Charles Beaumont | |
|---|---|
 Beaumontc. late 1950s | |
| Born | Charles Leroy Nutt (1929-01-02)January 2, 1929 Chicago, Illinois, U.S. |
| Died | February 21, 1967(1967-02-21) (aged 38) Los Angeles, California, U.S. |
| Period | 1950–1967 |
| Genre |
|
| Notable works | The Twilight Zone (various episodes) |
Charles Beaumont (bornCharles Leroy Nutt; January 2, 1929 – February 21, 1967) was anAmerican author ofspeculative fiction, includingshort stories in thehorror andscience fiction subgenres.[1] He is remembered as a writer of classicTwilight Zone episodes, such as "The Howling Man", "Static", "Nice Place to Visit", "Miniature", "Printer's Devil", and "Number Twelve Looks Just Like You", but also penned the screenplays for several films, such as7 Faces of Dr. Lao,The Intruder (based on his novel), andThe Masque of the Red Death.
NovelistDean Koontz said "Charles Beaumont was one of the seminal influences on writers of the fantastic and macabre." Beaumont is also the subject of the documentaryCharles Beaumont: The Short Life of Twilight Zone's Magic Man byJason V. Brock.
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Beaumont was born Charles Leroy Nutt in Chicago,[2] on January 2, 1929,[3] 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 ascenarist atEssanay Studios.[2] 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 celebratedshort 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 theArmy in the final years ofWorld War II.[2] He also worked as a cartoonist, illustrator, disc jockey, usher, and dishwasher before selling his first story toAmazing Stories in 1950. During his time as an illustrator, he briefly used the pseudonyms Charles McNutt[2] (circa 1947/48) and E.T. Beaumont[2] (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.[1]
Beaumont was energetic and spontaneous, and was known to take trips (sometimes out of the country) at a moment's notice. An avidracing fan, he often enjoyed participating in or watching area speedway races, with other authors tagging along. Beaumont and several friends built their ownSCCA H Modified racecar dubbed the "Monzetta", consisting ofPanhard mechanicals and aDevin body and chassis, which was raced at many Southern California tracks includingParamount Ranch Racetrack.[4][5]
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 ofTwilight 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.[1]
His short story "The Crooked Man" (also published byPlayboy 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.[6] In the story, a heterosexual man meets his lover in a gayorgy bar; they try to have sex in a curtained booth (she dressed in maledrag) and are caught.
Beaumont wrote several scripts forThe 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.
Beaumont scripted the filmQueen of Outer Space from an outline byBen Hecht, deliberately writing the screenplay as a parody. According to Beaumont, the directorial style is not informed by his satiric intent. He penned one episode of the TV showSteve Canyon, titled "Operation B-52", in which Canyon and his crew attempt to set a speed record in a B-52 accompanied by a newsman who hates Air Force pilots.
Beaumont was much admired by his colleagues (Ray Bradbury,Harlan Ellison,Richard Matheson,Robert Bloch,Roger Corman). Many of his stories have been re-released in the posthumous volumesBest of Beaumont (Bantam, 1982) andThe Howling Man (Tom Doherty, 1992), and a set of previously unpublished tales,A Touch of the Creature (Subterranean Press, 1999). In 2004,Gauntlet Press released the first of two volumes collecting Beaumont'sTwilight Zone scripts.
Beaumont wrote several scripts forRoger Corman includingThe Intruder. According toFilmink, "In Corman-ology, Beaumont’s often confused forRichard Matheson."[7]
A book-length biography of Beaumont, titledTrapped in the Twilight Zone: The Life and Times of Charles Beaumont, by Roger Anker, is due to be published byCentipede Press in late 2024.[citation needed]
In 1963, when Beaumont was 34 and overwhelmed by numerous writing commitments, he began to suffer the effects of "a mysterious brain disease" which seemed to age him rapidly. His ability to speak, concentrate, and remember became erratic. While some people attributed all of this to Beaumont's heavy drinking, his friend and colleague John Tomerlin disagreed: "I was working closely with Chuck at the time, and we were good enough friends for me to know that alcohol by itself could not possibly account for the odd state of mind that he was in."[8][1]
"He was rarely well," his friend and colleagueWilliam F. Nolan later recalled.[8] "He was thin, and kept having headaches. He usedBromo-Seltzer like most people use water. He had a big Bromo bottle with him all the time". The disease also affected his work.[8] "He could barely sell stories, much less write. He would go unshaven to meetings with producers, which would end in disaster. [A script writer has] got to be able to think on your feet, which Chuck couldn't do anymore; and so the producers would just go, 'We're sorry, Mr. Beaumont, but we don't like the script'."
The condition might have been related to thespinal meningitis he suffered as a child. His friend and early agentForrest J. Ackerman has asserted an alternative, that Beaumont suffered simultaneously fromAlzheimer's disease andPick's disease. This claim was supported by the UCLA Medical Staff, who subjected Beaumont to a battery of tests in the summer of 1964 that indicated that it might be either Alzheimer's or Pick's. Nolan recalls that the UCLA doctors sent Beaumont home with a death sentence: "They said 'There's absolutely no treatment for this disease. It's permanent and it's terminal. He'll probably live from six months to three years with it. He'll decline and get to where he can't stand up. He won't feel any pain. In fact, he won't even know this is happening'." In Nolan's own words: "Like his character 'Walter Jameson,' Chuck just dusted away".
Several fellow writers, including Nolan and friendJerry Sohl, beganghostwriting for Beaumont during 1963–1964, so that he could meet his many writing obligations.[8] Privately, he insisted on splitting these fees. By 1965, however, Beaumont was too ill to even create or sell story ideas. His last on-screen writing credit was for the 1965 filmMister Moses, officially a screenplay written with (but more likely written by)Monja Danischewsky.
On February 21, 1967, Beaumont died in Woodland Hills, California at the age of 38. His son Christopher later said that his father, "[...]looked ninety-five and was, in fact, ninety-five by every calendar except the one on your watch".[8]
The following is a list of episodes Beaumont penned forThe Twilight Zone (an asterisk indicates that the episode was credited to Beaumont, but ghostwritten byJerry Sohl).
Beaumont co-wrote the stories withWilliam F. Nolan.
