|
Rod Sterling (1924-1975)
Rod Serling (December 25, 1924-June 28, 1975), one of television’s most prolific writers, is best known for his science fiction television series, The Twilight Zone and co-writing Planet of the Apes. He believed that the role of the writer was to “menace the public conscience.” Throughout his life Serling used radio, television, and film as “vehicles of social criticism.
Serling not only write the Twilight Zone series, but he was also the face of it, serving as its on-screen narrator. The Twilight Zone ran until 1964 and garnered Serling an Emmy.
Serling spent his later career hosting Rod Serling's Night Gallery and teaching screenwriting at Ithaca College. Over the course of his career, Serling wrote an estimated 252 scripts and won a total of six Emmys.
Rod and his wife Carol were active members of the Unitarian Community Church of Santa Monica, California. The minister of the church was Ernest Pipes whose humanist preaching suited Serling’s outlook and with whom he corresponded on politics and the state of humanity.
Serling, whose work pace and four-pack-a-day cigarette habit alarmed even his 1960s Hollywood colleagues, died in 1975 at age 50 during open-heart surgery.
|
