George Clayton Johnson Eloquent, enthusiastic, and a true lover of storytelling, George


by Holly Interlandi


Clayton Johnson has succeeded in attaching his name to the type of ‘magical’ tale that THE TWILIGHT ZONE made so famous, as well as familiar titles like LOGAN’S RUN, OCEAN’S ELEVEN, and even the first episode of STAR TREK. With a group of writers like Richard Matheson, Charles Beaumont, and Ray Bradbury to bounce ideas off of, it’s no surprise that Johnson became such a fount of stories for Rod Serling to draw from.


Famous Monsters. From what I know about you, you were introduced to Rod Serling through a circle of science fiction writers that you were working with—Ray Bradbury, Richard Matheson… how did you get into that circle? George Clayton Johnson. I am a lifelong, devoted Ray Bradbury fan. Early on in my reading career, I recognized his as a singularly wonderful voice. And I wished so badly that I could be Ray Bradbury that before long I started forging Ray Bradbury stories. And I started seeing other stories that had that same stamp upon them—I could see the influence. Among those people were Charles Beaumont and William F. Nolan, to name two. So I contrived to meet Charles. We met in a restaurant and talked for two solid hours about Ray Bradbury and the influence he had on literature of the era. And through him I met others, and came to understand that [Beaumont] himself had met Ray Bradbury. So, on one occasion, Charles Beaumont took me as a guest with him to a meeting of a club called ‘The Fictioneers’. These were a bunch of penny-a-word story writers, editors, and publishers, who got together once a year. I was only too honored to be able to gather among them, and to meet a lot of writers I hadn’t met before, like Poul Anderson and Clifford Simak. And there in the midst of all of that was Ray Bradbury, who was the guest speaker—one of the reasons Beaumont had taken me. And of course he was utterly inspiring. Through our mutual admiration of Bradbury, people like Matheson and Beaumont and myself—people who all wrote episodes of THE TWILIGHT ZONE—were part of a little group


who would hang out. People who recognized Beaumont as our leader, an impetuous guy who would get tired of sitting at a typewriter and want to go off to ride the bumper cars at Pacific Ocean Park or go to some nudie bar or some weird idea that you would think was juvenile. But we would enthusiastically go off and act like teenagers, make a lot of jokes… And I, through them, mutually reinforced my ideas about what constituted a good story of the type that Bradbury had made so famous. And then Rod Serling came to town. Rod was from the east, and he shared this admiration for Bradbury. He really wanted Bradbury to be a big part of [TWILIGHT ZONE]. My guess is that his bosses said, no, you can’t drag Ray Bradbury in here. He’s got too much clout—it’ll be the Ray Bradbury Theater! He was probably right about that. I was invited to parties at Beaumont’s house. When we all got together, it was really a houseful. And in the midst of all of it was Rod Serling, cigarette in his hand, a glass of Scotch on the rocks,


“A GAME OF POOL” FAMOUS MONSTERS OF FILMLAND • JAN/FEB 2012 75


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