Rod Serling

Library Journal

It is Engel's thesis that Serling's early live TV dramas, Requiem for a Heavyweight and Patterns , ecstatically received by the critics who pronounced Serling the Arthur Miller of TV, dogged Serling for the rest of his prolific career in TV, movies, stage, and prose. Driven by his twin fierce demons of ambition and insecurity, he became mired in the ``velvet alley'' of Hollywood, writing too fast (actually, dictating his scripts and rarely revising) on too many projects, so that The Twilight Zone (156 episodes, 1959-64, most of which he scripted) became his tomb. He ended his career in the knowing ignominy of commercials and game shows. If Serling never becomes the intended tragic figure in this unincisive but interesting first biography, still Engel is adept at dissecting the deficiencies of the scripts and revealing the extreme, often petty, censorship power wielded by networks and especially sponsors and ad agencies in the so-called ``Golden Age'' of TV.-- David Bartholomew, NYPL