ARMSTRONG CIRCLE THEATRE, HALLMARK HALL OF FAME, THE DOCTOR, AND KRAFT TELEVISION THEATRE
In December 1951, The Storm produced Rod Serling’s “Ward 8,” a dramatic examination of combat trauma and posttraumatic stress disorder set during the Korean War. In January 1953, the script earned first place and a one-thousand-dollar-prize in a scriptwriting contest sponsored by WTVN in Dayton, Ohio. In between, the story was produced as “The Sergeant” on Armstrong Circle Theatre.
ARMSTRONG CIRCLE THEATRE
NBC
“The Sergeant”
April 29, 1952, 30 min.
Alternate titles/productions/publications:
1. Produced on The Storm, December 18, 1951, as “Ward 8”
Produced by Hudson Faussett; directed by Garry Simpson
Story by Rod Serling; adapted by Roger Garis
Cast: Anthony Ross; Don Hanmer; Robert Brown; Tiger Andrews; Lloyd Knight; Stewart Pierce Brown; Audrey Lindley; Eugenia Rawls; Mike Ellis; Floyd Banis
Synopsis: In an army hospital in Kyoto, Japan, four soldiers are being treated for serious wounds suffered in combat: James Casey, Louis Brandano, Frances Cooper, and Oliver Brown. After dynamiting a bridge, their platoon’s commanding officer, Sergeant Thomas Peterson, inexplicably screamed, alerting the enemy to the platoon’s location. Casey, Brandano, Cooper, and Brown are the only known survivors of the resulting firefight. All of them blame the sergeant for the death of their fellow soldiers. “Why did he scream? What made him scream?” Each wants a simple answer to what seems a simple question. If the sergeant hadn’t been killed in action, any of them would now be happy to do the job. They soon get their chance.
Introduction to “The Sergeant” on Circle Theatre.
Peterson, alive after all, is brought into the ward with a head wound that will require surgery the following morning. The hospital staff, unaware of what had happened in combat, leaves Peterson alone with his fellow soldiers. They immediately begin tormenting Peterson with accusations of cowardice. Casey struggles out of bed and attempts to smother Peterson with a pillowcase but a doctor intervenes. Trying to justify their actions, the soldiers describe the incident in combat. The doctor responds by performing a surreptitious psychological demonstration in which he manipulates each man into acknowledging that he has fears. Yet when Sergeant Peterson experienced fear on the battlefield, the doctor points out, they labeled him a coward. He informs them of Peterson’s record of heroism, which includes a Silver Star for bravery. He tells them that Peterson had been in combat longer than any of the others and that it is possible that no specific, identifiable cause led him to scream; rather, it was simply the moment that his mind succumbed to the pressure of having been in combat for so long.
Shamed by the doctor’s explanation, the soldiers apologize and tell their sergeant that they will be pulling for him to make it through his surgery the following morning.
Notes: Blanche Gaines had warned Serling about the disadvantages of living in Cincinnati, and with “The Sergeant,” her warnings proved prophetic. For the show’s production on NBC’s Armstrong Circle Theatre, Serling’s award-winning script was revised by Roger Garis, who received credit for the retitled teleplay. Gaines described these revisions as “considerable” and took the opportunity to again encourage her client to leave Cincinnati: “This is one of the unfortunate things about a writer not being on the spot to make his own revisions and do his own rewrite—but there is nothing that can be done about that.” After the broadcast she reported that Dick McDonagh (who continued to be one of Serling’s biggest supporters) “thought your version was better and thought it ridiculous for them to give it to anyone else for rewrites.”1
Garis’s rewrite also cost Serling an extra payday and a potential publication. On July 15, 1953, William I. Kaufman offered to buy the script for publication in his anthology, Best Television Plays of the Year, but rescinded the offer because he would have needed to credit (and pay) Garis as well as Serling.
HALLMARK HALL OF FAME
NBC
Early television productions were sometimes derisively described as “radio with pictures.” No program may warrant this description more than this incarnation of Hallmark Hall of Fame. Those who are familiar with only modern Hallmark productions may find this suggestion surprising. This Hallmark series, which began in July 1952 under the title Hallmark Summer Theater, typically featured stories that were shot almost entirely in tight close-ups against black backdrops to obviate the need for set construction, and the stages rarely contained anything more elaborate than a table and a few chairs as props. The series was “devised and directed” by Albert McCleery, who had first employed this minimalist production style a few years earlier on the live anthology Cameo Theatre. Although this style garnered some critical acclaim at the time, it makes for difficult viewing today. McCleery went on to produce NBC’s Matinee Theater, for which Serling wrote two episodes (“The Cause,” a Reconstruction-era drama; and a lighthearted baseball-themed story, “O’Toole from Moscow”).
Serling wrote five scripts for this incarnation of the Hallmark Hall of Fame. (He also wrote a 1970 Hallmark production, “A Storm in Summer,” that featured much more advanced production values.) Three of these thirty-minute dramas were based on actual historical figures and could have aired untouched on the radio series Our America, for which Serling wrote while working at WLW.
“The Carlson Legend”
August 3, 1952, 30 min.
Alternate Titles/Productions/Publications:
1. Working title: “The Fortner Legend”
Devised and directed by Albert McCleery
Cast: Tod Andrews; Robert Bolger; Frank Daly; Charles Eggleston; Susann Shaw; Howard Smith; Calvin Thomas; Vincent Van Lynn
Synopsis: Meeting with the press before his first day of serving in his state’s legislature, John Carlson Jr. summarizes his platform by quoting his father, the legendarily ethical Congressman John Carlson Sr.: “To attain a public office is to accept the responsibility of that office: to serve honestly, govern cleanly, to legislate with thought.” To honor his father, Carlson proposes a bill that would make all state business, “from roads to the chlorine used in public swimming pools,” a matter of public record. He naively believes that the bill will pass easily. Instead, the idea is opposed even by members of his own party. In a smoke-filled room, Carlson’s political rivals meet to decide what to do about Carlson and his bill. “If they make state records public,” one says, “you and I and several of our worthy colleagues in the senate can start getting measured for striped shirts and sledgehammers!” They filibuster Carlson before he can introduce the bill on the senate floor. Undeterred, Carlson is considering ways to introduce his bill when one of his father’s staunchest supporters, Ballantine, pays a visit. One of the biggest contractors in the state, Ballantine shocks Carlson with the news that his father accepted de facto bribes in exchange for government construction contracts. If all state records are made public, his father’s good name will be among those ruined. Faced with this moral dilemma, Carlson again finds guidance in his father’s words: “Clean up all dirt, even if it’s on your own hands.” The following morning, Carlson successfully introduces his bill on the Senate floor.
Rod Serling on …
POLITICS:
“It hurts me that I’ve never been asked to run for public office, because I have all the proper qualifications. When I was eleven years old I had a tap dancing routine with a trained monkey. I swear to God, I used to entertain! Now, quite obviously as a result of the Tuesday election, and considering the nature of politics, though I may not have been asked—that monkey might make it yet.”
—November 11, 1966 (in response to the recent elections)
Rod Serling’s politically themed stories:
“Grady Everett for the People,” Stars over Hollywood
“The Carlson Legend,” Hallmark Hall of Fame
“The Arena,” Studio One
“The Worthy Opponent,” Center Stage
The Man (feature film)
“Certain Honorable Men,” Prudential’s On Stage
Notes: After Studio One aired Serling’s political drama, “The Arena,” on April 9, 1956, Jack Rosenstein of the Hollywood Reporter wrote, “Rod Serling must have had to blast his way through the cobwebs with a blowtorch to get to the old trunk from which he resurrected The Arena.”2 Rosenstein’s hyperbole may not have been far off the mark. Serling resurrected “The Arena” from “The Carlson Legend,” which had appeared four years earlier.
In both “The Arena” and “The Carlson Legend,” Serling’s protagonist is a freshman senator trying to live up to his legendary father’s reputation. In both, the father’s vaunted reputation is revealed to be not quite what it had seemed. And in both, the freshman senator faces a moral dilemma of whether to reveal politically damaging information in pursuit of what he believes to be a greater good. These similarities (and others) are superficial, however, and to further compare the two would be to do a disservice to “The Arena” (which has plenty of faults of its own). “The Carlson Legend” is, quite simply, badly written and embarrassingly clichéd. When reviewing “The Arena” for the Philadelphia News, Ernest Schier panned its portrayal of the political process as “childish.”3 If “The Arena’s” take on politics was childish, “The Carlson Legend’s” is infantile. It can be most generously considered a primitive first draft on which Serling would significantly (though perhaps not sufficiently) improve four years later.
“Horace Mann’s Miracle”
March 8, 1953, 30 min.
Alternate titles/productions/publications:
1. Working titles: “The Victory” and “Some Victory”
Devised and directed by Albert McCleery
Cast: Frank M. Thomas; Mona Bruns; Howard Freeman; Harry Antrim; Brandon Peters; John Kerr; Joseph Leberman; James Zernecke
Synopsis: Horace Mann, “father of the common school,” helps to found Antioch College on the principle of equal educational opportunity for all, “regardless of the way they worship their god, or which party’s ballot they choose to vote, the length of their ears, or the political affiliations of their great-great-grandfather on their mother’s side.” Accepting almost nothing in tuition, the school is perpetually in financial trouble until a wealthy benefactor steps in and saves the day. Assured that his dream will live on, Mann dies shortly after he addresses Antioch’s 1859 graduating class, telling them, “Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity.”
Notes: As early as 1947, Serling proposed a Horace Mann biographical story, “Father of the Common School,” to the radio series Cavalcade of America. That proposal was rejected, but Serling got another chance to write a love letter to the first president of his alma mater six years later.
Mann’s words, “Be ashamed to die until you have earned some victory for humanity,” were adopted as the school’s motto and repeated to every graduating class after his death. Many years later, Serling again used these words in The Twilight Zone’s “The Changing of the Guard,” which starred Donald Pleasence as a college professor who doubts that he has lived up to Mann’s credo and contemplates suicide.
THE DOCTOR
NBC
The Doctor was a half-hour series of psychological dramas produced by Marion Parsonnet. Parsonnet was best known for writing the screenplay for Gilda, starring Rita Hayworth, and spent most of his career as a screenwriter before a brief stint as a television producer. He was not a fan of Serling’s writing style and initially purchased two of Serling’s story ideas with the intent of having them adapted by other writers. He ultimately gave Serling the chance to do the revisions, and Serling ended up earning full teleplay credit on both.
The series starred Warner Anderson as the Doctor, who would generally appear at the beginning and end of each episode to comment on the story from the supposed point of view of a general practitioner. While Parsonnet was not a big fan of Serling’s style, Gaines was no fan of the series itself. After viewing Serling’s second contribution to the series, “Those Who Wait,” she wrote to Serling, “I just can’t help feeling that their productions are pretty bad and do very little to bring out the best of a script. Most of their actors are mediocre … and that dumb business first and last with the doctor just make[s] me sick. Of course you got good money for the scripts, but I don’t think their productions add much to a writer’s prestige.”4
The series was later syndicated under the title The Visitor.
“Those Who Wait”
October 19, 1952, 30 min.
Alternate titles/productions/publications:
1. Produced on The Storm, January 8, 1952
Produced by Marion Parsonnet; directed by Don Siegel
Cast: Mary Anderson; Bernadine Hayes
Synopsis: After an explosion in a coal mine has killed scores and survivors have been rescued, four men are unaccounted for. Learning that one of these men is dead, four wives nervously await further news about which one it is. To make the time bearable, they share stories about their husbands. Each reveals a surprise that she was waiting to share with him.
The first, Dolly, planned to tell her husband, Jim, that she is pregnant. Jim has wanted nothing more than to be a father, but Dolly’s doctor had told the couple that she was infertile. She has been waiting for the right time to give him the good news.
The second, Stella, explains that she and her husband, Joe, had been told that their son had been killed in action in Korea. But that morning, after Joe left for work, she received a telegram from the War Department saying that there had been a mistake and their son is alive.
The third, Midge, shares details about her rocky relationship with her husband, Bill, a former policeman who has been working as a coal miner until he can return to the police force. Midge confesses that she has harangued him over his failure to return to the force, never realizing that “he didn’t need a loudmouthed dame chirping at him morning and night. He needed a little encouragement, a couple kind words, some love.” She had planned to tell him that night that she was going to change her ways and start “being a wife instead of a judge.”
Before the fourth, Mrs. Grabowski, can begin her story, three men are rescued from the mineshaft. As the men reach the surface, it becomes clear that Mr. Grabowski has not survived. And what was his wife’s surprise? She had planned a retirement party for that night to celebrate his last day of working in the coal mines.
KRAFT TELEVISION THEATRE
NBC
From half-hour dramas written for Lux Video Theatre and Hallmark, Rod Serling graduated to writing one-hour scripts for the more prestigious (and better-paying) Kraft Television Theatre. Two of his first three scripts produced on the series were later expanded into episodes of The Twilight Zone, while the third constitutes an early draft of Playhouse 90’s “Requiem for a Heavyweight.”
“Next of Kin”
April 8, 1953, 60 min.
Alternate titles/productions/publications:
1. Act 2 recycled into “In Praise of Pip,” The Twilight Zone, September 27, 1963
2. Act Three recycled as “Strength of Steel,” Star Tonight, June 16, 1955
Directed by Stanley Quinn
Cast: James Daly; Joe Maross; Stuart Macintosh; Louise Holmes; Ann Hillary; Gene Lyons; Joe DeRita; Jack Arthur; Catherine Cosgriff; Jack Ewing; Robert Middleton; Frederic Tozere; Blair Davies; Patricia Ferris; Leona Powers
Synopsis: During the Korean War, a platoon narrowly avoids being led into an ambush, then discovers that three soldiers—Jerry Dennison, Tommy Phillips, and Bill Watnik—are unaccounted for. Their families will soon receive telegrams informing them that their sons are missing in action.
Meg Dennison had been married for one week before her husband, Jerry, shipped off for Korea. Since then, she’s been living with his parents and his brother, Paul, in a small college town, and she’s becoming restless. So restless, in fact, that when Paul returns home from the college where he teaches, she throws herself at him and tells him that she has fallen in love with him. When he rejects her, she suggests that they could be together if Jerry doesn’t make it home. On cue, a messenger arrives with a telegram addressed to her, bringing news from Korea.
The frequently drunk Max Phillips is a small-time bookie living in a shabby rooming house. His landlady wakes him at 8:00 at night, swearing that his room smells like a brewery. “One of these days,” he promises, “I’m gonna drink my last drink, accept my last bet, and I’m gonna meet my boy as he gets off the boat and tell him his old man wised up.” Mrs. Feeney has heard this story before. She doubts that he’ll ever make good on these promises, but she knows that Max has a good heart and that he has a sentimental side when it comes to his son, Tommy, who is serving in Korea. This sentimentality leads Max to forgive the gambling debt of a kid who reminds him of Tommy. “You can welsh on a bet,” he tells the kid, “but don’t be like me. Don’t welsh on your soul. Then you wind up hating what you see in the mirror.” Phillips’s boss, Moran, isn’t quite so sentimental. When Max shows up to deliver his gambling receipts and comes up short, Moran intends to take a pound of flesh to even things out. While he’s in Moran’s office, Max gets a phone call from his landlady, who reads him the telegram declaring that his son is missing in action. Dazed, Max looks out a window and sees a nearby carnival. “My kid used to love carnivals,” he says wistfully. “I’d take him every time there was one in town. My kid Tommy is missing in action, and you know something? I’m too dirty to grieve. I don’t have enough heart to produce tears.” Swayed partially by Max’s plight (but mostly by Max’s switchblade), Moran lets Max leave without punishment—for now.
Rudy Watnik is a wealthy man. After spending thirty years shoveling coal in a steel mill, he now owns the mill. But he wonders what his money is truly worth if it can’t keep his son, Bill, out of harm’s way. Bill is now in Korea, and all his father can do is brood and worry and feel miserable. Shortly before shipping out, his son married Martha, whom he had met in the town where he’d been stationed. Martha has now arrived to live with her new father-in-law, and he immediately characterizes her as a gold digger. He allows her to stay but warns her to steer clear of him. For weeks he treats her terribly, and she silently accepts his abuse. She becomes friendly with Watnik’s butler and maid, who cannot understand why she puts up with his mistreatment. She says that Mr. Watnik, not her, needs sympathy and understanding. But her tolerance can’t last forever. The old man tells her that he worked hard to ensure that his son could surround himself with a better class of people, “and now you come along and you’ll drag him back to what I got out of. You are closer to my kind, not his.” Fed up, Martha packs her bags and is ready to leave when the telegram arrives. Her devastation at the news it brings finally convinces Watnik that she truly loves his son and that she was never interested in his money. Watnik asks her to stay and keep vigil with him for Bill’s safe return.
Back in Korea, the platoon’s commander receives good news: all three soldiers have returned safe. All three families will soon receive new telegrams bringing much happier news.
Notes: “Next of Kin” was Serling’s first sixty-minute teleplay to be produced and his first contribution to the series that helped to make him a star less than two years later. It also generated his first one-thousand-dollar payday. According to Serling, he got the idea for the story when
I read in the newspaper about three men from the Greater Cincinnati area who were missing in action. The account mentioned names, addresses, names of parents. One guy was from the Bottoms, one from a ritzy section of town, the third from some nondescript suburb. I got to thinking. How does each family react? Is it universal emotion or does each family react according to its economic station? In my play, three different types of families receive “missing in action” telegrams from the War Department.5
Fans of The Twilight Zone will likely find the second act of “Next of Kin” familiar. “In Praise of Pip,” a fifth-season Twilight Zone episode that starred Jack Klugman and Billy Mumy, is a largely untouched recycling of this portion of the play. Virtually the only difference between the two is in their length—the later version continues where this version leaves off, following Max out of Moran’s office and into the Twilight Zone (where he meets a projection of his dying son, Pip). Along with the carnival motif and the names of Max’s landlady (Mrs. Feeney) and of the mob boss (Moran), Serling reused much of this play’s dialogue almost verbatim.
Serling also reused the third act of “Next of Kin,” turning it into Star Tonight’s “Strength of Steel” (May 16, 1955). Serling’s contract for that script explicitly acknowledged that it had been previously produced as part of “Next of Kin.”
“The Twilight Rounds”
May 27, 1953, 60 min.
Alternate titles/productions/publications:
1. Produced on The Storm, 1952
Cast: Frank Maxwell; Pat O’Malley; Barbara Baxley; Mike Kellin; Carlos Montalban; John Weeks; Tony Canzoneri
Synopsis:
Scotty Beckitt, contender for the middleweight championship. He was a good fighter, and I knew him very well.
Scotty Beckitt was a good fighter, but he developed two glaring weaknesses. The first was age, which crept upon him so gradually that he was unable to recognize it or accept its effects. The second, and more damaging, was his love for a former lounge singer, Marge, who saw him as nothing more than her chance to prove to the world that she has finally picked a winner. After his final fight, Scotty stands alone in the ring, gazing around the empty auditorium and remembering how he got here.
Flashback: Scotty has a fight scheduled against an opponent that he should easily beat. His manager, Googy, begs Scotty to make this his last fight, to get out before he becomes like Maxie, a brain-damaged pug who works at the gym, endlessly repeating play-by-play of the time he went the distance with Sugar Ray. Googy also begs Scotty to give up Marge: “In the ring you got guts enough for five guys, but with this dame you take a beating every second you live.” In Scotty’s dressing room, Googy insults Marge, and Scotty impulsively slugs him. Seeing this, Maxie rushes to Googy’s defense. Maxie has a brain embolism that could kill him if he gets hit in the head, so Scotty backs away, begging Maxie not to force a fight. Marge enters the dressing room and screams at Scotty to defend himself, and Scotty does as he’s told, flooring Maxie with one punch. Googy calls for an ambulance, and Maxie is brought to a hospital, where he dies a few hours later. The police buy the story that Max had only fallen and hit his head, so Scotty avoids criminal consequences, but Scotty and Googy’s relationship is now damaged beyond repair. Googy leaves the aging fighter to fend for himself.
Almost two years later, Scotty is scheduled to fight one of Googy’s up-and-coming fighters, Andy Pinella. Scotty asks his former manager to have Andy go easy on him. After all, he reasons, Andy will have plenty of time to make up for one loss, but this is Scotty’s last chance to be a contender. Googy says he’ll consider the request but instead tells Andy all about Scotty’s weaknesses, offering precise instructions on how to take Scotty apart in the ring. He tells Andy to take Scotty quick and to hurt him bad. Despite Andy’s inside information and his goal of an early knockout, Scotty manages to stay on his feet for eleven rounds. He is beaten so badly, however, that he will never fight again, which was Googy’s ultimate intention.
Googy visits Scotty in the locker room after the fight. “I once told you you could walk away and never feel ashamed of a single round you ever fought. That still goes.” Scotty returns to the ring and climbs over the ropes for one last look before finally saying good-bye.
The empty arena. The long rows and naked seats and the quiet that somehow seems so loud. These are the twilight rounds. This is the afterwards a fighter never thinks about when he’s young and when he’s fighting. Until one night after his last fight, the afterwards is now and the twilight rounds are there outside the ring by his corner, waiting for him. His name was Scotty Beckitt. He was a good fighter. And I knew him very well.
Notes: The trail to “Requiem for a Heavyweight” begins with Serling’s short story “The Good Right Hand,” written while in college (and from which Serling borrows the name “Googy”), proceeds directly to The Storm’s version of “The Twilight Rounds,” makes a short detour into the realm of baseball with Lux Theatre’s “Welcome Home, Lefty,” returns to this version of “The Twilight Rounds” (which is twice as long as its prior version on The Storm), and continues on to Ford Theatre’s “Garrity’s Sons,” which recycles much of “Twilight’s” dialogue and uses an almost identical climax.
Several elements migrated from “Twilight Rounds” all the way to “Requiem.” In “Twilight Rounds,” Scotty is so devoted to Googy partly because the manager wept after Scotty took a particularly bad beating in the ring. In “Requiem,” a big part of Mountain McClintock’s devotion to his manager, Maish, stems from the same experience. The punch-drunk Maxie morphed into the fighters who populate the graveyard bar in “Requiem,” continuously trading stories about their glory days in the ring. When Scotty punches Googy, he immediately regrets having done so, foreshadowing Mountain’s similar punch thrown at his trainer, Army.
And in both of these scripts, as well as all of Serling’s stories of this nature, there is the message that guts are more important than results. In such stories, Serling maintains that it is more admirable to be a fighter who finds the strength to stay on his feet while taking a beating than to be the fighter who has the strength to deal out that beating. Sylvester Stallone’s Rocky rode this premise to an Academy Award twenty-three years later.
Though it is primarily notable as a stepping-stone toward “Requiem,” “The Twilight Rounds” is an effective piece in its own right. In its performance, its primary weakness lies in the fact that Frank Maxwell, in the role of Scotty Beckitt, lacked the physique to convincingly portray a fighter, and attempts to hide this fact are somewhat distracting in several scenes. Scotty Beckitt spars in a full sweat suit while other fighters go shirtless. When Scotty is introduced in the ring, his robe covers most of his upper body. John Weeks, who played Andy Pinella, was a professional fighter making his first acting appearance, and when he and Maxwell square off, every shot seems to be framed to minimize the difference in their body types. Wisely, most of this fight scene is conveyed by showing Marge’s reactions as she listens to the radio broadcast, so the negative impact of the casting decisions is ultimately minimal.
One way that Serling constructed “Requiem for a Heavyweight” was by simply subtracting the aspects of “The Twilight Rounds” that don’t work. The overbearing, manipulative she devil character, while something of a Serling staple, strays toward cliché, so she is eliminated. The idea that the “hero” could even suggest that an opponent throw a fight and then redeem himself so quickly is difficult to accept, so it is gone. Maxie’s death is contrived and melodramatic, so it is cut. What remains is a pair of convincingly drawn characters (Scotty and Googy) who have a believable and emotionally effective relationship and a setting that Serling was already proving that he could dramatize with impressive authenticity. Combining these elements with Jack Palance, an actor who had no difficulty looking like a prizefighter, set a solid foundation for Serling’s masterwork.
“Old MacDonald Had a Curve”
August 5, 1953, 60 min.
Alternate titles/productions/publications:
1. Script published in Rod Serling, Patterns
2. Partially recycled into “The Mighty Casey,” Twilight Zone, June 17, 1960
Produced and directed by Harry Hermann
Cast: Olin Howlin; Jack Warden; Cameron Prud’Homme; Dan Morgan; Addison Powell; Bettie Gibson; Rex O’Malley; S. K. Hershewe; John Kullers; Robert McQuade; Ralph Longley; Victor Harrison; Gage Clarke; Owen Coll; Tom McElhany; Harry Sheppard
Synopsis: At the Carterville Home for the Aged, Maxwell “Lefty” MacDonald has alienated himself from the rest of the residents thanks to his incessant bragging about his days as a Major League pitcher. “I ain’t bragging just for them,” he admits. “I’m bragging a mite for myself. I gotta keep reminding myself that I was somebody once. I did have my name in the paper. I was famous. Don’t you see? I look in my scrapbook and I see Lefty MacDonald, pitcher. Then I look in the mirror and I see an old man.… I don’t wanna be one of the old men living in the past. I wanna be somebody today! I don’t wanna sit in a rocking chair dyin’ a little every day. Just one more time, I’d like to—I’d like to get cheered.”
MacDonald gets his wish, thanks to a freak accident that dislocates his left shoulder at a crazy angle, giving him the ability to throw unhittable curveballs. The Brooklyn Dodgers, in the midst of a terrible season and in desperate need of pitching, sign the sixty-seven-year-old to a Major League contract. After signing MacDonald, the Dodgers become reluctant to put him into a game, fearing that if the old man has to play the field, run the bases, or do anything more strenuous than throw curveballs, he just might collapse. The news of MacDonald’s unlikely signing boosts attendance, however, and the presence of the sincere old man in the Dodgers’ dugout has a positive effect on the team. The Dodgers begin to win games. To ensure that this is no publicity stunt, the baseball commissioner orders the Dodgers to pitch MacDonald or release him. When MacDonald finally takes the mound, he discovers that his shoulder has popped back into place, robbing him of the ability to throw his magical curveball. The Dodgers are forced to release him before he throws a single pitch.
AGING and OBSOLESCENCE:
MOUNTAIN
“What did I do wrong?”
MAISH
“You aged. That was the big trouble. You aged.”
MOUNTAIN
“What do you mean, Maish—I aged? Don’t everybody age?”
—“Requiem for a Heavyweight,” Playhouse 90
Rod Serling stories involving obsolescence:
“Welcome Home, Lefty,” Lux Video Theatre
“Old MacDonald Had a Curve,” Kraft Theatre
“Buffalo Bill Is Dead,” Studio One
“The Sixteen-Millimeter Shrine,” The Twilight Zone
“Walking Distance,” The Twilight Zone
“A Stop at Willoughby,” The Twilight Zone
“The Trade-Ins,” The Twilight Zone
“Changing of the Guard,” The Twilight Zone
“It’s Mental Work,” Chrysler Theatre
“A Slow Fade to Black,” Chrysler Theatre
“They’re Tearing Down Tim Riley’s Bar,” Night Gallery
“The Sad and Lonely Sundays,” The Oath
Embarrassed by his release, MacDonald is surprised to find that everyone at Carterville now sees him as a hero for having had the courage to pursue his dream. This moral victory satisfies MacDonald’s ennui—until he again dislocates his shoulder and phones manager Leo Durocher to ask for a chance to pitch for the New York Giants.
Notes: Serling included the script for “Old MacDonald” in his first book, Patterns, alongside what are perhaps his three finest plays, “Patterns,” “The Rack,” and “Requiem for a Heavyweight.” The fourth play in this collection was to be United States Steel Hour’s “Noon on Doomsday,” but Serling was unable to clear all the rights to include it. He decided instead to balance the collection’s weight with something lighthearted, but “Old MacDonald” was a poor choice for the job. In the book’s commentary, Serling praises the performances of the cast and the direction of Harry Hermann and contends that the teleplay offers “a terribly funny look at the great American pastime.” These comments may represent the only time that Serling, a notoriously harsh critic of his own work, praised a production that so clearly did not warrant it. The cast members (with the exception of Jack Warden as the acerbic manager, Mouth McGarry) play their roles with uniform insincerity (even considering the absurdly comedic nature of the material); Hermann’s direction does not help; and the material is painfully unfunny. Most detrimental, the limitations of early television proved insurmountable when attempting to create the illusion of a baseball field and its surroundings.
Several years later, Serling recycled elements of “Old MacDonald” into “The Mighty Casey,” a first-season episode of The Twilight Zone, with much more successful results. In “Casey,” Jack Warden reprises his role as McGarry, this time managing the fictional Hoboken Zephyrs. Two Zephyrs players, Monk and Chavez, share names with counterparts in “Old MacDonald,” and several lines of dialogue between McGarry and the team’s general manager are recycled verbatim from “Old MacDonald.” While the premise of “Old MacDonald” is almost fantastic enough to fit the Twilight Zone mold, “The Mighty Casey” goes the extra fantastic mile by making the titular pitcher (again a left-hander) a robot with the ability to throw not only unhittable curveballs but also fastballs so fast that they burn holes in catchers’ mitts and changeups so slow that batters swing two or three times before the ball reaches home plate.
“The Blues for Joey Menotti”
August 26, 1953, 60 min.
Alternate titles/productions/publications:
1. Produced on The Storm, March 7, 1952
Cast: Dan Morgan; Constance Ford; Robert F. Simon; Edward Binns; Dennis Harrison; Rica Martens; Caren Preiss
Synopsis:
This is Anshey’s Bar down on 4th Street near Washington Square. It’s a slow night in Anshey’s tonight.
No other piano player can play the blues as authentically as Joey Menotti can. “Some people aren’t built for smiles,” he explains. “Take away the music and I’d be a ghost. It’s the only way I know how to show emotions.” He’s too good to be playing a dive like Anshey’s, but he won’t even think about looking for a better gig in a nicer place. He’s staying at Anshey’s for one reason: this is where he met Francey Decker, and he’s waiting for her to again walk through the doorway.
For once in his life, he thought he had found a kindred spirit, someone who wouldn’t care that he’s an “ugly little runt.” Sad-eyed, beautiful, and usually drunk, Francey would sit next to him on his piano bench and say, “Make me sad, Joey.” And Joey would play her the blues. For months on end she came to Anshey’s to commiserate with Joey, usually after having been mistreated by her boyfriend, Horse. Francey and Joey’s relationship never moved beyond his piano bench, and when the commiserating was finished, it was Horse she would return to. But when Horse showed up at Anshey’s with another woman, flaunting his infidelity, Francey asked Joey to propose to her. He did so, in front of Horse. And this is all Francey wanted from him. While Joey was out planning their wedding, a repentant Horse returned with his own proposal for Francey, and Joey Menotti was left alone again with his piano.
Fast-forward one year. As Joey plays a nondescript song, his friend, Si, suggests that maybe Joey has been carrying his torch a little too long. Joey has a surprising response: “You think I still love her?” He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a gun. He’s been carrying it every day since she left. He’s not waiting for a chance to reconcile. He’s waiting for a chance at revenge.
Instead, Joey learns the meaning of the cliché that “the best revenge is living well.” When Francey finally shows up, she is a broken woman. She abandoned Horse a week after their marriage and demanded a divorce, and her unkempt appearance suggests that she has spent every day since in a drunken stupor. Her bloodshot eyes are sunk deep into her face, and her body appears emaciated. Her appearance is so shocking that Joey lowers his gun as soon as he gets a good look at her. She pleads for his forgiveness. She asks him to play her the blues. “Make me sad, Joey,” she begs. “You already are,” Joey answers. “You don’t need me anymore.”
He turns his back on her and returns to his piano, to again take solace in his music.
Because Joey Menotti took all the heartache and the sadness and discontent that flows like a sea down city streets, and he put ’em to music … and that’s why people came to Anshey’s. So they could hear the little guy’s music. The kind he always played. It was the Blues for Joey Menotti.
Notes: Rod Serling envisioned Francey Decker as a prostitute. On network television in 1953, however, this characterization had to be suggested rather than explicit, and these suggestions may be easily missed. Serling implies that Francey is a prostitute by having her be an unmarried woman drinking alcohol at a bar—a socially inappropriate practice at the time—and even more obliquely by having Joey mention how much makeup she wore on the day they first met. A more daring implication is suggested by the drug connotations of her boyfriend’s name, Horse.
However subtle these suggestions, “Joey Menotti” is a dark piece of work and daring television for its time. The sight of the “fallen” Francey Decker lying on a dirty bed in a grungy hotel room, smoking a cigarette, with dark patches around her eyes, is shocking. (She truly appears strung out, lending credence to the idea that she was addicted to Horse in more ways than one.) Joey’s revelation that he has been thinking of nothing but homicidal revenge for a year is a surprising (and dark) twist. And the fact that Joey ends up exactly where he started, lonely enough and sad enough to play the blues, is uncompromising. Serling took a risk in writing this script, and Kraft Theatre took a risk in producing it.
Trivia: Within ten years, Constance Ford went from playing an irresistible femme fatale in “Joey Menotti” to playing a woman who is mercilessly berated for her supposed lack of femininity in Twilight Zone’s “Uncle Simon” (November 15, 1963).
“A Long Time till Dawn”
November 11, 1953, 60 min.
Alternate titles/productions/publications:
1. Produced on Modern Romances in five installments, March 21–25, 1955
2. Produced on Lux Radio Theatre (Australia), October 9, 1955
Produced by Talent Associates; executive producer: David Susskind; directed by Richard Dunlop
Cast: James Dean; Naomi Riordan; Ted Osborn; Robert F. Simon; Rudolph Weiss; O. Tolbert-Hewitt; Pud Flanagan; Billy M. Greene; Robert Cass
Synopsis: “One minute he can be a gentle boy and the next minute a thug.” This is how Joe Harris’s own father describes him. More poetically, Case, a New York City police lieutenant, describes Joe as “violence with big blue eyes.” Released after serving six months in prison for robbery and assault, Joe finds that his wife, Barbie, has left him. Commiserating with Poppa Golden, a friendly old man who runs a delicatessen next door to his apartment, Joe says that he regrets dragging his wife to New York City and that he had planned for the two of them to return to their quiet hometown of Flemingsburg, New Jersey.
Poppa Golden has heard this story countless times. He knows that Joe would never have changed his ways and followed through with this plan. Poppa admits that he encouraged Barbie to leave Joe—and New York City—for her own good. Enraged, Joe beats the old man and flees. He pursues Barbie to Flemingsburg, where she is living with his father in the house in which Joe grew up. He convinces them that he’s ready to reform and settle down, but his violent nature is always there, barely beneath the surface. When Lieutenant Case arrives to question Joe about the assault on Golden, Joe’s father lies to provide his son with an alibi. Shortly thereafter, Golden dies from his injuries, and Case returns to arrest Joe for murder.
Any chance Joe might have had to recapture his lost innocence is gone. He retreats to his boyhood bedroom with a gun. Lying on his bed, the room exactly the way he’d left it so many years earlier, he becomes delusional. When Case calls for him to surrender, he imagines he is hearing a childhood friend calling him to come outside to play ball. With the gun in his hand, he throws open the bedroom window and stares down at Case and the police. Because Joe is clearly delusional, armed, and dangerous, the police are forced to shoot him dead. His body tumbles from the second story, landing at the feet of his wife and father.
As Joe’s body is carried away, Lieutenant Case assures them that they won’t be the only ones mourning what has happened. “I just saw a twenty-three-year-old kid get shot to death,” he says. “I got a kid, too. Makes sense, does it?”
Notes: “A Long Time till Dawn” is one of Serling’s better early scripts, aided by a strong, authentic performance from James Dean in his first starring television role, two years before his big screen breakthrough in Rebel without a Cause.
“Jimmy Dean played the part in ‘A Long Time till Dawn’ brilliantly,” Serling later said. “I can’t imagine anyone playing that particular role better…. There was an excitement and an intensity about him that he transmitted viscerally to the television audience.”6
One memorable monologue, delivered by Ted Osborn as Joe Harris’s father, provides a believable history of Joe’s paranoia:
When he was a little boy I took him to a circus once. He liked the clowns—went crazy about the clowns. Well, when they finished everyone applauded. Except Joe. Joe wanted to know why the clowns went away. Was it because they knew that he was out there? Was it because they didn’t like him? Joe told me that the clowns were against him. And from then on, clowns were his enemy. And he was only nine years old.
“We were trying in those days to make a legitimate composite figure of the youth,” Serling said. “The movies were still portraying kids as bobby-soxers and cheerleaders, chewing gum and driving jalopies. I was only in my early twenties then and close enough to know that this picture didn’t bear any resemblance to reality.”7
Trivia: The character of Myron “Poppa” Golden was named after the script editor of Curtain Time, a radio series to which Serling consistently tried and failed to sell scripts during his college days. After Serling wrote to ask why the show had not bought any of his scripts, Golden sent Serling a particularly harsh reply:
You want to know why you have failed to sell a script to CURTAIN TIME, and, frankly, I hate to tell you why.
For one thing, I don’t agree that, as you put it, “the humor is there.” As I see it, the humor is generally quite feeble. Nor do I feel that “the novelty of approach seems to ring a few bells.” I can’t, of course recall your other scripts now, but “Cupid at Left Half” is, with only a few deviations, practically the same script that comes to me from various hands every fall. It appears to be a standard plot that writers somehow or other manage to pluck out of the public domain.
Most important, however, is the fact that this particular script lacks a professional quality: the dialog is spotty, the plot is loose, and the whole thing lacks verisimilitude.8
Over time, Serling apparently exaggerated the harshness of this letter in his memory. In 1975, he told a class at Sherwood Oaks Experimental College that Golden had written, “I note that the scripts you’ve sent to us have a return address of Antioch College. Might I recommend that if you are studying writing, forget it?” Said Serling, “You get a thing like this from Myron Golden and it’s put your head in the oven time.”9
In having Joe Harris kick Myron Golden to death, Serling seems to have gotten the last word.
