Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, April 25, 1993 TAG: 9304230457
SECTION: HORIZON PAGE: F-4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Reviewed by MELVIN MATTHEWS
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Lamenting the state of TV in 1952, an NBC script editor announced that "only through good writing" would the medium realize its potential. Where, he asked, were the television artist-playwrights?
They were incubating, and shortly would burst forth: Paddy Chayefsky, Reginald Rose and the man who perhaps became the most famous of them all, Rod Serling.
Gordon Sander's new biography showcases both Serling's professional highs and lows, and television's progression from its "golden age" to its less radiant bottom-line days.
According to Sander, Serling's upbringing in Binghamton, N.Y., did much to shape him as a writer, and provided the genesis for many episodes of "The Twilight Zone." The other two influences in Serling's early life were 1930s radio, the balm for Depression-weary America, and World War II. Serling served as a paratrooper in the Pacific, and his war experiences furnished the basis for some of his later literary work. Postwar, he attended Ohio's Antioch College, a school that prided itself on its unconventionality.
Serling's breakthrough into the big-time, "Patterns," a bitter critique of the corporate world, came in the midst of the "golden age" of live TV drama. It also created pressure for him to write another hit, which he did the following year with "Requiem for a Heavyweight."
A 1958 Desilu Playhouse broadcast of a Serling story about a man who dreams of traveling back in time to pre-Pearl Harbor Honolulu was the catalyst for Serling's most enduring undertaking, "The Twilight Zone." That series served as a vehicle for his social consciousness and featured performances by the likes of Cliff Robertson, Burgess Meredith, Lee Marvin, William Shatner and Inger Stevens.
By the time the original "Twilight Zone" series ended, Serling was despondent over the direction his medium had taken. The "golden age" had been supplanted by "Gilligan's Island," "Gomer Pyle" and "Hogan's Heroes." Creative differences with CBS over his "cerebral Western" (as he called it), "The Loner," had rendered Serling persona non grata at that network. Thinking it wouldn't make money, he forfeited the syndication rights to "The Twilight Zone" to CBS, thereby sacrificing an opportunity to provide financial security for his family when the series reaped a fortune in syndication.
Though he wrote scripts for such first-rate films as "Seven Days in May" and "Planet of the Apes," Serling, unlike Chayefsky, couldn't make the transition to screenwriting.
His last years were a hollow parody of his erstwhile glory days. Trading on his "Twilight Zone" recognition, he hosted a game show, did ads for the Famous Writers School and pitched commercial products. He returned to series TV as host and occasional writer of NBC's "Rod Serling's Night Gallery," though he wielded no creative control over it. Serling ended his days teaching at Ithaca College.
Sander also looks at the private man. Serling was a Jew who converted to Unitarianism. Dominated by his wife Carol, he was occasionally unfaithful, and he was troubled by his inability to write for women. On sabbatical as writer-in-residence at Antioch during his "Twilight Zone" days, he found that his Hollywood success had alienated him from his younger students. To reach out to them, he reportedly took LSD with some of them.
In her obituary for Rod Serling, New York World Telegram television critic Hariet Van Horne said that he was "a man too good for television." Readers of Sander's book will come away saddened at this story of one man's attainment of success and the price it exacted from him.
Melvin Matthews works for the city of Roanoke.
by CNB