The Man in the Bottle

"The Man in the Bottle"
The Twilight Zone episode
Episode no.	Season 2 Episode 2
Directed by	Don Medford
Written by	Rod Serling
Featured music	Stock from "What You Need" by Nathan Van Cleave
Production code	173-3638
Original air date	October 7, 1960
Guest appearance(s)
Luther Adler as Arthur Castle Vivi Janiss as Edna Castle Joseph Ruskin as Genie Olan Soule as IRS agent
Episode chronology

"The Man in the Bottle" is episode 38 of the American television series The Twilight Zone. It originally aired on October 7, 1960 on CBS.

Plot

A poor elderly woman visits Arthur Castle, an unsuccessful antiques dealer, bringing a wine bottle she found in a trash can. It has no value, but he buys it for a small amount out of pity. The bottle proves to contain a genie, who offers to grant four wishes to Castle and his wife. They use their first wish to repair a broken glass cabinet, proving the genie's power, and then receive a million dollars in cash upon making their second wish. After they have given tens of thousands away to their friends, an IRS employee visits the shop and presents the Castles with a tax bill that leaves them with only $5 once they pay it.

The genie warns them that every wish has consequences, and that they should think carefully before making their next one. Castle decides that he wants to be in a position of great power, and wishes to be the leader of a modern and powerful country in which he cannot be voted out of office. He is turned into Adolf Hitler and transported to the last days of World War II, hiding in a Berlin bunker as one of his men brings him a vial of cyanide so he can kill himself. In desperation, he wishes to be returned to his old life, throwing the vial to the floor.

In an instant, Castle is back in his shop and the wine bottle shatters on the floor. He and his wife have nothing to show for their experience except a repaired cabinet—which Castle accidentally breaks again as he sweeps up—and a changed perspective on life. He dumps the pieces of the bottle into a trash can outside; they magically reform into a whole bottle, waiting for someone else to pick it up and release the genie.

Cast

Luther Adler as Arthur Castle
Vivi Janiss as Edna Castle
Lisa Golm as Mrs. Gumley
Joseph Ruskin as Genie
Peter Coe as First German
Albert Szabo as Second German
Olan Soule as IRS agent

Opening narration

"Mr. and Mrs. Arthur Castle, gentle and infinitely patient people whose lives have been a hope chest with a rusty lock and a lost set of keys. But in just a moment that hope chest will be opened and an improbable phantom will try to bedeck the drabness of these two people's failure laden lives with the gold and precious stones of fulfillment. Mr. and Mrs. Arthur Castle, standing on the outskirts and about to enter the Twilight Zone."

Production notes

Luther Adler had previously portrayed Hitler in two 1951 feature films: The Magic Face, a fantasy about a European impersonator who somehow manages to murder "der Fuehrer" and then assumes his identity; and The Desert Fox, a drama about Erwin Rommel.

Both the 1891 short story "The Bottle Imp" by Robert Louis Stevenson and the 1901 short story "The Monkey's Paw" by W. W. Jacobs feature an object containing a supernatural power that can grant the wishes of its human possessors, indicating that such is a dangerous power to enjoy.

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

"The Man in the Bottle" at the Internet Movie Database

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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