American Legends: The Life of Rod Serling

De: Charles River Editors

Narrado por: Kenneth Ray

A lot of ink has been spilled covering the lives of history's most influential figures, but how much of the forest is lost for the trees? In Charles River Editors' American Legends series, listeners can get caught up to speed on the lives of America's most important men and women in the time it takes to finish a commute, while learning interesting facts long forgotten or never known.

The "Golden Age" of television was in part so named because it was the era in which new technology was pioneered and industry rules were still being written. Here was a fascinating new medium, founded by executives with no previous body of experience, and a myriad of directions in which to proceed. Numerous factions spent the next generation wresting control over content and the content/product relationship. Some envisioned a public service and educational medium, while others sought sophisticated entertainment. With profit as the determining motive, executives and sponsors sought only what would evoke the most lucrative response.

The term "Golden Age" also applies to the reality that much of the television programming in the 1950s was offered up as live performance, a dangerous and exciting time for both writers and actors. As pioneer director John Frankenheimer put it, "There were no old days. We were the old days." Frankenheimer went on to associate with one of the age's best and most prolific TV writers, Rod Serling, an enduring name in the realm of philosophical fright and ironic reflections of human injustice.

©2016 Charles River Editors (P)2017 Charles River Editors

Memory Lane revisited

I was a teenager in the early 60's and thrived on Serling's work. I remember the excitement at age 18 of meeting a woman who had been a classmate of his, and her description of the writer's creative genius. This audio book has inspired me, now age 72, to purchase the DVD collection of Twilight Zone stories and relive that creative genius. Thank you, Audible!