Rod Serling grew to become a TV star with the success of “The Twilight Zone,” a novel drawback for Serling who all the time felt like he was letting viewers down after they truly obtained take a look at him in particular person.
“Now folks see me on the road and so they say, ‘Why, we thought you have been six-foot-one’ or ‘We thought you appeared like a film actor,’ after which they take a look at me and say, ‘Why, God, this child is five-foot-five and he is obtained a damaged nostril.’ I {photograph} much better than I look, and that is the issue.”
When talking about this fame, Serling all the time appeared to deal with it like a drag, which it most actually was to his members of the family, as chronicled in “The Twilight Zone Companion.” His kids would typically change into irritated at their dad being acknowledged whereas they have been out and about. They report that their dad was all the time very form to those that acknowledged him, however the entire time his youngsters would beg him to inform his followers that they have been mistaken and that he wasn’t certainly Rod Serling.
Nonetheless, his shut pal, a producer with probably the most suggestive identify I’ve ever heard, Dick Berg, prompt that Mr. Serling doth protest an excessive amount of and that in actuality, he cherished the popularity. A few of it might have been ego, however Berg thinks it was principally that the celebrity meant his work was reaching folks, and as a populist author that was crucial factor to Serling. Plus, fame got here with energy and that energy let him inform the tales he needed to inform in the way in which he needed them instructed, a perk that only a few of his different colleagues loved, regardless of how celebrated.