Photo: Rod Serling from Night Gallery.
Nineteen seventy-one brought Sauter an opportunity to exercise his compositional chops once again. Rod Serling, creator of such mind-bending television series as The Twilight Zone, had another suspenseful program on NBC entitled Night Gallery. Unlike The Twilight Zone, Night Gallery focused more specifically on tales of horror rather than tales of mystery.
Compared with the restraints of Broadway, Sauter enjoyed the freedom afforded by composing for television. His often quirky, dissonant compositional style fit perfectly with the mood Night Gallery often sought to project.
For Night Gallery, Sauter scored seventeen episodes and composed the theme for the show's third and final season.
From 1971-1973, Night Gallery kept Sauter relatively busy and financially stable. In 1976, Sauter again got the opportunity to score for television. This time the show was an action-adventure series about two detectives on CBS entitled Switch. For Switch, Sauter scored ten episodes.
Sauter scored the 1979 TV movie "Beggarman, Thief" with a stellar cast including Glenn Ford, Jean Simmons, and Lynn Redgrave. "Beggarman, Thief" was a sequel to the 1976 mini-series "Rich Man, Poor Man."
Recommended: Listen on headphones or external speakers.
Night Gallery – S2 E10 | 11/24/71
"The Dark Boy"
A woman ignores warnings and takes a teaching job at a small rural school, where she meets the ghost of a boy who died years earlier. Elizabeth Hartman, Gale Sondergaard — NBC Night Gallery website
Night Gallery – S2 E22 | 11/24/71
"The Caterpillar"
Deep in the rainforests of Borneo, a discontented assistant, smitten with his boss's wife, has his murder attempt backfire on him with very disturbing results. Laurence Harvey, John Williams, Joanna Pettet
"[Sauter's] often quirky, dissonant compositional style fit perfectly with the mood Night Gallery often sought to project." —
TV Work