CHARLES BEAUMONT: SELECTED STORIES
edited by Roger Anker
CHARLES BEAUMONT: SELECTED STORIES copyright 1988 by Roger Anker
“Miss Gentilbelle”, copyright 1955 by Charles Beaumont. Originally appeared in The Hunger and Other Stories.
“The Vanishing American”, copyright 1955 by Fantasy House, Inc. Originally appeared in Fantasy and Science Fiction.
“Place of Meeting”, copyright 1953 by Charles Beaumont. Originally appeared in Orbit Magazine.
“The Devil, You Say?”, copyright 1963 by Charles Beaumont. Originally appeared in Amazing Stories.
“Free Dirt”, copyright 1955 by Fantasy House, Inc. Originally appeared in Fantasy and Science Fiction.
“Last Rites”, copyright 1955 by Charles Beaumont. Originally appeared in If Magazine.
“The Howling Man”, copyright 1960 by Charles Beaumont, Originally appeared in Rogue Magazine.
“The Dark Music”, copyright 1956 by Charles Beaumont. Originally appeared in Playboy.
“The Magic Man”, copyright 1960 by Charles Beaumont. Originally appeared in Night Ride and Other Journeys.
“Fair Lady”, copyright 1957 by Charles Beaumont. Originally appeared in The Hunger and Other Stories.
“Song For a Lady”, copyright 1960 by Charles Beaumont. Originally appeared in Night Ride and Other Journeys.
“A Point of Honor”, copyright 1955 by Charles Beaumont. Originally appeared in Manhunt as “I’ll Do Anything.”
“The Hunger”, copyright 1955 by Charles Beaumont. Originally appeared in Playboy.
“Black Country”, copyright 1954 by Charles Beaumont. Originally appeared in Playboy.
“Gentlemen, Be Seated”, copyright 1960 by Charles Beaumont. Originally appeared in Rogue Magazine.
“The Jungle”, copyright 1954 by Charles Beaumont. Originally appeared in If Magazine.
“The New People”, copyright 1958 by Charles Beaumont. Originally appeared in Rogue Magazine.
“Perchance to Dream”, copyright 1958 by Charles Beaumont. Originally appeared in Playboy.
“The Crooked Man”, copyright 1955 by Charles Beaumont. Originally appeared in Playboy.
“Blood Brother”, copyright 1961 by Charles Beaumont. Originally appeared in Playboy.
“A Death in the Country”, copyright 1957 by Charles Beaumont. Originally appeared in Playboy as “The Deadly Will to Win.”
“The Music of the Yellow Brass”, copyright 1958 by Charles Beaumont. Originally appeared in Playboy.
“Night Ride”, copyright 1957 by Charles Beaumont. Originally appeared in Playboy.
“Mourning Song”, copyright 1963 by Charles Beaumont. Originally appeared in Gamma Magazine.
“The Intruder”, copyright 1959 by Charles Beaumont. (Novel excerpt of chapter 10), published by G.P. Putnam’s Sons.
“To Hell with Claude”, copyright 1987 by Chad Oliver (never published previously).
“Appointment with Eddie”, copyright 1987 by Charles Beaumont (never published previously).
“The Crime of Willie Washington”, copyright 1987 by Charles Beaumont (never published previously).
“The Man with the Crooked Nose”, copyright 1987 by Charles Beaumont (never published previously).
“The Carnival”, copyright 1987 by Charles Beaumont (never published previously).
Preface Copyright 1988 by Christopher Beaumont
Introduction to “Miss Gentilbelle” Copyright 1988 by Ray Bradbury
Introduction to “The Vanishing American” Copyright 1988 by John Tomerlin
Introduction to “The Devil, You Say?” Copyright 1988 by Howard Browne
Introduction to “Free Dirt” Copyright 1988 by Dennis Etchison
Introduction to “Last Rites” Copyright 1988 by Richard Matheson
Introduction to “The Howling Man” Copyright 1988 by Harlan Ellison
Introduction to ‘The Magic Man” Copyright 1988 by Charles E. Fritch
Introduction to “Fair Lady” Copyright 1988 by George Clayton Johnson
Introduction to “The Hunger” Copyright 1988 by Richard Christian Matheson
Introduction to “Black Country” Copyright 1988 by Ray Russell
Introduction to “Gentlemen, Be Seated” Copyright 1988 by Frank M. Robinson
Introduction to “The New People” Copyright 1988 by Saul David
Introduction to “The Crooked Man” Copyright 1988 by Robert Bloch
Introduction to “A Death in the Country” Copyright 1988 by William F. Nolan
Introduction to The Intruder (Chapter 10)” Copyright 1988 by Roger Corman
Introduction to “Mourning Song” Copyright 1988 by Jerry Sohl
Introduction to “To Hell With Claude” Copyright 1988 by Chad Oliver
All Rights Reserved
Manufactured in the United States of America
FIRST EDITION
Dark Harvest / P.O. Box 941 / Arlington Heights, IL / 60006
Limited Edition: ISBN-0-913165-22-0
The Publishers would like to express their gratitude to the following people. Thank you: Dawn Austin, Kathy Jo Camacho, Tony Camacho, Stanley Mikol, Phyllis Mikol, Wayne Sommers, Dr. Stan Gurnick PhD, Tony Hodes, Bertha Curl, Kurt Scharrer, Ken Morris, Luis Trevino, Raymond, Teresa and Mark Stadalsky, Ken and Linda Fotos, Tom Pas, and Ann Cameron Williams.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
MISS GENTILBELLE/Introduction by Ray Bradbury 23 THE VANISHING AMERICAN/Introduction by John Tomerlin 39 PLACE OF MEETING 49 THE DEVIL, YOU SAY?/Introduction by Howard Browne 53 FREE DIRT/Introduction by Dennis Etchison 73 SONG FOR A LADY 85 LAST RITES/Introduction by Richard Matheson 97 THE HOWLING MAN/Introduction by Harlan Ellison 111 THE DARK MUSIC 127 THE MAGIC MAN/Introduction by Charles E. Fritch 139 FAIR LADY/Introduction by George Clayton Johnson 155 A POINT OF HONOR 161 THE HUNGER/Introduction by Richard Christian Matheson 171 BLACK COUNTRY/Introduction by Ray Russell 183 GENTLEMEN, BE SEATED/Introduction by Frank M. Robinson 201 THE JUNGLE 215 THE NEW PEOPLE/Introduction by Saul David 233 PERCHANCE TO DREAM 251 THE CROOKED MAN/Introduction by Robert Bloch 259 BLOOD BROTHER 269 A DEATH IN THE COUNTRY/Introduction by William F. Nolan 275 THE MUSIC OF THE YELLOW BRASS 287 NIGHT RIDE 299 THE INTRUDER/Introduction by Roger Corman 313 MOURNING SONG/Introduction by Jerry Sohl 333 TO HELL WITH CLAUDE/Introduction by Chad Oliver 347 APPOINTMENT WITH EDDIE 361 THE CRIME OF WILLIE WASHINGTON 373 THE MAN WITH THE CROOKED NOSE 385 THE CARNIVAL 393 Thanks are due to the following for their help in bringing this book to publication:
Robert Bloch, Ray Bradbury, Howard Browne, Roger Corman, Saul David, Harlan Ellison, Charles E. Fritch, George Clayton Johnson, Richard Matheson, Chad Oliver, Frank M. Robinson, Ray Russell, Jerry Sohl and John Tomerlin.
For friendship, advice and support:
Cathy, Elizabeth and Gregory Beaumont, Larry Anker, Bill Farley, Edward Gorman, Dean R. Koontz, Joe R. Lansdale, Robert R. McCammon, Dave McDonnell, Paul Mikol, Scot Stadalsky, William Relling Jr., Darrell, Donna and Jason Rossi, Peter Straub, Robert Vaillancourt, Stanley Wiater and Douglas E. Winter.
And a very special thanks to the following for the endless hours of driving, interviewing, conversing, all-night coffee shops and encouragement:
Christopher Beaumont, Richard Christian Matheson, William F. Nolan and Dennis Etchison.
* * *
INTRODUCTION
by Roger Anker
* * *
Though best remembered for his short fiction and nostalgic essays in Playboy, teleplays for The Twilight Zone; and his screenplay adaptation, The Seven Faces of Dr. Lao, Charles Beaumont's creative talents have been evidenced in such diverse fields as science fiction, horror, whimsy, crime-suspense
, and film criticism. His prolific output also reflects his many interests and hobbies, including motor racing, music, hi-fidelity equipment, cartooning, and travel. Tall, lean and bespectacled, Beaumont was always full of a thousand ideas and a thousand projects, and approached them all with what was fantastic energy. In a career which spanned a brief thirteen years, he'd written and sold ten books, seventyfour short stories, thirteen screenplays (nine of which were produced), two dozen articles and profiles, forty comic stories, fourteen columns, and over seventy teleplays. Some of his books were inspired by his adventurous personal experiences. Omnibus of Speed and When Engines Roar (both co-edited with William F. Nolan) are about auto racing; The Intruder, a novel concerning Southern integration in the early sixties, was drawn from his extensive research on the subject. Beaumont could never write fast enough to keep up with his ideas. A selfeducated man, learning for him was never confined to a classroom; life had much to teach. He was born Charles Leroy Nutt in Chicago on January 2, 1929, and grew up on that city's North side. Of his early childhood, he wrote, "Football, baseball and dimestore cookie thefts filled my early world, to the exclusion of Aesop, the brothers Grimm, Dr. Doolittle and even Bullfinch. The installation by my parents of 'library wallpaper' in the house ("A room-full of books for only 70~ a yard!") convinced me that literature was on the way out anyway, so I lived in illiterate contentment until laid low by spinal meningitis. This forced me to less strenous forms of entertainment. I discovered Oz; then Burroughs; then Poe-and the jig was up. Have been reading ever since, feeling no pain." The only child of Charles H. and Letty Nutt, young Charlie Nutt was "fairly outgoing," yet very sensitive about his name. He once expressed to boyhood acquaintance Frank M. Robinson (co-author of The Glass Inferno and The Gold Crew) his hatred for the continuous name teasing he'd endured: ". . . the kids in school would call him 'Ches' or 'Wall' or would ask 'Is your father some kind of a nut?" He later changed his name to Charles McNutt, but when that didn't satisfy the situation, he changed it finally, legally, to Beaumont. At an early age, he'd often "haunt" the editorial offices of the Ziff-Davis Publishing Company-publishers of Amazing Stories and other pulp magazines-and, from an outer office, would gaze at the group of employees typing busily. To young Charlie Nutt, these people were giants, editing manuscripts, and building a small empire, at that time, in Chicago. "I used to stand there and watch them slamming out 10,000 words a day," he once wrote. "They were Gods to me…" Ironically, his first professional sale, "The Devil, You Say?", would appear in the January, 1951 issue of Amazing Stories. At age twelve, mid-way through his two year bout with meningitis, Beaumont's parents sent him to what they considered to be a better climate. In July, 1960, he told the San Diego Union, "I lived with five widowed aunts who ran a rooming house near a train depot in the state of Washington. Each night we had the ritual of gathering around the stove and there I'd hear stories about the strange death of each of their husbands." During this period in Everett, he published his own fan magazine, Utopia, and soon became an avid fan of science fiction, writing letters to almost every magazine of this genre. By the time he was thirteen he had broken into print 25 times in almost as many magazines with these resumes and editorial criticisms. His interests then shifted from typewriter to drawing board and his illustrations began to appear in a number of pulp magazines under the brush name E.T. Beaumont. His first cartoon, done in collaboration with his friend and fellow artist, Ronald Clyne, appeared in Fantastic Adventures in October, 1943. In the early months of 1944, Charlie McNutt turned to drama and radio work, beginning as a featured actor on "Drama Workshop," a West coast show, and soon moved on to write and direct his own spot, "Hollywood Hi-Lights," a 15 minute show of movieland chatter and shop talk. His formal education was sparse, of which, he wrote, "[I] barely nosed through the elementary grades and gained a certain notoriety in high school as a wastrel, dreamer, could-do-the-work-if-he'd-only-tryer and general lunkhead." He left high school a year short of graduation for a four month period of Army service (Infantry) before he was medically discharged for a bad back. This led to his enrollment into the Bliss-Hayden Acting School in California under the GI Bill. After starring in a local version of the Hecht-MacArthur play, Broadway, he was signed by Universal Studio as an actor, and was scheduled for a co-starring role in a Universal-International film. But despite much "hullabaloo in film magazines and newspapers," this never materializied, and Beaumont reluctantly gave up a theatrical career for one in commercial art. Soon he was sketching cartoons for MGM's animation studio and working as a part-time illustrator for FPCI (Fantasy Publishing Company) in Los Angeles. Beaumont later wrote, "[I] worked hard, managed to crack most of the pulp magazines with illustrations, graduated to book jackets and slick magazine cartoons. But [was] forced, finally, to admit total lack of any real talent in the field." When this failed, Beaumont turned to writing. It was in the summer of 1946, that he met twenty-six-year-old Ray Bradbury (author of numerous screenplays, teleplays, essays, poems, and works of fiction, including Farenheit 451 and The Martian Chronicles) in Fowler Brothers Book Store in downtown Los Angeles, and began talking about his comic collection. Remembers Bradbury: "He said he had a lot of Steve Canyon, and I told him I had a lot of Prince Valiants and some Hannes Bok photographs; so we decided to get together. "Out of that beginning, of our mutual interest in comic strips, a friendship blossomed." Bradbury began to read Beaumont's short fiction and quickly became a major influence in Beaumont's life-a mentor. "When I read the first one, I said: 'Yes. Very definitely. You are a writer," recalls Bradbury. "It showed immediately. It's not like so many people who come to you with stories and you say, 'Well, they're okay,' You know, if they keep working they'll make it. Chuck's talent was obvious from that very first story." For reasons of economic survival, Beaumont moved to Mobile, Alabama in 1948, where his father had obtained employment for him as a clerk for the Gulf, Mobile & Ohio Railroad. It was there that he met Helen Broun, and wrote in a notebook: "She's incredible. Intelligent and beautiful. This is the girl I'm going to marry!" A year later, they were married and moved to California. Their son, Christopher, was born in December of 1950; they would later parent three more children: Catherine, Elizabeth, and Gregory. As Beaumont's early writing brought him little more than rejection slips, he worked at a number of jobs, including that of a piano player ("Studied piano for six years, decided [I] couldn't squeak by owing to immensely talented right hand and nowhere left") and, in 1949, a tracing clerk for California Motor Express, where he met John Tomerlin. When the two discovered they shared a passion for words (as well as a skill for "geting out of work"), they quickly cultivated what was to become a lifelong friendship. In mid-1951, another special friendship was made when Beaumont met a young, struggling writer by the name of Richard Matheson (who, in addition to many screenplays, teleplays and short stories, is known for works such as I Am Legend and The Shrinking Man). As their families became very close, there soon developed between Beaumont and Matheson a constant interchange of ideas, out of which a number of varied and imaginative stories would emerge. Says writer Dennis Etchison (Darkside and Cutting Edge), who'd attended Beaumont's UCLA writing class in 1963, "It's pretty difficult to consider Beaumont and Matheson separately because as short story writers they came out at the same time; they worked together, they both came out of an influence from Bradbury, and they both had such a close friendship. I think there are great similarities, tradeoffs, and variations between their stories. They were just two of a kind that came up at one time." As their careers grew, Beaumont and Matheson acted as "spurs" to one another. "He and I, in a very nice way, of course, were very competitive," says Matheson. "At first, I was a little ahead of him in sales. I'd call him on the phone and say, 'I just sold a collection of short stories to Bantam,' and he'd say, 'Thanks a lot, thanks a lot,' and hang up. [laughs] He wasn't serious about it though. But he caught up to me. My first collection of stories [Born of Man and Woman, 1954] spurred him on to his first collection [The Hunger and Other Stories, 1957].
Then we both did a so-called 'straight' novel just about the same time [Beaumont's The Intruder, 1959 and Matheson's The Beardless Warriors, 1960]." But the success which was to come their way, was still in the future. For now, Beaumont was working hard to break through. Says Ray Bradbury, "I was at Universal in 1952 on my very first screen project, It Came From Outer Space. And Chuck, coincidentally, was working there in the music department, handling a multilith machine, copying the musical scores. I would see him and have lunch with him there at the studio and encourage him, Those were hard years for him; he didn't want to be in the music department doing all this 'stupid' work. He wanted to write." During this period, Beaumont was writing feverishly, but meeting with little success. His agent at the time, Forrest J. Ackerman, recalls: "I made approximately 78 submissions for him, but nothing happened for quite sometime." When fired from Universal in June of 1953, Beaumont took the plunge into fulltime writing. Late 1953 saw the Beaumonts in disastrous financial shape; Chuck's typewriter was in hock and the gas had been shut off in their apartment. Writer William F. Nolan (co-author of Logan's Run and biographer of Dashiell Hammett) remembers Beaumont "breaking the seal and turning it back on; Chris required heat, and damn the gas company! Chris got what he needed." Nolan had met Beaumont, briefly, in 1952 at Universal, when introduced by Ray Bradbury. "I recall Chuck's sad face and ink-stained hands. The first Beaumont story had already appeared (in Amazing Stories) and within a few more months, when I saw Chuck again, half a dozen others had been sold. Forry Ackerman got us together early in 1953, and our friendship was immediate and lasting. I found, in Chuck, a warmth, a vitality, an honesty and depth of character which few possess. And, most necessary, a wild, wacky, irreverant sense of humor." In February, 1954, Beaumont and Nolan began writing comics for Whitman Publication. Together they turned out ten stories, after which Beaumont sold another thirty to become employed at Whitman as co-editor, where he helped to "guide the destinies of such influential literary figures as Bugs Bunny, Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck and Andy Panda." Finally, in September of that year, Beaumont's first major sale appeared in Playboy. "Black Country," a 10,000-word novella about a terminally ill jazzman, is considered by Ray Russell (Playboy editor during the 1950s, and author of many works of fiction, including Incubus and Sardonicus), the best story Playboy ever bought. "Beaumont manages to set up a rhythm and sustain a pitch, a concert pitch-to use a musical term-and sustain that from the very beginning to the very end," says Russell. "It almost never relaxes. You're on a beat throughout the entire story until whhhh, it's over. There are very few stories that have that, by Beaumont or anybody else." Playboy soon placed Beaumont on a five-hundred-dollar monthly retainer for first refusal right to his manuscripts, and later listed him as a contributing editor. Beaumont had reached the turning point in his career. His stories began to appear in the most prestigious magazines in the nation, including Esquire, Collier's and The Saturday Evening Post. 1954 also marked the beginning of his career in television when, in April, his teleplay "Masquerade" aired on Four Star Playhouse. In the years to follow, he would write a number of scripts, many in collaboration with Richard Matheson. "For a year or two, we wrote together on all sorts of projects: we did a couple of Have Gun, Will Travels, and old Western series, Buckskin, and there was Philip Marlowe, and the D.A.'s Man. Real crap, most of it," says Matheson, laughingly. "But it was fun, because we had never done this before… But eventually we decided that we really didn't need to collaborate, and chose to go our own ways." Beaumont's entry into television, coupled with his success at Playboy, soon enabled him to participate in what was to become a new and exciting hobby-auto racing. In February, 1955, Beaumont and Nolan attended their first sports car race in Palm Springs (an event in which actor James Dean was driving, and with whom Beaumont would later share a maintainance pit). The sport instantly became one of the great fascinations of their lives-a fascination which quickly carried over to John Tomerlin as well. "Chuck was marvelous at talking people into doing things they had not thirty seconds before ever dreamed they wanted to do, and suddenly discovered that it was their lifelong ambition," says Tomerlin. "And the next thing you knew, you'd be off and on your way doing it!" The trio could soon be found attending and competing in weekend racing events on the West coast, at an average of one event per month, and writing voluminously for motoring journals such as Road & Track, Autosport, The Motor, Sports Car Illustrated, and Autocar. A favorite hangout became the Grand Prix-a Hollywood restaurant which catered to the sports car enthusiast and professional alike, and featured racing music, racing records, and 8mm racing films, which were shown over the walls by multiple projectors. Of their racing abilities, Nolan says: "We weren't great, by any means, but we were fairly good, fairly fast, and totally crazy-which means we weren't afraid of anything." Later this year, Beaumont made a major-as well as difficult-decision to act on his growing concern over the way his fiction was being handled by the Forrest Ackerman agency-an agency which dealt, almost exclusively, in science fiction markets. With increasing regularity, Beaumont had found himself turning toward "mainstream" storytelling and, in July, signed with Don Congdon, of the Harld Matson agency in New York. The move proved to be a beneficial one, and quickly helped in establishing Beaumont's versatility. As Richard Matheson observes, "Chuck had no genre; he was not a science fiction writer, he was not a fantasy writer-although he did write some wonderful science fiction and fantasy stories-he wrote all kinds of fiction. A lot of the stuff he wrote-for Playboy, what have you-was just flat, goodout fiction. Straight fiction. So there's no category. His mind jumped from place to place." Beaumont's first short fiction collection, The Hunger and Other Stories (G.P. Putnam's Sons) was released in April of 1957 to favorable reviews. "The first sixteen tales of the book are interesting as instruments which reveal the scope and proclivities of a highly individual mind," says the New York Herald Tribune. "One is impressed by the creative gymnastics of the author… But in 'Black Country,' Beaumont, the author, is forgotten… Among all the stories it is this extraordinary work that passionately tears into the heart of jazz which gives Mr. Beaumont undeniable stature as an artist." In addition to the previously mentioned periodicals, Beaumont's stories-both fiction and non fiction-were appearing in publications as The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Fortnight, and Rogue. (In Rogue, due to his Playboy commitment, he appeared as "C.B. Lovehill" and "Michael Philips"). Other collections soon followed-Yonder: Stories of Fantasy and Science Fiction (Bantam, 1958), Night Ride and Other Journeys (Bantam, 1960), and The Fiend in You, a Beaumont-edited anthology (Ballantine Books, 1962). In September of 1957, his first novel was published, Run From the Hunter (written in collaboration with John Tomerlin under the joint pseudonym "Keith Grantland"). Though he employed many writing styles, the distinct Beaumont "signature" was always in evidence. "His writing was brisk and very terse," says Bradbury. "There's a great similarity to John Collier. Collier rubbed off on him, just as Collier rubbed off on me. And it was all to the good: good, short, to the point, imaginative storytelling. A lot of us are Collier's indirect sons, but you learn as the years pass, to shake the influence. But it's certainly there. I also see carryovers from my work in Chuck. It's inevitable, because we were around each other so much. I told him about Eudora Welty and Katherine Anne Porter. I think that also shows. And it's all to the good." By 1958, Beaumont had firmly established himself in television, scripting episodes for shows as Alfred Hitchcock Presents, One Step Beyond, Naked City, Thriller and Wanted Dead or Alive. Recalls Jerry Sohl, author of numerous scripts and novels, and with whom Beaumont had collaborated on several screen projects, including an unproduced version of The Dunwich Horror, "Chuck was the kind of person who could go in [to a producer's office] and absolutely flabbergast you. He'd do what you'd call 'Blue Sky'-he'd pitch this story and no one would say that's no good, because they'd be so fascinated with Chuck. He had this ability to absolutely overpower you with what it was that he was doing. The trouble with most writers is that they may be
good writers, but they can't sell themselves in television. Chuck Beaumont was able to do both; plus he could deliver the goods when the chips were down." In 1958, Beaumont also saw the film release of his first produced screenplay, Queen of Outer Space. (Two earlier screenplays, Confession of a Teen-Ager and Invaders from 7000 A.D., both written in 1956-7, went unproduced). Of the film, Beaumont says: "[The] studio called me in to do what I'd thought was to be a serious study of a group of men who take a space ship to Venus. But how serious can a picture be when the part of the world's biochemist is played by Zsa Zsa Gabor? The picture [is] about these men who land on Venus and find a planet inhabited entirely by beautiful women. "Naturally, I wrote the thing as a big spoof. Only trouble was the director and some of the cast didn't realize it." When Rod Serling's Twilight Zone made it's network debut in 1959, Beaumont became one of the show's principal writers, scripting 22 of its 156 episodes. Richard Matheson explains his and Beaumont's involvement with the celebrated series. "The show was just getting started and Chuck and I had just joined this agency which was quite good at the time (we'd never had a good film agency before this), so they immediately started getting us appointments. There was a lot of work going on in television-half-hour television-and Twilight Zone was about to screen their pilot episode. So Chuck and I went to pitch some ideas to Rod [Serling] and [producer] Buck Houghton." Beaumont and Matheson went on to become second and third, respectively, in production of Twilight Zone scripts behind Serling, and were largely responsible for some of the series' classic episodes. Beaumont was also responsible for bringing a young, untried talent to Twilight Zone's core of principal writers. While George Clayton Johnson's story output was relatively minor (four stories and four teleplays), when compared to that of Serling, Beaumont and Matheson, it was the quality of his work which soon placed him on a level with the other three. By now a close-knit "brotherhood" had formed between Beaumont and his friends-many of whom considered him the cornerstone or "electric center" of the group. "Chuck was like the hub of the wheel," explains Nolan, "And you had all these different spokes going out: Richard Matheson, John Tomerlin, George Clayton Johnson, OCee Ritch, Chad Oliver, Ray Russell, Rod Serling, Frank Robinson, Charles Fritch, myself. Spokes. All connected to Beaumont. He energized us. Fired us. Made us stretch our creative and writing muscles. He was always encouraging us to do better. It was a very stimulating period in our lives." The summer of 1961 found Beaumont involved in an explosively-controversial project: the first motion picture to deal with the volatile problem of Southern school integration, based on his novel The Intruder. The factual springboard for both novel and film was an article on rabble-rousing John Kasper in Look magazine, printed in 1957 as "Intruder in the South," which described a power-hungry Kasper's efforts to sabotage school integration in Clinton, Tennessee. Adam Cramer, the central figure in Beaumont's story (protrayed by actor William Shatner), is on a similiar mission and also uses integration as a ready lever in an attempt to gain personal power. He fails, as Kasper failed, but not before mob violence has taken its ugly toll, as it actually did in Clinton; by the time Kasper left, a week after his arrival, bombings, acts of terror, and attacks on integrationists had become common in the small community. Intrigued by Kasper, Beaumont packed a suitcase and flew to Clinton to interview him. A year and a half later his novel was finished, and Beaumont was subsequently hired to do the screenplay adaptation for director Roger Corman. When Corman, whose forte had long been science fiction-horror, was unable to obtain studio backing, he financed The Intruder on an independent basis. Filmed on location in and near Charleston, Missouri, on a shoestring budget of $100,000, and utilizing some 300 local townspeople in its cast, Beaumont went along to oversee his script and to essay the cameo role of school principal Harley Paton. The film was never successful in general release due to complications over its controversial nature, but it was later exploited under the misnomer, I Hate Your Guts, and, later, Shame. The early Sixties also saw the production of seven other Beaumont screenplays: The Premature Burial (written in collaboration with Ray Russell); Burn, Witch, Burn (with Richard Matheson); The Wonderful World of the Brother Grimm (with David P. Harmon and William Roberts); The Haunted Palace; The Seven Faces of Dr. Lao; The Masque of the Red Death (with R. Wright Campbell); and Mr. Moses (with Monja Danischevsky). In 1959, Beaumont also worked with Otto Preminger on Bunny Lake is Missing; however, Beaumont's script was never used and he remained uncredited on the film. By now, film and television offers were flooding in. At times Beaumont juggled as many as ten projects simultaneously, and would have to farm the extra work out to fellow writers William F. Nolan, Jerry Sohl, John Tomerlin, Ray Russell and OCee Ritch. "I gather Chuck did too much, didn't he?" observes Bradbury. "He overloaded himself; then had to farm the extra work out to his friends. I think there's a similarity here to Rod Serling-Rod could never resist temptation. In other words, you've been neglected a good part of your life and no one is paying attention to you, and all of a sudden, people are paying attention: they're offering you jobs here and there. And the temptation is: Jeez! I never had anything. I better take that because it may not last! And that happens to all of us. So Chuck, I think suffered from 'Serling Syndrome.' Rod, in the last year of his life, did all those commercials, which he didn't have to do. But he couldn't resist, and I gather Chuck couldn't resist all these things; then it got to be a real burden and he had to do something with it. So his friends had to come to his aid." Although he'd attained a high-level of creative and financial success in film and television, Beaumont had often confided to close friends his desire to return to novel writing, and, in 1963, decided to finish Where No Man Walks-a novel he'd begun in mid-1957. John Tomerlin explains, "Once you begin working in Hollywood, unless you enter it through the back door of doing novels and then writing the screenplays and stories that you want to, you end up taking assignments; usually, to a large extent, those assignments are other people's-you're meeting their requirements. Even if the story is original, you must adapt it to their requirements. I think Chuck didn't like doing that, and wanted very much to write books that he had seen himself writing." But time was running out on Beaumont. By mid-1963, his concentration began to slip; he was using Bromo Seltzer constantly to cope with ever increasing headaches. Friends remarked he looked notably older than his thirty-four years of age. By 1964, he could no longer write. Meetings with producers turned disastrous. His speech became slower, more deliberate. His concentration worsened. Meanwhile, his family and friends desperately tried to understand and treat his symptoms. In the summer of 1964, after a battery of tests at UCLA, Beaumont was diagnosed as having Alzheimer's Disease; he faced premature senility, aging, and an early death. "The saving grace to it," says Tomerlin, "if there is one, in a disease like that, is he was not really aware, after the very beginning, that there was anything wrong with him. When he first began to show strong symptoms of it, he would have kind of momentary flashes of great concern, as though he saw something happening and couldn't understand what it was. But it was a fairly gentle process." Charles Beaumont died February 21, 1967 at the age of thirty-eight, his full potential never realized. His last hardcover book was Remember? Remember?, and as Bill Nolan observes, "there is so much to remember about Charles Beaumont: [a] midnight call to California-Chuck calling from Chicago to tell me he planned to spend the day with Ian Fleming and why not join them? . . . the frenzied, nutty nights when we plotted Mickey Mouse adventures for the Disney Magazines… the bright, hot, exciting racing weekends at Palm Springs, Torrey Pines, Pebble Beach… the whirlwind trips to Paris and Nassau and New York… the sessions on the set at Twilight Zone when he'd exclaim, 'I write it and they create it in three dimensions. God, but it's magic!'... the fast, machine-gun rattle of his typewriter as I talked to Helen in the kitchen while he worked in the den… the rush to the newstand for the latest Beaumont story. . Yet, Beaumont's magic is still with us, evidenced by the four children who survived him, and in the stories which follow. He was a craftsman, the kind of w
riter who could be relied upon to perform the ultimate function of fiction-entertainment-adding always some ambiance, echoing, indefinable, the reflection of a storyteller who was more than a voice… Roger Anker Los Angeles, California January, 1987
Charles Beaumont: Selected Stories Page 1
