June 27, 2025 • 11 mins
George Noory and author Marc Zicree mark the 50th anniversary of the death of Twilight Zone creator Rod Serling, explore Serling's prolific career as a television writer, and discuss how he weaved social commentary into the episodes along with the show's famous twist endings.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Now here's a highlight from Coast to Coast AM on iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
Mark Scott's degree is the author of the best selling
twilight Zoned Companion book and Saturday June twenty eighth is
the anniversary of the death of the founder, Rod Serling.
Mark's with us now as we talk about the life
of Rod Serling in the one hundred and fifty six
episodes of the twilight Zone television program. Mark, welcome back,
my friend. Have you been.
Speaker 3 (00:44):
I've been great, George, and I'm always great whenever I'm
talking with you.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
I cannot believe it's been fifty years that Rod Serling
has been gone.
Speaker 3 (00:53):
Incredible, incredible. I remember when I was a teenager, when
I was nineteen years old when Rod died, and when
it came on the news, everyone was just stunned. I mean,
he was fifty years old when he died, and now
it's fifty years since his death. But twilight Zone is
more famous than ever. The episodes are loved and they're
still proving a point and telling a story and doing
(01:15):
what Rod designed them to do. So you know, the
sad thing is, he never knew that it was going
to continue and be popular. He died thinking he has
kind of not grabbed the brass ring, and that's very sad.
Speaker 2 (01:28):
How many years did those one hundred and fifty six
episodes were on?
Speaker 3 (01:31):
Twilight's A was on for five seasons, and the fourth
it was a half hour show, but the fourth season
they expanded it to an hour for about eighteen episodes
and then and it really didn't work as well, so
they took it back on the final season to half hours.
Speaker 2 (01:45):
And there was something special about black and white, wasn't there?
Speaker 3 (01:48):
Yes, my god, Well, the DP George Clemens won an
Emmy for his cinematography, and he had been a camera
operator on the classic films like the Frederick Mark jackal
and Hyde and Valance Tino's Blood and Sand, and so
he was trained in the golden age of Hollywood. So
he I think Twilight one was the best looking black
and white show ever shot for television. It's gorgeous.
Speaker 2 (02:09):
Rod Sirlene had heart issues, did.
Speaker 3 (02:11):
He not, Yes. And he also smoked, you know, you know,
as a chain smoker. And and and he also kept
his emotions very bottled up because he was he was
he cared so passionately about so many things. And his
father had died at fifty two of a heart attack,
and so there was that that genetic factor as well. So,
(02:32):
but it was it was still a shock. He died
of open heart's complications from open heart surgery.
Speaker 2 (02:38):
His wife, Carol died a few years ago. She made
it to ninety, did.
Speaker 3 (02:41):
She Yes, yes, yes, And she was a dear soul
and she was the keeper of the flame and she
really really kept kept kept the uh, you know, Rod's
Rod's message going. And and now now that now the
torch bearers are the two daughters, and and Jodie, and
they're they're both wonderful and I'm I'm in very close
touch with him.
Speaker 2 (03:01):
What was it about the Twilight shone that got Rod
interested in that concept, that genre.
Speaker 3 (03:06):
Well, the fascinating thing is, you know, Rod never wanted
he never aspired to be a science fiction writer. He
wanted to be sort of the Arthur Miller of television.
He wanted to be writing mainstream, hard hitting dramas. And
at first in live TV, which shows like you know,
Playhouse ninety, it looked like he was going to succeed
in that ambition. He was the most awarded writer working
(03:28):
in TV. Ultimately he won six Emmys. But then as
he tried to write about politics or racial issues or
anything that could be viewed as controversial in any way,
the sensors and the network and sponsors would would essentially,
you know, given notes that rendered everything meaningless. And he
was feeling very, very frustrated. And then he had the
(03:49):
idea that if he wrote it in science fiction, he
could slide it past the sensors and still say what
he had to say. And so that's why he chose
Twilight Zone. And and he was absolutely right. And what's
a great bonus that he didn't foresee was that by
making it more universal, such like a show on like
(04:10):
Monsters Do on Maple Street, which deals with mob hysteria
and scapegoating, that is as relevant now as it was
back in nineteen fifty nine when he wrote it.
Speaker 2 (04:21):
Truly remarkable, wasn't it amazing?
Speaker 3 (04:25):
An amazing show and amazing singular talent. And Rod of
course was really the first showrunner, and in the modern sense,
he was the writer, producer of the show. He was
at the top of the food chain, and he had
power to make sure that his vision was what got
to the audience, and the audience was huge, huge, back then,
it was regularly around forty million viewers per episode, so
(04:47):
that was phenomenal compared to what TV viewership is now.
Speaker 2 (04:52):
In his episodes, Mark always had that strange ending, that
strange twist.
Speaker 3 (04:57):
Nice yes, yes, talked about it like the O Henry twist. Oh.
Henry was a writer who wrote short stories that always
had that twist at the end, and Rod really liked that.
But he said, he said that if he had the
end of a story, he could write the story. But
if he only had the first act in the second
act but no third act, he couldn't do it because
he needed know where the story was going. But of
(05:18):
course those twist endings are terrific. But the thing is
also because there's such a human heart to these stories
and such compassion and such wisdom and insight, you can
watch them again and again and again even when you
know what the twist ending is. So it wasn't solely
reliant on those twist endings. That was just sort of
like the cherry on top.
Speaker 2 (05:37):
What percent of the episodes did Rod Shirley write.
Speaker 3 (05:40):
He wrote ninety two out of one hundred and fifty six,
which is an incredible output. He was also writing movies
like seven days in May and writing those short story
collection adaptations of Twilight Zone episodes. I mean, he was
a very busy man, but he was very committed to
Twilight Zone. He turned down a movie contract that would
have brought him over a million dollars to do Twilight Zone,
(06:01):
and had it failed, he would have lost a lot
of money. But but he was he was doing it
for the right reasons. He was doing it because he
had a passion and stories to tell, and he was
he was just an astonishingly gifted and talented man.
Speaker 2 (06:16):
Tell us how Rod he used to do dictaphone writings
in his pool.
Speaker 3 (06:19):
Yes, yes, yes, he Rod would dictate into a recorder.
He he would lounge by his Olympic sized swimming pool
and Pacific palisades and and dictate these twilights On scripts
into into a recorder. He used to joke that he
was the only writer who could write a script and
get a tan at the same time. And and yet
that was why he was able to write so quickly.
(06:41):
And then his secretary would type up what he dictated.
And it's amazing. I've heard these recordings and he's not
only doing all the characters, he's also calling all the shots.
It's like, you know, extreme close up, you know, wide shot,
all of that stuff, and so the fact that he's
able to hold that all in his head. Richard Matheson,
who was also one of the writers on Twilight Zone,
told me that he tried to dictate and he couldn't
(07:01):
do it. It's a it's a rare talent, and but
Rod was just a master at it because he was
he viewed himself as well, east to call himself a ham,
you know, because he liked performing, he liked being able
to be all those characters.
Speaker 2 (07:17):
Well with the Hollywood producer writer director Mark's decree. After
the break, we'll come back and talk about some of
the programs Mark is working on, including Space Command. We
know a mutual fellow who was in Twilight Zone. He
was a little kid at the time, Billy Mooney.
Speaker 3 (07:32):
Yes, yes, Well I'm working with Bill on the new show,
so we're going to be shooting with him in the
next month or two. So it's it's a joy. And
I've known him since I was seven, so I love,
I love having known him for the such an incredibly
wonderful long time.
Speaker 2 (07:47):
Was it the Twilight Zone that got him into Lost
in space.
Speaker 3 (07:50):
You know, I've never asked him that, but I would
think so. I was doing a lot of shows and
movies though he was doing Hitchcock, he was doing he
did a movie with Bridgid Bardow. And but certainly Twilight
so showed him to uh, to great, great advantage, and
so it's very probable that's what that's what nailed him,
uh nailed the role for him.
Speaker 2 (08:08):
How many Twilight Jones was Billy in He was in.
Speaker 3 (08:11):
Three and and they're all terrific. I mean, it's a
good Life, which is you know, the wonderful one where
we which is People of the Cornfield, and in Praise
of Pip, which is a terrific episode with Jack Klugman,
and Long Distance Call, which was one of the six
episodes done on videotape rather than film, where his grandmother,
his dead grandmother is calling him on a toy telephone
trying to beckon him to uh to come to the
(08:34):
other side, you know, to kill himself and and join her.
And so they're all wonderful, absolutely wonderful. And he was
he was he was a very rare commodity, a really
really really good child actor. And he still and some
people grow up and then they're not. They never are
able to find that kind of creative path. But Bill
(08:58):
has always been torific. And when when I wrote for
Babylon five, he was a cast member on that show,
and he was he still had it and he still
has it now. It's it's so much fun to work
with him.
Speaker 2 (09:08):
I love his line you're a bad bad man.
Speaker 3 (09:11):
Yes, yes, iconic use that.
Speaker 2 (09:15):
Sometimes when he was on Coast to coast with me.
What was his name in Loston space, was it Will Robinson?
Speaker 3 (09:21):
Robinson, Will Robinson, Danger, Will Robinson exactly, Yes, yeah, it was.
It's a it's a fun show. And we're working with
one of the other actors from that show, Marta Christen,
who played his older sister, and so she's going to
be in a show we're doing called Sweet Haven that
we can talk about as as we continue talking.
Speaker 2 (09:39):
Great tell us about Twilight's old companion. People still can't
get that book.
Speaker 3 (09:43):
Yeah, I just recently updated it. So there's a third
edition that has one hundred more pages and five hundred
new photographs and links to audio and video, and and
it's on sale on Amazon and wherever good books are sold.
Speaker 2 (09:55):
Remember we wrote that editorial about Ray Bradbury's I sing
the Body Electric.
Speaker 3 (10:00):
Yes, yes, yes, yes, I got.
Speaker 2 (10:02):
A letter of him posted up on my wall that thing.
Speaker 3 (10:06):
Yeah. Well, you and I are truly blessed, George, that
we get to know so many amazing, you know, unique people,
and I consider that a great gift to what When
you present your authentic self to the world as you have,
people are attracted to that, and people are drawn to that,
and you end up having wonderful friendships and wonderful conversations.
(10:28):
And you and I of course clicked from the very beginning,
of course. And you know it's been it's been a
while that we've been doing this.
Speaker 2 (10:35):
How many shows have you done with us on Coast God.
Speaker 3 (10:38):
You know, I'm on every few months and it's been
at least twenty years, probably more so. But I always enjoyed.
It's my favorite interview show. It's always so much fun
talking with you, and you know, I always look forward
to it. And Tom dan Heiser, your producer, is a
swell fella and he's again, you know, one of the things, well,
(11:01):
good people attract good people, as you know.
Speaker 1 (11:04):
Listen to more Coast to Coast AM every weeknight at
one a m. Eastern and go to Coast to coastam
dot com for more
Now here's a highlight from Coast to Coast AM on iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
Mark Scott's degree is the author of the best selling
twilight Zoned Companion book and Saturday June twenty eighth is
the anniversary of the death of the founder, Rod Serling.
Mark's with us now as we talk about the life
of Rod Serling in the one hundred and fifty six
episodes of the twilight Zone television program. Mark, welcome back,
my friend. Have you been.
Speaker 3 (00:44):
I've been great, George, and I'm always great whenever I'm
talking with you.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
I cannot believe it's been fifty years that Rod Serling
has been gone.
Speaker 3 (00:53):
Incredible, incredible. I remember when I was a teenager, when
I was nineteen years old when Rod died, and when
it came on the news, everyone was just stunned. I mean,
he was fifty years old when he died, and now
it's fifty years since his death. But twilight Zone is
more famous than ever. The episodes are loved and they're
still proving a point and telling a story and doing
(01:15):
what Rod designed them to do. So you know, the
sad thing is, he never knew that it was going
to continue and be popular. He died thinking he has
kind of not grabbed the brass ring, and that's very sad.
Speaker 2 (01:28):
How many years did those one hundred and fifty six
episodes were on?
Speaker 3 (01:31):
Twilight's A was on for five seasons, and the fourth
it was a half hour show, but the fourth season
they expanded it to an hour for about eighteen episodes
and then and it really didn't work as well, so
they took it back on the final season to half hours.
Speaker 2 (01:45):
And there was something special about black and white, wasn't there?
Speaker 3 (01:48):
Yes, my god, Well, the DP George Clemens won an
Emmy for his cinematography, and he had been a camera
operator on the classic films like the Frederick Mark jackal
and Hyde and Valance Tino's Blood and Sand, and so
he was trained in the golden age of Hollywood. So
he I think Twilight one was the best looking black
and white show ever shot for television. It's gorgeous.
Speaker 2 (02:09):
Rod Sirlene had heart issues, did.
Speaker 3 (02:11):
He not, Yes. And he also smoked, you know, you know,
as a chain smoker. And and and he also kept
his emotions very bottled up because he was he was
he cared so passionately about so many things. And his
father had died at fifty two of a heart attack,
and so there was that that genetic factor as well. So,
(02:32):
but it was it was still a shock. He died
of open heart's complications from open heart surgery.
Speaker 2 (02:38):
His wife, Carol died a few years ago. She made
it to ninety, did.
Speaker 3 (02:41):
She Yes, yes, yes, And she was a dear soul
and she was the keeper of the flame and she
really really kept kept kept the uh, you know, Rod's
Rod's message going. And and now now that now the
torch bearers are the two daughters, and and Jodie, and
they're they're both wonderful and I'm I'm in very close
touch with him.
Speaker 2 (03:01):
What was it about the Twilight shone that got Rod
interested in that concept, that genre.
Speaker 3 (03:06):
Well, the fascinating thing is, you know, Rod never wanted
he never aspired to be a science fiction writer. He
wanted to be sort of the Arthur Miller of television.
He wanted to be writing mainstream, hard hitting dramas. And
at first in live TV, which shows like you know,
Playhouse ninety, it looked like he was going to succeed
in that ambition. He was the most awarded writer working
(03:28):
in TV. Ultimately he won six Emmys. But then as
he tried to write about politics or racial issues or
anything that could be viewed as controversial in any way,
the sensors and the network and sponsors would would essentially,
you know, given notes that rendered everything meaningless. And he
was feeling very, very frustrated. And then he had the
(03:49):
idea that if he wrote it in science fiction, he
could slide it past the sensors and still say what
he had to say. And so that's why he chose
Twilight Zone. And and he was absolutely right. And what's
a great bonus that he didn't foresee was that by
making it more universal, such like a show on like
(04:10):
Monsters Do on Maple Street, which deals with mob hysteria
and scapegoating, that is as relevant now as it was
back in nineteen fifty nine when he wrote it.
Speaker 2 (04:21):
Truly remarkable, wasn't it amazing?
Speaker 3 (04:25):
An amazing show and amazing singular talent. And Rod of
course was really the first showrunner, and in the modern sense,
he was the writer, producer of the show. He was
at the top of the food chain, and he had
power to make sure that his vision was what got
to the audience, and the audience was huge, huge, back then,
it was regularly around forty million viewers per episode, so
(04:47):
that was phenomenal compared to what TV viewership is now.
Speaker 2 (04:52):
In his episodes, Mark always had that strange ending, that
strange twist.
Speaker 3 (04:57):
Nice yes, yes, talked about it like the O Henry twist. Oh.
Henry was a writer who wrote short stories that always
had that twist at the end, and Rod really liked that.
But he said, he said that if he had the
end of a story, he could write the story. But
if he only had the first act in the second
act but no third act, he couldn't do it because
he needed know where the story was going. But of
(05:18):
course those twist endings are terrific. But the thing is
also because there's such a human heart to these stories
and such compassion and such wisdom and insight, you can
watch them again and again and again even when you
know what the twist ending is. So it wasn't solely
reliant on those twist endings. That was just sort of
like the cherry on top.
Speaker 2 (05:37):
What percent of the episodes did Rod Shirley write.
Speaker 3 (05:40):
He wrote ninety two out of one hundred and fifty six,
which is an incredible output. He was also writing movies
like seven days in May and writing those short story
collection adaptations of Twilight Zone episodes. I mean, he was
a very busy man, but he was very committed to
Twilight Zone. He turned down a movie contract that would
have brought him over a million dollars to do Twilight Zone,
(06:01):
and had it failed, he would have lost a lot
of money. But but he was he was doing it
for the right reasons. He was doing it because he
had a passion and stories to tell, and he was
he was just an astonishingly gifted and talented man.
Speaker 2 (06:16):
Tell us how Rod he used to do dictaphone writings
in his pool.
Speaker 3 (06:19):
Yes, yes, yes, he Rod would dictate into a recorder.
He he would lounge by his Olympic sized swimming pool
and Pacific palisades and and dictate these twilights On scripts
into into a recorder. He used to joke that he
was the only writer who could write a script and
get a tan at the same time. And and yet
that was why he was able to write so quickly.
(06:41):
And then his secretary would type up what he dictated.
And it's amazing. I've heard these recordings and he's not
only doing all the characters, he's also calling all the shots.
It's like, you know, extreme close up, you know, wide shot,
all of that stuff, and so the fact that he's
able to hold that all in his head. Richard Matheson,
who was also one of the writers on Twilight Zone,
told me that he tried to dictate and he couldn't
(07:01):
do it. It's a it's a rare talent, and but
Rod was just a master at it because he was
he viewed himself as well, east to call himself a ham,
you know, because he liked performing, he liked being able
to be all those characters.
Speaker 2 (07:17):
Well with the Hollywood producer writer director Mark's decree. After
the break, we'll come back and talk about some of
the programs Mark is working on, including Space Command. We
know a mutual fellow who was in Twilight Zone. He
was a little kid at the time, Billy Mooney.
Speaker 3 (07:32):
Yes, yes, Well I'm working with Bill on the new show,
so we're going to be shooting with him in the
next month or two. So it's it's a joy. And
I've known him since I was seven, so I love,
I love having known him for the such an incredibly
wonderful long time.
Speaker 2 (07:47):
Was it the Twilight Zone that got him into Lost
in space.
Speaker 3 (07:50):
You know, I've never asked him that, but I would
think so. I was doing a lot of shows and
movies though he was doing Hitchcock, he was doing he
did a movie with Bridgid Bardow. And but certainly Twilight
so showed him to uh, to great, great advantage, and
so it's very probable that's what that's what nailed him,
uh nailed the role for him.
Speaker 2 (08:08):
How many Twilight Jones was Billy in He was in.
Speaker 3 (08:11):
Three and and they're all terrific. I mean, it's a
good Life, which is you know, the wonderful one where
we which is People of the Cornfield, and in Praise
of Pip, which is a terrific episode with Jack Klugman,
and Long Distance Call, which was one of the six
episodes done on videotape rather than film, where his grandmother,
his dead grandmother is calling him on a toy telephone
trying to beckon him to uh to come to the
(08:34):
other side, you know, to kill himself and and join her.
And so they're all wonderful, absolutely wonderful. And he was
he was he was a very rare commodity, a really
really really good child actor. And he still and some
people grow up and then they're not. They never are
able to find that kind of creative path. But Bill
(08:58):
has always been torific. And when when I wrote for
Babylon five, he was a cast member on that show,
and he was he still had it and he still
has it now. It's it's so much fun to work
with him.
Speaker 2 (09:08):
I love his line you're a bad bad man.
Speaker 3 (09:11):
Yes, yes, iconic use that.
Speaker 2 (09:15):
Sometimes when he was on Coast to coast with me.
What was his name in Loston space, was it Will Robinson?
Speaker 3 (09:21):
Robinson, Will Robinson, Danger, Will Robinson exactly, Yes, yeah, it was.
It's a it's a fun show. And we're working with
one of the other actors from that show, Marta Christen,
who played his older sister, and so she's going to
be in a show we're doing called Sweet Haven that
we can talk about as as we continue talking.
Speaker 2 (09:39):
Great tell us about Twilight's old companion. People still can't
get that book.
Speaker 3 (09:43):
Yeah, I just recently updated it. So there's a third
edition that has one hundred more pages and five hundred
new photographs and links to audio and video, and and
it's on sale on Amazon and wherever good books are sold.
Speaker 2 (09:55):
Remember we wrote that editorial about Ray Bradbury's I sing
the Body Electric.
Speaker 3 (10:00):
Yes, yes, yes, yes, I got.
Speaker 2 (10:02):
A letter of him posted up on my wall that thing.
Speaker 3 (10:06):
Yeah. Well, you and I are truly blessed, George, that
we get to know so many amazing, you know, unique people,
and I consider that a great gift to what When
you present your authentic self to the world as you have,
people are attracted to that, and people are drawn to that,
and you end up having wonderful friendships and wonderful conversations.
(10:28):
And you and I of course clicked from the very beginning,
of course. And you know it's been it's been a
while that we've been doing this.
Speaker 2 (10:35):
How many shows have you done with us on Coast God.
Speaker 3 (10:38):
You know, I'm on every few months and it's been
at least twenty years, probably more so. But I always enjoyed.
It's my favorite interview show. It's always so much fun
talking with you, and you know, I always look forward
to it. And Tom dan Heiser, your producer, is a
swell fella and he's again, you know, one of the things, well,
(11:01):
good people attract good people, as you know.
Speaker 1 (11:04):
Listen to more Coast to Coast AM every weeknight at
one a m. Eastern and go to Coast to coastam
dot com for more
The Best of Coast to Coast AM News
Host
George Noory
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