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| Jerry Sohl Writer |
In 1982 writer Marc Scott Zicree
published the first edition of The
Twilight Zone Companion, his exhaustively researched retrospective of
Rod Serling’s celebrated fantasy series. The first book-length study of the
show and its influence on the culture, The
Companion shed a light on many aspects of the show that had gone largely
unknown for nearly two decades. One of the more significant revelations was that
science fiction writer Jerry Sohl had ghost-written three episodes of the show
which, at the time of their original broadcasts, were all credited to frequent
Twilight Zone writer Charles Beaumont. One episode in particular, season five’s
“Living Doll,” had since become one of the most recognizable episodes of the
series. He had also sold two additional scripts to the show during its fifth
season that were never produced. Why then had his involvement with the show been all but erased from its history? The most significant reason is that he wrote
them as a favor to his friend Charles Beaumont, who had begun experiencing
symptoms of an undiagnosed neurological disorder that would eventually claim
his life, in an agreement that they split the profit and that Beaumont receive
the onscreen credit. Unfortunately, this violates guidelines set in place by
the Writer’s Guild of America so even after the Twilight Zone went off the air, Sohl was
hesitant to speak publicly about his involvement with the show. After the
publication of Zicree’s book Sohl was finally able to take credit for his
contribution to the show. But Jerry Sohl’s career as a professional writer was
a prolific one, both on the page and the screen, and his place in the history
of speculative fiction is worth exploring.
Gerald Allan Sohl was born on December
2, 1913 and was raised in Chicago, Illinois. Sohl became an avid reader at a young age, spending hours at the local library soaking in the early
science fiction periodicals of the time. He eventually became a writer for The
Chicago Daily News and several other local papers until he was drafted into the
Army Air Corps where he served three years in the Airways Communications division. While serving he met and married his wife Jean with whom he would have three children. After returning from service he and Jean
settled in Bloomington, Illinois where he became the music and literature
critic for The Daily Pantagraph, a job he would keep until 1958 when he left Illinois for Los Angeles to try his luck at writing
for television.
But Sohl began his career as a prose
writer years earlier when his story “The 7th Order” appeared in the
March, 1952 issue of Galaxy Science Fiction. The story was later adapted into a
radio play for the NBC series X Minus One in 1956. Sohl was inspired to begin
writing science fiction after interviewing Hugo Award-winning author Wilson Bob
Tucker for the Pantagraph in 1950. As a lifelong admirer of the genre, Sohl
dove headfirst into writing science fiction and by 1952 he had sold his first
novel, The Haploids, to Rinehart & Company. Over the next decade he would average
around a novel a year—The Transcendent Man and Costigan’s Needle in 1953, The Altered Ego in 1954, Point Ultimate in 1955, The Mars Monopoly in 1956, The
Time Dissolver and Prelude to Peril—a mystery novel—in 1957, One
Against Herculum and The Odious Ones in 1959. He was also publishing numerous short
stories during this time in science fiction magazines like Galaxy, If, and
Infinity.
In 1958, at the age of forty-five, Sohl
quit his job at The Pantagraph and moved to Los Angeles to become a screenwriter.
He had already established himself as a novelist in the science fiction community
and he hoped that this small bit of notoriety would get him a foot in the door
in Hollywood. After arriving in Los Angeles, Sohl attended the World Science
Fiction Convention where he first met Richard Matheson, Charles Beaumont, and George
Clayton Johnson. Sohl would eventually form close friendships with each of them
and would become a prominent figure in their extended circle of creative
friends often referred to as the Southern California School of Writers, or
simply the Group. Although significantly older than his new friends, Sohl’s
work ethic and laid back personality seemed an immediate fit and their
encouragement and influence was a prominent factor in his success.
Sohl sold his first teleplay to the NBC detective
series M Squad in 1959. “The Upset” aired in December of the show’s third
season. That same year he was hired as a staff writer for Alfred Hitchcock
Presents polishing scripts and adapting short stories by Henry Slesar and others
into fully formed teleplays. According to Sohl, many of his scripts for the show went
unproduced but he did eventually see four of his teleplays make it to air. He wrote three episodes of the ABC series The New Breed and contributed
two stories to the iconic anthology series The Outer Limits, adapting his short
stories “The Invisible Enemy” and “Counterweight” for the show's second season. He
also wrote two episodes of the Larry Cohen-created ABC series The Invaders. His
first episode for the series, “The Watchers,” was a reworking of a script by
fellow Twilight Zone alumni Earl Hamner.
Aside from his work on The Twilight
Zone, Sohl is probably best remembered today for the three teleplays he wrote
for the original Star Trek series. His first teleplay for the show, “The
Corbomite Maneuver” was nominated for a Hugo Award for Best Dramatic
Presentation and is considered an important episode in the show’s chronology as
it was originally intended to be the first episode broadcast and introduces key
elements of the show. Sohl wrote two more teleplays for the show, “This Side of
Paradise” for the show’s first season—for which he received story credit under
the pseudonym Nathan Butler after he removed his name from the project due to changes made to his script by Gene Rodenberry and writer D.C. Fontana—and “Whom
Gods Destroy” for the show’s third season.
In the late 1960s, Sohl, Matheson,
Clayton Johnson, and science fiction writer Theodore Sturgeon formed The Green
Hand, a legal corporation designed to pitch quality fantasy and science
fiction projects to television networks and production companies. They were
hired by Herbert F. Solow, then Vice President in charge of television production at MGM,
and they set up an office on the MGM lot. George Clayton Johnston served as
president and the four of them spent several years trying to get a wide variety
of shows on the air including a series called Hunter, about a police detective
with ESP, E.T, about an extraterrestrial's difficulty adapting to humanoid culture on Earth, and a Twilight Zone-like anthology series called A Touch of the
Strange. Ultimately though, none of their ideas managed to catch the attention
of network executives and they eventually dissolved the corporation.
After the Green Hand, Sohl begrudgingly
continued to write for television for several more years but after a bad
experience submitting a teleplay to the NBC series Man from Atlantis in 1977 he
decided to call it quits and concentrate exclusively on writing novels and
short fiction. His last script to ever be produced was a teleplay for The Next
Step Beyond the following year called “Portrait of the Mind.”
Although Sohl concentrated his efforts
mostly on writing for series television he did see several feature-length
scripts make it to the big screen. In 1960 he adapted Richard Stern’s story
“Set Up for Murder” into a feature length film directed by Edward L. Cahn
called Twelve Hours to Kill. He also scripted two films for American
International Pictures, both of which starred Boris Karloff and were
adaptations of stories by H.P. Lovecraft. Monster of Terror (aka Die, Monster,
Die, 1965) was an adaptation of Lovecraft’s “The Colour Out of Space” and The
Crimson Cult (1968) was an uncredited adaptation of Lovecraft’s story “The
Dreams in the Witch House.” Sohl stated in several interviews that he admired
Lovecraft’s work a great deal. A few years before either of these films he
co-wrote a feature-length adaptation of Lovecraft’s story “The Dunwich Horror”
with Charles Beaumont that was, unfortunately, never produced. Aside from his
own scripts he also wrote the plot synopsis to the 1965 Japanese film
Frankenstein Conquers the World and he saw his novel Night Slaves (1965)
adapted into an NBC Movie of the Week in 1970 which was directed by Twilight
Zone veteran Ted Post.
Sohl was also indirectly involved in the
inspiration for another television classic. An avid golfer, Sohl was golfing
with Richard Matheson the day President Kennedy was assassinated. After hearing
the news, the two packed up their clubs and decided to call it a day. On the
drive home, they encountered a large eighteen-wheeler driving dangerously close
behind them. Even after increasing their speed in an attempt to put some distance
between themselves and the driver the truck remained just as close as before. They
were now driving at a dangerously fast speed through steep hills with nowhere
to pull over. Finally, they came upon an area wide enough to pull off onto and let the
gigantic truck pass them by. This encounter stayed with Matheson for many years and
he eventually turned it into the novella “Duel” which he adapted into the
screenplay for the famous made-for-television film directed by Stephen
Spielberg in 1971.
Collaboration was common within the
Group and Sohl spent the first few years of his career as a screenwriter
co-writing scripts and other projects with various members of the Group’s inner
circle. Second to Richard Matheson, Sohl would become Charles Beaumont’s most
frequent collaborator, although for most of the projects he worked on with
Beaumont he was less of a collaborator than a ghostwriter as Beaumont would
often receive sole credit for the assignment. In addition to the aforementioned
script for "The Dunwich Horror" Sohl and Beaumont collaborated on a handful of
projects. He co-wrote an episode of The Naked City with Beaumont and William F.
Nolan called “Down the Long Night” and he co-wrote an episode of Route 66
called “The Quick and the Dead” with Beaumont and John Tomerlin. He and
Beaumont also collaborated on two articles for Playboy, “Requiem for the
Holidays” (June, 1963) and “Lament for the High Iron” (October, 1963). Beaumont
received sole credit for these. Both articles later appeared in Beaumont’s
nonfiction collection Remember, Remember (1963) which he dedicated to Sohl and
fellow collaborator OCee Ritch.
The majority of these collaborations
were written in early 1963 when Charles Beaumont’s health first began to
deteriorate. These experiences working with Sohl are likely the reason the busy writer
trusted him with his material for The Twilight Zone when he found it difficult to reach production deadlines during the show's fourth and fifth seasons. Sohl wrote a total of five scripts for the show, three under Beaumont's byline: “The New Exhibit” for season four and “Living
Doll” and “Queen of the Nile” for season five. He also wrote two additional
scripts,* “Pattern for Doomsday” and “Who Am I?” which were originally bought by
producer Bert Granet at the beginning of the fifth season but were later cut
from the production schedule by Granet’s replacement William Froug who also
axed another Beaumont script, “Gentlemen, Be Seated” and Richard Matheson’s
“The Doll” among others. Beaumont had varying degrees of participation in the writing of these scripts ranging from fully thought out story treatments to virtually no involvement at all. But all of the finalized scripts that were handed to the show's producers were written by Sohl.
In the early 1960’s Sohl took an
extended hiatus from writing novels and short stories to concentrate on his new
career as a screenwriter. By the end of the decade, however, he had returned to
the format and was now writing far outside the genre of science fiction.
Starting with the publication of his novel The Lemon Eaters by Simon and
Schuster in 1967 Sohl’s fiction began to take on more of a mainstream dramatic
aesthetic aimed at a wider audience. He published several novels through the
prominent publishing house including The Spun Sugar Hole (1971) and The Resurrection
of Frank Borchard (1973). Sohl put a tremendous amount of creative effort into
these novels and it earned him a great deal of critical acclaim. Unfortunately,
the sales were moderate at best and by the 1980s Sohl had more or less
abandoned the mainstream market. Throughout the late 70s and 80s Sohl published
novels in a variety of different genres including several horror novels, two
historical romances under the name Roberta Jean Mountjoy, a series of romantic
suspense novels under the name Nathan Butler, and a novelization of the
Japanese film SuperManChu: Master of Kung Fu under the name Sean Mei Sullivan
in 1974. A renaissance man of many talents, Sohl also released two semi-satirical
instructional books on Bridge, Underahanded Bridge, and chess, Underhanded
Chess, both published by Penguin Books in 1973.
Although Sohl published several dozen
short stories during his career, he never saw a collection of his short fiction
published during his lifetime. He attempted to publish a collection of stories
in 1959 under the title Filet of Sohl but it never materialized. In 2003
BearManor Media finally published Filet of Sohl as a career
retrospective of Sohl’s work featuring his original introduction to the 1959
edition, new and old works of short fiction, and his two unproduced Twilight
Zone teleplays. In 2004 they published The Twilight Zone Scripts of Jerry Sohl
featuring his three scripts that were made into episodes of the show (“The New
Exhibit” “Living Doll” and “Queen of the Nile”). Both volumes were edited by
frequent Southern California School of Writers biographer Christopher Conlon
and feature tributes to Sohl from George Clayton Johnson, William F. Nolan, and
Richard Matheson, as well as Sohl’s children.
Sohl passed away on November 4, 2002 in
Thousand Oaks, California. He was 88.
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| Jerry Sohl (1913-2002) |
Grateful acknowledgement is made to the
following publications:
Filet of Sohl edited by Christopher
Conlon (BearManor Media, 2003)
The Twilight Zone Scripts of Jerry Sohl
edited by Christopher Conlon (BearManor Media, 2004)
“Jerry Sohl” interview with Sohl by Edward Gross in
Starlog (October and November issues, 1988)
"Sohl Man: From the Twilight Zone to the Outer Limits and Beyond" interview with Sohl by Mathew R. Bradley Filmfax #75/76 (October, 1999)
California Sorcery edited by William F.
Nolan and William Schafer (Cemetery Dance, 1999)
The Work of Charles Beaumont: An
Annotated Bibliography and Guide compiled by William F. Nolan (Bibliographies
of Modern Authors series, Borgo Press, 1986)
The Twilight Zone Companion, 2nd edition by Marc Scott Zicree (Silman-James Press, 1992)
Jerry Sohl at imdb.com
Jerry Sohl at isfdb.org
The Twilight Zone Companion, 2nd edition by Marc Scott Zicree (Silman-James Press, 1992)
Jerry Sohl at imdb.com
Jerry Sohl at isfdb.org
Jerry Sohl at wga.org
*Both scripts were eventually adapted into episodes of The Twilight Zone Radio Dramas by author Dennis Etchison. "Pattern for Doomsday" features a full cast including Henry Rollins and Mike Starr and "Who Am I?" features Sean Astin. The scripts can also be found in Filet of Sohl (2003) edited by Christopher Conlon.
--Brian
*Both scripts were eventually adapted into episodes of The Twilight Zone Radio Dramas by author Dennis Etchison. "Pattern for Doomsday" features a full cast including Henry Rollins and Mike Starr and "Who Am I?" features Sean Astin. The scripts can also be found in Filet of Sohl (2003) edited by Christopher Conlon.
--Brian
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| From the jacket of The Spun Sugar Hole (1971) |
