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Gordon F. Sander

Serling: The Rise and Twilight of TV's Last Angry Man Paperback – January 26, 2012

by Gordon F. Sander (Author), Ron Simon (Foreword)

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"Serling's complex life was very like an extended episode of The Twilight Zone, and Gordon F. Sander uniquely captures all the twists and ironies of a talented man struggling against the conventions of society and the insecurities of self. Sander’s haunting portrait is of a writer indeed caught between light and shadow."―from the Foreword by Ron Simon

"Sander has fashioned a vivid and fascinating portrait of this complex innovator from television's Golden Age."―Library Journal

"The story of Serling's career doubles as a history of the television industry itself, and Sander vividly depicts the heady early days of live TV, when the highest artistic achievement seemed attainable. Highly recommended."―Booklist

"Sander's strong, straightforward portrait of Serling as an industry goad who confronted his corporate bosses forms the most unexpected and powerful part of the book. Rod Serling merited this fine book."―Philadelphia Inquirer

Gordon F. Sander's acclaimed biography of Rod Serling is at once a portrait of a prodigiously talented writer and a history of the first-quarter century of television. A former paratrooper in World War II, Serling rose to fame in the 1950s with his hard-hitting plays Patterns and Requiem for a Heavyweight during the "golden age" of live television in New York City. In 1959, excited by the prospect of writing and producing his own dramatic anthology show, the angry young man of television followed his fortune―and the burgeoning video medium―to Hollywood.

Serling’s anthology show, of course, was the landmark The Twilight Zone. Still considered one of the greatest television shows ever produced, Serling’s surreal video showcase ran for five seasons, adding to Serling’s record clutch of Emmys, and continues to be a cult favorite today. Meanwhile Serling also tried his hand at writing for movies, turning out the screenplays for Seven Days in May and Planet of the Apes before his death in 1975 at age fifty.

Sander’s historical biography―for which he interviewed more than two hundred of Serling’s friends, family members, and colleagues, including Robert Redford, Sydney Pollack, Kim Hunter, and William Shatner―follows the video bard’s odyssey from Binghamton, the small upstate city that served as the template for some of the best-remembered episodes of The Twilight Zone to his searing and equally influential wartime experiences in the South Pacific; from his apprenticeship as a Midwestern radio and television writer to his successes in New York and Hollywood, before he himself was consumed by the commercialism of the medium he had helped create.

Print length

328 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Cornell University Press
Publication date

January 26, 2012
Reading age

18 years and up
Dimensions

6 x 0.72 x 9 inches
ISBN-10

0801477301
ISBN-13

978-0801477300
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Editorial Reviews

Review

"Sander has fashioned a vivid and fascinating portrait of this complex innovator from television's Golden Age."

― Library Journal

"Sander's strong, straightforward portrait of Serling as an industry goad who confronted his corporate bosses forms the most unexpected and powerful part of the book. Rod Serling merited this fine book."

― Philadelphia Inquirer

"The story of Serling's career doubles as a history of the television industry itself, and Sander vividly depicts the heady early days of live TV, when the highest artistic achievement seemed attainable. Highly recommended."

― Booklist

Review

"Rod Serling was a literary hero to me, and this really outstanding book beautifully balances the highs and lows of his career. Serling is brisk reading on a brilliant and prophetic artist."

-- Mitch Horowitz, author of Occult America

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Cornell University Press; 1st edition (January 26, 2012)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 328 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0801477301
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0801477300
Reading age ‏ : ‎ 18 years and up
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 15 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6 x 0.72 x 9 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #1,460,141 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #1,257 in TV History & Criticism
- #3,131 in Television Performer Biographies
- #7,380 in Popular Culture in Social Sciences

Customer Reviews:
13 ratings

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Gordon F. Sander

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Frank Garvey

If you dig Lynch and Arbus, you'll love this book on Rod Serling!

Reviewed in the United States on October 10, 2018

Verified Purchase

Great book on an important subject, the great American Social Surrealist Rod Serling!

Reviewed in the United States on September 24, 2013

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I have always been fascinated by Rod Serling. His voice and face were seared into my imagination at a tender age. As I grew out of my terror of the Twilight Zone, my appreciation of the artistry and compassionate messages of this iconoclastic television show grew. I wondered who this man was. What moved him to preach, through his art, justice, mercy, kindness, and humanism?

I was surprised to learn that Serling was a Marine and had fought terrible battles for the liberation of the Philippines during World War II. These battles would haunt him and inform his art throughout his life. I wasn't surprised to learn that he was a thorn in the side of the bean counters and studio suits who just wanted to sell cigarettes and breakfast cereal. Serling was an artist who wanted to explore the potential of the television medium at its inception. This he did with great success, not just on the Twilight Zone, but on the long dead format of live television drama.

Sander's is one of the very few biographies of Serling. He shows Serling as the Ed Murrow of broadcast art. We needed, and still need, more people like Rod Serling.

4 people found this helpful

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William J. Morton

Complete disappointment

Reviewed in the United States on August 17, 2013

Verified Purchase

This is one of those biographies that goes down the checklist of what NOT to do when writing a biography. The Writer starts with a preconception, in this case that Serling was a man-child, and then fails to demonstrate anything that supports the theory. The writer continues to try and use the title and concept of the work the subject is best know for, The Twilight Zone, as an ongoing metaphor hamfistedly throughout. The author gives great weight to the testimony of minor sources :There are several anecdotes of old friends from Serling's small town past interacting with him and decrying the fact that he'd "gone hollywood". The book takes at face value that the testimony of people trying to glom onto a busy person as signs of a character fault in Serling, not that a small town High-school friend may not understand that they can't be a priority for a busy old friend. Lastly the book is simply ploddingly written, Dull and uninspired. You'll learn little about Serling you can't find on Wikipedia and it'll be a chore getting there.

As a minor note: Toward the end of the book the author uses the word "ironically" incorrectly several times in a dozen pages. It may be just a pet peeve but it's a sad thing to see from a professional writer.

14 people found this helpful

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Henry Bonilla

Great account of the evolution of the television industry in ...

Reviewed in the United States on July 30, 2015

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Great account of the evolution of the television industry in the 50s and 60s as well as fascinating account of Serling's life. Loved it!

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Joseph M. Reninger

Interesting look at Serling's career

Reviewed in the United States on October 2, 2017

Rod Serling achieved his lasting fame in the early 1960s when he wrote, produced, and hosted the iconic science fiction and fantasy series The Twilight Zone. The series was wildly popular (and is still in syndication and streaming today) thanks to the intelligent scripts, the visual creativity, the twist endings, and the compelling nature of Serling's introductions and conclusions. The series spawned many imitators and the phrase "twilight zone" has become idiomatic.

Even before The Twilight Zone, Serling was a television celebrity, writing many dramas in the golden age of television, including Requiem for a Heavyweight (later made into a film) and Patterns (his breakout work that earned him his first of six Emmy awards in less than ten years). He wrote about both political and personal challenges of his day. He drew from his life experience as well.

Serling grew up in rural New York. During World War II, he joined the 511th Airborne as a paratrooper, even though he was too short to qualify. He had the personal ambition and strength of will to be a paratrooper. Ironically, he saw very little action for the first few years but then was part of the very intense fighting in the Pacific theater. He returned at the end of the war, as many GIs did, to college. He worked at the campus radio station where he first felt the need to entertain. He worked in radio as a script writer and made the transition to television as it became more popular. The intimacy and the immediacy of television fascinated him and, with a lot of work under his belt, he became a fine writer.

The book starts with his personal life but his writing career becomes the central focus. Serling's wife Carol fades into the background as Serling's television career takes off. Sander mentions that Serling had affairs after the family moved to Hollywood but does not delve into them. Serling was also distant from his two daughters, who are only mentioned occasionally. The real focus of this book is on Serling as an icon of television's golden age and how the collapse of that age played out in his life. Like film auteur Orson Welles, Serling started to cash in on his celebrity, doing parodies of himself and working on commercials. In the last years of his life, Serling's greatest joy was teaching college, where the students were often in awe of him, something Hollywood lost when The Twilight Zone finished. His personal life is at best a secondary theme of the book.

The book identifies Serling as "television's last angry man" in part because of his career ambitions. He wanted to write great dramas about contemporary topics. He especially wanted to write against prejudice, which he abhorred. At first, television was looking for prestige projects to validate the medium as a form of art as well as entertainment. Sponsors and executives eventually became more concerned to avoid controversy, making it a fight for Serling to produce what he wanted. Ironically, starting The Twilight Zone looked like a sell-out for Serling--he'd be making a popular entertainment show. But it really gave him a platform from which to comment on social issues and morality, albeit indirectly through placing the issues in other times or places. The production schedule on the show was too much, leading to burn out and a drop in quality in the later years. Those factors, combined with increasing challenges with the network and the sponsors, drove Serling away from Hollywood in frustration over what he could no longer do.

I found the book fascinating throughout. I didn't mind the focus on his career (gossipy biographies are of little interest to me). His early life and military service are interesting, especially when they are connected to his writing career.

Recommended, especially for Twilight Zone fans.

2 people found this helpful

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NWkimble

Packed with information, but not necessarily accurate. And dull as dry toast!

Reviewed in the United States on February 27, 2014

I give this 3 stars only because Serling biographies are few and far between, so there is not a lot of competition. But this book suffers in many ways. First, it paints Serling as unpleasant and difficult to work with (he was, to an extent - as are most brilliant creative minds; but this portrays him as completely devoid of redeeming qualities, which is despicable). There is almost no attention given to his adult home life, the world he lived (and wrote) in outside of TV, which is VERY IMPORTANT when analyzing a person's character. The overall depiction is patchy, not well-rounded, and gives way to a lot of unfortunate assumptions.

All of that aside, much of the "information" in this book is length descriptions of Twilight Zone episodes. While that may be fine and dandy for someone who has never watched the show, 99% of people looking for a biography on the enigmatic Rod Serling know the show inside and out. Plodding, several-page-long descriptions of each episode are, quite simply, nothing but dull filler material.

There's nothing great about this book. It's as exciting as watching paint dry, and far more illuminating information can be found now thanks to the internet. Still, if it's absolutely the only thing you can read about Rod Serling, it's better than nothing.

3 people found this helpful

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Serling: The Rise and Twilight of TV's Last Angry Man Paperback – January 26, 2012

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