My Mom is a fan of "Coal Miner's Daugher" so I have seen the film many times and recalled "Crazy" playing on the radio as Loretta heard the news of her crash.


1. I was born on December 25, 1924.

2. In elementary school, I was seen as the class clown and dismissed by many of my teachers as a lost cause.

3. I wanted to leave school before graduation to join the fight, but my civics teacher talked me into waiting for graduation. "War is a temporary thing," Gus Youngstrom told me. "It ends. Education doesn't. Without your degree, where will you be after the war?"

I should ave got that Jack; I was playing that song only yesterday.

4. I saw death every day while in the Philippines, at the hands of my enemies and my allies, and through freak accidents such as that which killed another private, Melvin Levy. Levy was delivering a comic monologue for the platoon as we rested under a palm tree when a food crate was dropped from a plane above, decapitating him.

Had a mental lapse, & I sit, corrected, & apologize. Sorry!

Joseph Heller?

Jerry Stiller?

Don Adams

Nope, nope... and nope.

5. I later set several of my scripts in the Philippines and used the unpredictability of death as a theme in much of my writing.

6, After being discharged from the Army in 1946, I worked at a rehabilitation hospital while recovering from my wounds. My knee troubled me for years. Later, my wife, Carol, became accustomed to the sound of me falling down the stairs when my knee buckled under my weight.

Dalton Trumbo?

No.

7. For extra money in my college years, I worked part-time testing parachutes for the United States Army Air Forces. I received $50 for each successful jump and had once been paid $500 (half before and half if he survived) for a hazardous test. My last test jump was a few weeks before my wedding. In one instance, I earned $1,000 for testing a jet ejection seat that had killed the previous three testers.

8. While attending college, I worked at the Antioch Broadcasting System's radio workshop and was managing the station within a couple of years. I then took charge of full-scale radio productions at Antioch which were broadcast on WJEM, in Springfield. I wrote and directed the programs and acted in them when needed. I created the entire output for the 1948-1949 school year. With one exception (an adaptation), all the writing that year was my original work.

Paul Harvey?

Rod Serling?

Roger Corman?

You got it! Learned a lot by researching him.

Next group of clues were:

*) The early years of television often saw sponsors working as editors and censors. I was often forced to change my scripts after corporate sponsors read them and found something they felt was too controversial. They were wary of anything they thought might make them look bad to consumers, so references to many contemporary social issues were omitted, as were references to anything that might compete commercially with a sponsor. For instance, the line "Got a match?" was deleted because one of the sponsors of "Requiem for a Heavyweight" was Ronson lighters.

*) I was said to smoke three to four packs of cigarettes a day. On May 3, 1975, I had a minor heart attack and was hospitalized. I spent two weeks at Tompkins County Community Hospital before being released. A second heart attack two weeks later forced doctors to agree that open-heart surgery, though considered risky at the time, was required. The ten-hour-long procedure was performed on June 26, but I had a third heart attack on the operating table and died two days later at Strong Memorial Hospital in Rochester, New York. I was 50 years old. In 1975, the Canadian rock band Rush dedicated its third studio album, Caress of Steel, to me

*) I’m best well known for narrating the following: “You're traveling through another dimension, a dimension not only of sight and sound but of mind ... a journey into a wondrous land whose boundaries are that of imagination—your next stop, the Twilight Zone!”

He was an incredibly intense, imaginative and prolific writer.

A genius. Those early Twilight Zone episodes (in glorious black and white) are superb.

I rewatched season 1 two weeks ago and thought he would be a good candidate for this game. Was surprised and intriqued to discover his interesting backstory.

Good one, Animated. I knew nothing about Serling’s background. Absolutely fascinating!

Karnak, I believe you’re up …