Book Review: Serling by Gordon F. Sander

Serling: The Rise and Twilight of Television's Last Angry Man by Gordon F. Sander

Rod Serling achieved his lasting fame in the early 1960s when he wrote, produced, and hosted the iconic science fiction and fantasy series The Twilight Zone. The series was wildly popular (and is still in syndication and streaming today) thanks to the intelligent scripts, the visual creativity, the twist endings, and the compelling nature of Serling's introductions and conclusions. The series spawned many imitators and the phrase "twilight zone" has become idiomatic.

Even before The Twilight Zone, Serling was a television celebrity, writing many dramas in the golden age of television, including Requiem for a Heavyweight (later made into a film) and Patterns (his breakout work that earned him his first of six Emmy awards in less than ten years). He wrote about both political and personal challenges of his day. He drew from his life experience as well.

Serling grew up in rural New York. During World War II, he joined the 511th Airborne as a paratrooper, even though he was too short to qualify. He had the personal ambition and strength of will to be a paratrooper. Ironically, he saw very little action for the first few years but then was part of the very intense fighting in the Pacific theater. He returned at the end of the war, as many GIs did, to college. He worked at the campus radio station where he first felt the need to entertain. He worked in radio as a script writer and made the transition to television as it became more popular. The intimacy and the immediacy of television fascinated him and, with a lot of work under his belt, he became a fine writer.

The book starts with his personal life but his writing career becomes the central focus. Serling's wife Carol fades into the background as Serling's television career takes off. Sander mentions that Serling had affairs after the family moved to Hollywood but does not delve into them. Serling was also distant from his two daughters, who are only mentioned occasionally. The real focus of this book is on Serling as an icon of television's golden age and how the collapse of that age played out in his life. Like film auteur Orson Welles, Serling started to cash in on his celebrity, doing parodies of himself and working on commercials. In the last years of his life, Serling's greatest joy was teaching college, where the students were often in awe of him, something Hollywood lost when The Twilight Zone finished. His personal life is at best a secondary theme of the book.

The book identifies Serling as "television's last angry man" in part because of his career ambitions. He wanted to write great dramas about contemporary topics. He especially wanted to write against prejudice, which he abhorred. At first, television was looking for prestige projects to validate the medium as a form of art as well as entertainment. Sponsors and executives eventually became more concerned to avoid controversy, making it a fight for Serling to produce what he wanted. Ironically, starting The Twilight Zone looked like a sell-out for Serling--he'd be making a popular entertainment show. But it really gave him a platform from which to comment on social issues and morality, albeit indirectly through placing the issues in other times or places.  The production schedule on the show was too much, leading to burn out and a drop in quality in the later years. Those factors, combined with increasing challenges with the network and the sponsors, drove Serling away from Hollywood in frustration over what he could no longer do.

I found the book fascinating throughout. I didn't mind the focus on his career (gossipy biographies are of little interest to me). His early life and military service are interesting, especially when they are connected to his writing career.

Recommended, especially for Twilight Zone fans.

Book Review: The Twilight Zone: Deaths-Head Revisited

The Twilight Zone: Deaths-Head Revisited original screenplay by Rod Serling, adapted by Mark Kneece and illustrated by Chris Lie

At the end of World War II, Nazi officer Lutze escapes from Dachau by shooting a prisoner and taking his clothing. Decades later, he returns to the town with a new identity and makes a visit to the place where he committed many atrocities. He arrives at the camp late in the afternoon and wanders around alone. Soon the memories begin to haunt him. He sees prisoners he remembers. They accuse him of the terrible crimes that happened to them. Lutze rehearses the Nuremberg defense ("I was only following orders") which is chilling given the horrors depicted (which just scratch the surface). In one scene, people come back out of the ovens to accuse him for their deaths. His memories finally drive him mad. He is discovered wailing uncontrollably on the grounds of the death camp by the attendant.

This story is very powerful and haunting. The episode was made in 1961 during Adolf Eichmann's trial for his part in the Nazi's Final Solution. This graphic novel captures the horror of a man without a conscience as he finally succumbs to his own humanity. Well worth reading.

Book Review: The Twlight Zone: The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street by R. Serling et al.

The Twlight Zone: The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street adapted by Mark Kneece from Rod Serling's original screenplay, illustrated by Rich Ellis

Having read a previous adaptation of a Twilight Zone episode, I picked up this volume at the library anticipating another well-retold story. The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street is a famous episode from the show. In it, a suburban street is subject to a power outage after what seems to be a meteor comes crashing overhead. Not only is the power out, but cars won't start and portable radios don't pick up any stations. People start to get nervous. One guy goes to the next street to find out if they have the same problems. The other people gather and talk about how weird it is. When two guys decide to walk downtown, a boy of ten warns them not to go, because they won't come back. That's how these stories always work out in comic books and movies--people disappear one after another because the aliens from the "meteor" are starting their invasion. The boy insists that there must be a family who are really aliens sent ahead of time to get things ready. Suspicions immediately grow and good neighbors become a paranoid mob. Things go from bad to worse when cars mysteriously start and stop and only certain homes have power. The neighbors turn on one another at a truly frightening pace and with devastating consequences.

As an adaptation of the story, this volume was a bit of a let down. The story is exactly the same with no real visual flourishes or significant new material to make it better or even different in an interesting way. Having seen the episode first, this book feels redundant. It's still a great story anyway.

Book Review: The Twilight Zone: The Midnight Sun

The Twilight Zone: the Midnight Sun, adapted from Rod Serling's original script by Mark Kneece

There is a fifth dimension beyond that which is known to man. It is a dimension as vast as space and timeless as infinity. It is the middle ground between light and shadows, 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. 

The Twilight Zone is a classic science fiction television series from the 1960s. It was produced and hosted by Rod Serling who wrote more than half of the 156 episodes. The stories are so well told that the show is still repeated and readily available today. It was also a training ground for many actors and directors, including Robert Redford, Charles Bronson, Ron Howard, and William Shatner. A series of graphic novels were developed based on script episodes. This particular book comes from the tenth episode of the third season, also called "The Midnight Sun."

The story follows a young female artist, Norma, who lives in New York City. For the past several months, the weather has gotten hotter and hotter, driving citizens from the city. Those who have remained behind are slowly going crazy. She lives in a walk-up apartment. Her building is down to two residents--her and her neighbor Mrs. Bronson. They try to keep each others spirits up, even though there's no good news from the TV or from the passersby in the street. Norma paints sweltering landscapes that mirror the bleak heat outside the building. As with many Twilight Zone stories, the ending has a nice twist that I didn't see coming the first time I saw the episode on TV.

This adaptation stays very close to the script, even including scenes from the script that weren't filmed for budgetary and time constraints. It does a great job at capturing the oppressive heat and despair in the story as well as Norma's efforts to survive her various run-ins with desperate people. The visuals open up the story. It has the more epic feel that Serling could not capture on a television budget, depicting things like Liberty Island as a dried out hill next to Manhattan.

It's nice to visit stories from old favorites and the graphic novel format suits The Twilight Zone quite well.

Great quote from the introduction by Anna Marlis Burgard:

While he had his run-ins with censorship, Serling's clever use of other worlds and veiled scenarios generally protected him. As he explained, what he couldn't have a Republican or a Democrat espouse on the show, he could have an alien profess without offending the sponsors. This approach also allowed viewers to take away whatever message best suited them; the more reflective could consider the psychological and political implications, while others might be satisfied with simply enjoying the thrill of the surface story. So much more than mere science fiction or fantasy, Serling's scripts are parables that explore the multifaceted natures of hope, fear, humanity, loneliness, and self-delusion.