The Bradbury Chronicles (32 page)

The next script Ray presented for
The Twilight Zone
was “A Miracle of Rare Device,” an adaptation of a short story that wouldn't appear in print for a few more years, in the January 1962 issue of
Playboy
. This time, Ray's script sold to
The Twilight Zone
. The tale followed two drifters, driving through the desert down an Arizona highway, who eye a stunning mirage in the far distance—a city rising out of the shimmering heat and the parched mountains. The two men decide to set up a viewing station, charging passersby twenty-five cents for a glimpse of the uncanny urban mirage. They soon discover that each viewer sees a different city: Paris, New York, Rome, even the mythical city of Xanadu. But one patron sees nothing at all and becomes intent on spoiling this place of vision and imagination for everyone.

“A Miracle of Rare Device” was scheduled for production but was never made.
Twilight Zone
scholars Presnell and McGee theorize that, once again, production costs likely played a role. The authors also present another theory, quoting Rod Serling: “Ray Bradbury is a very difficult guy to dramatize, because that which reads so beautifully on the printed page doesn't fit in the mouth—it fits in the head.”

While Ray's difficulties with
The Twilight Zone
persisted, he was also, after a decade, seriously contemplating a change of publishers. Over the years, Ray had grown disenchanted with Doubleday, and he was having doubts whether the publisher should get his new book. He was truly fond of his editor, Walter Bradbury, who was instrumental in shaping
The Martian Chronicles
and
Dandelion Wine,
but he had never been impressed by Doubleday's marketing efforts and, as his agent, Don Congdon, complained, the company did not pay enough for Ray's books. These were the reasons, according to Congdon, that he and Ray were eager to sign a deal with Ian Ballantine for
Fahrenheit 451
and
The October Country
. Ballantine showed enthusiasm and an understanding that Ray's work far exceeded the science fiction genre.

The space race was blasting off, Sputnik had circled the globe, and it had ignited the collective imagination of people young and old around the world. People dreamed of traveling beyond the boundaries of our own little blue marble. Ray was confounded to learn that in a time when periodicals like
Life,
Newsweek,
U.S. News & World Report,
and
Time
were all covering space exploration, one of the great paeans to pioneering outer space,
The Martian Chronicles,
was no longer available. Doubleday had let the book go out of print and Ray was livid. When he raised his grievances, the ever-agreeable Walter Bradbury made haste to put
The Martian Chronicles
back into print with a new introduction by writer Clifton Fadiman. Walter Bradbury had always tried his best to keep Ray appeased, but he was only one man. In 1959, when Walter Bradbury left Doubleday for an editor's post at Henry Holt and Company, Ray's relationship with Doubleday, after more than a decade, was in jeopardy. Ray expressed his concerns with his new editor at Doubleday, Tim Seldes, in a letter that reflected his acute awareness of the status of his career and also that of his growing popularity. Ray was lecturing on college campuses, and his work was beginning to be assigned and read in high school literature classes throughout the country. Ray knew full well that he was a name entity for Doubleday, and he took Seldes to task for his company's lack of support.

 

… As you know, I've been under contract to you people now for 11 years, as of this month. And while Walter Bradbury in his time, and you in yours, have been warmly responsive to my work, I have never felt the same enthusiasm existed throughout the Doubleday organization.

So may I ask this of all of you—some time in the coming four weeks, at an editorial meeting, as a joint effort, I want you to think of my past books and my possible value at Doubleday in the next few years. I think a group decision has to be made now as to whether you find my books lacking and bid me goodbye.

I have felt lonely at Doubleday, and often neglected, and want some of the individual attention and promotion given to other authors at smaller publishing houses. I have waited patiently, these eleven years, for Doubleday to exert influence in my behalf in many places in the book trade where I could use your good offices.

My anxiety and un-ease have increased because of one simple fact: the Space Age is here. And Doubleday, I feel, has yet to realize that they own the leading writer in the field. In colleges and high schools throughout the country my name gets fantastic attention. Operas, one-act plays, and films are being made of my work everywhere. Immodest of me to mention this, but the enthusiasm is there, and must be noted.

What do I ask of Doubleday, in the light of all this? A blueprint of my future, set down in detail, jointly, by you people …

 

While Ray felt that Seldes wanted him to remain at Doubleday, he believed the other decision makers at the New York publishing house did not. He felt they did not understand or care about the value of the nascent Space Age. They were being myopic and could not connect Ray on a marketing level to the new race against the Russians to break the bonds of Earth's atmosphere, to challenge the laws of Mother Nature, to explore the great unknown. Ray Bradbury saw himself, perhaps immodestly, as a spokesperson for this new era.

Ray consulted with his one great confidant, Don Congdon. “In all his years as an agent,” Ray said in a 2004 interview, “he never steered me wrong.” After discussions with Congdon and Maggie, Ray wrote Seldes with a decision.

 

After eleven years, I think it is time for me to leave Doubleday and to try to find a new publisher who will see me and this fantastic and exciting new Space Age with the same high-spirits in which I approach it. I feel very much like a person who, throwing confetti, serpentines, and my hat to the sky, finds he is the lone celebrant at a party. I need a whole company of people to celebrate and be really excited with me about an age I believe is the greatest man ever lived in.

 

And with that, Ray Bradbury left the publishing house that he had joined, with just one book to his credit, in 1949.

A new novel was fast taking shape, its origins, like a lot of Bradbury tales, going back several years. Ray was crafting a classic tale of good versus evil, a story, he said, that he “wanted to take place almost entirely at night, in the shadows.” The book was
Something Wicked This Way Comes
.

As with many Bradbury tales, the inspiration for
Something Wicked This Way Comes
dated back to Ray's formative years in Waukegan, Illinois. Mining his childhood was a time-tested technique for generating stories. The concept for this new novel was no different. It began with Ray's recollections of running with his brother, Skip, near the shoreline of Lake Michigan. They loved to watch as the circuses and carnivals came into town; before dawn locomotives and trucks lumbered down the streets toward the lake and, more than once, the brothers witnessed the arrival of these night caravans.

“We used to run down Washington Street,” recalled Skip, “clear down to almost the beach, and we used to watch the trains come in and the men would unload the elephants and the zebras and the other animals. Sometimes we'd do chores, help carry things or unload things, and we'd get free tickets.”

Sometime in the mid-1940s, Ray began writing about late-night freight trains, trucks, and dusty canvas tents pitched before sunrise. It was an enigmatic world of magic, amusement rides, and freak show characters lurking in the shadows; a world of flashing lights, moaning calliopes, and sweet-smelling candy and popcorn. It was a world that Ray Bradbury loved.

As Ray recalled, he had initially planned a short story for his first collection,
Dark Carnival,
titled “Carnival,” but it was cut from the final manuscript of the book. Even before the collection
Dark Carnival
was published by Arkham House, Ray had conceptualized a novel titled
Dark Carnival,
about a carousel that sent its riders back in time. The story fragments of
Something Wicked This Way Comes
were taking shape more than fifteen years before the book would finally be published.

The wicked carnival concept appeared again, in the 1948
Weird Tales
short story “Black Ferris,” the last story Julius Schwartz sold for Ray. “Black Ferris” followed a sinister carnival worker riding a Ferris wheel backward in time to become a boy once more—a little boy with malicious intentions who could later climb back on the amusement ride, run it forward, and return to adulthood and anonymity, safe from his youthful indiscretions.

The primordial fragments of
Something Wicked This Way Comes
continued to coalesce when, in 1952, Ray spied Joe Mugnaini's rendition of a shadowy Renaissance circus train in a Beverly Hills gallery. The two men discussed turning the evil carnival concept into an illustrated book, but it never came to fruition.

In 1954, as Don Congdon was selling more Bradbury story rights to the growing television market, producer Sam Goldwyn Jr. purchased “Black Ferris” for six hundred dollars. The episode aired as a series pilot for the NBC television program
Sneak Preview
on July 10, 1956, under the less foreboding title “Merry-Go-Round.” But before the program aired, Ray read the teleplay that Goldwyn had contracted out to another writer, and became inspired. He suggested to Goldwyn that the concept had legs, that he could easily expand it into a feature-length screenplay. Purely on spec, for no money, Ray drafted a script titled
Long After Midnight,
about an evil carnival rolling into a small American town. As with his Mars stories of the 1940s, which evolved into
The Martian Chronicles;
as with the “five ladyfinger firecracker” short stories that set the stage for
Fahrenheit 451,
the various pieces of Ray's carnival premise were coming together. He was unconsciously bringing
Something Wicked This Way Comes
to life.

The final, major catalyst for the novel occurred during the summer of 1955 when Ray and Maggie attended a preview of a new Gene Kelly film,
Invitation to the Dance
. Ray had met the actor through writer Sy Gomberg, who was working at Universal as Ray was writing
It Came from Outer Space
. Ray was an avid Kelly fan and considered
Singin' in the Rain
among the greatest films ever made. Likewise, Kelly was a Bradbury fan and had asked Gomberg to arrange a meeting. By 1955, Ray and Kelly, though not friends, were good acquaintances, and Kelly invited Ray and Maggie to a preview of
Invitation to the Dance
at the MGM Studios in Culver City, which was a few miles from their house. Ray found the film flawed, but its ending reminded him of the unrequited love themes in the Lon Chaney films he had loved as a boy.

After watching the picture, Ray left, inspired. He and Maggie waited at a nearby bus stop for the trip home, but the bus never arrived. They decided to walk, and along the way, Ray talked excitedly about working with Gene Kelly, writing a screenplay for him. Maggie suggested to Ray that when they arrived home, he head straight downstairs to his filing cabinets. Certainly there was a story buried in there that Ray could adapt into a Gene Kelly vehicle. When Maggie said this, Ray knew right away what story that was—his screenplay
Dark Carnival
.

The next day, Ray sent the script to Gene Kelly, who was enthusiastic about the idea of working together. He liked the script as both a potential acting and directing project. “Gene was moving more into directing at that stage,” recalled Ray. Realizing that the script was too “off-trail” for a Hollywood studio, Kelly decided to find financial backing for the film overseas; he flew to Europe. The renowned actor, director, and dancer promised Ray that he would get back to him in short order. In a few weeks, he would know whether he could secure the funds to produce the motion picture. By September 1955, Kelly returned stateside without the financial backing to produce Ray's carnival concept. He was disappointed and apologetic. “I was flattered that Gene even tried,” said Ray.

Of course, the genesis of
Something Wicked This Way Comes
evolved, even though Kelly failed to find funding to make the film. By the late 1950s, the idea had developed from “The Black Ferris” short story into the feature-length script
Dark Carnival,
and at this point Ray set out to turn it into a novel. Early on, he wrote the book in the first person. It told the story of two boys living in a small Illinois town who are the only ones to comprehend that a recently arrived carnival is more than it appears.

Along with the other misgivings Ray and Congdon had about Doubleday, editor Tim Seldes had expressed only lukewarm interest in Ray's new book. It was the final step in pushing Ray to leave. After Ray parted company with Doubleday in 1960, Congdon began shopping
Something Wicked This Way Comes
to new publishers. It took him no time to interest Simon & Schuster, the company he was with when he first met Ray Bradbury. By the end of 1960, Ray Bradbury had signed on with Simon & Schuster to publish his next book. While Ballantine Books (publisher of
Fahrenheit 451
and
The October Country
) had always been supportive, they didn't have the financial muscle to market Ray that Simon & Schuster did. His new editor was Bob Gottlieb, and from the beginning, Ray felt renewed. His editor was energetic, and the publishing house showed excitement at the notion of bringing Ray Bradbury to a much larger, more mainstream audience.