Twilight Zone Companion (62 page)

Rod Serlings Night Gallery, produced at Universal by Jack Laird, debuted during the 1970-71 season as a group of six episodes that rotated with three other series McCloud, The Psychiatrist, and San Francisco International under the umbrella title Four-in-One. Each episode consisted of several stories, interspersed with comedic vignettes all with a supernatural bent. As he had on Twilight Zone, Serling acted as host and major contributor. In 1971, the series aired on its own, opposite Mannix on CBS. In 1972, its final season, Night Gallery was cut from an hour to a half hour.

In agreeing to do Night Gallery, Serling made a sizeable error in judgment. From the outset, he had no intention of having anything to do with the production end of the series (in 1969 hed said, Theres not enough money in the world to take a guy over forty and make him go through that grind again that is, at least not me), but he did assume that the producers would defer to him in matters of policy, seeing as how the show was billed as Rod Serlings Night Gallery.

Such was not the case. Time and time again, the producers sacrificed quality for shock value. Night Gallery quickly became exactly what Serling had so desperately tried to avoid when he had rejected Tom Moores Witches, Warlocks, and Werewolves proposal five years earlier. On Twilight Zone I took the bows but I also took the brickbats, and properly, because when it was bad it was usually my fault, Serling said. But when it was bad on Gallery I had nothing to do with ityet my face was on it all the time …

For all its problems, Night Gallery did have its occasional successes. In The Dead Man, a chiller written and directed by Twilight Zones Douglas Heyes, a doctor (Carl Betz) fails to bring an experimental subject back from an induced state of rigor mortis only to discover, months later, the error in his methods a bit too late for the now decaying (but ambulatory) corpse. In Serlings horrifying little tale, The Doll, a British Empire officer (John Williams) must confront his young nieces particularly hideous and murderous doll. In Green Fingers, adapted by Serling from the short story by R. C. Cook, a strong-willed old woman (Elsa Lanchester), proud of her gardening abilities and determined not to sell her property to a conscienceless industrialist (Cameron Mitchell), has her fingers hacked off by a thug but manages to plant them in her garden before bleeding to deathwith terrifying results. In the end, Mitchell, thoroughly mad, his hair turned white, peers at the camera from out of the bushes and rasps, You know what grows from little old ladies fingers? … Little old ladies/ In The Caterpillar, an effective and disgusting piece adapted by Serling from Oscar Cooks short story Boomerang, a scoundrel (Laurence Harvey) plans to kill a beautiful womans husband by using an earwig an insect that will enter the mans ear and eat its way through his brain but falls afoul of his own scheme. The conclusion is particularly grisly, as the villain, after miraculously surviving the agonizing ordeal of having the earwig journey across his entire head, discovers that the insect, a female, has laid its eggs in his brain!

Without doubt, Night Gallery’s high point came with its two Emmy nominations, both for thoughtful, original pieces by Serling. In The Messiah of Mott Street, a nine-year-old boy seeks out the Messiah to aid his ailing, Jewish grandfather (Edward G. Robinson). In Theyre Tearing Down Tim Rileys Bar, a lonely widower (William Windom, in a brilliant performance), on the twenty-fifth anniversary of his association with a plastics firm, discovers the ghosts of his past beckoning to him from a vacant bar about to be demolished.

In particular, Theyre Tearing Down Tim Rileys Bar represents Serling at his best, writing with an insight and power the equal of anything he had done before. Interestingly, the episode forms a curious triad with two of Serlings previous works, each of which forcefully reflected an aspect of the authors personality at the time. In 1954, Serlingtwenty-nine and full of ambitionwrote Patterns, about a rising young executive facing a future full of challenges and success. In 1959, Serling, older, more thoughtful, crafted Walking Distance, in which a similar executive, having achieved a certain degree of success, is so overwhelmed with nostalgia that he attempts to escape into the past of his childhood. His past rejects him, but when he returns to the presentalbeit sadlyit is clear that he will survive. In 1970, Serlingforty-five, with his greatest triumphs fully a decade behind himset down Theyre Tearing Down Tim Rileys Bar. Here, the executive is a tired man on the way down, his only joys memories of times long gone. Of the ghosts calling to him from his past, he says, Theyre the best friends Ive got. I feel a lot more comfortable with themthan I do with all those warm, living flesh-and-blood bodies I ride up and down the elevators with! His is a life of unfulfilled expectations, eloquently described to a friendly cop in this manner:

I rate something better than I got. Where does it say that every morning of a mans life hes got to Indian-wrestle with every young contender off the sidewalk whos got an itch to climb up a rung? (Voice suddenly softer; smiles, cups

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policeman’s face in his hands) Hey, Flaherty … Flaherty … Ive put in my time. Understand? Ive paid my dues.

I shouldnt have to get hustled to death in the daytime … and die of loneliness every night. Thats not the dream. Thats not what its all about.

For this man, the present is one long gut-acheand the only hope for salvation lies in reclaiming the past. For a brief moment, this seems a possibility as the man finds himself at a ghostly re-creation of his 1945 homecoming (like Serling, he too was a paratrooper during the war). But as the demolition on the bar begins, the phantoms start to fade away. He pleads with them:

Wait a minute … Listen to me … I cant stay here. I dont have any place here. Im an antique … a has-been. I dont have any function here … I dont have any purpose. {Halts, holds out his hands, fists clenched) You leave me now and Im marooned! (Points toward window)

I cant survive out there! Pop? Tim? They stacked the deck that way. They fix it so you get elbowed off the earth! You just dont understand whats going on now!

The whole bloody world is coming apart at the seams.

And I cant hack it! I swear to God … I cant hack it!

The story is bleak but accurateand a long sight from a tale whose sole point is to jump out at you and yell, Boo! It does have a fairy tale kind of ending: although the ghosts disappear, the executives devoted secretary convinces his bosswho has just fired himto rehire him and also throw him a surprise party, demonstrating that the present is not the empty, terrible place it had seemed. However, this was not the original ending. William Windom recalls: They added a sweetener. The way it ended was just like it says in the script: Where Tim Rileys bar had stood there was now an empty lot. The construction workers are just putting away their equipment. And in the middle of this empty, rainswept square stands Randolph Lane, all by himself, the rain pouring down on him. They didnt have the guts to do it.

Unfortunately, those involved with Night Gallery didnt see things Serlings way. Over the course of its second year, the show was being consistently bested in the ratings by Mannix. Both NBC and Universal were determined to do something about thisby making the series more like its competition. They rejected scripts by Serling in favor of more conventional fright stories by other writers and embarked on a campaign to turn Night Gallery into (as Serling put it) Mannix in a cemetery.Serling protested vehementlyto no avail. When I complain, they pat me on the head, condescend and then hope Ill go away.

He summed it all up in a letter to Universal: I wanted a series with distinction, with episodes that said something; I have no interest in a series which is purely and uniquely suspenseful but totally uncommentative on anything.

In spite of his feelings, Serling was contractually bound; he remained the host of Night Gallery until its cancellation.

In spite of such disappointments, Serling was still witty, full of funand committed. Throughout the late sixties and early seventies he taught writing, both in Los Angeles and Ithaca, New York, and lectured at colleges across the country, coming out against the Vietnam War and generally speaking his mind on political issues.

He gave so much of himself to other people, says director Ralph Nelson. I met a woman who recalled that once a guest speaker dropped out at the last minute, and she called Rod and said, Tm desperate and I cant pay you anything. He said, Well, let me think it over and Ill call you back in thirty minutes.

He called her back in fifteen minutes and said, Ill be on the next plane.

In May, 1975, Serling was admitted to a hospital after experiencing a mild heart attack. One month later, he was re-admitted for a coronary bypass operation. Complications arose after ten hours of open-heart surgery, and he died on June 28, 1975, in Rochester, New York. In all, he had lived fifty years, six months and three days.

Most who had known him met the news of his death with shocked surprise. Rod was built like a rock, says director Buzz Kulik. Even as he got older, he was always very lean, very muscular. The shrapnel wound was thereit was visible, you knowbut if anyone had said, Who is your least likely candidate for a bad heart? it would have been him.

To those closest to him, it was not quite so unexpected. His death reminded me of an airplane crash, says Rods brother Bob, in the sense that there is never any single cause of a crash; its always a culmination, a combination of circumstances that build, each on top of the other, and climax in the accident. There was no single reason for Rods death. I think it started wdth heredity: he had a family history of arteriosclerosis from my dads side of the family, of high blood pressure from my mothers. The second adverse circumstance was his smoking four packs of cigarettes for God knows how many yearslike twenty, twenty-five years. This had to have an effect on him. Third was his personality. He was so dynamic, so volatile, so intense about everything thatalthough we dont know everything about the effects of personality on a heart attackI suppose he was just literally an accident going someplace to happen.

He was truly a gentleman and a gentle man, actor Don Gordon (The Four of Us Are Dying, The Self-improvment of Salvadore Ross) says of Serling. He was soft-spoken and very kind. He always had a smile, and it wasnt a fake smile eitherhe liked you. He was a terrific man. You miss somebody like that very much.

Memorial services for Serling were held on July 7, 1975. Part of producer Dick Bergs eulogy defined Serling in this way: He was eternally the new boy on the block trying to join our games. And he penetrated the circle by regaling us with those many fragments of his Jewish imagination … intellectual stories, fantastic stories, hilarious stories, stories of social content, even oneliners about mans lunacy. However, they were always seen through his prism, becoming never less than his stories. And because he came to us with love … seeking our love … we invariably let him tell us a story. And how much richer we are for it.

Gene Roddenberry, the creator and producer of Star Trek, said of Serling, The fact that Rod Serling was a uniquely talented writer with extraordinary imagination is not our real loss. These merely describe his tools and the level of his skill. Our loss is the man, the intelligence and the conscience who used these things for us. No one could know Serling, or view or read his work, without recognizing his deep affection for humanity, his sympathetically intense curiosity about us, and his determination to enlarge our horizons by giving us a better understanding of ourselves. He cared and, I suspect, perhaps too deeply too much of the time. He dreamed of much for us and demanded much of himself, perhaps more than was possible for either in this place and time. But it is that quality of dreams and demands which makes the ones like Rod Serling rare … and always irreplaceable.

In his last interview, several months before his death, Rod Serling said, I just want them to remember me a hundred years from now. I dont care that theyre not able to quote a single line that Ive written. But just that they can say, Oh, he was a writer. Thats sufficiently an honored position for me. To leave Serling on this note would be to do him a disservice, for as usual he had underestimated himself and his works.

A far more fitting statement could be found in something he said to a college audience in 1970. There is just one thing I would like on my headstone, he told them. A line that read only, He left friends. When Serling died, he had no way of estimating his friendsfor they numbered in the millions. With his passing, their number has not diminished.

EPILOGUE

On The Twilight Zone, there was an attempt to keep it literary, to keep it bright, to keep it good. No one in the show ever suggested at any time that something would be good enough although thats commonplace today in commercial television, just to do it good enough, what the hell. Quality doesnt count now, but quality counted in The Twilight Zone.

GEORGE CLAYTON JOHNSON

Even if I had done, say, six more Twilight Zone episodes that were of a lesser nature, still I had that much respect for that series that I couldnt feel anything but saying, Well, thats one of the things Ive done along the way that wasnt just junk.

CHARLES AIDMAN

in an interview given in 1972, Serling said, As I grow older, the urge to write gets less and less. Ive pretty much spewed out everything I have to say, none of which has been particularly monumental. Ive written articulate stuff, reasonably bright stuff over the years, but nothing that will stand the test of time. The good writinglike winehas to age well with the years and my stuff is momentarily adequate. As so many times before, his assessment was candid and hard. But fortunately, both for him and us, it is an opinion that time has proven wrong.

Today, The Twilight Zone is a perennial television favorite around the world. Serlings three Twilight Zone collections have over two and a half million copies in print; the Twilight Zone comic book over ten million. A rock version of the Twilight Zone theme climbed into Billboard’s Top Thirty. And since 1981, Rod Serlings Twilight Zone Magazine has been enjoying a broad national circulation, featuring articles about the series as well as short fiction by such authors as Stephen King, Peter Straub, Robert Silverberg and Joyce Carol Oates.