Me and Rod Serling - Enter The Twilight Zone

Rod Serling

Witness one Rod Serling – Standing alone, flesh, blood, muscle and mind. A frustrated actor turned writer, he stands forever in the nightmare of his own creation, pressed into service in the role of narrator for a weekly television drama – The Twilight Zone.

For those who watched and listened, he showed how thin a line separates that which we assume to be real and that which is a product of our own minds.

There is that hauntingly repetitious four-beat score that opens the show, as Serling, dressed conservatively in dark suit and tie, steps out of the shadows and stands in the starry night. With his hands clasped in front of him, he says in his distinctive voice, talking out of the side of his mouth:

“There is a fifth dimension beyond that which is known to man. It is a dimension as vast as space and timeless as infinity. It is the middle ground between light and shadow, between the pit of man’s fears and the summit of his knowledge. This is the dimension of imagination. It is also an area we call the Twilight Zone.”

Marc Scott Zicree, in his book The Twilight Zone Companion (Bantam, 1982) tells us that the original music for the show was composed by Bernard Herman, who also did such classic film scores as Citizen Kane, Psycho and The Day The Earth Stood Still. Zicree describes it as, “a subtle and lonely piece scored for strings, harp, flute and brass,” but that was replaced after on season “by the more familiar rhythmic theme by French avant-guarde composer Marius Consant.”

As for the name of the show, Serling said, “I thought I’d made it up, but I’ve since heard that there is an Air Force term relating to a moment when a plane is coming down on approach and the pilot cannot see the horizon, it’s called the twilight zone, but it’s an obscure term which I had not heard before.”

Since then the lexicon should show that the CIA psychologists used the term to denote the state of mind of subjects to whom they administered LSD.

But from now on the term “Twilight Zone” will forever be associated with Serling, who conceived the idea for the TV show and wrote many if not most of the scripts. He made the show unique, parlaying an award wining TV drama into the half-hour weekly program that didn’t have the continuity that plots and characters give sit-coms and soap operas.

When word got out that the show would be scary, Serling rejected the advances of agents representing various monster and robot actors who monopolized other sci-fi shows, politely telling them he had something else “in mind.”

And indeed, the Twilight Zone would stimulate endless nightmares, portraying ordinary people in frightening predicaments. But it made people think, and come back for more.

Serling’s contract only called for him to write 80% of the shows, and for Orson Wells to do the narration, but when Orson Wells required more money than they were allocated, and others just didn’t seem right, Serling volunteered to do the narration himself. While it turned out to be the most familiar and endearing part of the series, it was also Serling’s own personal nightmare, as he had stage fright.

The producers and director were at first skeptical of Serling himself doing the opening dialog, but then, as Serling put it, “They looked at me and said, ‘Hell, at least he’s articulate and speaks English, so let’s use him.’ Only my laundress knows how frightened I was.”

According to Zicree, “Serling had more problems adjusting to his on screen role than just stumbling over the occasional word.”

Director Lamont Johnson said, “Rod was a very nervous man before the camera. When he had to do lead in time he would go through absolute hell. He would sweat and sputter and go pale. He was terribly ill at ease in front of a camera.”

Like all successful TV programs, they last only as long as the scripts maintain a certain quality, and writing is what Serling did best.

Born Rodman Edward Serling on Christmas day 1924 in Syracuse, New York, Serling was the second son of Ester and Samuel Serling, his father a wholesale meat dealer.

Popular, outspoken and confident, Serling read pulp paperback novels and mimicked movie actors as a kid. He went in for dramatics in high school, and served as a paratrooper in the Philippines during World War II. After the service he attended Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio, and started writing radio scripts and bad poetry.

His wife Carol, who published a Twilight Zone magazine that featured original short fiction, recalls that Rod’s writing habits got him up at dawn. After grabbing a cup of coffee, he would “dictate his scripts into a tape machine.” Often, if the weather was nice, he’d take the machine outside with him and sit by the pool.”

One friend noted, “He is the only person I knew who could get a tan and make money at the same time.”

After five seasons of the Twilight Zone, Serling hosted another TV weekly, The Night Gallery, which also developed short story themes.

Then, years after Serling’s death, they made The Twilight Zone movie, which adapted a few of the original shows to film. It partially succeeded, but the death of actor Vic Morrow and two children in its making put a stigma on the production.

While Serling wrote most of the Twilight Zone TV segments, only “It’s a Grand Life,” about a spoiled boy with supernatural powers, was written by Serling that is included in the film. “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet,” which originally stared William Shatner, was written by Richard Matheson, and first published in the Anthology “Alone By Night” (Ballentine, 1961), while “Kick the Can” was written by George Clayton Johnson.

Johnson once said, “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 that something would be good enough – although that’s common today in commercial television. Just to do it good enough. Quality control counted in the Twilight Zone.”

In his last published interview several months before his death, Serling said, “I just want them to remember me a hundred years from now. I don’t care that they’re not able to quote a single line that I’ve written. But just that they can say, ‘Oh, he was a writer,’ That’s sufficiently an honored position for me.”

In May, 1975, Serling suffered a mild heart attack while scheduled to give a lecture at a college in upstate New York, and had to have a coronary bypass operation.

When I read in the news papers that he was in the hospital, I sent him a small note, mentioning that I too had attended classes at Antioch College while a student at the University of Dayton, Ohio, and included a poem by William Bulter Yeats, from Supernatural Songs – The Four Ages of Man.

“He with body waged a fight, but body won, it walks upright.
Then he struggled with the heart, innocence and peace depart.
Then he struggled with the mind, his proud heart he left behind.
Now his war on God begins; at stroke of midnight, God shall win.”

A few days later, on June 28, 1975, after ten hours of open heart surgery, complications arose and Rod Serling died. I heard about it on television at home in Ocean City, and wondered if he ever got my note.

The next day I went out on the porch and took the mail from the mail box and was surprised to see one postmarked from upstate New York. The corner of the envelope said it was from Rod Serling.

I could hear the music from the Twilight Zone as I opened the envelop – Da da, da da, da, da, da da....

It was brief and to the point, typewritten, apparently dictated and signed, thanking me for the poem, and saying that he was really worse off than what the newspapers had let it out to be, and that he wouldn’t be working on any projects for awhile.

And now he’s stuck in that middle ground between light and shadow, and is remembered not as a writer, but as our host in his personal nightmare – the Twilight Zone.
Now whenever anything strange or unexpected happens, we hear the faint strains of that music, and quickly turn around, half-expecting to see him standing there, in dark suit and tie, hands clasped in front of him, welcoming us.

Somers and Decatur

 

Richard Somers and Stephen Decatur board the USS United States as Midshipmen - 1798.

Somers and Decatur

On Memorial Day, when President Obama honored two US Marines, Lt. Travis Manion and Lt. Brendan Looney, who were roommates at Annapolis, became best friends, died in combat and are buried together at Arlington National Cemetery, it is reminiscent of two other young men who were best friends, enlisted in the Navy together and fought beside each other in battles against the Barbary pirates – Richard Somers and Stephen Decatur.

"Behind the Dream"

 

Clarence Jones' "Behind the Dream"

 

Clarence Jones takes notes behind Martin Luther King, Jr.


Clarence Jones, an influential civil rights lawyer and close aide and associate of Martin Luther King, Jr., has written a book “Behind the Dream,” the story of King’s famous March on Washington speech at Lincoln Memorial in the summer of 1963.

Besides preparing the notes for the speech, and ensuring it was copyrighted, Jones stood by King when the speech was delivered, and his book tells the story of how it all came about.

Now a scholar in residence at the MLK Center at Stanford University, Jones has recently done some radio interviews with BBC and National Public Radio in which he recounts some of what is in the book.

Most interesting is the background of Clarence Jones himself.

Born in Philadelphia, Jones’ parents were live-in domestic servants in an apparently well to do Philadelphia home, so young Jones was sent off to a Catholic boarding school where most of the students were orphans, educated by Irish nuns who Jones credits with teaching him how to write well.

One summer however, while visiting his parents at the summer home of their employer in Longport, at the Jersey Shore, he went for a bike ride, only to be intercepted by some young white boys who harassed him, calling him “nigger,” “honkey,” “boogaloo,” “monkey,” and things that he had never been confronted with before.

When his mother found him crying, and he told her why, she made him look in a mirror and asked what he saw – telling him “you are the most beautiful thing in God’s creation,” and such taunting no longer affected him as it did that day in Longport.

Having been educated so well by the Irish nuns, Jones attended Columbia University and after being drafted and given an undesirable discharge for refusing to sign an anti-Communist loyalty oath, he studied law and became a lawyer.

Moving to California, one day in 1960 Martin Luther King visited him at home, and tried to persuade him to assist him in defending against a trumped up tax evasion case, but Jones turned him down because his wife was pregnant and he didn’t want to move back east.

After being berated by his wife however, Jones attended the church service where King gave the sermon on the subject of the responsibilities of black professionals to assist other less fortunate blacks, after which Jones joined King’s legal team.

To hear the NPR interview with Clarence Jones, or read the transcript:

http://www.npr.org/2011/01/17/132905796/dream-speech-writer-jones-reflects-on-king-jr

Clarence Jones is now in residence at Stanford MLK Center:

http://mlk-kpp01.stanford.edu/index.php

Steel Pier Showplace of the Nation

 

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Steel Pier – Showplace of the Nation – Atlantic City by Steve Leibowitz (Down the Shore, 2009)

There’s a new and important book out on the history of the Steel Pier.

So many great things happened at the Steel Pier in Old Atlantic City you know there had to be a good book about it, and Steve Liebowitz has written it.

This new, coffee table book, chock with plenty of pictures, takes you back to the Glory Days of Atlantic City, a place that many people would prefer to go to than the glitzy casinos today.

As explained by Liebowitz, after the boardwalk lined the beach, they started extending it out over the ocean, creating piers, that competed with each other by offering entertainment rides and shows, but the Steel Pier stood out above the rest after Frank Gravatt bought it in 1925 and began to book vaudeville acts.

Gravatt was a local, who started out delivering newspapers and married a Somers, Flora Somers, from English Creek, and although uneducated, he had a savvy business sense. By the time he was through, Gravatt would own the local Buick dealership, Indian motorcycles franchise, the Golden Gate Motel, the Shelburne, Traymore and Lafayette Hotels, WFPG radio and was director of Chelsea Bank, as well as owning the Steel Pier. But he did it by working hard and even after successful he wasn’t above climbing a latter to replace a burnt out light bulb.

Besides Gravatt, the other big name behind the Steel Pier was Hamid, George Hamid, Sr. and George Hamid, Jr. who took over the Pier after the Storm of ’44, and brought the Showcase of the Nation into the modern era.

While Gravatt was an entrepreneur, Hamid was a showman, actually from a circus family from Lebanon, a troupe of tumblers and acrobats who traveled the world circuit with Buffalo Bill Cody.

The first time Hamid, Sr. came to Atlantic City he entertained on the beach for tips, doing acrobats and sleeping under the boardwalk.

After buying Million Dollar Pier and moving into John Young’s famous house #1 Atlantic Ocean, he worked with Gravatt at the Steel Pier but they had a falling out and after the Storm of ’44, Hamid had to get a straw buyer to purchase it because he didn’t think Gravatt would sell it to him at any price.

From Vaudeville to Hollywood, the diving horse to the diving bell and dolphins, from Big Bands to Rock & Roll, it’s all there, and while Liebowitz’s story is an easy read and full of historical tidbits, the pictures really make the book special. As Liebowitz notes, it wasn’t a matter of which photos to use, there were so many it was hard to pick the ones to leave out, and maybe someday they will put them all on a web site.

Although grandmom might be more interested in the exciting things that went on at Steel Pier in the 30s and 40s - the Glory Years, when the Steel Pier was the number one entertainment attraction on the East Coast, and really was the “Showplace of the Nation,” the Rock & Roll era has more appeal to younger readers, and me.

It doesn’t seem that long ago when the Rolling Stones came to Atlantic City for the second time, in the l980s, for their Steel Wheels Tour, and I went over to George Hamid’s office which was then on Tilton Road in Northfield.

Did he remember the Stone’s show at Steel Pier in the 60s? Sure, Hamid, Jr. said, digging into one of a dozen filing cabinets and coming out with a bill of acts for the day the Stones played Atlantic City, along with the McCoys and Rick Derringer.

Hamid, Jr. explained to me then that their family were circus people, who had also taken over the New Jersey State Fair and the Aquarium in Philadelphia and ran other major attractions around the country as well.

The Steel Pier always had good music as part of their entertainment package but when rock & roll came along, they booked Bill Haley & the Comets shortly after their hit “Rock Around the Clock” became an international sensation, and then had Ed Hurst and Dick Clark feature rock and roll acts all summer long throughout the late fifties and sixties.

Hamid said his biggest mistake wasn’t paying the $12, 500 Elvis wanted, after one hit song, so Elvis went on to forever bypass Atlantic City, never playing there in his entire career.

But practically everybody else played the Steel Pier, either on the way up or as super stars in their own time – with Ricky Nelson holding the one day records of over 44,000 paying customers in one day – August 31, 1958, said to be the first rock concert. It was also his debut solo show, and he was introduced by an opening act, the standup Henny Youngman, whose one-liners didn’t go over well with the young crowd, and was “a theatrical mismatch if there ever was one,” quipped Hamid.

Nelson’s record would have been surpassed by the Beatles, who were booked to play Steel Pier for $25,000, a new record pay out for any band, but Hamid realized that they were too big for even the pier’s biggest room, so they were moved down to the boardwalk to the old Convention Hall, just days after the Democratic National Convention in August, 1964.

Although the Beatles’ small sound equipment was drowned out by the huge hall and the screaming girls, so nobody could actually hear them, it was a cultural phenomenon that’s still being recycled.

The Beatles stayed at Gravatt’s Lafayette Hotel, which was surrounded by thousands of adoring fans, but John Lennon was intent on seeing Steel Pier, which he had heard so much about but didn’t get a chance to play, so he dressed in disguise, slipped out of the hotel through the kitchen and sneaked up to the boardwalk just to see the Steel Pier.

The British Invasion of the United States landed at Atlantic City first, with Herman’s Hermits, Dave Clark Five, Peter and Gordon, Freddie and the Dreamers and the Animals, all hitting the Atlantic City beach before they went anywhere else in the country.

Liebowitz was fortunate to get through to many important people who performed there, and got first hand quotes from most of them, recalling their time well spent there, including Frankie Valli, Smokey Robinson, Joey Bishop, Al Martino, Chubby Checker and Alan King.

While this book will be popular with those who collect Atlantic City memorabilia, those who like old photos and everything to do with show business, Hollywood, the Big Band era and rock & roll, it is also a new and important historical resource, and my only complaint is that it’s index is incomplete and such a book should have a good index.

If Atlantic is to look to its past in order to forge a new future, it would be good to start with this book, not only for the ideas and forces that once brought it out of the depression and the Storm of ’44 to make it the “Showplace of the Nation,” but to see the kind of men that it will take - like Gravatt and the Hamids, to turn things around.

From sleeping under the boardwalk to owning it, they showed how it can be done.

You can read other books of local interest by William Kelly at http://billsbooksblog.blogspot.com
He can be reached at billykelly3@yahoo.com

Photo:
http://billsbooksblog.blogspot.com/2009/12/steel-pier-showplace-of-nation.html

Murder at Mile Marker 36 - Thriller Novel

Murder at Mile Marker 36 - Another thriller novel based on the Garden State Parkway murders of Memorial Day weekend 1969.

This one is a conspiracy thriller, with a campaign strategy developed for a candidate for governor to blame the murders on Ted Bundy in order to get the law and order vote and win the election.

Can you stand it?

http://www.milemarker36.com/index.html

Vulnerability on the critical law and order issue is the main obstacle in the way of silver-tongued Matt Moran's quest to become governor of New Jersey. His campaign team attempts to solve the problem by blaming the infamous 1969 Coed murders on Ted Bundy.

Pursuit of closure and clues connecting Ted Bundy to the 32-year old cold case are chilling. A love affair involving protagonist Sebstian Kenyon, an ex-journalist, and hotshot political consultant Geena Fallon seasons the story without removing focus from the ghost of the notorious serial killer.

"Murder at Mile Marker 36," set mainly along the Jersey shore, including the famed Pine Barrens, and takes the reader to Wyoming, Arizona, Harrisburg, Newark and Alexandria, Virginia. It runs roughly 240 pages.

In addition to Bundy's ghostly presence, major characters include dashing Matt Moran; Matt's wife Maggie, using the family fortune to finance the gubernatorial campaign; Lucious Harvey, a New Jersey State Trooper on leave to help his friend and confidante with the election so he can become the first "real" African-American to lead the state police: Nick Mastricola, old school Atlantic City pol and Moran campaign advisor, and savvy pollster Jack Remington.

Also, Yocontalie Wolf, a sensual Native-American psychiatrist who heard the serial killer's confession years earlier; Melvin "Catfish" Sadler, burned-out black trooper who helps Kenyon connect the dots; Sandra Steele, now 42, kid sister of one of the 1969 murder victims; George Butler, greedy former FBI agent who helped pioneer the concept of criminal profiling, and Reyneso "Popo" Vasquez, the mysterious Miami detective who taped details of the killer's horrific confession of the Coed murders.

And of course, Kenyon and Geena and their black lab retriever "Killer".

Ken Shuttleworth is an award-winning journalist with several newspapers including the Philadelphia Inquirer and the Cherry Hill based Courier Post, the leading newspaper in South Jersey. He has also been a street reporter for top ranked KYW News Radio in Philadelphia. He made a career switch from journalism in 1989 and became a political/public policy media tactician. He played a key role in shapiung the Camden County Democratic Committee into one of the best political organizaitons of its kind in the nation.

A life-long fan of mysteries, Ken Shuttleworth finally sat down to begin writing his first novel, "Murder at Mile Marker 36", at age 50. The native Philadelphian and 1965 graduate of Temple University has lived in New Jersey since 1971 and currently resides in Haddon Heights.

Ken Shuttleworth's work typiflies what critic/editor George Plimpton meant when he told a New York Times reporter that powerful forces cohere in New Jersey Literary history, adding: "Its habitues are so extraordnary - more than any other state in the East. The mob, great prizefighters, the prisons, the world of Far Hills, the gamblers, the shore, the corridor between Philadelphia and New York - there is the extraordinary framework that the state's writers have had throughout American history."

Parkway Murders - Cold Case Gets Hot?

After 40 Years the Parkway Murders Cold Case Gets Hot

By William Kelly

It was a cold case from the start when the bodies of Elizabeth Davis and Susan Perry were found three days after they were murdered over the Memorial Day weekend, 1969.

The college coeds had spent a few days in Ocean City before the holiday weekend and left their 9th street rooming house early on Friday morning, ate breakfast at the Point Diner and then disappeared down the Parkway north, heading home to Pennsylvania.

By Monday, when it was realized that an abandoned convertible towed off the Parkway Friday morning was the car belonging to the missing girls, the bodies were found in the woods nearby.

There were many leads followed and many suspects checked out over the years, including two mass murders in Florida prisons who confessed to having killed the girls, but closing the case remained elusive for the Atlantic County Prosecutor and the lead investigators – the New Jersey State Police.

Now, 40 years later, there’s a new book about the murders, a new State Police investigator has been assigned the case, and a new lead may develop additional suspects.

Christian Barth, a lawyer from Cherry Hill, N.J., has recently published a book, The Origins of Infamy, which describes how serial killer Ted Bundy may have committed the crime. The book, which is available on line at Amazon [http://www.amazon.com/Origins-Infamy-Christian-E-Barth/dp/1440138931], is also available at Sun Rose Books in Ocean City, where Barth will be selling and signing copies of his book on Wednesday, July 22, from 5 to 8 pm.

According to the publisher’s synopsis, “Based on a true story, The Origins of Infamy tells of Ted Bundy's alleged involvement in the murder of two coeds at the Jersey Shore on Memorial Day 1969.”

“Speaking to his biographer on the eve of his execution, Bundy is offered the chance of clemency in exchange for a confession to his involvement in the unsolved deaths. Before learning what transpired that weekend two decades earlier, journalist Richard Larsen, author of The Deliberate Stranger, is led on a psychological journey through the condemned murderer's past. From Bundy's own voice, Larsen learns the root causes motivating him to become America's most notorious serial killer. Beginning on Death Row at Florida State Penitentiary, then traveling back in time to Seattle, Philadelphia, New York City, and Ocean City, New Jersey, The Origins of Infamy vividly recreates a historical account of New Jersey's most famous cold case.”

Ocean City historian Fred Miller has said, "Barth's novel is a spellbinding reimagination of one of the more disturbing unsolved cold cases in local history. With hope, perhaps his work shall bring closure to this troubling mystery."
Drawing on details of the crime, Barth develops a plausible scenario as to what really happened.

But did Bundy do it?

The investigation never really tried to find out, as they never checked Bundy’s gas credit cards from when he was a student at Temple, or compared his fingerprints to the prints found on the car, or attended the Bund Conference at Quantico after he was executed to see if he could have been responsible for other crimes.

Now however, there is a new lead in the investigation, as a local insurance man has said that on the day before they were murdered the two girls were in a fender bender accident with two young men in a Volkswagen Van. The insurance man handled the claim and after the murders informed the New Jersey State Police about the incident, but was never contacted. Did that lead get lost in the shuffle of leads at the time of the murders?

With a new State Police investigator responsible for the case, both Bundy and the boys in the VW Van will probably be checked out, as well as other leads that failed to pan out before.

Two things are for certain however, whoever is responsible for the murders, committed other crimes, and may still be committing them, and the details make for stimulating reading on the beach this summer.

Bill Kelly can be reached at Billykelly3@yahoo.com