Although he was born in Syracuse NY on Christmas Day in 1924, Halloween came everyday for Rod Serling.
After his service in the Army during WW2, Rodman Edward Serling enrolled at Antioch College in Ohio and earned a Bachelors degree in literature. For extra cash during his days as a student he worked part time testing parachutes for the United States Army Air Forces earning fifty dollars for each successful jump. He once earned a thousand dollars for testing a jet ejection seat that had killed the previous three testers.
His work at the college radio station led him to work in Cincinnati radio as a writer but he eventually moved to television, writing advertisements and comedy.
After moving to NYC to be "where the action was" he won Emmys for two television drama scripts he wrote (Patterns and Requiem For A Heavyweight). However it's his work as a tour guide into the dimensions of his mind that he is best known for as writer, producer and narrator of the Twilight Zone television series. The series earned him yet another Emmy award in 1959.
Although predominantly sci-fi, Twilight Zones paranormal and kafkaesque events leaned the show towards fantasy and horror. The now classic series would eventually wind up on TV Guides 50 Greatest TV shows of all time, but Serling had a bit of difficulty attracting a large audience at the beginning. Eventually Twilight Zone managed to gain a strong enough audience to wind up producing 157 different episodes over five seasons.
Rod Serling would go on to be nominated for nine Emmys, winning six of them along with numerous other awards and recognition's.After Twilight Zone he continued writing for television with shows like Night Gallery and Loner as well as appearances on an episode of Ironsides (with a young Jodie Foster) and the Jack Benny Program. He also cowrote the screenplay for Planet of the Apes and taught at Ithaca college from the late 1960's until his death following open heart surgery at Strong Memorial Hospital in Rochester, NY in 1975
You're traveling through another dimension, a dimension not only of sight and sound but of mind. A journey into a wondrous land whose boundaries are that of imagination. There's a signpost up ahead - your next stop… TransistorTV.com
