Rod Serling's brave new world of TV

[tonysam]

"You're traveling through another dimension, a dimension not only of sight and sound but of mind; a journey into a wondrous land whose boundaries are that of imagination. That's the signpost up ahead -- your next stop, the Twilight Zone."

With those now-famous words, TV audiences 50 years ago were introduced to Rod Serling's breakthrough sci-fi series "The Twilight Zone." The series, essentially morality plays with evocative twists of fantasy, ran for five seasons on CBS -- and endlessly in reruns and the public imagination.

One week viewers could be on a plane with a troubled young man who insists he sees a monster on a wing; another week, an elderly woman could invite death into her house. Performers included veterans such as Ida Lupino and newcomers like Robert Redford and William Shatner.

"He created a new form of television," said screenwriter Marc Scott Zicree, author of "The Twilight Zone Companion."

More


I wouldn't call the show strictly sci-fi; it was more of a fantasy series which dealt with serious themes about life and death. Themes about war, aging, and especially death could never have been dealt with on television series during the classic television era if they were done in a realistic format were explored in "The Twilight Zone."

TZ remains one of my favorite shows after all these years. I remember well when it was on the air, even though I was a young child.

[peace frog]

1. I tune in to ScyFy

every holiday weekend they run a Twilight Zone marathon. Even my jaded young adult children agree, it's great stuff.

[Cleita]

9. I watched the original way back when, but it's never gotten old.

Rod was such a great story teller. No one has been able to duplicate it even though many have tried.

[madmom]

2. I love the Twilight Zone, one of my favorites when I was a kid. My dad used to belong to a

writer's guild. They had famous people critic their work. His famous person was Rod Serling. He has several letter's from him.

[valerief]

3. Uber groovy show. I loved it as a kid. Still do. nt

[Dr. Strange]

4. It's a cookbook!

:thumbsup:

[peace frog]

5. "Wish it away into the cornfield, Anthony"

"It's a real good thing you did. A real good thing. And tomorrow....tomorrow's gonna be a real good day!"

[freeplessinseattle]

6. He went to one of the original progressive colleges

When I had my orientation at Antioch they mentioned that he had attended, and that supposedly he had based his first episode on his experience at Antioch. In that it was so life-changing and perspective-altering, and...a cool way to inspire fresh Antioch students.

I never did get the opportunity to see that episode, but looking back, I do remember that he did have some social justice themes going on, and stories around "the bomb" regularly.

The original Antioch in Yellow Springs, OH was part of the Underground Railroad, btw, says something about their progressive creed.

[Liberal_in_LA]

32. Interesting... didnt know he went to Antioch n/t

:hi:

[tonysam]

33. He went to Antioch and taught at Ithaca College n/t

[Liberal_in_LA]

35. "and taught"! with his speaking style and smile I can't picture him teaching, shopping,

doing laundry. lol

[tonysam]

7. A big kick for Rod and TZ n/t

[AllentownJake]

8. Always am glued to the tube

When the SyFi channel does their Twilight Zone marathons.

[roguevalley]

10. I went to a speech by him when I was in college. He is/was only

about five feet tall but he seemed a giant. He spoke about morality, that is, how you cannot call yourself a moral person if you could say the n word. He spoke of incredible things. He was a great
man and a seriously great liberal. RIP, Rod. We needed ya now.

[tonysam]

11. He was gone too soon

Television lost one of its greats when he died in 1975 at the age of only 50.

[tonysam]

12. Twilight Zone was endlessly parodied

Jack Benny did one such parody with Serling:


link

[blues90]

13. I remember when it came on TV

It was a popular prime time TV show. I never missed it . Each show had a message and a lesson no matter what the theme was. I can't recall one bad episode. In a real sense they were warnings of things to come.

In a sense we have entered the Twilight Zone only now it's not a show but real live surreal now way out.

[tonysam]

14. I watched ALL of the episodes when they first ran

I was very young at the time. Some of them scared me as a little kid, including

Nightmare at 20,000 Feet

and

Eye of the Beholder

Of course these are two of the most famous episodes from this legendary series.

[blues90]

27. How about the thing about machines ?

There were so many great ones. TZ never freaked me out but Thriller certainly did .

[LibDemAlways]

39. Eye of the Beholder gave me nightmares when I was a kid. Absolutely

shocking ending.

[Liberal_Dog]

15. Watching TZ Right Now

I've been watching all of my TZ tapes this month. I am on the final season's episodes right now.

[tonysam]

16. Time has a "top ten" list

featuring some complete episodes (and some not):

Time

[tonysam]

17. kick again

[tonysam]

18. One more kick

[Delphinus]

19. Glad you kicked ...

I would have missed this!

[LunaSea]

20. Serling bio

Known primarily for his role as the host of television’s 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 medium—requiring 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 Serling’s 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, Serling’s legacy continues to grow. His television and cinematic works have reached cult status—enlivening a new interest in one of the great early writers of American television.


http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/database/serling_r.html

[Libertas1776]

21. To Serve Man?!!!

It's a COOKBOOK! IT'S A COOKBOOK!!


http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_CIsx75kG_PM/SlBF9bDzoSI/AAAAAAAABWI/_ahH96FigGE/s320/Stop+at+Willoughby.jpg

Oh, and Willoughby, this stop is Willoughby. Are you getting off, sir?



God, that stuff never gets old. :-)

[aint_no_life_nowhere]

22. I loved the anthology series "Way Out" as a child, as much as the TZ

"Way Out" was a wonderfully chilling and macabre anthology series very cleverly written. It came on just ahead of the Twilight Zone in the early 1960s. The intro showed a hill of sand with human hands coming out of it. The host Roald Dahl had a kind of Hitchcockian sense of humor. Here's a discussion of the series at imdb. Sadly, this great little tv series with very original stories has been largely forgotten.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0054574/

I loved the Twlight Zone and Serling's later series, Night Gallery. The story in Night Gallery about the little girl who receives a menacing looking doll with teeth from India was chilling.

[tonysam]

23. I'd like to get the entire TZ series on DVD,

and I guess prices have gone down a bit on them, but it's going to have to wait until I get some sort of windfall.

It appears various sites on the internet have lots and lots of episodes from the series, copyright be damned, I guess.

[logosoco]

26. My husband has the whole series

on beta tapes. They are up in the attic. I can get them for you real cheap!

Seriously...I love the show. My now 15 yo old daughter gets into it , too.
I think my all time favorite would have to be "Time Enough at Last".

[yodermon]

28. *Roald Dahl* hosted a TV show???

dude. I'm creeped out already.

only clip I could find: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wHy9NB1g1sc

[aint_no_life_nowhere]

44. Like Rod Serling, Roald Dahl was a very creative writer

A British pilot and ace with the RAF during World War II, Dahl wrote many stories about the macabre. He wrote some of the episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents. He wrote several successful films. He was married to famed actress Patricia Neal. And the anthology series of weird tales, "Way Out" that appeared on TV at the same time as The Twilight Zone was his baby. He was the host, creator, and writer:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roald_Dahl

"...Way Out

In 1961, Dahl hosted and wrote for a science fiction and horror television anthology series called Way Out, which preceded the similar but less dark and edgy Twilight Zone series on the CBS network Saturday nights for 14 episodes<27> from March to July. Dahl's comedic monologues bookended the episodes, frequently explaining exactly how to murder one's spouse without getting caught. One of the last dramatic network shows done in New York City, the entire series is available for viewing at The Paley Center for Media in New York and Los Angeles. ..."

[Blue For You]

45. You solved a 48 year old mystery for me.

For many years I've been trying to remember the name of a TV show that I saw when I was 8 years old (1961). It was about a "headless, electric woman" in a carnival setting. After seeing your post on "Way Out", I did some searching, and found the title of that particular show. Turns out it was called "Sideshow" on the tv series 'Way Out'. Unfortunately, it isn't available on DVD. But anyway, thanks!

[tonysam]

24. A whole bunch of complete episodes of TZ

are at this site:

link

[cherokeeprogressive]

25. Stonyvision... n/t

[JI7]

29. one of the best shows ever

[Canuckistanian]

30. I remember the show about the guy who couldn't be killed

You could shoot him, stab him - he wouldn't die.

So he lived a dangerous life and killed a man, figuring they'd give him the death penalty. And he'd walk because they couldn't kill him.

But in the end..... well, you'll just have to see the ending.

[tabasco]

31. Rod Serling was a paratrooper and a combat vet.

Just another great thing about him.

[nemo137]

34. Great show. I DVR'd about 12 hour worth this 4th of July

And spent the next few days watching it after work. It was a good week.

[tonysam]

36. Here is another recent article about TZ's 50th

After 50 Years, ‘The Twilight Zone’ Still Knows What Scares Us


His widow, Carol, keeps his legacy alive. She met him when she was 17 and he was 21, and they married in 1948. She's around 80 now. This is an old article about what it was like to live around him:

Life With Rod

[azul]

37. PA morning broadcast at Paul Revere JHS by RS.

Freaked out all us little junior highers, at the peak of the TZ's popularity. I attended the school with RS's daughter and one day, instead of the standard morning PA broadcast to all the homeroom classes, Rod Serling came on and did the TZ music and introduction, then the announcements, like the PA system and school was being hijacked into the twilight zone. As a strange and fun lark I still wonder at.

[LibDemAlways]

38. The Twilight Zone had a short lived revival in the 70's as well.

The best episode from that series (IMO) has been remade into a new movie due out soon called "The Box." It starred Mare Winningham as a financially strapped woman given a box containing a large amount of money by a mysterious stranger.

Of the original episodes I liked "The Hitchhiker" with Inger Stevens as a woman driving across the country who becomes unnerved because she keeps seeing the same hitchhiker over and over again. Creepy, and like many episodes, a neat twist at the end.

[tonysam]

40. "The Hitchhiker" was always interesting because of Inger Stevens

In real life she had cheated death a number of times, but in the end she took her own life. That was in 1970.

[tonysam]

41. I'll kick this thread up one more time n/t

[andym]

42. Willoughby, next stop...

Overburdened ad exec is not happy in his high pressure job and with his materialistic wife.

Falls asleep on a train, and in his dream the conductor announces Willoughby, an idyllic 1888 town with some boys about to go fishing.

Ends with a ride to the Willoughby & Son Funeral Home

[tonysam]

43. I watched that one last night online

The link I put above has literally dozens and dozens of TZ episodes.

[Art_from_Ark]

46. Twilight Zone also came out in comic book form

back in the early '70s, as part of the Mystery Comics Digest series. I had just about every one of them, back in the day. But then they mysteriously disappeared.