Rod Serling

• Born: December 25, 1924
• Birthplace: Syracuse, New York
• Died: June 28, 1975
• Place of death: Rochester, New York

Writer

Serling wrote the television series The Twilight Zone, declaring his intent was to “menace the public conscience.”

Area of achievement: Entertainment

Early Life

Rod Serling (SUR-lihng) was the second of two sons born to Esther Cooper and Samuel Lawrence Serling. The family moved to Binghamton, New York, in 1926. They practiced Judaism actively in the Binghamton Jewish community, characterized more as an ethnic association than as a religious group. Most of the community’s members attended synagogue only on high holy days. Samuel served as a vice president of the city’s Reform temple. He instructed his family to judge other people on their social values, not on their religion or their ethnic group. Rod Serling was enrolled at an early age in Sunday school at Binghamton’s Jewish community center, where he was taught philosophical humanism by Isadore Friedlander and his wife. Serling edited his high-school newspaper, but he was denied entry to Theta Sigma fraternity because he was Jewish. It was, he said later, the first time he had become aware of anti-Semitism.

He graduated from Binghamton Central High School shortly after the United States entered World War II. In January, 1943, Serling enlisted in the U.S. Army’s 511th Parachute Infantry Regiment (11th Airborne Division). With a slight build, standing only five feet, four inches, Serling was a good candidate for the paratrooper corps. He took part in General Douglas MacArthur’s invasion of the Philippines, earning a Purple Heart for a shrapnel wound he received in one of his knees. He also earned a Bronze Star and a Philippine Liberation Medal.

After the war, Serling was beset by insomnia, nightmares, and flashbacks related to his wartime experiences for the rest of his life. Some of these involved Serling’s best friend, who was crushed by an airborne supply crate after he had parachuted into a battlefield.

After his discharge from the Army in January, 1946, Serling enrolled at Antioch College of Ohio with aid from the G.I. Bill. He began to write and was inspired during the late 1940’s by the social activism of Unitarian philosopher and teacher Horace Mann, who had served as Antioch’s first president. Serling’s initial compositions were short stories, many of which were parables against the damage done to human beings by war.

At Antioch, Serling met Carol Kramer, whom he would later marry, posing a problem for both families. Kramer was a Protestant whose family was prejudiced against Jews. Serling’s mother had hoped that he would marry a Jew. Kramer prevailed upon Serling to convert to Unitarianism, which she also adopted, before they married. It was an effective compromise: The Unitarian creed allows adherents to define their own religion. They married at the Antioch chapel during the summer of 1948; Carol later gave birth to two daughters, Jody and Ann. Serling graduated from Antioch in 1950, majoring in literature.

Life’s Work

With a day job as a writer at a radio station (WLW in Cincinnati, Ohio), Serling wrote scripts freelance at night, earning enough to leave the station in 1952. The family moved to New York City and then, in 1957, to Pacific Palisades, California, where Serling’s teleplays were produced as The Twilight Zone series (1959-1964) for national television.

Serling’s teleplay “The Rack” described the effects of wartime torture on a Korean War veteran. It was followed in 1956 by “Requiem for a Heavyweight,” arguably Serling’s most famous teleplay, on Playhouse 90, broadcast by Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS). Serling had been a championship-caliber lightweight boxer while he served in the U.S. Army.

After a year of teaching writing, drama, and social implications of the media at Antioch in 1962, Serling returned to script writing. A movie script, Seven Days in May (1964), advocated peace and an end to the nuclear arms race, using the fictional vehicle of an attempted coup to depose the president of the United States. Serling then adapted Pierre Boulle’s work in Planet of the Apes (1968), with hearty implicit criticism of anthropocentrism (and, at the same time, racism). His television experience with two series, The Loner (1965-1966) and Night Gallery (1970-1973), disappointed him because he lacked creative control. In 1972, he wrote The Man, describing a black president of the United States more than three decades before Barack Obama would be elected. During his forties, Serling taught at Ithaca College in New York.

Serling supported the Santa Monica Unitarian Universalist Church, the national church with which it was associated, and the American Civil Liberties Union by speaking and making donations. He also was an avid writer of letters to newspaper editors, often opposing racial and religious prejudice. He opposed the Vietnam War.

Serling also published several collections of short stories, including Patterns (1957), Stories from the Twilight Zone (1960), Into the Twilight Zone (1964), and The Season to Be Wary (1967). Serling’s television scripts, numbering in the hundreds, were broadcast on The Hallmark Hall of Fame, Playhouse 90, and many other series.

A heavy cigarette smoker all of his adult life, Serling suffered two heart attacks during 1975. After the second coronary, he was admitted to the Strong Memorial Hospital in Rochester, New York, for a bypass, where he sustained a third heart attack in the operating room. He died the following day, June 28, 1975, at age fifty.

Significance

Serling won six Emmy Awards for his television work; he was inducted into the Television Hall of Fame in 1985. For decades after his death, Serling scripts still were being produced, including Rod Serling’s Lost Classics (1994), a made-for-television movie; In the Presence of Mine Enemies (1997); and A Storm in Summer (2000). Serling took the number one spot on a TV Guide ranking “Twenty-five Greatest Sci-Fi Legends” (August 1, 2004). Serling returned in digital form in a television series, Medium, aired November 21, 2005. On August 11, 2009, the U.S. Postal Service issued a stamp in his honor.

Bibliography

DeVoe, Bill. Trivia from “The Twilight Zone.” Albany, Ga.: Bear Manor Media, 2008. Odd facts about Serling’s episodes.

Engel, Joel. Rod Serling: The Dreams and Nightmares of Life in the Twilight Zone. Chicago: Contemporary Books, 1989. A very detailed biography. Engel asserts that Serling wrote too much too fast, dictating his scripts and rarely revising.

Grams, Martin. The Twilight Zone: Unlocking the Door to a Television Classic. Churchville, Md.: OTR, 2008. Detailed treatment of the series, episode by episode.

Joshi, S. T. The Evolution of the Weird Tale. New York: Hippocampus Press, 2004. Includes a critical essay on Serling’s fiction. Joshi asserts that Serling’s work was of a high order, while some critics claim that he mainly rewrote others’ work.

Sander, Gordon. The Rise and Twilight of Television’s Last Angry Man. New York: Dutton, 1992. Explores Serling’s prolific output, as well as his frustrations with censorship.

Zicree, Marc Scott.“The Twilight Zone” Companion. Los Angeles: Silman-James Press, 1989. The most detailed description of the series, summaries of its episodes and their inspirations, and Serling’s frustrations with sponsor censorship. This is a 456-page compendium of credits and plot synopses, with many pictures.