Ring-a-Ding Girl

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Twilight Zone original series Season five (1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5) Fall 1963 – Summer 1964 List of The Twilight Zone episodes
Episodes: In Praise of Pip Steel Nightmare at 20,000 Feet A Kind of a Stopwatch The Last Night of a Jockey Living Doll The Old Man in the Cave Uncle Simon Probe 7, Over and Out The 7th Is Made Up of Phantoms A Short Drink From a Certain Fountain Ninety Years Without Slumbering Ring-a-Ding Girl You Drive The Long Morrow The Self-Improvement of Salvadore Ross Number 12 Looks Just Like You Black Leather Jackets Night Call From Agnes—With Love Spur of the Moment An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge Queen of the Nile What's in the Box The Masks I Am the Night—Color Me Black Sounds and Silences Caesar and Me The Jeopardy Room Stopover in a Quiet Town The Encounter Mr. Garrity and the Graves The Brain Center at Whipple's Come Wander With Me The Fear The Bewitchin' Pool

“Ring-a-Ding Girl” is an episode of the American television anthology series The Twilight Zone.

[edit] Details

Episode number: 133
Season: 5
Production code: 2623
Original air date: December 27, 1963
Writer: Earl Hamner Jr.
Director: Alan Crosland Jr.

[edit] Cast

Bunny Blake: Maggie McNamara
Hildy Powell: Mary Munday
Bud Powell: David Macklin
Cici: Betty Lou Gerson
State Trooper: Vic Perrin

[edit] Synopsis

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

Bunny Blake is a movie star. Her hometown fan club sends her a ring. The ring turns out to be a magic ring in which she sees the faces of her friends and family from the small town in which she grew up. They implore her to come back home.

Bunny returns to her hometown where she spends quality time with family (especially her sister) and friends. The annual town picnic is on that day. She tries to get the event postponed, but to no avail; she then arranges a one-woman show at the auditorium. All the while she sees crystal ball-like images in the ring of a jetliner encountering severe weather. We see that it indeed becomes a rainy day in Bunny's hometown.

As Bunny, her sister and friend are about to leave for the concert, Bunny finally sees herself in the ring on the doomed jetliner, which we presume might crash (airline safety was a huge concern in the early days of jetliners, and a few high profile crashes in the 1950's and early 1960's heightened the public's fear of flying). Bunny then says a goodbye of sorts to her sister, who is slightly bewildered as Bunny does not directly tell her she is actually on the airplane and will die soon.

A breaking news flash on the radio comes on, and while Bunny's sister and friend are listening to the first reports of the crash, Bunny says a final goodbye, which the others do not hear, and goes outside in the rain - and disappears.

Just then, a police officer calls the house to inform the sister that Bunny is among the deceased passengers on the plane. Of couse the sister does not believe the officer, since Bunny was right there in the house, but the radio news anchor confirms that Bunny was indeed on the plane, while also stating that several townspeople saw her with her sister that day as well. The anchorman notes that since all the townspeople were in the auditorium waiting to see Bunny's concert, their lives were saved, since they would have been at the picnic, on which grounds the jetliner crashed.

Apparently Bunny was only in town in a ghostlike form somehow, while her real body was on the plane.

The final scene shows Bunny's sister finding Bunny's magic ring, which had fallen to the floor; it is now chipped and charred, presumably because of the fiery plane crash. Serling's words to the audience:

"We are all travellers. The trip starts in a place called birth - and ends in that lonely town called death. And that's the end of the journey, unless you happen to exist for a few hours, like Bunny Blake, in the misty regions of the Twilight Zone." [1]