The Script Change That Almost Led Rod Serling to Walk
By: Rj Carr
Tags: Twilight Zone, Rod Serling, Censorship, Writing, Television

Photo by Bruna Araujo on Unsplash

Desi Arnaz was the Desi in Desilu, the Lu of course was his wife Lucille Ball. Together, they formed the Desilu studio producing I Love Lucy among many other hit shows including the original Star Trek.

In 1958, Desilu produced The Westinghouse Desilu Theatre on CBS. In those days, whole programs had single sponsors, however, as television became more popular that would become prohibitively expensive and no longer cost-effective to sponsors.

Corporate censorship is endemic in media

Rod Serling was already an established writer for television and today he is most famous for his Twilight Zone series that although attempted has never been duplicated exactly without him.

In 1958, he announced that he considered quitting television after the censors changed his script for The Desilu Playhouse. Understand, such censorship is part of the media industry. One of the most famous incidents also for the same network, CBS, happened nine years later when the producers of the Ed Sullivan Show told Jim Morrison, lead singer of the Doors, not to sing the word higher when performing Light My Fire. They were afraid many would consider it a drug reference. He did it anyway — a classic Jim Morrison move. The Ed Sullivan Show’s producers blacklisted the group from that moment.

Rod Serling wrote a script for the Westinghouse Desilu Theatre called The Time Element. The drama featured television stars at the time such as William Bendix who headlined his own comedy show — The Life of Riley, Darryl Hickman younger brother of the future Dobie Gillis star Dwayne Hickman, Martin Balsam, maybe most famous for his role in The Taking of Pelham 123 (1974), Jesse White prolific supporting role actor, one of those with a famous face whose name you would have to look up. Finally, there was Joe DeRita who later became the fifth of the Three Stooges.

Writers know every word counts. The same with any scene they may create. Television, like social media today, worked then and to a slightly lesser degree now through advertising. Cable television was a scenario only found where the reception would be poor. Normally, people watched over-the-air television that was free in the United States. Today over-the-air television is still free but I literally see comments occasionally by people who believe, falsely, it is illegal to access it.

You are the product in free media

As with social media today, such as Facebook and Twitter, the reason access is free is the true product in television is the viewers. Sponsors bought viewers and the number of viewers set the rates. Networks did not want to alienate their sponsors so they gave them control over scripts.

Westinghouse was a major broadcaster at the time and parent to the Group W television stations and network as well as a sponsor on other networks. Westinghouse also was a defense contractor.

The teleplay featured William Bendix as a man who in repetitive dreams wakes up in the Imperial Hawaiian hotel on December 6th, 1941. Since it is a dream, he spends his time figuring out how he went from 1958 to 1941. He realizes he is in Honolulu, Hawaii the day before the invasion of Pearl Harbor.

The man encounters newlyweds Ensign and Edna Janoski. The officer works in the engine room on the USS Arizona and, obviously, he and his wife have no idea that tomorrow at least one of them will be dead. Bendix tries to warn them and others that a Japanese invasion is imminent.

Let us not offend a sponsor

According to television columnist Bob Foster, writing at the time in the San Mateo Times, this script was the one that led Serling to declare he was leaving television. The original teleplay involved Bendix’s character going to the Army to warn them of the upcoming invasion but they dismissed him. Of course, wrote Foster, this “might offend one of the sponsor’s top accounts. . . the Defense Department.”

The scene had to be changed. In the final version, Bendix’s character goes to a newspaper to warn them and is tripped up as delusional for being unable to name the vice-president.

Serling, who had a history of fighting such censorship, hated the idea of having to bow to sponsors and decided to leave Hollywood. This was not the first time Serling fought network censors. Previously that year, he wrote a script “Panic Button” about a commercial airline crash. Network executives told him to change it to a charter plane. Of course, commercial airlines were then and are now sponsors. Charter airlines not so much.

Bill Frisett relaying the story for the Oakland (CA) Tribune added apparently, one network executive complained that by the time the script was produced the airplane would be a taxi and the taxi companies would scream.

Frisett reported Serling’s attitude against censorship was that the sponsors controlled the flow of information and, therefore, controlled how people thought.

“If the trend towards censorship continues the next few years in the same direction to the same degree that it has, there will be a new citizenry evolving in this country. They will be very selective in terms of their serials in automobiles, but they’ll have forgotten how to read books. Make a decision and probably in the long run, to even think a thought.” Serling complained.

Obviously, Serling stayed and the show aired.

There are two ironies of this incident; together they are worthy of a Twilight Zone episode in themselves.

One is that Serling went on to become one of the most famous writers of the Golden Years of Television. IMDB reports that this Westinghouse Desilu Playhouse episode was so successful that viewers hounded CBS for more and so began the trek toward The Twilight Zone, the series for which Serling would be forever associated.

The second is that Serling died at a relatively young age — fifty, after a series of heart attacks over several days. I point out to young people that rarely was he seen on television not smoking. He was a smoker — a heavy one. Oftentimes tobacco companies were sponsors which added to the irony of his death in light of his fight over censorship.

Today, we can look back at the warning of one of the great prophets of television, the other being Edward R. Murrow, ironically another heavy smoker who died young. They saw a different world coming and did not take too kindly to it. If Serling did walk away, one of the great schools in television would never exist — The Twilight Zone. The show still speaks to us and maybe more so than in the five years it ran from 1959 to 1964.

There is a lesson there. You can take your ball and go home on principle but maybe the world is better off if you persevere as best you can.

The Time Element, S1E6, Westinghouse Desilu Playhouse, IMDB.com

The Time Element, Westinghouse Desilu Playhouse, YouTube

Frisett, Bill, Rod Serling Pipes Up on Censorship, Oakland, (CA) Tribune, May 5, 1958 p.l9

Ewald, William, Serling Pearl Harbor Drama Engrossing, UPI, Tucson Daily Citizen, December 2, 1958 p.20

Foster, Bob, column, San Mateo, (CA) Times, November 5, 1958, p. 14

Wikipedia, Rod Serling,

Crosby, John, I Never Turn It On Anymore, Tucson Daily Citizen, May 17, 1958 p. 19