Charles Beaumont: Selected Stories Read Online Free
Author: Charles Beaumont
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
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
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