not a character in the movie. The early 1960s: Screenwriting and fiction Following his move to Hollywood, around 1960, Bloch had multiple assignments from various television companies. However, he was not allowed to write for five months when the Writers Guild had a strike. After the strike was over, he became a frequent scriptwriter for television and film projects in the mystery, suspense, and horror genre. His first assignments were for the Macdonald Carey vehicle, Lock-Up, (penning five episodes) as well as one for Whispering Smith. Further TV work included an episode of Bus Stop ("I Kiss Your Shadow"), 10 episodes of Thriller (1960–62, several based on his own stories), and 10 episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents (1960–62). His short story collection Pleasant Dreams - Nightmares was published by Arkham House in 1960. Bloch wrote the screenplay for The Cabinet of Caligari (1962), which is only very loosely related to the 1920 German silent film, and proved to be an unhappy experience. The same year, Bloch penned the story and teleplay "The Sorcerer's Apprentice" for Alfred Hitchcock Presents. The episode was shelved when the NBC Television Network and sponsor Revlon called its ending "too gruesome" (by 1960s standards) for airing. Bloch was pleased later when the episode was included in the program's syndication package to affiliate stations, where not one complaint was registered. Today, due to public domain status, the episode is readily available in home media formats from numerous distributors and is even available on free video on demand. His TV work did not slow Bloch's fictional output. In the early 1960s he published several novels, including The Dead Beat (1960), and Firebug (1961), for which Harlan Ellison, then an editor at Regency Books, contributed the first 1,200 words. In 1962 numerous works appeared in book form. Bloch's novel The Couch (1962) (the basis for the screenplay of his first movie, filmed the same year) was published. That year several Bloch short story collections – Atoms and Evil, More Nightmares and Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper – were published, as well as another novel, Terror (whose working titles included Amok and Kill for Kali). Editor Earl Kemp assembled a selection of Bloch's prolific output for fan magazines as The Eight Stage of Fandom: Selections from 25 years of Fan Writing (Advent Publishers). In this era, Stephen King later wrote, "What Bloch did with such novels as The Deadbeat, The