Serling was born on December 25, 1924, in Syracuse, New York, to a Jewish family. He was the second of two sons born to Esther (nee Cooper) and Samuel Lawrence Serling. Serling's father had worked as a secretary and amateur inventor before having children, but took on his father-in-law's profession as a grocer to earn a steady income. Sam Serling later became a butcher after the Great Depression forced the store to close.

Serling moved from radio to television, as a writer for WKRC-TV in Cincinnati. His duties included writing testimonial advertisements for dubious medical remedies and scripts for a comedy duo. He continued at WKRC after graduation and, amidst the mostly dreary day-to-day work, also created a series of scripts for a live TV program, The Storm, as well as for other anthology dramas (a format which was in demand by networks based in New York). Following a full day of classes (or, in later years, work), he spent evenings on his own, writing. He sent manuscripts to publishers and received forty rejection slips during these early years.  In 1950, Serling hired Blanche Gaines as an agent. His radio scripts received more rejections, so he began rewriting them for television. Whenever a script was rejected by one program, he would resubmit it to another, eventually finding a home for many in either radio or television.  As Serling's college years ended, his scripts began to sell. He continued to write for television and eventually left WKRC to become a full-time freelance writer. He recalled, "Writing is a demanding profession and a selfish one. And because it is selfish and demanding, because it is compulsive and exacting, I didn't embrace it. I succumbed to it."  According to his wife, Serling "just up and quit one day, during the winter of 1952, about six months before our first daughter Jody was born--though he was also doing some freelancing and working on a weekly dramatic show for another Cincinnati station." He and his family moved to Connecticut in early 1953. Here he made a living by writing for the live dramatic anthology shows that were prevalent at the time, including Kraft Television Theatre, Appointment with Adventure and Hallmark Hall of Fame. By the end of 1954, his agent convinced him he needed to move to New York, "where the action is."  The writer Marc Scott Zicree, who spent years researching his book The Twilight Zone Companion, noted, "Sometimes the situations were cliched, the characters two-dimensional, but always there was at least some search for an emotional truth, some attempt to make a statement on the human condition."

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