Rod Serling

Rod Serling of ‘Twilight Zone’ And ‘Night Gallery’ on TV Dies By Edward Hudson June 29, 1975 Rod Serling, the television writer, producer and narrator who became best known as host Of “The Twilight Zone” and “Night Gallery” series, and who won six Emmy awards, died yesterday at Strong Memorial Hospital in Rochester, N.Y., following complications after open‐heart surgery performed on Thursday. He was 50 years old. Mr. Serling was a largely self‐taught dramatist who sold radio and TV scripts while still in college and quickly became one of TV's most prolific and best known writers. He also did some screenwriting, among others, for “The Man,” a 1972 film based on the Irving Wallace novel, and was co‐author of “Planet of the Apes,” which came out in 1968. In addition to the Emmys, he was recipient of the Sylvania, Peabody and Christopher awards. Mr. Serling was the creator, executive producer and frequently the author of the “The Twilight Zone” presentations, which usually combined drama and science fiction and often involved an unexpected twist of plot and imaginative excursions in time and space. In recent years, in addition to writing for movies and TV, he had been spending increasing amounts of time teaching dramatic writing at Ithaca College in upstate New York. Mr. Serling, according to a close associate, was an insomniac who got some of his best ideas while lying awake in bed. An intense individual, he smoked three to four packs of cigarettes a day, it was said. He seldom touched a typewriter, preferring instead to dictate his scripts. Mr. Serling more than once took his own industry to task. In a speech last year to the Ithaca College School of Communications, he criticized the film and TV industries for “our mediocrity, our imitativeness, our commercialism and, all too frequently, our deadening and deadly lack of creativity and courage.” Tackling TV commercials, he asked: “How do you put on a meaningful drama or documentary that is adult, incisive, probing, when every 15 minutes the proceedings are interrupted by 12 dancing rabbits with toilet paper?” Mr. Serling's first Emmy winner. “Patterns,” a TV drama of high‐pressure business tactics and its effects on executives, appeared in 1955. Another Emmy winner, “Requiem for a Heavyweight,” soon followed. Both scripts were later to become screenplays. Many of Mr. Serling's works for TV appeared on such prestigious programs as “The Kraft Theater,” “Studio One,” “The United States Steel Flour” and the “Playhouse 90” series. In May, 1960, Jack Gould, then television critic of The New York Times, reviewing Mr. Serling's drama “In the Presence of Mine Enemies,” a story of the Warsaw ghetto, said that Mr. Serling and “Playhouse 90” were “perhaps the most consistently fruitful partnership in television theater...” Mr. Serling was a former national president of the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences. Born in Syracuse, N.Y., on Dec. 25, 1924, Mr. Serling later moved with his family to Binghamton, N.Y. He became an Army paratrooper during World War II as well as an amateur boxer—getting his nose broken in his first and last bout. Following the war, Mr. Serling entered Antioch College under the G.I. bill, majoring in English literature and drama. He took jobs at local radio stations under a work‐study program and began turning out scripts. By the time he graduated in 1950 he had sold scripts for both radio and TV. After college, Mr. Serling got a job with a Cincinnati TV station where he earned $60 a week as a continuity writer and produced scripts for locally shown dramas. He quit that job after a time to turn freelance. “Patterns” in 1955 brought Mr. Serling fame within his industry. Later, his script for “Requiem for a Heavyweight,” for “Playhouse 90,” brought him not only his second Emmy, but also the first Peabody Award ever bestowed on a writer. His other Emmy awards were for “A Town Has Turned to Dust” and as outstanding writer on his “Twilight Zone” series. Mr. Serling, who later formed his own production company in Hollywood to produce television shows, was for a while the angry young man of television. “There was a time when I wanted to reform television,” he told an interviewer in 1970. “Now I accept it for what it is. So long as I don't write beneath myself or pander my work, I'm not doing anyone a disservice.” Mr. Serling stopped crusading several years ago, and eventually left television except for occasional narration. He preferred to teach at Ithaca College and lecture at various universities. Surviving are his widow. Carolyn: two daughters, Nan and Mrs. Stephen Croyle of Ithaca, and a brother. Robert J. Serling of Potomac, Md., author of “The President's Plane Is Missing.”