Miniature (The Twilight Zone)

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“Miniature”

The Twilight Zone episode

Robert Duvall and Claire Griswold in The Twilight Zone episode Miniature

Episode no.

Season 4
Episode 110

Written by

Charles Beaumont

Directed by

Walter Grauman

Guest stars

Robert Duvall : Charley Parkes
Pert Kelton : Mrs. Parkes
Barbara Barrie : Myrna
William Windom : Dr. Wallman
John McLiam : Guard
Barney Phillips : Diemel
Claire Griswold : The Doll (Alice)

Featured music

Fred Steiner

Production no.

4862

Original airdate

February 21, 1963

Episode chronology
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"Jess-Belle"	"Printer's Devil"

List of Twilight Zone episodes

"Miniature" is an episode of the American television anthology series The Twilight Zone.

1 Opening narration
2 Synopsis
3 Closing narration
4 Trivia
5 References
6 External links
7 Twilight Zone links

[edit] Opening narration

“

To the average person, a museum is a place of knowledge, a place of beauty and truth and wonder. Some people come to study, others to contemplate, others to look for the sheer joy of looking. Charley Parkes has his own reasons. He comes to the museum to get away from the world. It isn't really the sixty-cent cafeteria meal that has drawn him here every day, it's the fact that here in these strange, cool halls he can be alone for a little while, really and truly alone. Anyway, that's how it was before he got lost and wandered in--to the Twilight Zone.

”

[edit] Synopsis

Charley Parkes thinks he sees a figure in a museum dollhouse that comes alive. Charley returns to the museum numerous times and gazes into the dollhouse. He keeps coming back and sees the doll in the house come alive.

Charley falls in love with the figure, a woman, but is institutionalized because of his belief that the figure of the woman (as well as a housekeeper and a man) is alive. He eventually is "rehabilitated" and is returned to the care of his mother.

On the evening of his return home, his mother, sister, brother-in-law and his former girlfriend plan to celebrate his release with him, but discover that he has sneaked out of the house. They contact the psychiatrist who treated Charley in the hospital and surmise that he has returned to the museum and the dollhouse.

The family members, psychiatrist and museum guards search the museum but find nothing. Except for one guard, who glances into the dollhouse and sees Charley, now a miniature figure, finally together with his love in the dollhouse. The guard decides to never reveal what he witnessed.

[edit] Closing narration

“

They never found Charley Parkes, because the guard didn't tell them what he saw in the glass case. He knew what they'd say, and he knew they'd be right, too, because seeing is not always believing--especially if what you see happens to be an odd corner of the Twilight Zone.

”

[edit] Trivia

Trivia sections are discouraged under Wikipedia guidelines.
The article could be improved by integrating relevant items and removing inappropriate ones.

Because of a lawsuit, this episode was not included in the syndication package for The Twilight Zone. It was finally re-aired in 1984.
When it was re-released in 1984, a colorized version had been created. It has the obscure distinction of being the world's first use of computer colorization. Only scenes inside the dollhouse were colorized.
This story is very similar to "The Traveler with the Pasted Rag Picture", a short story by Edogawa Rampo. In Rampo's story, a young man falls in love with a beautiful young rag picture doll. This man's younger brother shrinks him to the size of the doll by looking at him through the wrong end of a pair of binoculars. The shrunken man then takes his place next to the beautiful doll in the rag picture. Tragically, the man ages and becomes a very old man, whereas the doll remains a beautiful young woman.
Charley's beloved doll plays several times on a harpsichord; she's playing from the first movement of Mozart's Piano Sonata no. 11 in A.