Best known as the host of television's The Twilight Zone, Rod Serling was a prolific author of live teleplays and television scripts who did much to raise the artistic bar of a fledgling medium in the 1950s and 1960s. With contemporaries such as Paddy Chayefsky and Reginald Rose, Serling found television a reprobate cousin to film and theater, and left it a respected forum for expression.

Rod Serling

Born Rodman Edward Serling on Christmas Day 1924, he grew up in the sleepy university town of Binghamton in upstate New York. He served in the army during World War II, seeing combat action in the Philippines. Hospitalized with multiple shrapnel wounds, Serling sought an outlet for his pent-up emotions. "I was bitter about everything and at loose ends when I got out of the service," he later recalled. "I think I turned to writing to get...