Rodman Edward Serling was an American screenwriter and television producer best known for his live television dramas of the 1950s and his anthology television series The Twilight Zone. Serling was active in politics, both on and off the screen, and helped form television industry standards. He was known as the "angry young man" of Hollywood, clashing with television executives and sponsors over a wide range of issues, including censorship, racism, and war.
Serling served in the U.S. Army during World War II and began writing scripts for Cincinnati radio and television stations while a student at Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio (B.A., 1950). In 1951 he began selling television dramas to live network series and quickly became one of the medium’s leading writers: over the next four years, he sold 90 freelance scripts. He won a 1955 Emmy Award for his script Patterns, a story of ruthless business executives, and a 1957 Emmy for his script Requiem for a Heavyweight. Serling’s dramas were often controversial, and despite his protests such scripts as A Town Has Turned to Dust (1958), about lynching, and The Rank and File (1959), about labour-union corruption, were extensively revised by CBS-TV censors.
Tired of battling censors, Serling abandoned writing realistic scripts in order to write, produce, and narrate the science-fiction anthology series The Twilight Zone, which became known for its unexpected plot twists and moral lessons; for this he won a third writing Emmy, in 1959. He also wrote screenplays, often based on his television scripts, such as Patterns (1956) and The Rack (1956). He was also coauthor of The Planet of the Apes (1968). Among his later projects, he hosted the fantasy anthology series Rod Serling’s Night Gallery (1970–73) and taught dramatic writing at Ithaca College in New York.
