Rod Serling left behind an impressive body of work for television. Hundreds of his teleplays were aired during his twenty-five-year career. By comparison, his writing for the screen seems slight--he wrote the screenplays for only nine films, and he never had an original screenplay produced; all of his screenplays were adaptations of his own teleplays or of stories or novels by others.

Edward Rodman Serling was born in Syracuse, New York, the son of a wholesale butcher, Samuel L. Serling, and Esther Cooper Serling. He grew up in Binghamton, New York, and after high school he entered the army, where he served as a paratrooper in the Philippines during World War II and received the Purple Heart. Upon leaving the army, he entered Antioch College under the G.I. bill; there he began writing radio and television scripts, teaching himself as he wrote. He married Carol Kramer on...