How Earl Hamner Journeyed into THE TWILIGHT ZONE Pre-order your DVD here: goo.gl/dmYhxh I arrived in Los Angeles on January 4th, 1961. I had been a professional writer, living in New York, writing novels and radio scripts and live television. Surely within days I would have assignments from major studios to write screenplays or pilots for television. Right? It wasn’t to happen—at least not right away. My agent, Ben Benjamin, one of the best in the business, had arranged meetings with all the right people. But one after the other “all the right people” had the same response: “We’ve read your books and know of your work in live TV, but you haven’t written film.” It was as if writing film was some talent you could possess only after breathing in a certain amount of smog or to have been baptized in the Pacific surf. All the Hollywood studios were telling me the same thing: I was a leaper. With a family to support, no income, and desperate for work, I decided to “enter” The Twilight Zone. I had never written fantasy or suspense type stories. Most of my work had been of a folkish nature, focused on the family, set usually in a rural locale, often in the past...another minus in fast paced, glamorous, slick, suspense-laden stories so typical of Hollywood. I had originally met Rod Serling in New York City in 1947. Each of us had won awards in a radio script-writing contest and was invited to come to town to be interviewed on the radio by the host of the show. We were both students at that time. Rod was in Yellow Springs, Ohio and I was a student at the University of Cincinnati. After graduation, I became a staff writer at Station WLW in Cincinnati. Once I saved enough money to take time out to write a novel, I resigned the job, which by an interesting coincidence was taken by Rod Serling. Eventually Rod left Ohio for a Hollywood and started writing and producing “The Twilight Zone.” So when it turned out that I was unqualified to write film, in desperation, I decided to contact Rod. I had a script in mind that I had written about a hunter and his dog. Both the hunter and his beloved hound die on a hunt and try to enter Heaven. Hell tries to get them first, but the dog is the one who can see through Hell’s lies and leads his master to the real pearly gates. I sent that script along with a second script idea to accompany a letter that said: Dear Rod: Having been a fan of The Twilight Zone for a long time, I was happy to hear from Ray Bradbury that you might be on the lookout for new stories. I am enclosing two that might interest you. Best Regards, Earl Hamner And as a result of that letter, “The Hunt” was aired as a “The Twilight Zone” episode on January 26, 1962 and starred Arthur Hunnicutt, the first of eight of scripts that I was to write for the series. During that time, I came to know Rod Serling and to develop a friendship. I remember our first meeting in his office at the MGM Studios in Culver City. He greeted me warmly and recalled some of the friends we had worked with back in Ohio. He was smoking, and so was I at the time, and we lit up—part of the ritual of the day. We spoke about our first meeting in New York and exchanged some accounts of our personal lives. I remember that our meeting was interrupted from time to time by phone calls that would cause Rod to roll his eyes Heavenward and occasionally raise his voice. After hanging up, he would explain, “Network!” and we would continue the meeting. He did not offer any notes on my story outline. He just said, “Go write it.” After that first script meeting when I delivered my finished script he would simply say, “What would you like to do next? I would describe a new idea and he would say, “Go to it!” At long last I was writing film! In those days, writers were almost never invited to the set to see their scripts being filmed. This practice changed as the industry came to recognize more and more that the whole process began with THE WORD and the producers came more to recognize where those words came from. My favorite script will always be “The Hunt.” Not only was it my first assignment in Hollywood, but also in addition the characters were mountain folks and the setting was my beloved Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. But most especially, by giving me that assignment, Rod opened the door to a career in film that has been richly rewarding to me and I hope to the audience. People often ask me how I could write for shows like “The Twilight Zone” when I am primarily a “soft writer” for shows like “The Waltons” and “Apples Way.” I received that question especially after the TV series “Falcon Crest” began. The answer is, of course, that I am a professional writer. I can write about the lives of many kinds of people; hopefully with objectivity, understanding, and compassion. “The Waltons” and The “Falcon Crest” characters were people, and any good writer should be able to write about people, no matter what their walks of life. In EARL HAMNER STORYTELLER Bill Mumy Its A Good Life, Jeffrey Byron The Bewitchin Pool, James Best Jess-Belle, Anne Serling - youngest daughter of Rod Serling, all salute Earl Hamner for his multiple contributions to one of the most influential television series of all time...THE TWILIGHT ZONE! youtu.be/GmC19BycBU0
Posted on: Wed, 26 Nov 2014 12:20:33 +0000
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