I've written for magazines, I've written books, I've got a play at the moment I'm trying to sell.
But The Waltons will be on my tombstone.
And I am still a professional writer. I go to my office every day, I keep bankers' hours, I stop after Christmas, about my new red wagon, my new blue sweater, and pulling a family of pup
pies around in this new wagon, and the poem was called "My Dog Jack." My mother sent it to the Richmond Times Dispatch children's page, and they published it. So, at six years old I discovered the joys of being a published author, and also, that imagination is about 9 5
percent o f the art o f writing and 5 percent is talent, because I did not have a new wagon and I did not have a new blue sweater, nor did we have any puppies. I didn't sell anything else until I was about 2 3 . I wrote some when I was a teenager, but I didn't know what I was doing. I kept a journal, but I didn't think of writing until I was in the army. I tried some
short stories in college, but I was stationed in Paris during and after WWII, and I began writ
ing seriously there.
So if your tombstone will refer to The Waltons as one of the most memorable pieces, as it were, what is your favorite thing you've ever written?
Maybe if The Waltons is first on my tombstone, right under it we can put The Twilight Zone.
Because those were original pieces. Each one that I did, it was not an adaptation, it was total
ly my work, it was done when I was a much younger writer. Maybe more apt to be a little energetic, a little more in possession of the word, a little more in charge of my talent as a writer during those years, which was in the ' 50S.
And so I'm quite proud of The Twilight Zone.
Speaking of The Twilight Zone, what was your first impression of Rod Serling?
My first impression of Rod was in 1 949 when we met in New York. We were both there to
Pippa Scott and Brian Aherne during a nightclub scene in
"The Trouble With Templeton."
1 5 5
accept awards for scripts we had written for a radio show called Dr. Christian. And that night that we met, we were there to be on a broad
cast, and Rod had on sort of a zoot suit. He was already married to Carol. He was a highly energetic person, a person with a great deal of charisma. You noticed Rod. He was always a short, kind of, not a tall person. And like many people who are kind of short, he tends to over
come that. But Rod did it very successfully -you didn't think of him as a short man. He rose above being short. He was a likable person. He was warm. And I knew Rod in the context of a friend, not a close friend, because we for most of those years were business associates. But we were good friends.
I left a job in a radio television station in Cincinnati, Ohio. And when I left that job to write a book, I had been there long enough to make enough money to stop for a while. And Rod had just gotten out of Yellow Springs and came down and applied for the job that I vacated. And he got it. And so later in Holly
wood, when we would run into each other at parties and awards events, he would always introduce me as the man who gave him his first job. Which was kind of a nice thing to do.
And then when I came to Hollywood, he was the man who gave me my first job. So there were wheels within wheels.
Do you think that Rod used the show as a way to address ongoing social issues, disguise them in fic
tion so it would be more palatable for both the audience and the network?
I think Rod was very clever in the way he turned issues into entertainment. But they were not just social issues. I think he was also con
cerned with all aspects of life - he wrote scripts about death, people dealing with death.
He wrote scripts about people who liked to read. But also he strongly made statements about social injustice, and he was particularly
Director Buzz Kulik and Dean Jagger appear to be dis
cussing his role in "Static."
fond of bringing the Nazis to their knees. And often these scripts would have an anti-Nazi fla
vor. And bless him for doing that. And I wish he were still here, because I don't think Nazism is quite dead, as we would like to see it.
The show was already pretty successful by the time you joined it in the third season. How did you feel about participating in a show with that kind of background?
My feeling joining The Twilight Zone was, first of all, one of great gratitude, because I had been looking for work in Hollywood for quite a long time and desperately needed money. So I could finally pay the rent. But, of course, I felt a great sense of pride even to be associated with Rod. And not only with Rod, but the very distinguished writers that also shared the
writ-ing chores with him. They also were superior directors. If you see some of those scripts today, they may seem limited in use of sets and makeup, but imagination took over. They may not be as technically perfect as one would want, but the imagination and the spirit, the life - the life, above all - was there.
It all starts with story, and so many projects today don't have it, the words aren't there.
They may look great, but if the words aren't there, then the eye can forgive a lot, I think.
One of the things is that not only are the words not there, but the spirit that Rod was able to imbue in his writers in his directors. In his own deep belief in what he was doing. We all became imbued by his strength.
"The Hunt" was your first episode. How did you make that first sale?
Having met Rod briefly in 1 949, I had kept up with his career, even though he stayed in Cincinnati and I had gone to New York and to Hollywood. I knew what he was up to, and had watched The Twilight Zone. But it didn't occur to me for quite a long time after I moved to California and was so poverty-stricken, that I could write for the show. I thought of a couple of ideas and one became "The Hunt." The other became "A Piano in the House." I wrote outlines and sent them over to Rod. And he sent a note back saying, "These are nice ideas, but our stories are chosen by committee and I have turned them over to the committee. " So I thought it was a really nice brush-off, but I don't blame Rod. They must have been terrible stories and wrong for the show. better. Think what Will Gere would have done in that role. But in spite of limited acting, the story came across. And again, it combined a lot of my background: it had religious over
tones, and I was raised in a very religious home and made to go to church every Sunday.
It also had reverberated experiences going coon hunting when I was a boy. And a love of dogs, which was reflected in the story about the man who loves his dog. Maybe part of that story came from the fact that one night, my father, who loved his hunting dogs and kept a good many of them, had accidentally shot one of his dogs. And he looked and looked until dark and couldn't find it, and he still went back after dinner and looked for the dog again. And he finally found it and it was dead.
But I think the emotional reaction to seeing my father's love for that dog reverberated in the fact that I wrote about a man who takes his dog to heaven.
What was the inspiration for your second episode,
"A Piano in the House"?
I don't remember specifically, but I am a pro
fessional writer, and I think of a story, you know, I make my living writing. So I suspect I sat down and said, "Now I've got to think of another story. " There was inspiration for "The Hunt." I can't recall any specific indication of inspiration for the second one. Except for ado
ration of Joan Hackett, the lady who played the wife. A gorgeous and talented and leg
endary lady who died much too young.
"Jess-Belle" was the only one-hour show you wrote for The Twilight Zone. Did the one-hour format give you opportunities that you didn't have in the half
hour form?
1 5 7
Barry Morse ( Fitzgerald Fortune in
example of the potential television has always had . "
I didn't think of it as giving me more opportu
nities. I did think that I could do a big story, something, not just an anecdote, because I think many of the half-hour shows were really kind of expanded anecdotes, or short, short stories. Whereas the hour episode was more akin to a novella or a long short story. It gives you more scope, or the opportunity to explore, not tangential things, but depth in a character, or to develop more interesting effects. Which who was a wonderful director, he was produc
ing and directing, called on a Friday and said,
"I just had a script shot out from under me and I was wondering if you happened to have an hour-long script that you could adapt to The Twilight Zone. " And I said, "No, I don't." And he said, " Gee, that's a shame, I
really need it - something by next Friday."
And I said, "Well, I'll write you an original by next Friday. " Again, arrogant, and just con
ceited and outrageous. And so Herb said,
"Can you do that? " And I said, "Sure, I'll write an act today. " And he said, "Well, you know, you write about those folks back home, and homespun down-to-earth stuff. Could you give me a story along those lines? " And I said, "Sure." Not knowing any better.
And so I thought of an idea over the week
end. It was loosely an idea that could easily have happened back in the Blue Ridge or the Appalachians. And having to do with a young woman who sells her soul to the devil for a young man's love. That's an old theme, and it's been explored a lot of times, but I didn't think that anyone had explored it in that particular background. And so I called Herb briefly on Sunday morning and told him what I wanted to do, and he said, "Go." And so I wrote an act each day and delivered it to him on Friday.
Well, he didn't have time to change a word, so that was to my advantage. Not that he would have. And the next day, he called and said he liked the script and was going to buy it. The next call to Herb was to say that I had written in a panther, a cougar, a wildcat, and that the penalty for Jess-Belle's selling her soul was that at midnight she would be turned into a wildcat.
And Herb said, "I'm up to my knees in wild
cats over here, and they are all very mean crea
tures and can't easily be trained." However, one. of the animal keepers brought in a black leopard instead of a wildcat. And I said I thought that would be wonderful, because this is The Twilight Zone and you can take those kinds of liberties. As it turned out, the black leopard was wonderful. And so is everybody on that show. From Anne Francis, who played Jess-Belle just beautifully, to James Best, who played the young man that she gave up her life for to love.
You've mentioned that sometimes you felt that actors haven't been able to capture the Southern spirit of the characters, but these two seem to be right on the mark.
They were absolutely wonderful. And I don't know that Anne or Jim had ever been in the south. It's been a recurring problem with me.
When I turned in my script for "The Home
coming," I wrote a two-page description of how to obtain Southern speech. But again, you see, I'm outrageously demanding of the people I work with.
Any fun stories or anecdotes that come to mind about the making of "Stopover in a Quiet Town"?
Laura Devon, James Best, and Anne Francis star in Earl Hamner Jr.'s folkish tale of black magic, "Jess·Belle."
One of the nice things about working for The Twilight Zone is that, having watched it prior to coming to Hollywood, I was aware of the work of a lot of people who I came actually to know, or to work with. So it was quite a pleas
ure doing The Twilight Zone to have Nancy Malone play one of the characters in
"Stopover in a Quiet Town," because I had admired Nancy's work for years on Naked City, which she did in New York. Wonderful actress, and she's still here in Hollywood.
159
Any favorite scenes or moments from the finished show?
I love the climax. Because I think I started with the climax of that show. I had that ending actress was not something I was proficient in, so I didn't really know what I was doing. I was just writing a person. And when Maggie McNamara came in, dragging furs behind her, I thought, "Yeah, she's right. " She was a very beautiful woman. And I thought she gave the quality that could have accounted for a woman of great glamour, and seeming not to have all that much substance at the same time, to give her life and to save the lives of people that she loved.
How did you feel about the casting on "You Drive"?
I thought the casting was wonderful. The gentle
man, whose name is Edward Andrews, was perfect in the part. He was a little bit overly fastidious; he put you off just a little bit to the degree you could hate him for running over a small kid. And then you could sympathize with the car - the car was the hero of the piece - when you could see it plotting against this bad man. I thought the production was marvelous. I like the many turns and twists of the attempts of the car to bring the man to jus
tice. Which was mostly my invention in the story, because I kept finding new devices to make the man attempt to rectify the bad thing he had done.
Maggie McNamara stars as actress Bunny Blake, in Hamner's underrated "Ring-a-Oing Girl."
"Black Leather Jackets" seems to be a precursor to biker films of the mid-to-Iate '60s.
Oh yes, they stole that idea from me. No, the only similarity I can find to real life of the guys in the leather jacket story were the fact that there were kids in my neighborhood - my son Scott, the Cooks' boy Steve, and the next-door neighbors the Hoblets' son Fred - all had minibikes. And they used to terrorize the neighborhood with their minibikes. There was an English lady, Pamela Goldstein, who lived next door who would get hoses out and throw water at them and shout, "Be gone!" As a matter of fact, I even call those characters Freddy, Scott, and Steve. And I understand a lot of people have felt that episode was rather faultily constructed, with a lot of holes in it.
But still I had the fun of naming the characters after my son and his friends. I don't think they were especially pleased about it.
"The Bewitchin' Pool" paints a fairly sad picture of the growing phenomenon of divorce. Were there any personal stories that went into that, or just the gen
eral sense that that was an increasing social factor?
I guess I was raised in a very religious family. I had gone to church up until the army. And also I've had friends who've gone through very painful divorces, and I've seen what happened to the children. And I suppose that finally bub
bled over into a story that said children suffer in a divorce. It's certainly not some earthshak
ing revelation, but I must have felt strongly enough about it that I dreamed up that story.
And also, it reflected a certain comfort and love that women can give. And in creating the old lady who was able to comfort the children, I was able to balance the young couple who were incapable of giving love. I guess unconsciously I try to create a balance to the good and the bad, because my philosophy of life, if you could call it that, is that there is a balance of good and evil. And I always feel that I am one with all of humanity, so that there's good and evil in me
because it exists within, both of those things Edward Andrews stars in Hamner's hit-and-run episode,
exist within me. So endeth the lesson. "You Drive."
Mary Badham, who played Sport, was nominated for an Oscar for To Kill a Mockingbird. Did you feel that the kids, and she in particular, captured what you were looking for?
Yes, yes, yes. She was marvelous. I'm honored even to be associated in any way, even by that link, with To Kill a Mockingbird, which I think is the great American novel. And I felt especially drawn toward that work because Harper Lee wrote a beautiful recommenda
tion for one of my books, which was reprint
ed on the book jacket, which I think account
ed for it becoming a best-seller. The letter of recommendation was better than the book.
Did you watch much beyond the shows you were involved with?
Oh, absolutely. I was a regular Twilight Zone fan. And I watched every episode.
How would you like Rod to be remembered?
I think, as the father to The Twilight Zone, a remarkable achievement in an industry that is classic - classic being a work that has lasting message and expression and achievement.
Toward the end of his life was a most heart
breaking experience for me, because I had heard on the radio that he had had a heart attack, that he was ill. And I did one of those things I wish we could all learn not to do, which was that every day I'd say, "I'll call Rod tomorrow, I'll call Rod tomorrow. " And then I remember - I think it was a Saturday night
1 6 1
- the news came over the radio that he had died. And it was a horrible feeling that I had not called him to wish him well. And to thank him for what he had meant in my life.
What makes a good Twilight Zone episode?
I think this is something those people who did the second version never knew. The Twilight
I think this is something those people who did the second version never knew. The Twilight