After having once again watched both the 1959 "Mike Wallace Interview" with Rod Serling, and the PBS bio of Serling, "Submitted For Your Approval", I now see that it was "Noon On Doomsday", Serling's first attempt to dramatize the tragic 1955 Emmett Till case, from the U.S. Steel Hour, that Serling was referring to in the "Mike Wallace Interview", as a "weak, lukewarm, emasculated, vitiated (not eviscerated, although that would, arguably, be appropriate) kind of play." It was "Noon On Doomsday" that was moved to New England, and "A Town Has Turned To Dust" that was moved to the American Southwest, with Emmett Till becoming "a romantic Mexican, who loved the sheriff's wife, but only with his eyes". It was still a story about a lynching, and about a sheriff who did nothing to prevent it, but it was so far removed from the true story of Emmett Till so as to be almost meaningless.
It was Serling's battle with the sponsors over "A Town Has Turned To Dust" that was mentioned and dramatized on the PBS bio of Serling, showing closeups of key words from executive memos, "eliminate", "modify" etc. with Serling, dramatized, saying, "They chopped it up like a roomful of butchers at work on a steer" along with a short clip from the play itself.
I am not sure to what extent "A Town Has Turned To Dust" led to the later Twilight Zone episode, "Dust", if at all. Both are set in the American Southwest and include Mexicans as characters.
It was Serling's battle with the sponsors over "A Town Has Turned To Dust" that was mentioned and dramatized on the PBS bio of Serling, showing closeups of key words from executive memos, "eliminate", "modify" etc. with Serling, dramatized, saying, "They chopped it up like a roomful of butchers at work on a steer" along with a short clip from the play itself.
I am not sure to what extent "A Town Has Turned To Dust" led to the later Twilight Zone episode, "Dust", if at all. Both are set in the American Southwest and include Mexicans as characters.