE TWILIGHT ZONE, THE PLANET OF THE APES was a moralistic tale of contemporary life told through a science-fiction fantasy in which Apes have taken over the world. Dealing with question of how we act as a society and how we view ourselves as moral beings, PLANET OF THE APES was a culmination of Serlings career-long interests as a writer.
By the early 1970s, he found a job teaching in Ithaca, New York. Continuing to write for television, he sought to impart a sense of moral responsibility and artistic integrity to the new generation of television writers. In June of 1975, he died of a heart attack. Today, more than twenty-five years after his death, Serlings legacy continues to grow. His television and cinematic works have reached cult statusenlivening a new interest in one of the great early writers of American television.
That one was the SCARIEST!!!
WRONG! The Twilight Zone was VERY POPULAR from the get-go.
I was a kid, tagging along for a ride, when my Dad and I stopped by Mt. Hope Cemetery to bring in a remains for cremation.
Rod Serling passed away 1 day earlier at the University of Rochester Medical Center while having heart surgery.
As we entered the retort area I casually asked the Director of Operations if Rod had stopped by.
He directed me to the looking glass of the retort.
I saw the last Rod Serling "Twightlight Zone!"
True story, I still retain my FD's license in NY.
I remember that one. The day she gets her sight was the day of the big NYC blackout. She freaks out, trips, and falls out the window.
camera obscura(sp) a primitive camera that could see into hell...
I vaguely remember that one. The camera obscura usually is a rooftop reflector projected on a tabletop. I forget the plot of this episode.
another one about an SS death camp guard and a painting.
I remember the Twilight Zone episode where the prison guard goes back after the war and sees the ghosts of his prisoners, who reclaim him.
-PJ
That was a Twilight Zone episode of the kind that Serling loved to do -- the ironic twist.
The one you described starred Burgess Merideth. There were many other cute ones like that: 1) the one where the man has a watch that stops time, but he breaks it, 2) the crabby man (Shelly Berman) who wishes the whole world were full of people just like him, and then he wakes up and everyone is him, 3) the astronaut on the planet with tiny people who take him as their leader, only to be crushed by astronauts 100 times bigger than he is, and on and on.
-PJ
Dang it. LOL. That'll teach me again to read the thread before I post. I thought I'd be the only one to remember that.
He survived, but....
Earwigs lay eggs.
ARRRRRGGGGGHHHHH!
Agreed, I love that episode, it's also one of my favorites. What was the name of the actor? I can see his face, but I can't for the life of me remember his name. This is killing me, does anybody out know who was the actor?
I liked Once Upon a Time. Remember that one?
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