Editing Charles Beaumont (section)

==Life and work==
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Beaumont was born Charles Leroy Nutt in Chicago,<ref name="prosser">{{Cite book |title=Running from the Hunter: The Life and Works of Charles Beaumont |last=Prosser |first=Harold Lee |publisher=Wildside Press |year=1996 |isbn=9780893702915 |pages=5–6}}</ref> on January 2, 1929,<ref>{{cite book|last1=Presnell|first1=Don|last2=McGee|first2=Marty|title=A Critical History of Television's The Twilight Zone, 1959-1964|location=Jefferson, N.C.|publisher=McFarland|date=2008|isbn=9780786438860|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=MqtTBQAAQBAJ|page=204}}</ref> 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]].<ref name="prosser"/> 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".

School did not hold his attention, and his last name exposed him to ridicule, so Charles Nutt found solace as a teenager in science fiction. He dropped out of high school in tenth grade to join the [[United States Army|Army]] in the final years of [[World War II]].<ref name="prosser"/> He also worked as a cartoonist, illustrator, disc jockey, usher, and dishwasher before selling his first story to ''[[Amazing Stories]]'' in 1950. During his time as an illustrator, he briefly used the pseudonyms Charles McNutt<ref name="prosser"/> (circa 1947/48) and E.T. Beaumont<ref name="prosser"/> (inspired by a female artist named "Miss Beaumont" with whom he had collaborated in Everett, Washington), before settling on the name Charles Beaumont. He soon adopted this name legally and used it both personally and professionally for the rest of his life.

In 1954, ''[[Playboy]]'' magazine selected his story "Black Country" to be the first work of short fiction to appear in its pages. It was at this time that Beaumont started writing for television and film.<ref name="sd" />

Beaumont was energetic and spontaneous, and was known to take trips (sometimes out of the country) at a moment's notice. An avid [[auto racing|racing]] fan, he often enjoyed participating in or watching area speedway races, with other authors tagging along. Beaumont and several friends built their own [[Sports Car Club of America|SCCA]] H Modified racecar dubbed the "Monzetta", consisting of [[Panhard]] mechanicals and a [[Devin Enterprises|Devin]] body and chassis, which was raced at many Southern California tracks including [[Paramount Ranch Racetrack]].<ref>{{Citation|date=2019-04-01|work=The Indianapolis 500|pages=40–45|publisher=Red Lightning Books|doi=10.2307/j.ctvc77n60.13|isbn=978-1-68435-076-6|title=The Indianapolis Motor Speedway Museum|s2cid=242791279 }}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |last1=Nolan |first1=William F. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=XNNMAQAAIAAJ |title=When Engines Roar |last2=Beaumont |first2=Charles |date=1964 |publisher=Bantam Books |language=en}}</ref> 

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 ''[[The Twilight Zone (1959 TV series)|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.<ref name="sd" />

His short story "The Crooked Man" (also published by ''Playboy'' in 1955) presents a dystopian future wherein heterosexuality is stigmatized in the same way that homosexuality then was, with heterosexual people living furtively like pre-[[Stonewall riots|Stonewall]] gay and lesbian people.<ref>{{Cite web |url=https://globalnews.ca/news/3773886/hugh-hefner-the-cooked-man/ |title=How a controversial sci-fi story put Hugh Hefner on the map for human rights |last=Dangerfield |first=Katie |date=2017-09-28 |website=[[Global News]] |access-date=2017-10-15}}</ref> 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 (entertainment)|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]]."<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.filmink.com.au/top-ten-corman-part-two-top-ten-screenwriters/?fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAR2clQTrE4m5rieOcOGakJeraw6OnWdGitJp93Oe43GbNSsr8HqWOaOovEU_aem_AS2WH4eyyMsN5rT26gUjr-Xlwt06QIcwdteDnernKsa_FHY9LMUa56xblcdZO-wi66tDIp_SjgoEH_f1ZBKBWDhp|first=Sephen|last=Vagg|website=Filmink|date=13 May 2024|title=Top Ten Corman – Part Two: Top Ten Screenwriters}}</ref>

A book-length biography of Beaumont, titled ''Trapped in the Twilight Zone: The Life and Times of Charles Beaumont'', by Roger Anker, is due to be published by Centipede Press in late 2024.