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.
WRONG! The Twilight Zone was VERY POPULAR from the get-go.
That is not what this site sayshttp://www.thetzsite.com/details/dream.html:
"During the first few months of its coast-to-coast lifespan, the Twilight Zone struggled for survival. Being the very first network science-fiction/fantasy anthology merit of any it took a while for the show to catch on with the public. Initial ratings were horrendously low, although that situation was destined gradually to change. The sponsors became nervous. The network began to grumble. Even in those lean days, Serling somehow found positive arguments to use on the show's behalf. Concerning its initial ratings, he exploded "Fifteen million viewers (saw the show) - more than saw Oklahoma! during the entire run of the show on Broadway, and they want to cancel us!!"
My books on Rod Sterling, and on the Twilight also say that it never did get very good Neilson ratings. The Twilight Zone was more popular AFTER it was canceled, much like Star Trek.
WRONG! The Twilight Zone was VERY POPULAR from the get-go.
Here is another site:
http://www.tvparty.com/unseentwilight.html
'The Twilight Zone' debuted October 2, 1959 to critical acclaim and dreadful ratings (against the hit '77 Sunset Strip'). Audience numbers grew as the season progressed. Ratings remained respectable during the five-year run of the series, but the show never finished any season in the top 25.
Serling sold his rights to the series to CBS. Serling missed out on millions in future royalties when 'Twilight Zone' proved a major hit in syndication.
"That one was the SCARIEST!!!"
Gets MY vote! That episode was terrifying! Who can forget Roddy McDowell's horrified face as the cadaver in the picture knocked at the door.
Nope, they don't do it like this anymore -- now it's ALL blood, gore, and FX.
Hillary want all the gloves washed............that is where u come in!
Yeah. Jack Palance was PERFECT as the fighter in Requiem For A Heavyweight.
I'm sure that is incorrect. The public always loved the Twilight Zone.
One of the things I hate about the redone Twilight Zone was the color. Somehow the Twilight Zone HAS to be in b&w. However, I believe there was one small segment of the original TZ that was shot in color.
Nope.
The more I think about it, the more I remember that I was about the only one I knew who watched it at the time when it first came out - and that was only because my family had 2 TV SETS!!!!!!
I also remember being quite scared watching it, because I was alone when I watched it. This was the first television show that I can remember which scared me. Until the Twilight Zone, no tv shows had anything scary or with twisted endings.
77 Sunset Strip on the other hand was very popular, old people like it, men liked the action, women liked watching Efrem Zimbalist Jr., and all the teenage girls tunred it on to watch Kookie(who even had a pop hit record with Connie Stevens). Most people back then watched 77 Sunset Strip instead.
Anybody who watched The Twilight Zone when it first came out, was not in the American mainstream.
Jeez! Don't get your lace panties in a bunch up your tight ass! It was an honest question.
It ain't so often that you get a chance to meet someone so badly in need of a beer and a monica as do you.
I have a lot of "favorite" Twilight Zone episodes, but if you had to pin me down, I would say "To Serve Man" is the one. Who would have thought at the end that the book the alien left was a "cookbook". Quite provacative for the time. Also I never knew he wrote the "Planet Of the Apes". Learn something new everyday.
Shatner was in another good TZ episode where he becomes obsessed with the fortunes spewed out by a fortune telling machine.
"THE SINS OF THE FATHERS*. In 19th century Wales, a devastating famine forces a young boy to play the part of a sin-eater at a dead man's wake. Cast: Geraldine Page, Richard Thomas, Michael Dunn, Barbara Steele."
This one haunts me to this day..
sw
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