I Dream of Genie - Misplaced Pages

(Redirected from I Dream of Genie (The Twilight Zone)) Not to be confused with I Dream of Jeannie.

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12th episode of the 4th season of The Twilight Zone

"I Dream of Genie"

The Twilight Zone episode

Episode no.

Season 4
Episode 12

Directed by

Robert Gist

Written by

John Furia Jr.

Featured music

Fred Steiner

Production code

4860

Original air date

March 21, 1963 (1963-03-21)

Guest appearances

Howard Morris as George P. Hanley
Molly Dodd as May
Milton Parsons as P.R. Man / Scientist
Patricia Barry as Ann Lawson
Jack Albertson as Genie
Mark Miller as Roger Hackett
James Millhollin as Masters
Loring Smith as E.T. Watson
Bob Hastings as Sam
Joyce Jameson as Starlet

Episode chronology

← Previous
"The Parallel"

Next →
"The New Exhibit"

The Twilight Zone (1959 TV series) (season 4)

List of episodes

"I Dream of Genie" is an episode of the American television anthology series The Twilight Zone. This episode is a comedy about a man who finds a genie and struggles to decide what to wish for, pondering the question through a series of hypothetical dream sequences.

Opening narration

Meet Mr. George P. Hanley, a man life treats without deference, honor or success. Waiters serve his soup cold. Elevator operators close doors in his face. Mothers never bother to wait up for the daughters he dates. George is a creature of humble habits and tame dreams. He's an ordinary man, Mr. Hanley, but at this moment the accidental possessor of a very special gift, the kind of gift that measures men against their dreams, the kind of gift most of us might ask for first and possibly regret to the last, if we, like Mr. George P. Hanley, were about to plunge head-first and unaware into our own personal Twilight Zone.

Plot

George P. Hanley, a shy office worker, shops for a birthday gift for Ann Lawson, the secretary in the office where he works. The gift store has just received a heavily soiled oil lamp as part of a random assortment from a distributor. Believing it to be worthless, the owner smooth-talks George into buying the lamp for $20. He takes it to work, but is beaten to the punch by his brash co-worker Roger, who gives Ann a skimpy nightgown. After Ann thanks Roger with a kiss, a despondent George takes the lamp home. When George rubs the lamp while cleaning it, a genie emerges. While he only offers one wish rather than the traditional three, he gives George time to consider what he should wish for.

Throughout the evening and next day, George considers his choices through various daydreams. He first thinks about wishing for love and dreams of being married to Ann as a successful movie star who will not be torn away from her career. However, George discovers she is having an affair with fellow movie star Roger. He concludes that in any circumstance, he would ultimately lose a woman like Ann.

The next day, as Roger is in the boss's office discussing a promotion to head bookkeeper - a position George believes he is up for as well - George contemplates having money. He dreams of being wealthy tycoon G. Peter Hanley, with Roger as his chauffeur and Ann as his financial assistant. However, he slowly realizes that being able to immediately buy anything he wants without having to wait or struggle for it, and having the capacity to give away vast sums is unsatisfying. He awakes from this fantasy to the news that Roger has won the promotion.

While taking his dog Attila on a walk, George considers power as his third prospective wish and imagines being President of the United States. Though initially successful, he is soon paralyzed by indecision when faced with a global UFO crisis. George realizes the problem with all three wishes is that while his circumstances change, he himself remains a loser, and that he can only improve his life by changing himself. This inspires him to finally decide on a wish.

Sometime later, a homeless man finds the lamp in a garbage can and polishes it. The genie who emerges is George, accompanied by Attila, who offers three wishes to the finder on the condition that the lamp be returned to the alley afterwards for another needy person to find.

Closing narration

Mr. George P. Hanley, former vocation: jerk. Present vocation: genie. George P. Hanley: a most ordinary man whom life treated without deference, honor or success, but a man wise enough to decide on a most extraordinary wish that makes him the contented, permanent master of his own altruistic Twilight Zone.

References

External links

DeVoe, Bill. (2008). Trivia from The Twilight Zone. Albany, GA: Bear Manor Media. ISBN 978-1-59393-136-0
Grams, Martin. (2008). The Twilight Zone: Unlocking the Door to a Television Classic. Churchville, MD: OTR Publishing. ISBN 978-0-9703310-9-0
"I Dream of Genie" at IMDb

v t e The Twilight Zone (1959) episodes
Season 1	"Where Is Everybody?" "One for the Angels" "Mr. Denton on Doomsday" "The Sixteen-Millimeter Shrine" "Walking Distance" "Escape Clause" "The Lonely" "Time Enough at Last" "Perchance to Dream" "Judgment Night" "And When the Sky Was Opened" "What You Need" "The Four of Us Are Dying" "Third from the Sun" "I Shot an Arrow into the Air" "The Hitch-Hiker" "The Fever" "The Last Flight" "The Purple Testament" "Elegy" "Mirror Image" "The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street" "A World of Difference" "Long Live Walter Jameson" "People Are Alike All Over" "Execution" "The Big Tall Wish" "A Nice Place to Visit" "Nightmare as a Child" "A Stop at Willoughby" "The Chaser" "A Passage for Trumpet" "Mr. Bevis" "The After Hours" "The Mighty Casey" "A World of His Own"
Season 2	"King Nine Will Not Return" "The Man in the Bottle" "Nervous Man in a Four Dollar Room" "A Thing About Machines" "The Howling Man" "Eye of the Beholder" "Nick of Time" "The Lateness of the Hour" "The Trouble with Templeton" "A Most Unusual Camera" "The Night of the Meek" "Dust" "Back There" "The Whole Truth" "The Invaders" "A Penny for Your Thoughts" "Twenty Two" "The Odyssey of Flight 33" "Mr. Dingle, the Strong" "Static" "The Prime Mover" "Long Distance Call" "A Hundred Yards Over the Rim" "The Rip Van Winkle Caper" "The Silence" "Shadow Play" "The Mind and the Matter" "Will the Real Martian Please Stand Up?" "The Obsolete Man"
Season 3	"Two" "The Arrival" "The Shelter" "The Passersby" "A Game of Pool" "The Mirror" "The Grave" "It's a Good Life" "Deaths-Head Revisited" "The Midnight Sun" "Still Valley" "The Jungle" "Once Upon a Time" "Five Characters in Search of an Exit" "A Quality of Mercy" "Nothing in the Dark" "One More Pallbearer" "Dead Man's Shoes" "The Hunt" "Showdown with Rance McGrew" "Kick the Can" "A Piano in the House" "The Last Rites of Jeff Myrtlebank" "To Serve Man" "The Fugitive" "Little Girl Lost" "Person or Persons Unknown" "The Little People" "Four O'Clock" "Hocus-Pocus and Frisby" "The Trade-Ins" "The Gift" "The Dummy" "Young Man's Fancy" "I Sing the Body Electric" "Cavender Is Coming" "The Changing of the Guard"
Season 4	"In His Image" "The Thirty-Fathom Grave" "Valley of the Shadow" "He's Alive" "Mute" "Death Ship" "Jess-Belle" "Miniature" "Printer's Devil" "No Time Like the Past" "The Parallel" "I Dream of Genie" "The New Exhibit" "Of Late I Think of Cliffordville" "The Incredible World of Horace Ford" "On Thursday We Leave for Home" "Passage on the Lady Anne" "The Bard"
Season 5	"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"

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