Rod Serling and His Evil Art

This is a terrific piece that explores a part of the television landscape few have bothered to document. It’s clearly written, and makes you want to explore its subject’s work further—but it prompts you to do that with a measured does of criticism.  It’s also exactly what Pop Matters and Mr. Gibron do best. Bravo!

Comment by Tony S — April 25, 2008 @ 2:14 am

I absolutely agree, Bill.  This was a piece of TV history I knew nothing about, but you definitely sparked my interest.

Comment by Patrick Schabe — April 25, 2008 @ 9:12 am

A sad, sad story in many respects but Bill, like Jack Laird, somehow gives it a happy ending.

Comment by Rodger Jacobs from Las Vegas, NV — April 25, 2008 @ 2:29 pm

I spotted some errors in your research, and I thought I’d point them out.

<<NBC accepted the pitch of Night Gallery and Universal came on board>>

Universal contract producer William Sackheim discovered Serling’s script outline for the pilot and lobbied to get the movie made at the studio before NBC ever accepted it.

<<But there would be some major concessions before a single second of this new series would air. First, Serling had to act as host. He really didn’t mind.>>

Major concession? Try no concession. Serling always intended to play host, as the structure of the pilot film should make clear. His early drafts of the script, which he had already finished before it was even accepted at Universal, included his on-air introductions.

<< Finally, Serling could not oversee production. While this last mandate was indeed a blow (he enjoyed the role of overseer), it was something he could live with. >>

He never lobbied for an executive position on the show. He had become burnt out overseeing “The Twilight Zone,” and didn’t want a repeat of that situation. He assumed his position as the show’s creator would allow him some creative input.

<< when you boiled the series down to its basics, The Night Gallery was really nothing more than a free form update of Serling’s celebrated past.>>

The Twilight Zone focused on morality tales dressed up as science fiction and fantasy. The focus of Night Gallery was horror and the macabre, sans the polemic element. Their common link was the anthology format and Serling’s writing. Beyond that, they’re pretty much apples and oranges.

<< One of Night Gallery‘s ‘gimmicks’ was to offer darkly comic blackouts, jokey asides that let Serling and others practice a bit of macabre mirth.>>

Serling never wrote any of the comic vignettes. They were written exclusively by Jack Laird or his protégé, Gene Kearney.

<<In fact, Night Gallery would represent the 23-year-old future icon’s first professional job behind the lens.>>

The movie went into production in January 1969, which would make Spielberg 22. He didn’t turn 23 until after it premiered.

<<NBC was still worried that Serling’s reputation for interference and troublemaking was still trailing him. It took over a year after the pilot aired before the network finally gave the go ahead.>>

That can’t be true, since the series was in production by late summer 1970. Actor-director John Astin recalls getting a call from his agent in the summer of 1970 inquiring whether he was interested in directing one of the scripts, which means the series had to have been green-lighted within six months of the pilot airing.

<<By then, water cooler conversations by viewers on the show’s twists and the usual style of the middle installment (Spielberg’s unique vision showed through even then) had calmed. There was no buzz, even after the pilot was rerun.>>

This sounds suspiciously like utter invention on your part.

<< Yet Universal’s executive in charge, Jack Laird, hated Serling’s downbeat, moralistic material. As a populist, he appreciated the clear cut over the complicated. He didn’t mind the dread or the depression, but there had to be a happy ending—or at least a little light at the end of the tunnel—before the final credits rolled.>>

Night Gallery had almost no happy endings—in most of them, someone, often the main protagonist, ended up dead. It was, by and large, a horror series, after all. And that statement mischaracterizes Jack Laird’s personality almost completely. He was not a populist, he was a deeply sardonic misanthrope.

<<As a result Serling’s contributions were edited, sometimes changed completely.>>

Almost never. Two of his scripts were totally rewritten. Two others were partially rewritten. The remaining 30-plus scripts were relatively untouched.

<< There were some highlights initially—Serling penned the standout episode entitled “They’re Tearing Down Tim Riley’s Bar”—but Laird’s imprint was apparent, sometimes obvious. He made the original downbeat finale turn into a slightly surreal celebration of life. >>

Hogwash. Serling’s earliest drafts of “Tim Riley’s Bar” include the “redemption” ending as ultimately filmed. In fact, he included the ending in his prose version of the script when it was printed in paperback, which he would not have done if that ending was not his intent. Actor William Windom recalls a script he read with a downbeat finish, although director Don Taylor swore that he never saw such a draft. If there was such a draft, it seems likely this was Jack Laird’s doing, and Serling, feisty as ever, fought him on it when he got his copy with the change in the mail. Earlier that year, Serling had engaged in a telephone shouting match with Laird when the producer altered his script for “The Little Black Bag,” which gives this credence.

<<Indeed, installments like “The Housekeeper” (a henpecked scientist wants a kindly old maid to replace his shrewish wife via a “personality transplant"), “Clean Kills and Other Trophies” (rich father demands son hunt ‘something’ before he earns his trust fund), and “The Last Laurel” (a track star finds a psychic way to overcome his accident-caused paralysis) seemed like bargain basement tales straight out of an EC Comics issue of The Haunt of Fear rather than the mind of one of America’s top writer.>>

“The Housekeeper” was written by “Twilight Zone” alumnus Douglas Heyes, not Serling. As for the others, it seems fairly obvious Serling was attempting to put his own spin on the pulp horror genre. What leavened them was not the originality of the plots—since many of them were not original, but adaptations of classic horror fiction, that would be impossible—but his flair for language and characterization.

<<They were gimmicky and goofy. Other episodes—the medical kit from the future known as “The Little Black Bag”, the ‘be careful what you wish for’ elements of a desperate comics desire to be funny in “Make Me Laugh”—seemed half completed, great ideas that just went “pffft” once the denouement arrived.>>

Serling’s original ending for “The Little Black Bag” (from C. M. Kornbluth’s short story) could not be produced, since it involved a bloody, accidental suicide on camera. The end had to be rewritten to show two doctors discussing the suicide. Blame that one on timid censors.

<<None of this went unnoticed by NBC and Universal. While ratings were decent, it was determined that Serling was still exerting too much influence on the show. >>

No one at Universal or NBC paid any attention to the show. The only one who thought Serling was too involved was Laird.

<<Getting the message loud and clear, his frequent contributions became even spottier and sloppier.>>

More hogwash. Serling wrote some of the best work of his career for Gallery’s second season, including such originals as “Class of ’99,” “Lindemann’s Catch,” “The Messiah on Mott Street,” and “Deliveries in the Rear,” and short story adaptations such as “Camera Obscura,” “Cool Air,” “A Fear of Spiders,” “Green Fingers,” “The Boy Who Predicted Earthquakes,” and the show’s best-remembered episode segment, “The Caterpillar” (yes, the one about the earwig).

<<As the second season series’ order expanded to 22 episodes, Night Gallery stayed directionless.>>

Actually, the second season is where Gallery found its direction, hitting its stride about the middle of the season, starting with Alvin Sapinsley’s adaptation of H. P. Lovecraft’s “Pickman’s Model.”

<< Much of this run was mediocre at best, with a few highlights—the future shock of “The Boy Who Predicted Earthquakes”, the haunted journal known as “The Diary”—metered out amongst monsters, murders, and other misguided attempts at terror.>>

Have you even seen the second season? The fact that you would place one of its weakest offerings, “The Diary,” on a short list of the best the season has to offer suggests otherwise.

<<There was a continued reliance on gallows’ humor and an adolescent level of wit. Laird loved what he saw; it perfectly matched his aesthetic and the studio mandate.>>

Nobody liked the comic vignettes but Laird—certainly not the studio or the network—and their appearance waned as the second season went on.

<<But Serling knew the series was sunk. Instead of growing in originality and bravery, it was mired in a ‘creativity by committee’ ideal that doomed everything anyone contributed.>>

Utterly untrue. High-quality adaptations were being produced late in the second season, and not just by Serling: Halsted Welles’ “The Sins of the Fathers,” Alvin Sapinsley’s “Last Rites for a Dead Druid” and “There Aren’t Any More MacBanes,” Jack Laird’s “I’ll Never Leave You—Ever,” Stanford Whitmore’s “Little Girl Lost.”

<< When called back to Los Angeles, he would find excuses to avoid the trip. When present during production, he was short and dismissive.>>

I interviewed most of the behind-the-camera people on this series, and that statement is a crock. To a man, they said Rod was always gracious and funny when he filmed the intros.

<< When the new series was finally cancelled in May of ‘73, he realized it was the end. >>

He actually realized it back in November of 1972, when the show was truly cancelled.

<<Indeed, the one thing that continues to endure about the series is its creepy canvases. There are websites devoted to their haunted visions, and the artist involved finds their continued interest and appreciation quite unnerving (after the pilot, the paintings were created by Tom Wright).>>

Actually, Tom finds it flattering and he’s graciously answered many fan questions about his work on the Night Gallery e-group and in filmed interviews.

<<Indeed, of all the schoolyard sentiments the show provided, framed images of a tap-dancing skeleton, a bog dwelling demon, or a face-filled sun over a particularly disturbing graveyard, were the most rabidly discussed.>>

You obviously have not been discussing the show with its fans, who discuss other facets of the show besides the paintings. The show, not just those canvases, continues to endure, and it actually has some famously rabid fans, including director Guillermo del Toro (“Mimic,” “The Devil’s Backbone,” “Hellboy,” “Pan’s Labyrinth”), who claims to have been profoundly influenced by this series. And since he’s just been signed to direct New Line’s adaption of J. R. R. Tolkien’s “The Hobbit,” I’d say that’s a very good thing.

Comment by Scott Skelton from Eugene, Oregon — April 26, 2008 @ 12:52 am

I feel that NIGHT GALLERY has been given a bad rap by media commentators over the years, and as time has gone by the belief that NIGHT GALLERY was not a very good show has become “common knowledge” among the so called “experts”. When reviewing Night Gallery, many commentators seem to have a “quality” scale that automatically put Serling scripts at the top, and anything else is rated below that; I think this is unfair to the show as a whole because quite a few of the best remembered and well liked episodes were not written by Serling.

From the many books/articles I’ve read about Serling’s work, much of the criticism of Night Gallery stems the fact the the writers are going it in terms of a Serling Project; Since their focus is on Serling and not the show, Night Gallery comes across as a “failed” Serling project, which I think does a disservice to the show—maybe it wasn’t the show Serling would have made if he was in total control, but that doesn’t automatically make it something unworthy of praise.

I think it should be pointed out that for years when it was broadcast in syndication, many Night Gallery episodes had been altered (edited to make them shorter, or worse, had extraneous material added to stretch out an episode), so many people have not seen the episodes as they originally appeared.  I’m looking forward to the eventual release of Season 2 (which has many of my favorite episodes)on DVD.

Comment by Rob Gaczol from Chicago IL — April 26, 2008 @ 2:19 pm

Oh, wish the comments had an “edit” function!

The line in my about comments should read: “...that the writers are going into it in terms of...”

Comment by Rob Gaczol from Chicago IL — April 26, 2008 @ 2:25 pm

If you’re going to review a classic network television series, please get the facts straight before you ever write one word.  First, watch the every episode of the series (and if you can’t do that, don’t review it).  Second, discuss the merits of the series as a whole, not rewrite the factually untrue talking points of past writers who hadn’t seen the entire series either. 

I saw “Night Gallery” as a teenager and it has long been one of the important turning points of my life.  It opened my eyes to the famed horror story writers; H. P. Lovecraft, Basil Copper, Margaret St. Clair, etc.  “Boiling down” Night Gallery is a mistake most reviewers make by discounting it’s impact and forgetting, or not researching, just how popular it was among it’s audience at the time.  It was something all the kids talked about the next day at school and when it was canceled, it wasn’t because people weren’t watching it.  The networks still sabotage series they don’t like for whatever reason today. 

As the moderator of the Night Gallery Yahoo discussion group, I approve new members every day who have just become the series’ newest fans.  They’ve seen the series on it’s recent Mystery Channel airings, or have purchased the first season DVD set, and they’re all lavish with praise for a 38-year-old series.  Most of all they wonder why this series never got the good press it should have had.

You say “The Diary” was a highlight of the series.  It definitely was not a highlight and while a decent story, was one of the less remembered and more pedestrian.  This mistake shows how unfamiliar you are with the individual episodes.  If you had said “Cool Air” was a highlight of the series, or “Pickman’s Model,” both superlative renderings of Lovecraft’s short stories, or “Brenda,” or “The Messiah on Mott Street,” your review would have more weight.  But it is apparent you haven’t seen all the episodes of “Night Gallery” and therefore are unqualified to review it.  Stick to reviewing the WB’s “Supernatural,” or some other recent retread.  “Night Gallery” was one of the best and deserves more than you gave it.

Comment by Marta Dawes from Omaha, Nebraska — April 26, 2008 @ 7:09 pm