Book Review - The Twilight Rounds: Rod Serling Explores the Dark Side of Boxing by Christopher Benedict.

At the conclusion of Martin Scorsese’s, Raging Bull, we see a bloated Jake LaMotta rehearsing his nightclub routine in his dressing room. He is reciting Marlon Brando’s “I coulda been a contender” speech from On the Waterfront before he’s given the five-minute warning by Scorsese playing a stagehand.

Outside the Barbizon-Plaza where De Niro’s LaMotta is performing, a sign advertises that evening’s show with the enticement that the Bronx Bull will be performing the works of Paddy Chayefsky, Rod Serling, Shakespeare, Budd Schulberg, and Tennessee Williams.

Rod Serling sits well among very good company.

Christopher Benedict’s new book, The Twilight Rounds: Rod Serling Explores the Dark Side of Boxing, focusses on a writer who once proclaimed, “I’ve always liked fighting and fighters”. Serling’s admiration resulted in him frequently returning to the sport of boxing throughout his writing career.  

The beauty of Benedict’s book is that it is more than just a biography of Serling the writer. Of course, we learn about his life, but Benedict also goes on to look at Serling’s influence on writers that came after him. We are also given profiles of a variety of fascinating characters in some way connected to the man himself or his work. The book also serves as a reminder of how prevalent boxing was in the cultural life of America in those early years of television.

Benedict makes the comparison between the discipline required from the life of a writer and that of a fighter. Serling was compelled to write, but recognised kindred spirits amongst pugilists.

“In the final analysis, the way I believe Rod Serling saw it, great reward was earned only through the taking of great risk by the writer as well as the prize-fighter. Both pursuits being ultimately solitary ones, Serling likely drew many parallels between the mindset of one and the other which correspond in a unique and quite meaningful way.

The innumerable hours spent in preparation and monastic isolation, the anxiety and self-doubt, fleeting sensations of elation or grandeur, shouldering the weight of external pressures to deliver the goods, alternating moments of insurmountable struggle and cruising effortlessly along almost as if on autopilot, and, ultimately, a pride in having accomplished the task at hand knowing full well that—win, lose, or draw—you left everything you had to give on the blood-splattered canvas or the typewritten paper.”

If Serling identified with the struggle of the boxer, there were others who saw the intensity of the prize-fighter within him. Benedict notes that Richard Grossman, an editor at Simon and Schuster back in the late 1950s, remarked that Serling’s “eyes moved like a boxer’s.”

Benedict recounts Serling’s time serving in the military and the impact that this had on his life subsequently, both physically and mentally. In one incident he received serious shrapnel wounds to his knee and wrist, his bravery and conduct earning him the Purple Heart. On another occasion Serling found himself in the crosshairs of a rifle brandished by a Japanese soldier taking dead aim at him. He would undoubtedly have been shot and killed if not for a quick-acting fellow serviceman who took out the enemy combatant from over Rod’s shoulder.

The bulk of Benedict’s book then focusses on Serling’s writing career, specifically where he took aim at the sport of boxing and the characters who inhabited that world.

Serling started as he meant to continue. His first ever published piece of writing was a four-page-long boxing story that ran in the March 1948 edition of his school’s literary magazine. The story was entitled, The Good Right Hand.

Benedict notes how Serling’s writing career coincided with a Golden Age of television.  The number of U.S. households boasting at least one set skyrocketed from less than 10,000 in 1945 to nearly 60 million by the end of the 50s. When it came to television content, anthology programs became exceedingly popular, a format that would suit Serling like a well fitted mouthpiece.

Rod won the first of what would eventually total six Emmy Awards in March 1956 for his teleplay, Patterns. October that same year, saw the broadcast of a play that Serling described, “as honest a piece as I’ve ever done.”

This televised version of Requiem for a Heavyweight starred Jack Palance as washed-up fighter Harlan ‘Mountain’ McClintock, with his trainer Army and manager Maish, portrayed respectively by real-life father and son Ed and Keenan Wynn.

While the production was a critical success, earning six wins at the 1957 Emmys, Serling, ever his own worst critic, felt that the conclusion of Requiem was “weak” and “anticlimactic.”

Benedict explains how when it came to adapting the teleplay into a motion picture, Serling corrected what he saw as that troublesome ending.

“The most radical divergence Serling makes from the televised broadcast of Requiem for a Heavyweight to the feature film is the tonal discord of their individual outro. After standing up for himself, Jack Palance’s Mountain McClintock is bestowed a happy ending in the Playhouse 90 version, teaching a young boy how to box aboard a train heading home to Kennesaw, Tennessee where he will work as a camp counsellor. In the motion picture, however, Anthony Quinn’s Mountain Rivera remains shackled to his devotion to Maish and is summarily doomed to a bleak, pessimistic fate.”

Anthony Quinn as Luis "Mountain" Rivera, in the movie version of Requiem for a Heavyweight.

Despite the changes, Serling remained dissatisfied with the finished product, describing it as, “not a very good picture.” He felt the film was “badly directed” as well as “poorly performed” with the exceptions of Jackie Gleason and Mickey Rooney.

Serling is almost certainly best known for his work on The Twilight Zone. Benedict reminds us that Serling proclaimed during a speech given at the Library of Congress in 1968 that “the writer’s role is to menace the public’s conscience.”

He goes on to say that “a science fiction anthology program was the perfect Trojan horse, a vehicle enabling Serling to drive far-out tales right into viewers’ living rooms which were perfectly entertaining on a superficial level but contained contemporary allegories hidden within.”

One of Serling’s notable boxing-related stories for The Twilight Zone was The Big, Tall Wish, which aired on April 8, 1960. The episode tells the story of Bolie Jackson, a past-his-prime prize-fighter with a fatalistic mindset who is “running down the street trying to catch that bus to glory”.

Benedict takes us behind the scenes of the casting decisions and into the thought processes of Rod Serling.

“Nearly the entire cast are African American. A production decision like this was considered unthinkable at the time and was an intentionally provocative choice on the part of Rod Serling because of his belief that Black actors were woefully underrepresented within the film and television industry. More than that, Serling viewed prejudice as mankind’s greatest evil.”

Our author’s admiration for Sterling and his work are clear and Benedict makes his case eloquently and passionately.

“Rod Serling’s writings, even when adapted from pre-existing sources, were always uniquely his own. Whether it’s the unmistakably verbose dialogue spoken by his characters, the compassion and pathos with which he treated the most deserving among them, or the ironic twists of fate that bedevilled others, a script that originated from the imagination and typewriter of Rod Serling was like no other. His stories have not only stood the test of time but remained critically relevant to both society and the entertainment industry.”

Benedict goes on to describe Rod Serling as being “a proponent of racial equality, champion of the oppressed, and (giving a) voice to the voiceless.”

Personally, I came to this book only knowing Serling as the writer of the movie version of Requiem for a Heavyweight. Having learnt of Serling’s views of the film, it seems that I am much more of an admirer than he was. Reading Benedict’s book, with Christopher as our expert guide through the boxing related stories and characters that Serling created, is a highly informative and entertaining journey. He has done a fine job in bringing his subject to life; both Serling’s work and the man behind the typewriter.

The Twilight Rounds: Rod Serling Explores the Dark Side of Boxing by Christopher Benedict is soon to be published by Jobber House Press and will be available from all good book shops.