R.I.P. Carol Serling, the wife of Rod Serling who made a cameo in Twilight Zone: The Movie

The caretaker of the Twilight Zone legacy was 91.

After serving in World War II, Rod Serling used the G.I. Bill to attend Antioch College in Yellow Spring, Ohio. It was the school his elder brother attended. In the fall of '46, Serling met a freshman named Carol Kramer. Two years later, the couple married.

Rod and Carol remained married until his death in 1975. In the subsequent 45 years, Carol Serling has become a caretaker of the Twilight Zone legacy. Most recently, she earned an executive producer credit in the Jordan Peele reboot of The Twilight Zone for the CBS All Access streaming service.

She consulted on Twilight Zone: The Movie (1983) and served as a supervising producer for 1994's Twilight Zone: Rod Serling's Lost Classics. In the 1980s, Carol worked as a consulting editor and associate publisher for Rod Serling's The Twilight Zone Magazine.

In 1987, she sat down for an interview with Bob Rosenbaum that was published in Twilight Zone Magazine.

"I think Rod would be absolutely amazed that the interest is still there and that so many people remember his work," she said. She had recently appeared in the Fifth Dimension herself. In the fourth and final segment of Twilight Zone: The Movie, George Miller (Mad Max) directs a kinetic remake of "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet" with John Lithgow in the William Shatner role.

The tale opens with Lithgow undergoing a panic attack in an airplane bathroom. When he exits the toilet, a concerned passenger stands up and asks the flight attendants if everything is okay. That was none other than Carol Serling herself, as seen above.

When Carol and Rod finished college at the dawn of the 1950s, the lovebirds moved to Cincinnati, where Rod wrote radio ads for Geritol. Carol worked to help support the two as Rod tried to break into writing. She worked until the birth of their first daughter, Jody. A second daughter, Anne, followed.

On January 13, Anne Serling announced that her mother had passed. Carol Serling was 91.

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7 Comments

Oscar 47 months ago
I saw the very first episode in 1959, "Where Is Everybody?" when I was 10 years-old and BOY was I hooked!! Rod Serling had the best imagination ever! I have every episode on dvd and love watching them often with no commercials or any parts omitted. RIP Carol, AND Rod. I can see that big toothy smile of his now as he greets you at 'The Pearly Gates of Heaven'.
JeffBaker 58 months ago
Thanks for posting the link to the article! I'd never read that interview, even though I read Twilight Zone Magazine back in the day! (Didn't see that issue I guess!) As a writer, Rod Serling has always been one of my heroes. R.I.P. Carol.
ed45 58 months ago
I'm currently watching the entire series courtesy of Amazon Prime. I expect at some point this series will show up on ME TV, but will most likely have been edited due to time constraints (adding more commercials) as most other shows from the 50's-70's are.
cperrynaples 59 months ago
Sadly, Rod Serling got cheated on TZ! He got a percentage in 1959, but as Carol said in a later interview CBS forced her husband to sell it back for a pitiful sum in the mid-60's!
wanderer2575 cperrynaples 58 months ago
That's a bit harsh. According to Carol Serling (in a comment quoted in Marc Scott Zicree's "The Twilight Zone Companion," the show often went over budget and CBS said they would never recoup those costs. Whether CBS really thought that or they were trying to lowball Serling is a point that may never be known. But Serling certainly was never "forced" to sell his interest.
GaryPhillips 59 months ago
When I was a "bit" younger..As a family we never missed an episode of TW. Some gave me nightmares..lol..Watching them now..compared to the Horror movies of today. GIVE ME TW any day of the week..Miss those days.
cperrynaples GaryPhillips 59 months ago
Actually, the prefered shorthand is TZ! No one uses TW unless you add a 3 and it becomes That Was The Week That Was!
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