I Dream of Genie

"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
Guest appearance(s)
	Howard Morris: George P. Hanley ; Molly Dodd: May ; Milton Parsons: P.R. Man / Scientist ; Patricia Barry: Ann Lawson ; Jack Albertson: Genie ; Mark Miller: Roger Hackett ; James Millhollin: Masters; Loring Smith as E.T. Watson ; Bob Hastings: Sam ; Joyce Jameson: Starlet ; Robert Ball: Clerk ; Robert McCord: Cast Party Member

"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 the beautiful Miss 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 it for $20. He takes it back to work but is beaten to the punch when his brash co-worker Roger gives Ann a skimpy nightgown. Ann thanks Roger with a kiss. Despondent, George takes the gift-boxed lamp and heads home, where he is greeted by his dog Attila. When George rubs the lamp while cleaning it, a genie emerges. The genie is something of a disappointment; not only is he dressed in modern garb - except for his shoes - but also he offers George only one wish, rather than the traditional three. The genie suggests that George consider very carefully what he should wish for.

Throughout the evening and the whole next day, as he considers his various choices, he daydreams various wish scenarios. Attila accompanies him through these dream sequences, but with his breed modified to match George's own changed profession.

He first thinks about wishing for love, and dreams of being married to Ann, who is a successful movie star who will not be torn away from her career. George discovers she is having an affair with Roger, who is also a movie star. He concludes that in any circumstance, he would ultimately lose a woman like Ann.

The next day at work, as Roger is in the boss's office discussing a promotion to head bookkeeper - a position George is supposedly up for as well - George contemplates having money. He is a wealthy tycoon with Roger as his chauffeur and Ann as his financial assistant. He is made to realize 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 amounts, is not satisfying. Indeed, it takes the flavor out of life. He awakes from this fantasy to the news that Roger has won the promotion.

As George and Attila later take a walk, George settles on power as his third prospective wish. He imagines being President of the United States. Though initially successful, he is 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.

In the final scene, a homeless man finds the lamp in a garbage can and polishes it. The genie who emerges is George, still accompanied by Attila. Unlike the genie who served him, George and Attila both wear the stereotypical turbaned genie garb, and grant 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

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

External links

"I Dream of Genie" on IMDb
"I Dream of Genie" at TV.com

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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"