A Reputation Is Wrought
In the winter of 1952, with wife Carol three months pregnant with the couple’s first daughter, Jodi, Serling quit WKRC. Scant months later, the Kraft Television Theater purchased his “Next of Kin,” examining the various ways in which families at different ends of the economic scale might react to receiving the military’s dreaded “missing in action” telegram—another weighty tale that confirmed Serling’s growing penchant for confronting difficult issues in his writing.
Prostitution and paranoia were both to raise their heads in his writing that year, but clearly, audiences were willing to be “entertained” by such topics—and television companies were happy to pay for them.
In July 1953, Serling’s continued, but still largely unrequited, love of science fiction writing finally found a home on Suspense, a long-running CBS drama serial into whose remit “Nightmare at Ground Zero” effortlessly slipped.
A year later, Westinghouse Summer Theatre purchased his “U.F.O.,” the incredibly entertaining, if viciously satirical, tale of a bored local newspaperman who amuses himself by dreaming up ever more spectacular local events—until the crowning glory arrives in the form of a real live flying saucer. Which, it turns out, isn’t real or alive, after all, but as a vehicle for exploring how society itself responds to, and maybe even wills into existence, its most spectacularly Fortean experiences, both the hoax and the show itself rank among the most foresighted investigations of their era.
Certainly Serling was sufficiently enthused by the response to the broadcast that he proposed an entire series dedicated to UFOs to CBS, albeit without much hope of success—the previous year, the same network had devoted a dozen weekly episodes to a science fiction series titled Out There, to little success. Sure enough, CBS rejected Serling’s overtures.
Home now was Westport, Connecticut, after Blanche Gaines recommended that Serling base himself someplace within easier reach of New York City than Cincinnati. Because New York City, she told him, was “where the action is.”
The move paid off almost immediately, with a return visit to Kraft Television Theater.
The series was one of NBC’s most established weekly drama anthologies, launched in May 1947 and recalled today as the vehicle that launched a slew of future stars to prominence: Hope Lange, James Dean, George C. Scott, Rod Steiger, Lee Remick, Anthony Perkins and many more all appeared in episodes; and on January 12, 1955, Elizabeth Montgomery, Joanna Roos, Jack Arthur and Victoria Ward were among the cast assembled to enact Rod Serling’s “Patterns.”
“Patterns” was based around the conflict that arises in a New York corporation when a newly hired executive, Fred Staples (played by Richard Kiley), and his mentor, Vice President Andy Sloane (Ed Begley), find themselves puppets in company president Walter Ramsey’s (Everett Sloane) plans to reorganize the hierarchy—by replacing a loyal veteran Sloane with an up-and-coming youngster.
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It was a hard-hitting story, one that was being played out in so many boardrooms at that time, as American business became ever more competitive, ever more vicious . . . the twenty-first-century hit Mad Men could well have been based in its entirety on “Patterns,” and it is not the only one.
At the time, however, “Patterns” was unique, not only in its choice of subject matter, but also in its treatment of the shifting relations and bitterness. Jack Gould, writing in the New York Times the following day, declared “[f]or sheer power of narrative, forcefulness of characterization and brilliant climax, Mr. Serling’s work is a creative triumph”; while the Saturday Review’s Robert Lewis Shayon was adamant. In all the years he had devoted to watching television, “I do not recall [ever] being so engaged by a drama, nor so stimulated to challenge the haunting conclusions of an hour’s entertainment.”
“Patterns” was broadcast live, as was the majority of television at that time. Technology was experimenting with what were called telerecordings, created by pointing a camera at a specially adapted TV screen, but the results were generally so poor that they were scarcely worth bothering with. Film and, later, videotape would ultimately offer the opportunity for broadcasts to be preserved, but this early on, it was rarely employed.
It was all a very far cry from today, when the viewer can call up almost any American television program from the past half century or more with just the push of a couple of buttons (or, at worst, a clunky box set full of silver discs). Generally, the audience had one opportunity, and one opportunity alone, to watch a show. If they missed it—as Rod and Carol Serling missed “Patterns” the night it was aired—they might never see it again.
“Patterns,” however, could not be allowed to disappear into the ether. So enthusiastic were the critics, so enraptured was the audience, and so loud were the cries of everyone who didn’t see the show, that one month later, the entire production was mounted again, cast and crew recalled to replay the show in what we might now refer to as a “repeat broadcast.”
Again, the response was enormous, and not only among the viewers. Hollywood was calling, demanding the movie rights to the hour-long play. And both Serling and his agent Gaines suddenly found themselves deluged by offers of work—so much so that there was no way Serling could physically keep up with it.
Heavyweight in a Forbidden Area
He delved into his archive, then, finally selling scripts that had been rejected on so many occasions before, and while a few dissenting voices did point out that the standard of Serling’s work had inexplicably declined since his emergence into the spotlight, it did not dent the demand for his work. He had, in the terminology of the time, “arrived.”
The New York Times declared, “Nothing in months has excited the television industry as much as the Kraft Television Theatre’s production of ‘Patterns,’ an original play by Rod Serling. The enthusiasm is justified. In writing, acting and direction, ‘Patterns’ will stand as one of the high points in the TV medium’s evolution. By comparison . . . the current motion picture . . . Executive Suite might be Babes in Toyland without a score. For sheer power of narrative, forcefulness of characterization and brilliant climax, Mr. Serling’s work is a creative triumph that can stand on its own.”
Yet such plaudits represented a double-edged sword. “Patterns” was so highly praised, so universally lauded, that nothing he could do in its aftermath seemed able to satisfy the critics. He had set the bar so high that nobody could ever leap over it every time. But the reviewers expected him to do so, regardless.
He was not complaining. No writer wants to cruise on old glories, and though the reviews sometimes stung, they just forced him to redouble his efforts. Nor was he perturbed by the sometimes less than glowing critical reception for some of the older scripts that he was now unleashing. He took every commission he was offered, and if some of the work that then went on air was of lesser quality than it could have been, whose fault was that? His for writing it? Or the broadcaster for accepting it?
Of course, the quality of Serling’s current work had not declined, as he proved when he was commissioned to script the first two episodes of CBS’s newly devised anthology series Playhouse 90—so titled because episodes stretched out over a full, movie-length ninety minutes, as opposed to the mere hour that had hitherto been the televisual norm.
Serling’s adaptation of novelist Pat Frank’s Forbidden Area debuted the series on October 4, 1956, a Cold War thriller featuring Soviet sleepers infiltrating American life, but mercifully devoid of the gung-ho patriotism and sermonizing that inflicted the usual investigations of the Red Menace’s designs on apple pie. Roles for Charlton Heston, singing heartthrob Tab Hunter, Vincent Price and Jackie Coogan indicated the anthology’s ambitions, but applause for this maiden effort was muted.
It was the story, the New York Times huffily sneered, “of two Russian spies [landing] on American shores. In no time at all the two Communists worm their way into the most security-conscious branch of the Strategic Air Command. In the pantry at the air base they put pressure bombs in coffee containers and nearly blow up most of America’s bombers. Even when the chef disappears, the S.A.C. doesn’t get wise.”
Neither was the tale dignified by any kind of climactic ending; just a succession of clichés that include the resignation of the Soviet government, the U.S. President choosing not to retaliate regardless, and the young lovers embracing. A “ridiculous denouement,” then, in a story that employed “every cliché in the book of elementary video dramaturgy.”
It was a rough start, but Playhouse 90 would survive. Besides, “Forbidden Area” was old news. Now, rehearsals were underway for episode two, Serling’s “Requiem for a Heavyweight.”
The heavyweight in question was Harlan “Mountain” McLintock (Jack Palance)—once regarded among boxing’s most brilliant up-and-comers, but now approaching the end of his career, the painfully obvious victim of what we now call dementia pugilistica, but which then was simply regarded as the occupational hazard of one too many blows to the head.
Already mentally addled, he was physically saddled with a manager, Maish (Keenan Wynn), who refused to let his man leave the ring . . . not while he could still make money by betting against his client in the ring. It turned out that Maish was heavily in debt to the mob, but it required some time, and a lot of evidence, before the so-loyal McLintock would break with his scheming manager and follow, instead, the advice of his friend Grace Carney (Kim Hunter), who was pushing for him to find a new career altogether—working with children.
Which, if that had been where we left the story, would have served up a most heartwarming ending to a particularly brutal tale. However, Serling had one final, lethal, twist in mind. Maish, far from mending his ways when his meal ticket walked away, simply went out and found another young boxer and commenced training him up as a replacement.
Broadcast on October 11, 1956, “Requiem for a Heavyweight” proved even more popular than “Patterns.”
“A play of overwhelming force and tenderness,” declared the New York Times; “an artistic triumph, [and] a searing, inspired indictment of the worst side of the prize-fight game, the greedy mortals who live off the flesh and blood of helpless youths who want to be champions. [Serling’s] play depicted the utter brutality and inhumanity of a so-called sport that can leave men in the wreckage of their own punch-drunk double talk.”
Neither was the Times a voice in the wilderness. “Requiem for a Heavyweight” enjoyed both a riotous critical and public reception, quickly followed by both a Peabody Award for the teleplay and Emmys for both Serling, as writer, and Ralph Nelson, as director. And, like “Patterns,” the story would be optioned by Hollywood. In 1962, director Nelson returned to the tale as it transitioned to the silver screen, with roles for Anthony Quinn, Julie Harris, Jackie Gleason, Mickey Rooney and a real-life boxer named Cassius Clay!
Keenan Wynn, Jack Palance and Ed Wynn in a scene from Serling’s legendary—and wildly acclaimed—Requiem for a Heavyweight.
CBS/Photofest
Cross-Country Voyager
In television terms, in 1956, New York City was “where the action is.” By fall 1957, that action had irrevocably crossed the country to Los Angeles, a consequence of the now industry-wide shift from live broadcasts to pretaped productions, while Serling put down further West Coast roots when he agreed to a nonexclusive four-year deal as a screenwriter for MGM.
It was clear that Hollywood was set to become a major player in Serling’s future career, even before his first movie under the arrangement, Saddle the Wind (“an intelligent little Western drama that remains interesting rather than walloping,” said the New York Times) went before the cameras.
The shift from television to movie writing (which of course would consume far more of his time later in life) was not difficult, although feature films would remain an occasional flirtation for now. Television was his live-in lover, and he gave it his full attention.