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Charles Beaumont (January 2, 1929 – February 21, 1967) was a prolific U.S. author of speculative fiction and horror short stories, beginning in 1951. He frequently wrote for The Twilight Zone TV series, as well as the screenplay for 7 Faces of Dr. Lao and The Masque of the Red Death.

He was born in Chicago as Charles Leroy Nutt to an abusive mother who frequently dressed him in girls' clothes and once killed one of his pets as punishment. Beaumont was an outgoing, spontaneous person, prone to taking trips out of the country at a moment's notice. An avid racing fan, he would often enjoy participating in or watching area speedway races with other authors tagging along.

Beaumont wrote the scripts for some of the Twilight Zone series' most memorable episodes, including an adaptation of his own short story, "The Howling Man", the filming of which starred John Carradine. Playboy published his short story, "The Crooked Man", an early (1955) portrayal of homosexuality in speculative fiction. He famously scripted the Queen of Outer Space from an outline by Ben Hecht, deliberately writing the screenplay as a parody.

When Beaumont was 34, he began to suffer the effects of a mysterious brain disease. While perhaps Alzheimer's disease, as commonly assumed, the disease may have been related to the meningitis he'd suffered as a child. As the disorder progressed, Beaumont began to lose his ability to write. Many of his friends and fellow writers, including William F. Nolan and Jerry Sohl, took to ghostwriting for Beaumont so that he could fulfill his many writing commissions, despite his illness. Privately, he insisted on splitting his fees with those authors who wrote the pieces for him. He died in Woodland Hills, California at the age of 38.

Posthumously much admired and appreciated by colleagues such as Ray Bradbury and Harlan Ellison, his work has been rediscovered in recent years with three collections of short stories published: Best of Beaumont (Bantam, 1982), Charles Beaumont: Selected Stories (Dark Harvest, 1988) and A Touch of the Creature (Subterranean Press, 1999). In 2004, Gauntlet Press released the first of what will be two volumes collecting Beaumont's Twilight Zone scripts.

Trivia

Once explained to Harlan Ellison that the trick to surviving in Hollywood is to cultivate the ability to climb a hill of dung while retaining the ability to smell and enjoy a delicate flower sprouting at the top of the smelly pile.

External links

• Bibliograpical information
• IMDB entry
• Charles Beaumont's Gravesite

Further reading

• California Sorcery, edited by William F. Nolan and William Schafer.
• The Work of Charles Beaumont: An Annotated Bibliography & Guide, by William F. Nolan.

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