I Dream of Genie

This article is about the Twilight Zone episode. For the television series, see I Dream of Jeannie.

"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
Episode chronology

"I Dream of Genie" is an episode of the American television anthology series The Twilight Zone.

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 down-on-his-luck office worker, is given an antique lamp at an antique store. Upon being unable to give the secretary Miss Ann Lawson his gift for her birthday, George heads home where he is greeted by his pet dog Attila. When George rubs the lamp while cleaning it, he is offered one wish by a genie summoned from the antique lamp. The genie (dressed in modern garb except for his old-fashioned shoes) explains that the traditional three wishes have been discontinued due to misuse by wishers. Rather than make a rash wish, George carefully considers the three most popular options.

He wonders what it would be like to wish for love. While he imagines marriage to Ann, transformed into a beautiful, successful actress, he soon discovers that she is obsessed with her acting career, living the very public life of a starlet, and always trying to keep her face and hair in perfect condition. He imagines a dashing lead actor vying for her attention and realizes that he would eventually lose a wife like that.

The next day, Hanley sees his friend Roger go into E.T. Watson's office. While Roger is in E.T. Watson's office, Hanley decides whether or not wealth is a proper wish. Hanley imagines life as bored tycoon with excessive amounts of money and chooses not to make this wish. After that imagining, Roger comes out and tells Hanley that he has been promoted to Head Bookkeeper.

After walking Attila, Hanley's final thoughts are on wishing for power. He imagines being President of the United States and being paralyzed by indecision when faced with a global UFO crisis. After that imagination, Hanley and Attila are told by a man to get off of his stoop as the two of them return to Hanley's apartment. Realizing that he's not really cut out for any of the things that most people would wish for, Hanley decides to make a truly original wish and starts to call out the genie to tell him his original wish.

In the next scene, a homeless man in an alley finds a genie's lamp in a garbage can. As he thoughtlessly polishes it a little and puts it back, a genie emerges from the lamp and offers him three wishes on the condition that the lamp be returned to the alley afterwards for another needy person to find. As the homeless man is stunned at this, the genie turns around and it is revealed that the genie is actually Hanley. It is also shown that Attila has joined Hanley in his job as well.

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.

”

Trivia

Unlike most episodes involving genies' or wishes, the protagonist in this episode declines to make any wishes at all. The narrative circles around the concept of his imagination of what may come to pass if he had made a wish rather than the traditional approach of showing each wish backfiring after being made. At the end of the episode, the protagonist has actually become a genie.

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" at the Internet Movie Database
"I Dream of Genie" at TV.com

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" "The 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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