Charles Beaumont

Charles Beaumont (born Charles Leroy Nutt; January 2, 1929 – February 21, 1967) was an American author of speculative fiction, including short stories in the horror and science fiction subgenres. He is remembered as a writer of classic Twilight Zone episodes, such as "The Howling Man", "Static", "A Nice Place to Visit", "Miniature", "Printer's Devil", and "Number Twelve Looks Just Like You", but also penned the screenplays for several films, such as 7 Faces of Dr. Lao, The Intruder (based on his novel), and The Masque of the Red Death.

Novelist Dean Koontz said "Charles Beaumont was one of the seminal influences on writers of the fantastic and macabre."

Early life Beaumont was born Charles Leroy Nutt in Chicago, Illinois, on January 2, 1929, the son of Charles Hiram Nutt and Violet (Phillips) Nutt. After a bout spinal meningitis at the age of twelve, Beaumont was sent to live with his aunts in Everett, Washington. He left high school a semester shy of graduation and joined the United States Army, later studying at the Bliss-Hayden Acting School under the G.I. Bill.

Beaumont met his future wife Helen Broun in 1948; they married shortly after and raised four children together.

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 of Twilight 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. In the story, a heterosexual man meets his lover in a gay orgy bar; they try to have sex in a curtained booth (she dressed in male drag) and are caught.

Beaumont wrote several scripts for The 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 film Queen of Outer Space from an outline by Ben 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 show Steve 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 volumes Best of Beaumont (Bantam, 1982) and The 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's Twilight Zone scripts.

Beaumont wrote several scripts for Roger Corman including The Intruder. According to Filmink, "In Corman-ology, Beaumont’s often confused for Richard Matheson."

Illness and death 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." "He was thin, and kept having headaches. He used Bromo-Seltzer like most people use water. He had a big Bromo bottle with him all the time". The disease also affected his work. "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 the spinal meningitis he suffered as a child. His friend and early agent Forrest J. Ackerman has asserted an alternative, that Beaumont suffered simultaneously from Alzheimer's disease and Pick'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 friend Jerry Sohl, began ghostwriting for Beaumont during 1963–1964, so that he could meet his many writing obligations. 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 during his lifetime was for the 1965 film Mister 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".