The Last Night of a Jockey

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The Twilight Zone original series
Season five (1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5)
Fall 1963 – Summer 1964
List of The Twilight Zone episodes

Episodes:

  1. In Praise of Pip
  2. Steel
  3. Nightmare at 20,000 Feet
  4. A Kind of a Stopwatch
  5. The Last Night of a Jockey
  6. Living Doll
  7. The Old Man in the Cave
  8. Uncle Simon
  9. Probe 7, Over and Out
  10. The 7th Is Made Up of Phantoms
  11. A Short Drink From a Certain Fountain
  12. Ninety Years Without Slumbering
  13. Ring-a-Ding Girl
  14. You Drive
  15. The Long Morrow
  16. The Self-Improvement of Salvadore Ross
  17. Number 12 Looks Just Like You
  18. Black Leather Jackets
  19. Night Call
  20. From Agnes—With Love
  21. Spur of the Moment
  22. An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge
  23. Queen of the Nile
  24. What's in the Box
  25. The Masks
  26. I Am the Night—Color Me Black
  27. Sounds and Silences
  28. Caesar and Me
  29. The Jeopardy Room
  30. Stopover in a Quiet Town
  31. The Encounter
  32. Mr. Garrity and the Graves
  33. The Brain Center at Whipple's
  34. Come Wander With Me
  35. The Fear
  36. The Bewitchin' Pool

“The Last Night of a Jockey” is an episode of the American television anthology series The Twilight Zone.

[edit] Details

[edit] Cast

[edit] Synopsis

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

[edit] Opening Narration

"The name is Grady, five feet short in stockings and boots, a slightly distorted offshoot of a good breed of humans who race horses. He happens to be one of the rotten apples, bruised and yellowed by dealing in dirt, a short man with a short memory who's forgotten that he's worked for the sport of kings and helped turn it into a cesspool, used and misused by the two-legged animals who've hung around sporting events since the days of the Colosseum. So this is Grady, on his last night as a jockey. Behind him are Hialeah, Hollywood Park and Saratoga. Rounding the far turn and coming up fast on the rail - is the Twilight Zone."

A jockey is sitting alone in his room after being banned from horse racing for life because of altering races by drugging horses. All he ever wanted was to be a big man. He argues with his alter-ego, trying to justify his life and his actions, but his "mirror image" knows better. He is offered the chance to change his life with one wish. Grady says his greatest wish is to be "BIG!" After he wakes from a nap he finds his wish has been granted - he is now ten feet tall. A telephone call from the racing authorities informs him that he has been given another chance - he has been reinstated and can jockey again. But now it's too late, he’s too tall to ride a horse. He pleads with his alter-ego: "Please make me small again, please! I'll never ask for anything ever again. Please make me small!" The alter-ego replies, "You are small, Mr. Grady. Every time you won an honest race, that's when you were a giant. Right now, they just don't come any smaller."

[edit] Closing Narration

"The name is Grady, ten feet tall, a slightly distorted offshoot of a good breed of humans who race horses. Unfortunately for Mr. Grady, he learned too late that you don't measure size with a ruler, you don't figure height with a yardstick and you never judge a man by how tall he looks in a mirror. The giant is as he does. You can make a parimutuel bet on this, win, place or show, in or out of the Twilight Zone."

[edit] Trivia

  • CBS's Program Practices department criticised this episode for use of the word "dwarf" in a negative context, suggesting that instead the terms "half-pint" or "shrimp" could be used.[1]

[edit] References

  • Zicree, Marc Scott: The Twilight Zone Companion. Sillman-James Press, 1982 (second edition)

[edit] Footnotes

  1. ^ Hal Erikson. “Censorship: Another Dimension Behind the Twilight Zone”, published in the October 1985 edition of The Twilight Zone Magazine
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