CHRYSLER MEDALLION THEATRE, MOTOROLA TELEVISION HOUR, AND STUDIO ONE
One of Rod Serling’s more harrowing wartime experiences, his first combat jump, inspired a script that was produced on the largely forgotten Chrysler Medallion Theatre in December 1953. In early 1954, another obscure series, Motorola Television Hour, provided Serling with a platform for one of his most frequently dramatized preoccupations, the plight of the elderly, in “The Muldoon Matter.” And during this period, Serling wrote the first of what ultimately totaled six episodes of one of the most acclaimed dramatic anthologies of the era, Studio One.
CHRYSLER MEDALLION THEATRE
CBS
“Twenty-Four Men to a Plane”
December 19, 1953, 30 min.
Produced by Mort Abrahams; directed by Don Medford
Cast: Leslie Nielsen; Jackie Cooper
Synopsis:
On our metal seats
And our chutes strapped tight
And our boots on the riveted floor
The prop blast whines
The ponderous engines roar
Our jump suits wet
With our running sweat
As we think of the open door
’Cause us guys don’t land with the plane!
Lieutenant Frank Paulson and Captain Harvey Keeler have titled this “The Official Poem of the Society of Old Men Who Used to be Paratroopers, but Who Now Confine Their Jumping to the Top Rungs of Bar Stools.” It’s been nine years since the two of them served together during World War II, and lately, Harvey has been spending more time on bar stools than usual. He seems depressed, and Frank is concerned.
After escorting his intoxicated friend home from a bar and putting him to bed, Frank stays to talk with Harvey’s wife, Beth. On their coffee table is a book Beth has been reading, Twenty-Four Men to a Plane. It’s the posthumous memoir of their former divisional commander, General Anthony Hogan, who was killed in action. Beth says that Harvey’s depression began the day he read this book—specifically, a section that details an incident when the 599th Parachute Infantry Regiment jumped on Manila, Luzon, in the Philippine Islands. The jumpmaster of one plane during that mission, Captain Harvey Keeler, dropped his men prematurely. Twenty-four men landed in the middle of a Japanese patrol, and twenty-two were killed. Harvey and Frank landed in trees and survived. Hogan’s memoir characterizes the incident as “mistaken judgment on the part of the jumpmaster—or cowardice” and indicates that he had recommended an investigation. Hogan was killed in action shortly thereafter, however, and no investigation ever took place.
Frank remembers the incident, of course, but he and Harvey have never spoken about it. Beth wants it in the open—she wants her husband to deal with it. As it turns out, Harvey is going to have to deal with it. Motivated by the memoir, the adjutant general has started a long-overdue investigation. Harvey still has active duty reserve status, and the adjutant general is recommending that he face a court-martial. Frank and Harvey soon receive orders to appear in Washington for a hearing.
Flight Commander Anthony Rienti is the first witness to testify. According to Rienti, General Hogan’s note immediately after the incident was much more inflammatory than what was published in his memoir: “General Hogan dictated a note that said the premature dropping of these men was nothing more nor less than murder, and it smacked of sheer cowardice on the part of the officer involved.”
Frank Paulson is the next to take the stand. He admits that he saw no incoming artillery before the men dropped but refuses to say that Harvey’s action resulted from cowardice. When the prosecuting officer, Colonel Peters, demands that Paulson answer yes or no to the direct question of whether Keeler was a coward, Paulson again refuses: “I can’t answer in one sentence. Everything has a reason.” He then provides context for his friend’s action:
While the regiment was at a rest camp after the Leyte campaign, Captain Keeler volunteered for detached service with the 587th Combat Team. At the time of the Luzon operation, Captain Keeler had almost 150 days of constant combat. Captain Keeler was no more responsible for his actions that morning than a man is responsible for yelling when he has a finger cut off. Captain Keeler was a man whose nerves were completely shot. I could see it in his eyes. In that plane, he was a completely different man. I submit that every man—private or general—has a breaking point. Each reacts differently. Each has his own safety valve that releases tensions. In Captain Keeler’s case, this release of tension took the form of a bad command. But I would remind the Board that in subsequent action, Captain Keeler showed himself to be as brave an officer as any man in the line…. Captain Keeler was guilty of being a human being, and that’s all.
When it is his turn to testify, Captain Keeler admits to having been afraid at the time of the jump: “I was a coward. I killed twenty-two men.” He also claims to having blacked out the incident until he read Hogan’s book. A military doctor confirms that such a loss of memory is possible.
After deliberating, the court asks Keeler to enter the chambers to receive the verdict alone. “It doesn’t matter what happens,” he says, reassuring his wife. “I can live with myself now. I can look in the mirror and not feel a bit ashamed of the man looking back at me.” He leaves Beth and his best friend in the hearing room to wait for him. When he returns, he’s wearing a relieved smile. He embraces his wife, and the two of them exit along with Paulson.
Notes: “Twenty Four Men to a Plane” was inspired by Serling’s only combat jump, on Tagaytay Ridge, Luzon. “General Hogan” is a thinly disguised version of Serling’s commanding officer, Colonel Orin D. Haugen. Serling’s jump involved a similar set of circumstances, with much more fortunate results. Over Tagaytay Ridge, one jumpmaster jumped his men early, upsetting the timing of subsequent jumps and causing several waves of paratroopers to miss the drop zone. There were no fatalities, however.1
ABC
“The Muldoon Matter”
February 23, 1954, 60 min.
Produced by Herbert Brodkin; directed by Donald Richardson
Cast: Charles Ruggles; Kent Smith; Ed Begley; Patricia Barry; Frank McHugh; Jim Boles; Malcolm Broderick; Pud Flanagan; Richard Olsen; Christopher Walken (credited as Ronnie Walken)
Synopsis:
This is the incorporated village of Fairview. And this is the town square. That’s the church on the left. My name is Bob Stacey. I’m a doctor here in town. This is the night the story started. Only the main character isn’t even in the picture. No … at this moment nobody in town even knew that Mordecai Muldoon was alive. Nobody knew that off to the south of town, by the railroad track, he was having coffee with a pal….
That’s Muldoon—the old man with the coffee pot. Anyway, this is how it all started. On an Indian summer night.
Flashback: Two very old men, Muldoon and Chick, sit by railroad tracks outside the town of Fairview, waiting to jump a train to wherever it may take them. Muldoon has taken a liking to the quaint little town, though, and he’s reluctant to leave. He claims to be 104 years old, a Civil War veteran, and he’s had enough of the hobo’s life. “Ever see a dead tree that was still standing but ready to topple over because it didn’t have no roots in the earth? That’s us.” Chick disagrees. When the next freight pulls in, Chick jumps on alone.
And this was how Mordecai Muldoon came to our town. Unheralded … except to the familiar whistle of the 10:32 freight … and unseen by the town, except perhaps by the big oak near the square—for most of us were in the church for the weekly town meeting. It was an institution in the town—made up variously of singing, politics, homemade pies and good fellowship…. Anyway, we had finished the singing, the pies had been eaten, and that moment the good fellowship had given way to politics.
The pressing issue on the town’s agenda is what, if anything, to do about a rickety shack that a few kids have built on Horace Clowden’s land. The place is an eyesore, and they had no right to build it there, and Clowden wants it gone. Doc Stacey wonders if there’s a better solution than tearing it down. What if they fixed up the place?
Their debate is interrupted by an unkempt old man who wanders in and promptly offers to fix up the place if they’ll let him stay in it. Most of the townsfolk are reluctant, but when the old man reveals that he was an infantry captain during the Civil War, they agree to let him stay.
Muldoon heads out to the little shack and finds two kids using it as a fort and pretending to be soldiers. He captivates them with stories about his army days, and the three of them form a platoon, with Captain Muldoon in command. They go to work on the shack and turn it into a respectable little home, especially for a man who is used to sleeping on the floors of freight trains.
When things are good the months go by quickly. So it was in our town after Mordecai Muldoon came. There was the fall and winter, another spring and summer … and the same cycle all over again. And now it was spring. The old man had planted his roots and he’d planted them deeply. He’d become sort of a living legend in our town. The council voted him a monthly salary—in lieu of the one the government had somehow forgotten. And there was talk of a medal he’d won—and also never received. We all wanted to help the old man, and in some way repay him, for what he’d given and shown to us—from the gentle care with which he mended a young tree’s branch, to the simple devotion he showed to our children.
To repay Muldoon for his military service and for his contributions to their town, the mayor of Fairview has written to Washington to request official recognition of Muldoon’s service, and the town hopes to surprise Muldoon with a ceremony at the upcoming town fair. The reply the mayor receives, however, can be summed up in one shocking word: fraud.
Confronted with his lie, Muldoon admits that he’s not 104 years old—he’s 84. He hadn’t even been born when the Civil War ended. He made up the story to make himself seem important, to make up for a lifetime that had added up to nothing at all, with nothing to be proud of. Muldoon leaves them to debate his fate. He returns to his “platoon” and requests that they court-martial him for his crimes.
While some of the townsfolk call for Muldoon to be charged with fraud, Doc Stacey is the voice of reason.
Maybe we should be the ones being judged—not doing the judging. Here we offer friendship and help to an old man because we think he’s a hero…. Would we have helped him if he’d come to us and said, “I’m an old man tired of riding freight trains and I want to settle down here”? Then would we have helped him? No sir. He had to lie. He had to because it appears we accept only giants … only celebrities. Can’t we put our hearts out to just little people who ask us?
Doc Stacey finds Muldoon near the railroad tracks, waiting to jump a train out of town. The doctor convinces Muldoon to return to his home in Fairview, and the freight train whistles past with no extra passengers aboard.
STUDIO ONE
CBS
“The Strike”
June 7, 1954, 60 min.
Alternate titles/productions/publications:
1. Teleplay published in Vidal, Best Television Plays
2. Produced on Armchair Theatre (United Kingdom), February 14, 1960, as “Come In, Razor Red”
3. Rewritten and produced on Bob Hope Presents The Chrysler Theatre, May 22, 1964, as “The Command”
4. Produced on Lux Radio Theatre (Australia), December 2, 1955
5. Feature-length screenplay written by Rod Serling (working title, The Cold Day in Hell; later retitled Dawn Minus One), unproduced
Produced by Felix Jackson; directed by Franklin Schaffner
Cast: James Daly; Frank Marth; Roy Roberts; Bert Freed; William Leicester; Douglas Taylor; William Andrews; Wyatt Cooper; William Whitman
Synopsis: North Korea, January 1951. Major Gaylord commands more than five hundred soldiers holed up in a farmhouse on the banks of a river, surrounded by enemy and with virtually no escape route. With dozens of wounded and dying men, it looks increasingly likely that the troops will need to move out from their location even though it will be a virtual suicide mission. One day earlier, Gaylord ordered a platoon of twenty men to head out on patrol to ascertain the strength and exact location of the enemy. But they have not returned, and Gaylord’s men have been unable to reach them by radio. As the situation grows more desperate, Gaylord agonizes over his decision to send out those twenty men. Command orders them to move out the following morning, leaving behind the platoon, its fate unknown. Shortly after receiving these orders, however, the missing platoon reestablishes radio contact and communicates their position. Another message from Command follows: Air Force planes have spotted the enemy artillery and will provide cover simultaneous with the withdrawal of Gaylord’s men. They will need only Gaylord’s signal to begin bombing the enemy’s location … which is exactly the same as that of the platoon.
To some of his men, Gaylord’s dilemma is no dilemma at all: simple mathematics says it makes sense to sacrifice twenty men to save five hundred. But Gaylord sees nothing simple about ordering the deaths of twenty of his own men and refuses to give the signal. He attempts to resign his command and shift the responsibility to someone else. He ultimately accepts that it is his command to give—and it is the only command he can give. Knowing that the Air Force pilots could not have learned the enemy’s location without the information provided by the platoon, Gaylord accepts that these men will not die for nothing. “But deep inside my gut, I’m going to ache from this second on,” he says. He gives the signal, and his troops move out.
Notes: Several plays serve as touchstones along the arc of Rod Serling’s career. Some are thematic touchstones, notable as his first or most successful treatment of a given theme; some are significant in terms of their critical or popular success; and some demonstrate Serling’s development as a writer. “The Strike” is noteworthy for all of these reasons.
Both producer Felix Jackson and Florence Britton, Studio One’s story editor, considered this the best script Serling had written to date. In 1956, Gore Vidal included it in his collection of Best Television Plays, making it Serling’s first published teleplay.
A little over a year after its broadcast on Studio One, Serling began negotiations with United Artists to adapt “The Strike” into a feature film. The project became mired in a series of business and legal wranglings that included the establishment and folding of Serling’s production company (Rod Serling Productions) and the formation and dissolution of a business partnership between Serling and Harry Essex, who collaborated with Serling on initial drafts of the screenplay, and John Champion, who intended to produce the film. On July 30, 1956, after these issues had been resolved and Serling was again in sole control of the property, he wrote to Max Youngstein of United Artists, “I’m in the middle of the first draft screen version of The Strike. Quite immodestly I’ll state that I think it’s a power house and should make a corker of a movie…. I’ve opened it with an action sequence of a battalion, whipped, bearded, cold and scared to death as they ford a river in heavy retreat. I’d like this as a cold opening with the titles supered over after a few minutes of the establishing.”2 Due to the prior legal issues, he intended to retitle the film The Cold Day in Hell.
Major Gaylord (James Daly, left) weighs an impossible decision in “The Strike.”
The film was never produced. The initial television script, however, was produced on Armchair Theatre in the United Kingdom as “Come In, Razor Red,” and a rewritten version was produced on Bob Hope Presents The Chrysler Theatre as “The Command.”
“U.F.O.”
September 6, 1954, 60 min.
Produced by Alex March; directed by Mel Ferber
Cast: Parker Fennelly; Jack Warden; Dorothy Sands; Susan Steell; Harry Bellaver; Nicholas Joy; George Matthews
Synopsis: Mr. William A. Pinchers is editor of the Bradleyville Bugle, a semimonthly newspaper with a total circulation of eighty. The old man is also Bradleyville’s most enthusiastic cheerleader. He so desperately wants to bring national attention to his beloved but tiny hometown that he calls the city news desk regularly to claim that incredible events have taken place: the birth of a two-headed calf, the discovery of a singing rooster, and most frequently the landing of flying saucers. The city news desk is never fooled. But the old man who cried flying saucer suddenly has the means to back up his claim. During a severe storm, an actual flying saucer has landed in the middle of Pinchers’s farm. Soon enough, everyone in town has heard the news and eagerly waits to meet the visitor from space. The flying saucer turns out to be a movie prop, temporarily abandoned by the driver who had been transporting it after the storm forced him off the road. Pinchers fears that revealing the hoax will cause Bradleyville to shift “from anonymity to oblivion.” But the opposite happens. An army general visits Pinchers and lets him in on a secret: the US government has kept flying saucer sightings classified as a consequence of fears regarding the public response. Pinchers has inadvertently provided a test case, and Bradleyville’s level-headed reaction has convinced the government that people can be trusted with the truth. Bradleyville is going to be world famous!
After the general leaves, Pinchers gazes at the stars, amazed by this turn of events, and sees four UFOs blasting across the sky. And this time he has witnesses.
Notes: “U.F.O.” is often cited as one of Serling’s earliest forays into science fiction, which is inaccurate on two levels. Serling had already written in the genre several times, and “U.F.O.” contains no science fiction elements at all until the UFO sighting at the very end, and the science fiction aspect of this is negligible. Until then, “U.F.O.” is firmly grounded in familiar Serling territory: a man’s love for his hometown.
Serling’s oft-quoted sentiments about Binghamton and the popularity of The Twilight Zone’s “Walking Distance” might lead to the conclusion that he felt an unconditional and universal love for small towns. His scripts tell a more balanced story. While a small town can be a refuge from the stress that may accompany living or working in a big city, Serling just as often suggests that small towns can be narrow-minded, provincial, and just plain boring places to be.
In “U.F.O.,” William Pinchers loves his hometown even though, as he admits, the place is “about as progressive as a constipated mule.” In “Noon on Doomsday,” the unnamed town’s aversion to progress is presented in similar though far less comical terms. The New England town where a “strange old foreigner” is murdered—and his murderer is not only acquitted of the crime but lauded like a hero—is portrayed as an “inbred” place, “constitutionally incapable of accepting change,” where “the attitudes are cemented into the sidewalk.”
In “Herman Came by Bomber,” an American soldier serving overseas, Mike Barnaby, similarly characterizes his hometown of Bengston, Idaho, as “a little town that thinks little.” When he is discharged from military service and returns to Bengston with a German boy whom he plans to adopt, he assumes that his small-town neighbors will be unwilling to welcome a “child of the enemy.” In this case, the residents of Bengston prove Barnaby wrong, welcoming Herman and helping Barnaby legally adopt the boy.
Serling’s balanced presentation of small-town psychology can be directly addressed by a comparison between “U.F.O.” and Twilight Zone’s “The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.” In one, a small town responds to an apparent alien visitation with such good nature that the US government decides that there is no need to fear a public panic in such an event. In the other, Serling presents an exactly opposite reaction—the residents turn their fears on each other, and chaos ensues.
“The Man Who Caught the Ball at Coogan’s Bluff”
November 28, 1955, 60 min.
Produced by Felix Jackson; directed by Franklin Schaffner
Cast: Alan Young; Gisele MacKenzie; Henry Jones; Benny Baker; Horace Mc-Mahon; Jerry Stiller; Bob Delaney; John Gibson
Synopsis: George W. Abernathy is such a creature of habit that his wife, Alice, jokes that “his middle name is Status Quo.” For George, eating three eggs for breakfast instead of his usual two is a change in character drastic enough to prompt his wife to wonder about his health and to wonder how she married such a boring, uninspired man. Timid at home, timid at work, George allows his boss to berate him in front of his co-workers, even when he’s being blamed for someone else’s mistake. When his office is forced to close unexpectedly in the middle of the afternoon, disrupting his precious routine, he lets a co-worker talk him into attending a baseball game at the Polo Grounds. While seated in the outfield bleachers, George makes an incredible (and accidental) catch of a homerun ball. A sportscaster interviews him on radio after the game, gushing over “one of those catches usually reserved for a Willie Mays or a Duke Snider!” George is transformed by the experience. He suddenly has the confidence to greet his wife with passionate kisses and to stand up to the boss at work. But when he returns to the Polo Grounds the following day and gets hit on the head by a ball as he is trying to catch it, his confidence disappears just as quickly as it had appeared. Seeing that he has reverted to form, Alice welcomes home her “prodigal husband,” assuring him that she loves him for who he is and would never want him to change.
Exiting the subway after work the following day, George is inexplicably accosted by photographers and reporters. They don’t care about his catch at the Polo Grounds, though. They tell him that he has just become the fifty millionth passenger to ride the IRT Subway. In recognition, he’ll have his picture in the newspaper and be awarded two weeks’ vacation in Bermuda. And just like that, the confident George returns.
Rod Serling on …
BASEBALL:
“That’s the universal language, Captain. Baseball.”
—“On Thursday We Leave for Home,” The Twilight Zone
Rod Serling’s baseball-themed stories:
“Welcome Home, Lefty,” Lux Video Theatre
“Old MacDonald Had a Curve,” Kraft Theatre
“The Man Who Caught the Ball at Coogan’s Bluff,” Studio One
“O’Toole from Moscow,” Matinee Theatre
“The Mighty Casey,” The Twilight Zone
“An Odyssey, or Whatever You’d Call it, Concerning Baseball” (short story)
Notes: Alan Young, who became best known for playing Wilbur on Mr. Ed, stars as George Abernathy in this lighthearted and enjoyable comedy. Twilight Zone viewers will likely see similarities between Abernathy and the title character from a second season Twilight Zone episode, “Mr. Bevis.” Both are likable, unassuming, inoffensive men who ask nothing more than to be accepted for who they are, quirks and all. If Abernathy’s newfound confidence had been instilled by a guardian angel rather than a Carl Furillo home run, the stories would be almost interchangeable.