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On January 2, 1929, "Twilight Zone" author Charles Beaumont was born.
I saw "The Howling Man" during the recent New Year's Day marathon. "Number Twelve Looks Just Like You" came on too, but I bailed on that a few minutes in.
Charles Beaumont
Beaumont c. late 1950s
Born: Charles Leroy Nutt; January 2, 1929; Chicago, Illinois, U.S.
Died: February 21, 1967 (aged 38); Los Angeles, California, U.S.
Period: 1950–1967
Genre: Speculative fiction, science fiction, horror
Notable works: The Twilight Zone (various episodes)
Children: 4
Charles Beaumont (born Charles Leroy Nutt; January 2, 1929 – February 21, 1967) was an American author of speculative fiction, including short stories in the horror and science fiction subgenres. He is remembered as a writer of classic Twilight Zone episodes, such as "The Howling Man", "Static", "Miniature", "Printer's Devil", and "Number Twelve Looks Just Like You", but also penned the screenplays for several films, such as 7 Faces of Dr. Lao, The Intruder, and The Masque of the Red Death.
Novelist Dean Koontz said "Charles Beaumont was one of the seminal influences on writers of the fantastic and macabre." Beaumont is also the subject of the documentary Charles Beaumont: The Short Life of Twilight Zone's Magic Man by Jason V. Brock.
Life and work
Beaumont was born Charles Leroy Nutt in Chicago, on January 2, 1929, the only child of Charles Hiram Nutt (an auditor of freight accounts for the Chicago & Alton Railroad) and Violet "Letty" (Phillips) Nutt, a homemaker who had been a scenarist at Essanay Studios. His father was 56 when Charles was born; Letty, his mother, was 22 years her husband's junior. Letty is known to have dressed young Charles in girls' clothes, and once threatened to kill his dog to punish him. These early experiences inspired the celebrated short story "Miss Gentilbelle", but according to Beaumont, "Football, baseball, and dimestore cookie thefts filled my early world".
School did not hold his attention, and his last name exposed him to ridicule, so Charles Nutt found solace as a teenager in science fiction. He dropped out of high school in tenth grade to join the Army in the final years of World War II. He also worked as a cartoonist, illustrator, disc jockey, usher, and dishwasher before selling his first story to Amazing Stories in 1950. During his time as an illustrator, he briefly used the pseudonyms Charles McNutt (circa 1947/48) and E.T. Beaumont (inspired by a female artist named "Miss Beaumont" with whom he had collaborated in Everett, Washington), before settling on the name Charles Beaumont. He soon adopted this name legally and used it both personally and professionally for the rest of his life.
In 1954, Playboy magazine selected his story "Black Country" to be the first work of short fiction to appear in its pages. It was at this time that Beaumont started writing for television and film.
Beaumont was energetic and spontaneous, and was known to take trips (sometimes out of the country) at a moment's notice. An avid racing fan, he often enjoyed participating in or watching area speedway races, with other authors tagging along. Beaumont and several friends built their own SCCA H Modified racecar dubbed the "Monzetta", consisting of Panhard mechanicals and a Devin body and chassis, which was raced at many Southern California tracks including Paramount Ranch Racetrack.
His cautionary fables include "The Beautiful People" (1952), about a rebellious adolescent girl in a future conformist society in which people are obligated to alter their physical appearance ( adapted with friend and frequent writing partner John Tomerlin as an episode of Twilight Zone, "Number 12 Looks Just Like You" ), and "Free Dirt" (1955), about a man who gorges on his entire vegetable harvest and dies from having consumed the magical soil he used to grow it.
His short story "The Crooked Man" (also published by Playboy in 1955) presents a dystopian future wherein heterosexuality is stigmatized in the same way that homosexuality then was, with heterosexual people living furtively like pre-Stonewall gay and lesbian people. In the story, a heterosexual man meets his lover in a gay orgy bar; they try to have sex in a curtained booth (she dressed in male drag) and are caught.
Beaumont wrote several scripts for The Twilight Zone, including an adaptation of his own short story, "The Howling Man", about a prisoner who might be the Devil, and the hour-long "Valley of the Shadow", about a cloistered Utopia that refuses to share its startlingly advanced technology with the outside world.
{snip}
Beaumont c. late 1950s
Born: Charles Leroy Nutt; January 2, 1929; Chicago, Illinois, U.S.
Died: February 21, 1967 (aged 38); Los Angeles, California, U.S.
Period: 1950–1967
Genre: Speculative fiction, science fiction, horror
Notable works: The Twilight Zone (various episodes)
Children: 4
Charles Beaumont (born Charles Leroy Nutt; January 2, 1929 – February 21, 1967) was an American author of speculative fiction, including short stories in the horror and science fiction subgenres. He is remembered as a writer of classic Twilight Zone episodes, such as "The Howling Man", "Static", "Miniature", "Printer's Devil", and "Number Twelve Looks Just Like You", but also penned the screenplays for several films, such as 7 Faces of Dr. Lao, The Intruder, and The Masque of the Red Death.
Novelist Dean Koontz said "Charles Beaumont was one of the seminal influences on writers of the fantastic and macabre." Beaumont is also the subject of the documentary Charles Beaumont: The Short Life of Twilight Zone's Magic Man by Jason V. Brock.
Life and work
Beaumont was born Charles Leroy Nutt in Chicago, on January 2, 1929, the only child of Charles Hiram Nutt (an auditor of freight accounts for the Chicago & Alton Railroad) and Violet "Letty" (Phillips) Nutt, a homemaker who had been a scenarist at Essanay Studios. His father was 56 when Charles was born; Letty, his mother, was 22 years her husband's junior. Letty is known to have dressed young Charles in girls' clothes, and once threatened to kill his dog to punish him. These early experiences inspired the celebrated short story "Miss Gentilbelle", but according to Beaumont, "Football, baseball, and dimestore cookie thefts filled my early world".
School did not hold his attention, and his last name exposed him to ridicule, so Charles Nutt found solace as a teenager in science fiction. He dropped out of high school in tenth grade to join the Army in the final years of World War II. He also worked as a cartoonist, illustrator, disc jockey, usher, and dishwasher before selling his first story to Amazing Stories in 1950. During his time as an illustrator, he briefly used the pseudonyms Charles McNutt (circa 1947/48) and E.T. Beaumont (inspired by a female artist named "Miss Beaumont" with whom he had collaborated in Everett, Washington), before settling on the name Charles Beaumont. He soon adopted this name legally and used it both personally and professionally for the rest of his life.
In 1954, Playboy magazine selected his story "Black Country" to be the first work of short fiction to appear in its pages. It was at this time that Beaumont started writing for television and film.
Beaumont was energetic and spontaneous, and was known to take trips (sometimes out of the country) at a moment's notice. An avid racing fan, he often enjoyed participating in or watching area speedway races, with other authors tagging along. Beaumont and several friends built their own SCCA H Modified racecar dubbed the "Monzetta", consisting of Panhard mechanicals and a Devin body and chassis, which was raced at many Southern California tracks including Paramount Ranch Racetrack.
His cautionary fables include "The Beautiful People" (1952), about a rebellious adolescent girl in a future conformist society in which people are obligated to alter their physical appearance ( adapted with friend and frequent writing partner John Tomerlin as an episode of Twilight Zone, "Number 12 Looks Just Like You" ), and "Free Dirt" (1955), about a man who gorges on his entire vegetable harvest and dies from having consumed the magical soil he used to grow it.
His short story "The Crooked Man" (also published by Playboy in 1955) presents a dystopian future wherein heterosexuality is stigmatized in the same way that homosexuality then was, with heterosexual people living furtively like pre-Stonewall gay and lesbian people. In the story, a heterosexual man meets his lover in a gay orgy bar; they try to have sex in a curtained booth (she dressed in male drag) and are caught.
Beaumont wrote several scripts for The Twilight Zone, including an adaptation of his own short story, "The Howling Man", about a prisoner who might be the Devil, and the hour-long "Valley of the Shadow", about a cloistered Utopia that refuses to share its startlingly advanced technology with the outside world.
{snip}