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October 11,
1956. Purple Heart Honoree, Edward Rod Serling has been out of
the military for 9 years. As a paratrooper he was injured by shrapnel.
Now, for the last four years he has been working in the television
industry as a writer.
This evening, Thursday night at 9:30 on Playhouse 90, he is to
reach a pinnacle of success when his 90 minute drama becomes the
first ever original story to be broadcasted live on national tv.
The preceding 3 weeks of rehearsal for Requiem of a Heavyweight
went by with only one glitch. One of the actors, long time comedic
star Ed Wynn, is appearing in his first dramatic role, and as
his co-starring son said "He was just awful."
Rod Serling had wanted to take his own name off the credits in
fear of the story being a failure. They wanted to cut Ed from
the cast, and they even held secret rehearsals with an under-study.
Finally, towards the deadline of the show, Ed's character took
shape and all felt the evening would be a success.
The only other problem Rod knew he would experience is the nervousness
of watching his show. In the directors control room Rod would
stand behind the director and comment on the actors: whether they
were doing their lines right or not. It got to the point where
one of his directors, John Frankenheimer, had told Rod that he
needed to leave.
Being in live tv wasn't new to Rod. He had been writing for 4
years for television but he acquired his first national attention
in January '55 when his play Patterns was broadcasted on Kraft
Television Theater. It was a huge critical success and was also
the first drama ever to be repeated on national television.
This night on Playhouse 90 was no different for his nerves. Within
the first 10 minutes his Ed Wynn fears got to him and he left
the control room before being asked to leave. Outside the door
he bumped into casting director Ethel Winant. They got into a
discussion of the shows success and how Rod wouldn't be able to
enjoy the actual production until he saw the Kinescope filmed
version. A new thought popped up into Rod's head that the Kinescope
was not working properly. Last weeks show, Forbidden Area, didn't
get filmed because the film camera wasn't loaded properly.
Walking into the dark room with Ethel, Rod heard the whirring
of the projector but wanted to get a closer look. While arched
over the Kinescope, Ethel let the door shut and when Rod straightened
up he bumped the Kinescope. It was just a second, but in that
second the live airways being transferred into the tv, out of
the tv and into the film camera, escaped in the black room. Rod
froze. The transmission beam caught him in the eye and he now
found himself outside of the projector room, outside of the studio,
and inside of a different room. Where he was he didn't know. Two
distorted figures started to approach him and about 8 seconds
from the flood of light he was back in the Kinescope room. "Ethel?"
he said.
Ethel was still in the room. She could tell that her eyes were
affected by the flood of light but it was too dark to tell. They
went outside of the room. Rod's eyes did not feel any different
and Ethel's eyes took just a little while to re-dialate to the
normal lights.
Something had triggered in Rod. He had gone home from the show
feeling that he was holding a memory that he needed to bring out.
When he got a chance to be alone he sat in the darkness and tried
to concentrate on his experience of that evening. Slowly he felt
that an image was being drawn to him. He felt he was losing his
sense of smell and touch. To his vision it looked like the fabric
of his eyes were being taken away. He experienced people, and
emotions, and different eras, and even a realm beyond earth. They
were all being brought to his consciousness. He was moving, but
he was no longer in his home. The visions lasted for hours and
he became fully conscious of the hypnosis he had gone through
over 9 years earlier in Roswell, NM. He finally lost consciousness.
When he woke up the next morning he wanted to share his experience,
but he knew the most important thing as a writer was to put it
down in writing. He went to his dictaphone where he normally would
record his plays and act out all of the characters. He turned
on the dictaphone and said, "There is a fifth dimension beyond
that which is known to man. It is a dimension as vast as space
and as timeless as infinity. It is the middle ground between light
and shadow, between science and superstition, and it lies between
the pit of man's fears, and the summit of his knowledge."
After remembering the government hypnosis, Rod felt a sense of
worry about who he was going to tell. He didn't want to have a
government conspiracy on his hands and he also didn't want to
do anything to endanger his family and friends. He felt that he
should tell his story to another military man, his director friend,
John Frankenheimer. Frankenheimer, 6 years younger than Serling,
had heard of military hypnosis during his time in the Air Force.
He remembers the psychiatrist on the base asking him if he would
ever consider being hypnotized. Frankenheimer said he wasn't against
it but he never was approached about it again.
Serling told Frankenheimer all about moving the Kinescope and
they actually watched Requiem for a Heavyweight to see the moment
where the movie camera is bumped from the tv. This happened in
the early part of the show when the Doctor was telling the prizefighter
that he could no longer fight. His moment of walking out and closing
the door was when Rod bumped the Kinescope.
Rod continued to tell Frankenheimer about what he remembers from
the hypnosis, being in Roswell, and also how the light in the
dark kinescope room had triggered his memories. Frankenheimer
allowed for there to be truth to his story, but he didn't want
to just believe it outright. After discussing it at length, the
question came up on whether there were any women being hypnotized.
Serling had not remembered women being with him and the other
12. Frankenheimer suggested that they find a woman confidant to
bounce these stories off of. The spoke to Ethel Winant.
Since she was in the Kinescope room with Serling, they thought
she would be a good person to keep the story to herself. She did
serve during WW2 at warehouses of Lockeed Aircraft riveting p-38's.
Ethel didn't have the experience Rod did. When the door shut behind
her in the Kinescope room, she had turned around to reopen it.
She remembered the light and also that it must have been really
bright to hurt her eyes when her back was against the Kinescope.
After hearing Rod's story, she certainly didn't think that she
was part of a hypnosis governmental plan, but her imagination
was strong enough that she knew not to disregard Rod's tale just
because it went beyond the normal everyday-life happening. She
thought that he possibly was experiencing something that had truth
behind it. She reminded him that others believe that some kind
of craft had crashed in New Mexico. Until Rod's story, she had
believed what she had heard on tv, that it was a craft identified
as American Military.
Rod continued to have flashes of memory and they became more detailed.
He knew that also the memories could be temporary. He made up
his mind that he needed to write them down in a form that he could
understand but that were coded enough so no one else would. He
wanted to write them as fictionalized accounts and also write
them with just enough information that anyone who possibly had
a similar experience would see and understand. He knew he had
to focus on producing these accounts and he knew that he couldn't
do this and also keep his current job writing solely for Playhouse
90.
Rod shocked the writing world when he decided to go on his own
to write a series he called the Twilight Zone. His success as
a live television writer was at an all time high. He just received
another Emmy, this one for Requiem for a Heavyweight. To the rest
of the entertainment world, he was making the wrong choice. As
writer Christopher Conlon later wrote, "It was an announcement
that sent shock waves through the industry; it was as if Ernest
Hemingway had declared he would stop writing novels and instead
concentrate on comic books." (Christopher Conlon in Southern California
Sorcers as read in http://rodserling.com/csorcerers.htm)
Another
link that Rod was experiencing was remembering pieces of why
the hypnosis had begun. His memories were vague. He knew there
was an FDR connection, and one about apparitions in Holland
and also about the artist from Holland, MC Escher. Escher was
at his greatest success in America around the time that Serling
came into knowledge of his new dimension. Rod remembers laughing
to himself when reading about Escher and his designs he called
"patterns", because his own first great success came with his
show that he had named "Patterns". Also Eschers themes in artwork
were about an approaching infinity, something that Rod felt
was brought to him. Serling felt that he was a guinea pig for
the government to experience this higher realm when they themselves
wouldn't approach it. He found a quote by Escher that echoed
his feelings, "[Mathemeticians] have opened the gate leading
to an extensive domain, but they have not entered this domain
themselves . . . [they are] more interested in the way in which
the gate is opened than in the garden lying behind it.
It gave him an eerie feeling when thinking about it, and if
the government had also somehow used Escher as one of their
subjects. Escher had tried to enlist in the military when he
was in his 20's but he was rejected. Maybe the government of
the Netherlands had been years ahead of America in hypnosis
and they didn't want Escher in the military until they were
able to properly use his mind. His family, both being involved
in government, probably were following governmental orders and
keeping tabs on MC and allowing for a time in the future when
they would deliver their son up to the military psychiatrists.
Serling wrote for almost 2 years, getting his thoughts on paper.
During this time he also was getting other plays performed on
Playhouse 90. He kept in touch with Frankenheimer and Winant.
During this time, three of his plays, shown on Playhouse 90,
are directed by Frankenheimer. Through conversations he had
with Frankenheimer, he saw Escher-esque ideas that were similar
between them. Escher had a curiosity with objects being in prison
and being freed. This furthered his belief that Frankenheimer
also was used for hypnosis. He asked Frankenheimer to look through
his first Playhouse 90 play, Forbidden Area, and see if there
were any themes he felt drawn to. He also offered him some ideas
he had about a future script about a government takeover plot.
Frankenheimer was drawn to these themes and also felt he wanted
to explore the ideas of the government hypnotizing their own
soldiers. In 1957 Frankenheimer directed his first motion picture,
Young Stranger. He hated it.
After Twilight Zone was in progress, Serling wanted to explore
the possibility that other people were a part of this government
experiment from 1947. He felt a connection to Requiem for a
Heavyweight, and thought that his writing this script may have
been from some of his influences experienced under hypnosis.
He himself was a boxer while in the war. The character he wrote
about was a fighter that had been lead for 14 years into boxing
rings, never knowing that his life was being controlled by his
manager, who turned against him. The first scene, of the original
broadcast, has the fighter coming to the viewing audience in
a daze. Not really knowing where he is and being taken into
a room, only to come in and out of consciousness with a bright
light in his face and people, who to him were distorted, looking
over him.
Serling wondered if this was his own memories of when he first
felt a presence of the other dimension. As if influenced by
the FDR hypnosis, he decided to have his script produced for
tv in the Netherlands. Serling decided, though, to change the
ending of the script before it went out. In the original, the
fighter leaves his hard life and goes back to Tennessee to begin
again with only memories to haunt him. In the new version, the
fighter is from New Mexico but doesn't get sanctuary from his
past. Instead he is put in front of others and ridiculed for
his heritage.
In 1959 the show came out in the Netherlands as Requiem Voor
een Zwaargewicht. It had fair success, but Serling never knew
of the 11-year old boy from The Hague who connected to the script.
His name was George Kooymans. Too young to think that he was
being affected by Serling's script, Kooymans became obsessed
with Serling's work and especially to a director that Serling
worked with, John Frankenheimer. The Frank name carried weight
in Holland, that of Hitler's most famous victim who hid in Amsterdam,
Anne Frank. Kooymans took to director and writer, and 2 years
later in 1961 he started a band. Like Serling, he became obsessed
with the themes he saw in Serling and Frankenheimer. Life, death,
God, angels, devils, space ships, imprisonment. He didn't know
why he was connected to them but he constantly had to write
lyrics, the way Serling had to write Twilight Zone scripts.
In 1962, Requiem for a heavyweight became a motion picture.
It contained the new ending and Serling also had a new cast
inserted. It starred tv sensation Jackie Gleason
In the 60's, after Frankenheimer had further researched Serling's
scripts, he decided to take on a project directing a movie that
would be the brightest light in his career. The film dealt with
hypnosis, government hypnosis that would make a normal soldier
into an assassin. The soldier, with a rifle, would kill an American
political figure without knowing what he had done. The film
came out in 1962 and would be Frankenheimer's greatest success
and the greatest monkey on his back. It would also confirm to
Serling that Frankenheimer had also been under direct hypnosis
and the two of them had been mislead into writing and directing
scripts that would carry out a message.
One year
after the film, a former marine was arrested for shooting and
killing the president. The assassin, who used a rifle, his name
was Lee Harvey Oswald. The actor who played the assassin in
the movie was Lawrence Harvey. The president was John F. Kennedy.
His closest friend, Frank Sinatra, was the main protagonist
in Frankenheimer's movie. 5 years later Frankenheimer would
suffer déjà vu when one of his closest friends, presidential
nominee Robert Kennedy was assassinated. Frankenheimer had droven
Robert that day from their home to the the Ambassador Hotel
in Los Angeles.
After JFK's shooting, Sinatra had the movie removed from circulation.
It stayed out of the public eye for 25 years. The movie company,
United Artists, continued to fight with Sinatra over this issue.
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