Fans of Rod Serling and his iconic The Twlight Zone sci-fi series know the significance of the date Oct. 2.
On Oct. 2, 1959, The Twilight Zone premiered on CBS.
So this year on Oct. 2 an Ohio Historical Marker honoring Serling will be unveiled in Yellow Springs on the Antioch College campus where he earned a degree in literature in 1950, and returned to teach in 1963.
Rod’s daughter Anne Serling will participate in the dedication of the marker in front of One Morgan Place on the campus. She also will participate in “A Tribute to Rod Serling” that night to open the five-day Yellow Springs Film Festival in the Foundry Theater.
Serling, who died during open heart surgery in 1975, at age 50, followed his brother to Antioch College after World War II in 1946 to study on the GI Bill. He met his wife there, student Carol Kramer from Columbus, and did radio dramas on the campus station.
After graduating in 1950, he immediately started his professional writing career at WLW radio and television. He wrote travel shows, sitcoms, and “continuity” patter for variety shows — everything but serious drama. While at WLW, he wrote his first TV dramas as a freelancer for The Storm, a weekly 30-minute live series on rival WKRC-TV.
Serling quit WLW in December 1951. He freelanced for live network TV dramas based in New York from his home on Long Lane in Springfield Township before moving his family to Connecticut in 1954. He expanded "The Twilight Rounds," his 1952 boxing drama from The Storm, into CBS’ Requiem for a Heavyweight, which won the first Peabody Award for TV writing and an Emmy Award in 1957. “No Gods to Serve” and “Mr. Finchley vs. The Bomb” from The Storm aired on NBC before the Serlings moved to Los Angeles to launch The Twilight Zone on Oct. 2, 1959.
Anne Serling, author of As I Knew Him: My Dad, Rod Serling, told me last month her father once said “the freedom to speak, the freedom to reason, and above all, the right to question — this I think is tradition at Antioch.” As for the historical marker to be erected 50 years after his death, she said her father “would be humbled, honored, and happy to come home again.”
She was part of the joint effort to secure the historical marker along with the Ohioana Library Association; Antioch College; Yellow Springs Film Festival; and Mark Dawidziak from the Rod Serling Memorial Foundation.
Antioch College archivist Scott Sanders provided the text of the historical marker application in my June story, Rod Serling historical marker coming to Yellow Springs.
The Oct. 2 event schedule:
- Dedication of the marker at 4 p.m.
- "A Tribute to Rod Serling" opening presentations in the Foundry Theater at 7 p.m. by Anne Serling and Dawidziak (author of Everything I Need to Know I Learned in The Twilight Zone, The Death and Life of Edgar Allan Poe, and five books on Mark Twain);
- Live performance of a Serling radio play;
- Screening a 1961 episode of The Twilight Zone called “The Obsolete Man,” starring Burgess Meredith as a librarian in a future totalitarian society declared obsolete and sentenced to death, followed by a panel discussion with Serling, Dawidziak, and me.
The festival continues through Sunday, Oct. 5. Highlights include:
- A Kevin Nealon comedy concert Friday, Oct. 3;
- Director Stanley Nelson discussing his new We Want The Funk! documentary on Saturday;
- A conversation with Hannah Beachler, the Academy Award-winning film production designer (Black Panther) from Centerville who has degrees from the University of Cincinnati and Wright State University.
Tickets are available now for some events at the Yellow Springs Film Festival website.
