Twenty Two (The Twilight Zone)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
“Twenty Two” is an episode of the television series The Twilight Zone.
 |
Details
|
[edit] Cast
Starring
- Barbara Nichols as Liz Powell
- Jonathan Harris as The Doctor [first of two TZ appearances—see "Episode notes"]
- Fredd Wayne as Barney (Barney Kamener "...I've been this little lady's agent for 12 years") [first of two TZ appearances—see "Episode notes"]
- Arline Sax as Nurse in Morgue [second of two TZ appearances—see "Episode notes"]
- Mary Adams as Day Nurse
- Norma Connolly as Night Nurse (Miss Jameson)
- Wesley Lau as Airline Agent (who looks and speaks directly into the camera, at the audience, as he hands Liz Powell her airline ticket) [first of two TZ appearances—see "Episode notes"]
- Angus Duncan as Ticket Clerk (who mouths "Oh, my God" as the plane explodes)
unbilled
- Jay Overholts: Public address system announcer [fourth of a record eight TZ appearances—see "Episode notes"]
- Joseph Sargent: Uniformed clerk who examines Liz Powell's ticket as she is about to ascend the stairway into the plane
[edit] Rod Serling's opening narration
In one uninterrupted shot, Liz Powell runs through the corridor of the hospital basement, pushes the elevator button and, as the doors open, lurches into the elevator and, in long view, faces us as the doors slide shut and the camera slowly pans to the left to reveal Rod Serling standing and speaking in front of the entrance to Room 22, the morgue:
- "This is Miss Liz Powell. She's a professional dancer and she's in the hospital as a result of overwork and nervous fatigue. And at this moment we have just finished walking with her in a nightmare. In a moment she'll wake up and we'll remain at her side. The problem here is that both Miss Powell and you will reach a point where it might be difficult to decide which is reality and which is nightmare, a problem uncommon perhaps but rather peculiar... to the Twilight Zone."
[edit] Synopsis
While in a hospital, recuperating from stress, Liz Powell, whom her agent, Barney, describes as "the best little stripper... dancer, that ever came down the pike", is haunted by a recurring nightmare about a nurse who tells her there's “room for one more, honey” in Room 22—the hospital's morgue. Later, after she has left the hospital and is ready to board an airplane, she sees a stewardess with the face of the nurse from her dream. The stewardess intones the familiar phrase, “room for one more, honey”, and Liz Powell immediately runs away from the plane. The plane then proceeds to take off and explode—Liz Powell's dream had saved her from death.
[edit] Rod Serling's closing narration
- "Miss Elizabeth Powell, profession: dancer. Hospital diagnosis: acute anxiety brought on by overwork and fatigue. Prognosis: with rest and care, she'll probably recover. But the cure to some nighmares is not to be found in known medical journals. You look for it under 'potions for bad dreams', to be found... in the Twilight Zone."
[edit] Episode notes
As the Twilight Zone's second season began, the production was informed by CBS that, at about $65,000 per episode, the show was exceeding its budget. By November 1960, 16 episodes, more than half of the projected 29, were already filmed, and five of those had been broadcast. It was decided that six consecutive episodes would be videotaped at CBS Television City in the manner of a live drama and then transferred to 16-millimeter film for TV transmission. Eventual savings amounted to only about $30,000 for all six entries, which was judged to be insufficient to offset the loss of depth of visual perspective that, at the time, only film could offer. The shows wound up looking little better than set-bound soap operas and, as a result, the experiment was deemed a failure and never tried again.
Even though the six shows were taped in a row, through November and into mid-December, their broadcast dates were out of order and varied widely, with this, the fifth one, shown on February 10, 1961 as episode 17. The first, "The Lateness of the Hour", was seen on December 2, 1960 as episode 8; the second, "Static" appeared on March 10, 1961 as episode 20; the third, "The Whole Truth" was broadcast on January 20, 1961 as episode 14; the fourth was the Christmas show, "The Night of the Meek", shown as the 11th episode on December 23, 1960; and the last one, "Long Distance Call", was transmitted on March 3, 1961 as episode 22.
- The title of this episode, frequently seen hyphenated ("Twenty-Two"), appears on-screen as "Twenty Two".
- Jack Smight, a director of numerous TV episodes, made-for-TV movies and theatrical films, helmed four TZ episodes, including three of the six videotaped ones, the other two being "The Lateness of the Hour" and "The Night of the Meek". His first TZ assignment was "The Lonely" which, shown as the seventh episode of the first season, was the first regularly-filmed installment after the pilot episode.
- Jonathan Harris, a legendary personality in the sci-fi genre for his iconic role as the alliteratively-minded Dr. Zachary Smith on TV's Lost in Space, appeared in two TZ episodes. Here, he is his familiar, somewhat patronizing and supercilious, self as Liz Powell's hospital physician. His other appearance came less than three months later, in the same season's "The Silence", where he is a member of a men's club, observing the battle of wills between Franchot Tone and Liam Sullivan.
- Fredd Wayne (born 1923), who appeared in scores of TV episodes during the 1950s, 60s, 70s, 80s and even 90s, was in two TZs, playing his usual overly-friendly characters. In "Twenty Two", he's Liz Powell's distressed, but still glad-handing agent, and in third season's second episode, "The Arrival" he's the airline's public relations man, perplexed over the landing of an empty plane.
- Arline Sax, an exotic-looking, familiar face from the 1960s, 70s and 80s who, from the mid-60s onward, performed as Arlene Martel, played the sinister nurse-turned-stewardess in this episode, with her single, but crucial line, heard three times, "room for one more, honey". Sax had one other (minor) TZ appearance—in first season's "What You Need".
- Wesley Lau (1921–1984) was a hard-working, primarily small-part actor, whose main claim to recognition comes from his four years (1961-65) as Lt. Anderson on the 1957-66 Perry Mason. In this TZ episode, he has the uniquely staged scene in which, as the airline official, he looks directly into the camera and speaks to the Liz Powell character as if he were addressing us, the audience. In his other (third season) TZ episode, he's one of two humanoid aliens come to Earth to retrieve "The Fugitive" J. Pat O'Malley.
- A bit player, whose entire acting career only extends over the 1959-62 three-year period, Jay Overholts (1922–1966) managed eight appearances, a TZ record. All were very brief and unbilled, and the first two were, appropriately enough, in the show's first two broadcast episodes, "Where Is Everybody?" (a physician) and "One for the Angels" (one of the reporters). During the second season, in addition to this one, the remaining three were in "A Thing About Machines" (an intern attending to the late Bartlett Finchley), "The Odyssey of Flight 33" (one of the airplane passengers) and "Static", where he is difficult to spot as an extra. Overholts' final two appearances came in the third season—"The Jungle" (as John Dehner's taxi driver) and, as a cowboy, in the Western spoof "Showdown with Rance McGrew".
