The Bard: Rod Serling’s Other Television Writer
© Al Sjoerdsma
August 26, 2020
In 1959, Playhouse 90 aired Rod Serling’s “The Velvet Alley,” the story of a struggling writer who lives in a small apartment where he is pestered by a kid until he makes a sale to a prestigious television program and has to contend with sudden success. Four years later, Twilight Zone aired Rod Serling’s “The Bard,” the story of a struggling writer who lives in a small apartment where he is pestered by a kid until he makes a sale to a prestigious television program. But whereas Ernie Pandish in “The Velvet Alley” is a man with talent, Julius Moomer in “The Bard” is someone who, to quote Rod from his introduction, “if talent came 25 cents a pound would be worth less than car fare.” In fact, Julius is the untalented writer that Rod brushed aside in “The Velvet Alley.” There, in a small role, Eddie Ryder plays a writer whose name appears to be Julius, who pitches the same ideas that Jack Weston’s Julius pitches in “The Bard.”
This is “The Velvet Alley:”
Julius: He’s a cowboy. He’s a fast gun and he promises his girl that he won’t use the gun again, you see?
Secretary: How about a science fiction piece? There’s this rocketman who promises his girl never to go up in a spaceship.
Julius: What is it? What’s the matter, Max? You don’t look so good. What is it?
Max: Somebody just made a sale.
Julius: Me? Was it me, Max? The zombie story? It’s a fantastic yarn. It’s about this girl marries a guy who’s walking around on his heels all the time, see? Everybody thinks he’s punchy but he isn’t, he’s dead. All the time they’re married, she don’t know he’s dead, ya dig?
Max: Julius, I’m sorry, it wasn’t your day, it was somebody else’s day.
And this is “The Bard:”
Julius: So, maybe he ain’t a prize fighter, maybe he’s a cowboy, a top gun and maybe he promises his girl never to carry a gun again and maybe it’s the girl’s kid brother who has this incurable disease….Say, how about if it was a science fiction piece, this rocketman makes a promise to his girl never to go up in a spaceship again…I bet you made a sale, Mr. Hugo, you made a sale. The zombie story! I shoulda known it. The minute I wrote it, I knew it was sure-fire. Absolute sure-fire. Oh, it’s a fantastic yarn, honey. It’s about this dame who marries a guy who walks around on his heels all the time. She thinks he’s punchy but it turns out he’s dead. All the time they’re married, she don’t know he’s dead.
In both cases, Julius finds out that, as Max says, “It was somebody’s else’s day.” In “The Velvet Alley,” Julius is left behind as the story follows that “somebody” but, in “The Bard,” the story stays with Julius. Why did Rod decide that Julius’ throwaway story was finally worth telling? Well, because it isn’t Julius’ story, not really. Julius is just a convenient dress dummy on which Rod can put the suit that he wants to tailor.
In “Rod Serling: His Life, Work, and Imagination,” Nicholas Parisi tells us that “The Velvet Alley started life on October 19, 1955, when Rod Serling wrote to Blanche Gaines, his longtime agent, that he was about to sign a five-year contract to be represented by Ashley-Steiner, one of the biggest agencies in Hollywood,” and quotes Rod, saying that, ”the externals of the play were definitely autobiographical – the pressures, the assault on values, the blandishments that run in competition to a man’s creativity. I left strips of flesh all over the studio with that one.” That story was deeply personal. “The Bard” is not. Rather, it is how Rod saw the television networks, the sponsors, even the method actors of the theatre, in their pursuit of profit or gritty realism, cheapening the product in spite of Julius’ agent Mr. Hugo telling him that television is “preoccupied with talent.” Julius is not equipped to handle this hypocrisy. In fact, Julius is part of the problem because the whole culture is part of the problem. So, the person with talent who can grapple with this culture has to come from far outside. And what better way to comment on 20th century American drama and culture than with the man considered to be the greatest of all English language playwrights?
Let’s run through the relatively simple plot. Failed writer Julius Moomer gets a hold of a book of black magic and accidentally conjures up William Shakespeare (perfectly cast with John Williams) who ghostwrites his television play. “The Tragic Cycle” is impressive enough to be chosen for a Playhouse 90 clone (Shannon’s Classic Playhouse) but not impressive enough to be left alone by the sponsors, the censors, and the representatives of the modern theater. As the boys from the network change lines, assuage sponsors and hire actors wearing sweatshirts who are too old for their roles, Julius is a willing participant. He only wants the prestige and cares little for the art. At least, the others don’t realize that they are butchering a new Shakespeare play (not that we get a sense they would care) but Julius has no such excuse. Shakespeare is supposed to be a silent partner but he arrives uninvited to rehearsal and is appalled by all he sees. He ends up punching tortured actor Rocky Rhodes (a Marlon Brando take-off wonderfully played by Burt Reynolds) and leaving Julius for good.
Julius doesn’t understand this rejection. He thinks he is a man of the modern world, immersed in the vernacular, with some of Rod’s most distinctive lines, wonderfully delivered by Jack Weston (“You know, like a vow. A vow, Mr. Hugo, that’s like a promise, I mean like solemn,” “There’s more here than meets the eyeballs,” “Don’tcha dig? I’m conjurin’, baby, I’m conjurin’.”), steeped in malapropisms (“lizardy coachmen,” “the Wurlitzer prize,” “Rimsky and Korsikov,” “Rubber barons. Just because you’re heeled, that don’t make you unhuman.”), exaggerations (When speaking to Shakespeare, “Man! You’ve been dead a thousand years!”) and empty banalities (His description of Shakespeare’s language, “It’s Shakespearean!”). Yet for all of his modernity, Julius finds himself trying to keep up with the times:
Mr. Hugo: Why don’t you go back to doing what you did before?
Julius: A streetcar conductor! Mr. Hugo, it’s like progress. There ain’t no more streetcars.
He’s not the only one. When confronted with Shakespeare’s script, Mr. Dolan of the Shannon Soup corporation exhorts the others to “Let’s be cerebral, boys,” something they’re not used to doing. Mr. Shannon himself, not versed in anything except soup and faced with actor Rocky Rhodes who was “brilliant in ‘Streetcar Named Desire’, says, “What was he, a conductor?” The stymied director of “The Tragic Cycle,” deals with Rocky’s question about his tertiary motivation (“Any slob can walk through a door. I mean, I do it every day…Would I walk through that door? It’s on the basis on that answer that I find my motivation.”) by telling him, “Well, Rocky baby, why don’t we just run through it and see how it plays, shall we do that?”
Rocky, on the other hand, is comfortable in a modern world of method acting, shadow boxing as a warm up routine, Tennessee Williams plays, and Stanislavkian thought. None of Rod’s jabs at this are subtle. Nor are the digs at the sponsors, with Mr. Dolan’s insistence that “onion” be changed to “turnip” in the script because Shannon’s does not sell onion soup, or at television in general with the change of “The Tragic Cycle’s” male lead to a “Dr. Kildare, Dr. Casey” type because “doctor stories are very big this season.” This all works as satire because we, as viewers, are wise to it, in ways that the characters are not. But we are not necessarily wise to everything and that’s where “The Bard” really shines. When Shakespeare responds to the annoying Rocky with “What have I got against this personage, Stanislavsky? You,” followed by a punch in the nose, we’re with him. But when Shakespeare wonders at, “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof,” he reminds us that it is an odd title to which we have become accustomed. (Rocky’s brilliantly scripted response is, “That would be a play, Charlie. A real play. What are you, a Tennessee knocker?”) When Julius says, “Ugly butchers and dog dames. That’s all right for Chayefsky but Moomer aspires,” he puts the Academy Award-winning “Marty” in a light we haven’t shined on it. And when Julius tells William, “You want to creep back into a crypt and be forgotten? Fame flits. Shakespeare is dead, long live Mickey Spillane,” he presents a comparison that we haven’t and would rather not make.
Then there are the elements of this world that we take for granted. The book seller’s obsession with baseball may seem a bit out of place but is really just another example of someone steeped in a modern niche culture. After not knowing that Keats was a person when visiting the bookstore (“I’d like to see a Keat.”), Julius namedrops Keats to try to boost his intellectual image in a TV interview. (“As Keats once said to the Paris edition of the New York Herald Tribune, Keats said, ‘Keep punchin’’.”) We think he looks like a fool but while we’re thinking that, we may not be noticing that we are watching the show along with Julius in a meta moment where we only see the show through the frame of Julius’ TV. “Celebrity Interviews,” which is touted as bringing us “the personalities of show business who make the headlines and the stories. Playwrights, actors, actresses, all the living legends of show business as it is today,” is the type of show we may actually watch and feel culturally rewarded but shown on Julius’ TV with Julius’ smiling face filling the screen, we peek behind the curtain and don’t feel rewarded at all.
Even “Ye Book of Ye Black Arte” succumbs to our culture. It may start off with an archaic title and the ability to appear in a book store and leap off the shelf (The book seller says, “This book and I have never been introduced.”) but its incantations seem to consist of “Va Va Vooms,” “Za Za Zooms,” and “Ipsy Dipsies.” Julius’ transition of a spell to modern times, substituting pigeon feathers for falcon feathers, Jones Beach sand for Egyptian sand, and three legs of an ant instead of a spider, seems to work just fine. With them, he conjures up Shakespeare and, later, figures from American History.
Only Shakespeare appears immune to the modernity infection. Quoting his own words as if knowing the fame they have achieved, he stands aloof, until summing up these times by telling Julius that he has “succumbed to the rankest compound of villainous smell that ever offended nostril,” only to succumb himself at the last moment with a modern and slangy, “lotsa luck.”
In “Rod Serling: His Life, Work, and Imagination,” Nick Parisi quotes Rod talking about the first time he met Charles Beaumont, during which Beaumont told him that “The Velvet Alley” was “the worst piece of writing I’ve ever seen:” “I didn’t rebel at this at all,” Rod said, “but to this day I lay claim that Chuck is absolutely wrong. I think it’s a beautiful piece of work. That’s it’s an aged theme I can’t defend, but that it was a legitimate story, honestly told – this I will defend.” I’ve heard a number of people say that “The Bard” is their least favorite Twilight Zone episode but Rod would defend this script, too, as he did with producer Herbert Hirschman. According to Martin Grams, Jr. in “The Twilight Zone: Unlocking the Door to a Television Classic,” “Hirschman insisted on drastic changes, claiming it was too comical and whimsical for the Twilight Zone. In late July, he sent Serling a list of 16 concerns, most of which he felt were a primary reason for discarding the script altogether…On August 2, Serling wrote to Hirschman…’It’s a wild story. The dialogue is wild. The humor is farfetched. The comedy is broad stroked. I frankly wouldn’t have it any other way…This is one I’m afraid I must ask you to swallow wholesale and then spit it out – but swallow it, you guys must!” He could just as easily have told Hirschman that it’s an aged theme but a legitimate story, honestly told. Or, at least, one issued from the heart.
If “The Bard” does not resonate with you, I think there are three main reasons. The first is the musical score, which plays like a series of sustained rimshots, cheapening the humor that it means to emphasize, turning a satire into a farce. Imagine the episode without it and see if your opinion rises. The second is the gags, as if Rod, in detailing the cheapness of this culture fell victim to the cheapness himself; another meta moment in which he seems to fear he isn’t playing to “the lady in Dubuque.” After giving us such subtly comic lines as “It’s so archaic, language wise” and “We can’t live with the suicide,” there’s no need to add Julius’ fainting spell, Shakespeare forgetting the rest of “To Be or Not to Be” or even his “lotsa luck” line, though that one serves a purpose. The third is the ending, which falls flat as Julius conjures up George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Daniel Boone, Pocahontas and others to write an American History piece. In “The Twilight Zone Companion,” Marc Scott Zicree rightly notes that “one feels that it would have been more logical for Julius to call upon Mark Twain, Bret Harte, James Fenimore Cooper, Stephen Crane, and Ambrose Bierce, since his problem wasn’t an inability to research but rather an inability to write.” But, more than that, the problem is that Julius is not really the main character of the piece and should not be providing the ending. After all, the episode is entitled “The Bard,” not “Moomer.” While Julius is the same hopeless chump from beginning to end, it is Shakespeare who tries to defend his drama from the modern world, only to be reduced to the vernacular at the end. Perhaps a better ending would be to have Shakespeare stick around to get ground down by the times; a willing collaborator with Julius for any hack job they are asked to turn out. However, Rod did tell Herb Hirschman, “I can’t rewrite it anymore. Not a scene, not a line,” so far be it from me to attempt my own rewrite. Even as it is, Marc Scott Zicree considers “The Bard” a “delightful episode” and I agree. For those who still can’t see it, I recommend a few more viewings, then maybe a few more. And lotsa luck.