Upon
awakening the first word to hit your head was “Yowser” and immediately thought
of your Grandfather (Popo) Orndorff. The arthritic aches are back as the rains
are heading towards southwest Ohio. The house is cleaned up. Later this morning
Gilkey is replacing one fogged window in the kitchen and two damaged screens in
the TV and study rooms. Breakfast is complete and now the wait. Eventually you
want to return to bed for an hour of napping. – Amorella
0914
hours. It looks like it is going to be one of those dark, dull and disheveling
days where anything could happen and most likely will. In the olden days one
would venture out on the path through the woods in watch of trolls or faeries
on such a fine October day. Rod Serling rings in. Here is another tribute to a
man who got me thinking back in the day.
** **
Rod Serling: His 'Twilight
Zone' lives on
By Barry M. Horstman, Post
staff reporter [1999]
Submitted for your
approval: The time is the early 1950s. The place: a kitchen table in
Cincinnati. The young man seated at it, hammering away on a typewriter deep
into the night, is a radio script writer eager to crack the new medium of
television.
He'll become one of the
leading TV playwrights of his generation. Yet all the Emmys and the money and
the public adulation leave him unfulfilled, even miserable, longing for simpler
days of 'serene summer nights, merry-go-rounds and nickel ice cream cones.'
He'd written a fantasy
about such a man once, a burned-out, middle-aged executive who, when he tries
to return to his youth, is told by his father that there is 'only one summer to
every customer.'
It's only one of life's
painful lessons in ... 'The Twilight Zone.'
With such opening
narrations - delivered with his trademark clipped cadence, dispassionate
smugness and an ever-present cigarette dangling from his hand - Rod Serling
began one of television's most memorable programs, one arguably more popular
today than when it was launched in TV's Golden Age four decades ago.
Although his writing
credits extend from 1956's 'Requiem for a Heavyweight' - one of the most
praised dramas in TV history - to the screenplay for 'Planet of the Apes,'
Serling always will be inextricably matched with 'The Twilight Zone.'
The evocative program -
characterized by its plot-ending twists and introspective focus on bedrock
human values - had its genesis in the scripts and ideas that began pouring out
of Serling while he was a student at Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio.
After graduating, the
Syracuse native moved to Cincinnati with his wife to accept a $75-a-week job as
a staff writer for WLW Radio. And though his time in southwestern Ohio was
brief - combined with his years at Antioch, less than a decade - it was a
period that Serling himself acknowledged shaped the Midwestern sensibility
reflected in much of his writing.
At WLW, Serling found
himself thrown into what he described as 'a murderous ... grind,' writing
everything from public service announcements to laxative commercials to
half-hour documentaries. He also scripted banter for two performers he later
described as 'a hayseed emcee who strummed a guitar and said, "Shucks,
friends,' and a girl yodeler whose falsetto could break a beer mug at 20
paces.'
Desperate to break away to
serious writing, Serling would go home after a full day at WLW and work into
the night on 30- and 60-minute dramas. After accumulating more than 40
rejection slips from TV producers and radio syndicators, he made a breakthrough
in 1951 by selling nearly two dozen scripts to WKRC-TV (Channel 12).
Emboldened by that success
- and a contract with WKRC for 26 additional half-hour scripts at $125 each -
Serling quit WLW (or, depending on which version is believed, was fired) in a
somewhat contrived showdown over a $10 raise.
For the next several
years, Serling lived and wrote in Cincinnati, frequently commuting from his
Wyoming home to work in New York City. Finally, in late 1954, with more than 70
of his scripts already produced on network TV, he moved to Westport, Conn.
Serling soared to national
prominence in January 1955 with the Kraft Television Theatre's production of
his play 'Patterns.' The story of Fred Staples, a young, ambitious executive
lured from Cincinnati to New York, 'Patterns' portrayed his struggle to
maintain his sensitivity amid the ruthless white-collar backstabbing of the
corporate world. In the end, when Staples - in whom there was much of Serling -
decides to try to become the company's conscience rather than quit, his wife
reminds him: 'There's always Cincinnati.'
The Emmy that Serling won
for 'Patterns' was his first of six, joined a year later by one for 'Requiem' -
the poignant tale of a fighter on the decline - after it aired on Playhouse 90.
'The Twilight Zone' would later earn Serling two more Emmys, with the other two
awards coming for other dramas.
But while he was now
earning a six-figure salary and was one of the most sought-after writers in TV,
Serling already was tiring of jousting with censorious network executives and
sponsors, who wielded iron-fisted control over script content. In 'Requiem,'
for example, the line 'Got a match?' was changed because the sponsor was Ronson
lighters. And when Serling wrote a story patterned after an infamous murder of
a 14-year-old black child in Mississippi, the script was gutted.
For years, Serling had
mulled over notions for a science-fiction/fantasy series. Networks, however,
were wary of the idea of an anthology series in which there would be no
recurring characters save the narrator, Serling himself. Finally, though, CBS
signed onto a project that Serling - expanding on a time-travel fantasy that
had aired on WKRC's 'The Storm' - had entitled 'The Twilight Zone.'
The 18 million viewers who
tuned in on premiere night - Oct. 2, 1959 - heard Serling's distinctive voice
intoning what would become one of TV's most famous openings: '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 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.''
For the next five seasons,
Serling - using 'The Twilight Zone' as a video social conscience - blended
fantasy, parable and reality into compelling and often disquieting insights
into the human condition, lessons alternately delivered with humor or sobering
directness.
The search for one's
youth, man's infinite capacity for goodness and evil, nuclear-age nightmares,
the price that greed and guilt exact over time, urban alienation, the sometimes
blurry line between success and failure, and the tantalizing possibilities of
opening one's mind to the seemingly impossible - these and other subjects were
the recurring themes that Serling explored. The well-crafted stories were noted
for their intensely personal dialogue, with Serling's tautly written opening
and closing narrations serving as contextual bookends.
In 'Eye of the Beholder,'
Serling showed conventional beauty being treated as ugliness worthy of
banishment from society. An episode entitled 'Monsters are Due on Maple Street'
had a 'we-have-met-the-enemy-and-he-is-us' message; in it, a meteor races over
a typical Middle American street, prompting fears of an invasion from outer
space that, in the end, turns neighbor violently against neighbor.
In another episode, a man
given three wishes asks to be a leader who cannot be voted out of office, only
to become Hitler in the final hours in his Berlin bunker. And 'To Serve Man'
delivers one of the all-time classic punch lines in TV history: a book left
behind by aliens who promise to use their technology to aid mankind turns out
to be a cookbook, with humans as the main course.
Still regularly broadcast
in nearly every major city and the subject of occasional all-day marathons,
'The Twilight Zone' has become a multi-generational touchstone of the video
age, one that eclipsed anything Serling did in the remainder of his relatively
brief career.
During the early 1970s, he
was the host of 'Night Gallery,' a flawed clone of 'The Twilight Zone' that,
like most of his other post-'Zone' projects, met with limited critical and
commercial success. With his clout receding in Hollywood, Serling - burdened by
the strain of trying to live up to the promise of his early successes - also
taught at colleges and was reduced to being a commercial spokesman and a TV
game-show host.
A workaholic and
four-pack-a-day smoker for most of his life, Serling suffered a heart attack in
May 1975. Weeks later, he had a second attack, and on June 28, suffered a
third, fatal heart attack during open-heart surgery. He was only 50.
In his last major
interview shortly before his death, Serling said: 'I just want them to remember
that I was a writer a hundred years from now.'
His words echoed those of
a character in a 'Twilight Zone' episode who, eager to be recognized as the
world's best pool player, says: 'As long as they talk about you, you're not
really dead ... A legend doesn't die, just because the man dies.'
And in death, Serling
would achieve that measure of immortality, as the term 'twilight zone' entered
the vocabulary and the nostalgia surrounding the program transformed him into a
cultural icon.
For Serling, it's a closing scene worthy of his
finest work. It's also a part of life - and death - confined not only to The
Twilight Zone.
From - http://www.rodserlingDOTcom/CincyPost.htm
** **
0932
hours. The Cincinnati Post no longer exists except in the twilight zone of
memory of crisp, clean pages. What can I make of one small event catching hold
of another. Eventually such matters have a way of going nuclear and an idea
unfolds from nearly nothing; alas, but not today. Today is a memory and Autumn
in reflection.
Late
afternoon. You just completed Brothers Seven in 762 words. Earlier you had half a
ham and cheese sandwich with chips on the side and you both watched “Blue
Bloods” and “Revenge”. Yesterday you watched “Blacklist”, “CSI” and “NCIS New
Orleans”. Earlier in the week, “NCIS” and “NCIS LA” as well as “Person of
Interest”. Kim called this morning to mention that she announced to the Mason
Alumni Associations that her father has a new book out. You are rather
embarrassed by this and sent her an email to please not do it because it is not
her responsibility to help her dad promote his book. She just laughed and moved
on to what’s going on with her part time job. She was excited that she is now
on salary rather than working by the hour, that she has been on this part time
employment for a year already and likes to keep her feet wet in the workaday
world. Post. - Amorella
2127 hours. The simplest
explanation is old age. I forget lots of things. I always have, but I, as it
were, soldier on. Forgetting is not a big deal to me but noting this is
important. This is still an experiment in writing and it is notable that I do
not remember writing this, but I know better. I must have. Still, it is not
like my usual work.
2110
hours. I was curious as to what my top ten of all time postings are. Usually
they have been the same but below is a selection from Number Five [159 page
views]: blog posting 21 August 2012.
** **
From posting 21 August 2012:
All well and
good, boy, but we need to get cracking on the section transition. - Amorella
1730 hours. I have been working on a transition poem of sorts.
I want to say enough but not too much. It is difficult to pen down.
You have the wit to throw in a rather prickly pun so there's creative
energy. Copy what you have at present, in bold only. I will eliminate some
lines then you work with what's left. - Amorella
***
"What's
Left" (thought out of order)
Books in
their Bindings, Chapters In Four Section Limits
The Dead,
The Brothers, Grandma and Young Diplomat's Pouch
All Four are
Thought Balls on the Table Racking Up Points
In Grammar
and Reason and when Time's Out of Joint
Location,
Location is a stacked book in a Place
No need for
Distance when Nothing is Space
Merlyn's in
a Bind, Bound in a Soul Bounded Case
With No
Accounting for Tongue, No Accounting for Taste
Page turning
Page Racking Forward or Back,
Thought
Balls on the Table Pocketing Tracks
What the
Meaning, the Purpose in Ball Running Points
With Grammar
in Reason, and Time Out of Joint?
With Merlyn
Stuck Alone in a Thought Board Box
Only the
Free Mind of Merlyn Can Open the Lock
Of the
Dead and Brothers, Grandma and Pouch
Of the
Living, and Brothers, Grandma and Pouch
** **
2116
hours. What is weird is that I don’t remember writing this at all. It is like
someone else wrote it. This is very, very strange. I can follow this and it
makes only partial sense. Do I have a personality disorder here? That’s what it
feels like at present. Why would I use all these capitals? Thought balls? I use
‘billiard balls’ in reference to Merlyn’s thinking things out in the Dead
segments; but not thought balls. Who says thought balls? This is very weird
almost Twilight Zone stuff. This is as trolls and faery rings in my imagination
but not in my reason. In my reason I did not write this “What’s Left” but
obviously in reality I did. Very weird. I think I’m ready for bed.
Your concern is similar to when your
students showed you were writing your notes on the board in three different handwritings
back in the mid 1980’s. You had brain tests and various scans at the time but
there was no evidence of a personality disorder. What I see from in here is
lack of memory of the event. Now, the question I have is why? Post. – Amorella
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