Charles Beaumont

Charles Beaumont (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", "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", 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." Beaumont is also the subject of the documentary "Charles Beaumont: The Short Life of Twilight Zone's Magic Man" by Jason V Brock.
Life and work.
Beaumont was born Charles Leroy Nutt in Chicago, the only child of Charles Hiram Nutt (an auditor of freight accounts for the Chicago & Alton Railroad) and Violet "Letty" (Phillips) Nutt, a homemaker who had been a scenarist at Essanay Studios. His father was 56 when Charles was born; Letty, his mother, was 22 years her husband's junior. Letty is known to have dressed young Charles in girls' clothes, and once threatened to kill his dog to punish him. These early experiences inspired the celebrated short story "Miss Gentilbelle", but according to Beaumont, "Football, baseball, and dimestore cookie thefts filled my early world".
