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."
<
br /> 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 writer 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
* * *
PREFACE by Christopher Beaumont
* * *
Roger Anker has put together a good and varied collection of Beaumont short stories. But he's done something more. He's wrapped each and every story in the loving embrace of a friend. Matheson, Tomerlin, Bradhury, Nolan; all names I grew up with. Each one a distinct and pleasant piece of my memory. A memory that includes the picture of a young boy falling asleep, night after night, to the sound of his father's typewriter, the keys finally becoming a familiar lullaby.
Do not think for a minute that the style and clarity found in these stories was not the result of countless hours spent shaping and reshaping, and then reshaping again, the words.
But somehow, in the midst of his passion for the words, he found time enough, and love enough to be a father. And such is the quality of that love that it sustained his children; Catherine, Elizabeth, Gregory and myself, through the stormy weather that followed his death and the death of our mother.
Not only sustained, but inspired and confirmed our suspicions that certain things never die: a story well told, the steadfast loyalty of a good and true friend, and the memory of a father who somewhere knew that his time was short, and so passionately shared all that he had to share.
And even now, some nights, I vaguely hear the typewriter keys tapping in the other room. The single bell at the end of the carriage. The sound of the roller twisting another lucky page into the works. And then the tapping starts again and I begin to drift to sleep.
Good night, Father.
* * *
Introduction to MISS GENTILBELLE
(by Ray Bradbury)
* * *
It has been too many years. Quite suddenly I realize the old memory is failing.
I say this because I thought I remembered everything there was to remember about Charles Beaumont and "Miss Gentilbelle." Not so.
For some letters have come into my hands from that time more than 30 years ago, when Charles Beaumont was a young father and a more-than-aspiring writer. Those were the years when I promised Chuck if he showed up at my house every Wednesday evening with a new story, I would read it. It was a way of forcing him, and several other writer friends, to do one story a week, 52 weeks a year. Quality, I told them and him, came out of quantity. The more you wrote, the better you got. That is if your intentions were honorable and your dreams high and wondrous.
Chuck did just that. He not only wrote 52 short stories a year, but he revised them during the same weeks.
"Miss Gentilbelle" must have come under my eye on not just one or two, but three or four occasions. With this, and other stories, I wanted Chuck to learn how to cut his stories. Like every writer in the history of the world, including myself, his stories ran long, and needed shaves and haircuts.
I wish I had some of the original versions of "Miss Gentilbelle" in front of me. For it is obvious, in re-reading our old letters, that he revised and cut the story three or four times. At one point, I rather rigorously insisted that if he didn't edit his stories, I wouldn't read them. That seems terribly harsh, now that I look back. But young writers are often stubborn, and remembering my own stubbornness about my immortal prose, I had to nag Chuck.
It was all worth while, as can be seen by the story here. Chuck revised it at least four times, and I became its friendly agent to several magazines. My luck was not good. When I had sent it around five or six times, I passed the story on to other hands, and it finally sold.
Further results can be seen in dozens and then scores of his future tales. He became, in a very short while, not only my honorary son, but first cousin to John Collier, Roald Dahl, Nigel Kneale, and a lot of other story tellers that we admired together. Until, at last, he became and stayed the one and only Charles Beaumont.
I am glad that we were friends. I am proud that I gently nagged "Miss Gentilbelle" at various times. Long after the nags are forgotten, the story will stand. Here is the early Chuck Beaumont, promising even greater things that he lived just long enough, thank God, to do.
* * *
MISS GENTILBELLE
* * *
Robert settled on his favorite branch of the old elm and watched Miss Gentilbelle. The night was very black, but he was not afraid, although he was young enough to be afraid. And he was old enough to hate, but he didn't hate. He merely watched.
Miss Gentilbelle sat straight and stiff in the faded chair by the window. The phonograph had been turned down and she sat, listening. In her hands were a teacup, faintly flowered, and a saucer that did not match. She held them with great care and delicacy and the tea had long ago turned cold.
Robert decided to watch Miss Gentilbelle's hands.
They were thin and delicate, like the cup and saucer. But he saw that they were also wrinkled and not smooth like his own. One of the fingers was encircled by a tarnished yellow band and the skin was very, very white.
Now the phonograph began to repeat toward the end of the record and Miss Gentilbelle let it go for a while before she moved.
When she rose, Robert became frightened and cried loudly. He had forgotten how to climb down from the tree. Miss Gentilbelle heard him crying and after she had replaced the record in its album she went to the window and raised it halfway to the top.
"Roberta," she said. "I'm surprised. Quite surprised." She paused. "Trees are for monkeys and birds, not little girls. Do you remember when I told you that?"
The soft bayou wind took Miss Gentilbelle's words and carried them off. But Robert knew what had been said.
"Yes, Mother. Trees are for monkeys and birds."
"Very well. Come down from there. I wish to speak with you."
"Yes, Mother." Robert remembered. Cautiously at first, and then with greater daring, he grasped small limbs with his hands and descended to the ground. Before the last jump a jagged piece of bark caught on his gown and ripped a long hole in the gauzy cloth.
The jump hurt his feet but he ran up the splintery steps fast because he had recognized the look in Miss Gentilbelle's eyes. When he got to the living room, he tried nervously to hold the torn patch of cloth together.
He knocked.
"Come in, Roberta." The pale woman beckoned, gestured. "Sit over there, please, in the big chair." Her eyes were expressionless, without color, like clots of mucus. She folded her hands. "I see that you have ruined your best gown," she whispered. "A pity, it once belonged to your grandmother. You should have been in bed asleep, but instead you were climbing trees and that is why you ruined your gown. It's made of silk--did you know that, Roberta? Pure silk. Soft and fragile, like the wings of a dove; not of the coarse burlap they're using nowadays. Such a pity . . . It can never be replaced."
She was quiet for a time; then she leaned forward. "Tell me, Roberta-- what did you promise when I gave you the gown?"
Robert hesitated. There were no words to come. He stared at the frayed Oriental rug and listened to his heart.
"Roberta, don't you think you ought to answer me? What did you promise?"
"That--" Robert's voice was mechanical. "That I would take good care of it."
"And have you taken good care of it?"
"No, Mother, I ... haven't."
"Indeed you have not. You have been a wicked girl."
Robert bit flesh away from the inside of his mouth. "Can't it be mended?" he asked.
Miss Gentilbelle put a finely woven hankerchief to her mouth and gasped. "Mended! Shall I take it to a tailor and have him sew a patch?" Her eyes came to life, flashing. "When a butterfly has lost its wing, what happens?"
"It can't fly."
"True. It cannot fly. It is dead, it is no longer a butterfly. Roberta--there are few things that can ever be mended. None of the really worthwhile things can be." She sat thoughtfully silent for several minutes, sipping her cold tea.
Robert waited. His bladder began to ache.
"You have been an exceedingly wicked girl, Roberta, and you must be punished. Do you know how I shall punish you?"
Robert looked up and saw his mother's face. "Shall you beat me?"
The Howling Man Page 2
