Rod Serling

Even though the black & white video quality of this is pretty bad, the quality of the interview is excellent. Mike Wallace quizzes Rod Serling on several issues that were strong concerns in the late 1950's. Serling is very upfront with his answers too.

On Censorship, Rod Serling definitely lashes out about how ridiculous the codes were at that time illustrating his point about a script where a ship captain could not order tea from his ships galley because the sponsor was a coffee company. Wallace cultivates several other nuggets out as well. He goes over the resume Serling had already built up by 1959.

A timely thing about this is Serling is just starting production on The Twilight Zone when this interview is being conducted. Serling states he is working on the series 7 days a week & 13 hours a day on average. Serling actually addresses the fact that with the kind of success he already had, that he was having a tough time finding time for his wife & kids because of our system even then. Amazing as this family-life issue for the rest of us was not addressed by Corporations until the late 1990's.

This shows Serling is ahead of his time, & Wallace brings it out with a darned fine interview.