shadowplay

My latest haul of second-hand stuff included THE BAREFOOT CONTESSA on DVD, DEATH OF A POET on Blu-ray, and two paperback collections of short stories by Henry Kuttner. One of the first stories I read in Ahead of Time had me reaching for the IMDb, curious to see if it had been adapted by The Twilight Zone. It hadn’t — officially.

Kuttner HAD, under the pseudonym of Lewis Padgett (good name) co-written with C.L. Moore, the source story for What You Need, starring Steve Cochran and Ernest Truex, but the story I was looking for, By These Presents, was not the credited source for the Season One episode Escape Clause, which is down as an original story by Rod Serling. That one’s directed by Mitchell Leisen and stars David Wayne and Thomas Gomez. It’s one of Rod Serling’s “funny” episodes, which let’s face it are never terribly good. There ARE some good funny episodes, but they’re not usually written by Serling, imho.

Both stories are Faustian variations. Nearly every classic sci-fi writer seems to have tried a Faust parody, and I seem to recall Walter Tevis or maybe it was Roger Zelazny made a thing out of how tiresomely familiar the trope was. Kuttner’s is above average, and includes the Faust character asking the Devil WHY he collects souls, to which His Satanic Majesty replies, “In your fall, and in the fall of every soul, I forget my own for a moment.” Which is SUPERB.

One can hardly condemn Serling for making his own comic Faustus, but the thing is, he starts from the same premise — the protag thinks he’s found a loophole, and offers to sell his soul for immortality. It looks as though Satan — known as Cadwallader in the TV version, though Gomez makes an unlikely Welshman — is stumped, since he can’t collect if the client never expires.

And it looks as though Serling, who clearly knew Kuttner’s work, has been caught with his hand in the cookie jar of plagiarism. Sure, the final twist in his TV version is different from Kuttner’s (neither is particularly great but Kuttner’s is the better), and the general developments from the starting point are basically different too. There aren’t ENOUGH developments in Serling’s script, but they’re his own.

I can see how this could happen. Serling has to keep churning the material out. His budget is tight, it’s got to be cheaper for him to write “an original” than to buy the stuff in. And the Faustian parody is an old warhorse anyway, and taking just the starting point and developing it differently isn’t the same as abducting it wholesale. Still, I think it’s highly qustionable.

I’d never heard of any allegations of plagiarism against Serling, so I got curious and immediately found this fine piece by Emily Temple, wherein we learn that Ray Bradbury thought Serling was plagiarising left right and centre from him and his friends, including Kuttner. Charles Beaumont (a frequent TZ scriptwriter) and John Collier were also cited as sources lightly pilfered from. It’s pretty bad — Serling would’ve been earning a lot more than most of these guys, though admittedly he was probably suffering more stress and smoking himself to death.

Jonathan R. Eller, quoted in the above piece, argues that Serling’s thefts were small, subtle, and right on the edge of being legitimate influence rather than overt piracy. Bradbury reckoned Serling maybe didn’t even know he was doing it. I think this example nudges over the line, Serling must have known he was pinching a premise, but he told himself, probably, that the changes he was making legitimised the acquisition of another writer’s concept. He was just wrong, is all.

Bradbury, a gent, admits the thefts were relatively modest, but his assessment of how they came about is quietly devastating — Serling was new to the genre, in over his head, and in trying to acquaint himself with the form he consumed lots of writing, didn’t digest it fully, and regurgitated some. And the implication is that he was able to fool himself into thinking he was being properly creative because he wasn’t familiar enough with this kind of writing.

It’s a shame because Escape Clause wasn’t really worth making, let alone crossing an ethical boundary for. But Thomas Gomez is REALLY good in it.

Ironically, the cover of my edition of Kuttner’s book is itself a blatant Magritte knockoff.