Tag Archives: Rod Serling

Why Bradbury Didn’t Write More Twilight Zone Episodes

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Marc Scott Zicree, author of The Twilight Zone Companion, draws on that expertise for the newest “Mr. Sci-Fi” video, in which he repeats the things Ray Bradbury told him about helping Twilight Zone in the beginning and why, despite his and Rod Serling’s best intentions, he only wrote one completed episode for the series.

Phil Nichols’ insightful commentary on the video for Bradburymedia notes:

Bradbury also claimed a significant contribution to the very existence of the series: he reportedly introduced Serling to the writers Richard Matheson and Charles Beaumont, each of whom would write many episodes of the series.

Serling Conference in LA

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Rod Serling

Rod Serling

Ithaca College’s 2013 Rod Serling Conference will be held November 8-9 at the Hilton Los Angeles/Universal City. Sessions already announced are —  

  • Reading by Anne Serling, author of As I Knew Him: My Dad, Rod Serling
  • 1964 Holiday Gift From Rod Serling: Carol for Another Christmas by Gordon Webb
  • An Exploration of Anti-War Themes in Rod Serling’s The Twilight Zone Episodes by Michael Moodian
  • “Assault” on “The Maritime Zone”: Rod Serling’s Screenplay of a Jack Finney Novel by Joseph Zarzynski
  • Sending in the Extremists to the Cornfield: Rod Serling’s Crusade Against Radical Conservation by Mark Boulton
  • Serling and the Kennedy Administration by Amy Boyle Johnston
  • Singing the Body Electric: The Symbiotic Relationship Between The Twilight Zone and the Literature of Speculative Fiction by Don Pizzaro
  • Westport in Rod Serling’s The Twilight Zone by Arlen Schumer

There will also be a bus tour ($25 extra) to visit Rod Serling’s star on the Walk of Fame, the Television Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a place where the “Hollywood” sign can be photographed.

The Serling Conference is held every two years. Serling taught at Ithaca College from 1967 to 1975 and its campus is home to the Rod Serling Archives.

Themes of past conferences included “Submitted for Your Approval” in April 2006, “The Life and Legacy of Rod Serling” in March 2008, and “Celebrating 50 Years of The Twilight Zone” in 2009. The conferences present research, anecdotes, and an opportunity to view some of the classics of early television. The proceedings from past conferences are available here [PDF, 7 MB].

J.J. Abrams To Develop Serling Screenplay

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J. J. Abrams will develop an unproduced screenplay by Rod Serling reports Variety. 

“The Stops Along the Way” is described as Serling’s final completed work before his death in June 1975 at the age of 50. Bad Robot and Warner Bros. TV secured the rights to the script from Serling’s widow, Carol Serling. The property will be shopped to TV outlets as a limited series.

Carol Serling would not reveal any of the story’s details to Variety.

My Dad, Rod Serling

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SerlingsAnne Serling is interviewed about her memoir As I Knew Him: My Dad, Rod Serling in the May 29 issue of the LA Times.

Not only did your father have physical issues because of the wounds he suffered in World War II, he also had nightmares of his experience in combat.

He absolutely did. I vividly remember him having nightmares and when I would ask him what happened he said, “I dreamed the Japanese were coming at me.” Back then post-traumatic stress disorder wasn’t even a term.

He always planned to go into teaching kids physical education, but because he had been so traumatized by the war, he switched to language and literature. He was quoted saying he needed to get it off of his gut and out of his system.

Part of the soundtrack for her promo video comes from Mike Wallace’s interview with Rod Serling, first aired in 1959. The most eerie thing in the interview has nothing to do with Twilight Zone — it’s seeing both men puffing away on cigarettes behind the opening title.

[Thanks to John King Tarpinian for the story.]

A Rarity on TCM

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Carol for Another Christmas, an adaptation of Dickens’ famous story by Rod Serling, will be broadcast twice in December on Turner Classic Movies.

The 1964 production was telecast only once and is not commercially available (at least according to the Wikipedia). Aficianados wanting to see it ordinarily must resort to TV archives like the one at UCLA.

Film critic Bhob Stewart gives this synopsis:

Presented without commercial interruptions, this “United Nations Special” was sponsored by the Xerox Corporation, the first of a series of Xerox specials promoting the UN. Director Joseph Mankiewicz’s first work for television, the 90-minute ABC drama was publicized as having an all-star cast (which meant that names of some supporting cast members were not officially released). In Rod Serling’s update of Charles Dickens, industrial tycoon Daniel Grudge (Sterling Hayden) has never recovered from the loss of his 22-year-old son Marley (Peter Fonda), killed in action during Christmas Eve of 1944. The embittered Grudge has only scorn for any American involvement in international affairs. But then the Ghost of Christmas Past (Steve Lawrence) takes him back through time to a World War I troopship. Grudge also is visited by the Ghost of Christmas Present (Pat Hingle), and the Ghost of Christmas Future (Robert Shaw) gives him a tour across a desolate landscape where he sees the ruins of a once-great civilization.

The cast includes Eva Marie Saint, Ben Gazzara, James Shigeta and Britt Ekland. Henry Mancini wrote the theme music.

A Carol for Another Christmas plays Sunday, December 16 @ 08:00 PM (ET) and Saturday, December 22 @ 04:15 PM (ET)

[Thanks to John King Tarpinian for the story.]

Honoring Twilight Zone at the Egyptian

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The 50th anniversary of Twilight Zone will be celebrated at American Cinematheque’s Egyptian Theatre on October 30th (click link and scroll to bottom of page), with showings of Emmy-winning episodes and discussions with Carol Serling (schedule permitting), Richard Matheson, Earl Hamner Jr., George Clayton Johnson, H.M. Wynant, Robert Butler, and Arlene Martel.

Marc Scott Zicree, author of The Twilight Zone Companion, told the Los Angeles Times:

“He created a new form of television… Science fiction was basically viewed as kids’ stuff,” [Zicree] says. “There is a great interview that Mike Wallace did with Rod just prior to ‘The Twilight Zone’ where he says to Rod, ‘Now you are doing this kind of kids’ stuff, are you giving up writing anything important?'”

Among the episodes tentatively scheduled to screen Friday are: “It’s a Good Life,” by Serling, starring Billy Mumy as a 6-year-old boy who is a little monster; “Kick the Can”; “The Howling Man,” by Beaumont, about a scholar who unleashes the devil; “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet,” by Matheson, about a young man (Shatner) recovering from a nervous breakdown who sees a monster on the wing of the airplane; and Serling’s “Time Enough at Last,” about a bookish man who survives a nuclear holocaust.

This Weekend in the Twilight Zone

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The Twilight Zone is difficult to map, being a vast and invisible realm of the imagination:

“There is a fifth dimension beyond that which is known to man. It is a dimension as vast as space and as timeless as infinity. It is the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition, and it lies between the pit of man’s fears and the summit of his knowledge. This is the dimension of imagination. It is an area which we call ‘The Twilight Zone.'” – Rod Serling

The capital of the Twilight Zone, however, is the tangible and evident town of Binghamton, NY. That’s where Rod Serling was born in 1924 and where newscasters claim “Binghamton Landmarks Inspire Twilight Zone” – something not every Chamber of Commerce would shout about.

Fifty years ago the first episode of The Twilight Zone aired on CBS. Today Ithaca College, where Serling taught from 1967 to 1975, is home to the Rod Serling Archives extensive collection of television scripts, film screenplays, stage play scripts, films, unpublished works. And over the weekend Ithaca College hosted “Celebrating 50 Years of the Twilight Zone.”

George Clayton Johnson, the keynote speaker, was interviewed on the local news. The clip also shows the town’s preparations for the event, including Rod Serling’s face covering the side of a city bus to advertise the conference.

Also, Binghamton’s Rod Serling Video Festival competition encouraged students from kindergarten through high school to enter.

All kinds of links to anniversary-related events are tracked on the official 50th anniversary website. The site is maintained by Douglas Brode. He co-authored, with Carol Serling, Rod Serling and the Twilight Zone: The 50th Anniversary Tribute. Brode’s personal TZ anniversary celebration was a book-signing outside Disneyworld’s Twilight Zone Tower of Terror on October 2.

The Binghamton celebration has one more big event to come, when the Bundy Arts & Victorian Museum hosts a Rod Serling Symposium on October 7.

[Thanks to John King Tarpinian for the links.]

Two Fantasists Going First-Class in 2009

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2009 postage stamps

The US Postal Service will honor two fantasy writers on postage stamps next year: Rod Serling and Edgar Allan Poe.

Edgar Allan PoeI checked — neither was on the list of historic sf figures Chris Barkley gathered petitions to honor ten years ago (see File 770:133, page 18).

That Serling should be selected ahead of everyone else on the list is a little bit ironic because it validates one of Chris’ own arguments  — he told Science Fiction Weekly that the writers he named deserved recognition because they laid the foundations for currently-popular sf tv series and movies:

We know that without the influences of E.E. “Doc” Smith, Murray Leinster, Leigh Brackett and Edmund Hamilton, it’s doubtful you would be enjoying Star Trek, Farscape, Babylon 5 and Star Wars today. Gene Roddenberry, George Lucas and Steven Spielberg might have well been sitcom producers without them.

In case you’re curious, here are the leading lights Chris wanted to see on stamps:

Artists: Frank R. Paul, Chesley Bonestell, Hannes Bok, Virgil Finlay, Vaughn Bode, Roy Krenkel, Ed Emshwiller, Jack Gaughan. Editors: John W. Campbell, Jr., Judy Lynn Del Rey, Anthony Boucher, Terry Carr, T.E. Dikty, Geoff Conklin, Terry Carr. Authors: E.E. “Doc” Smith, Robert A. Heinlein, Clifford D. Simak, Paul Linebarger (Cordwainer Smith), Will Jenkins (Murray Leinster), Theodore Sturgeon, C.L. Moore and Henry Kuttner, Leigh Brackett, Edmund Hamilton, A. Merritt, Alfred Bester, Alice Sheldon (James Tiptree, Jr.), Philip K. Dick, Cyril M. Kornbluth, James Blish, Fritz Leiber, Frank Herbert, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Edgar Pangborn, Stanley Weinbaum.

It’s still a good idea, Chris!

[Thanks to Andrew Porter for the story.]