The Night of the Meek (The Twilight Zone, 1959)

"**The Night of the Meek**"
"The Night of the Meek"
The Twilight Zone episode
Episode no.	Season 2; Episode 11
Directed by	Jack Smight
Written by	Rod Serling
Featured music	None credited
Production code	173-3665
Original air date	December 23, 1960
Guest appearances
	Art Carney as Henry Corwin; John Fiedler as Mr. Dundee; Robert P. Lieb; Val Avery; Meg Wyllie; Kay Cousins Johnson; Burt Mustin;
Episode chronology
← Previous; "A Most Unusual Camera"	Next →; "Dust"
	The Twilight Zone (1959 TV series) (season 2)
	List of episodes

"The Night of the Meek" is episode 47 of the American television anthology series The Twilight Zone. It originally aired on December 23, 1960 on CBS. One of six episodes shot on videotape in a short-lived experiment aimed to cut costs.

Introductory scene/opening narration

As snow begins to fall, a drunk Henry Corwin, wearing his Santa Claus suit, stumbles and half-falls at a curbside lamppost. He is approached by two tenement children pleading for toys, a Christmas dinner and "a job for my daddy". As Corwin begins to sob, the camera pans to Rod Serling standing on the sidewalk, wearing a winter coat and scarf:

This is Mr. Henry Corwin, normally unemployed, who once a year takes the lead role in the uniquely popular American institution, that of the department-store Santa Claus in a road-company version of 'The Night Before Christmas'. But in just a moment Mr. Henry Corwin, ersatz Santa Claus, will enter a strange kind of North Pole which is one part the wondrous spirit of Christmas and one part the magic that can only be found... in the Twilight Zone.

Plot

It is Christmas Eve. Henry Corwin, a down-and-out ne'er-do-well, dressed in a baggy, worn-out Santa Claus suit, has just spent his last few dollars on a sandwich and six drinks at the neighborhood bar. While Bruce, the bartender, is on the phone, he sees Corwin reaching for the bottle; Bruce throws him out.

Corwin arrives for his seasonal job as a department store Santa, an hour late and obviously drunk. When customers complain, Dundee, the manager, fires him and orders him off the premises. Corwin says that he drinks because he lives in a "dirty rooming house on a street filled with hungry kids and shabby people" for whom he is incapable of fulfilling his desired role as Santa. He declares that if he had just one wish granted him on Christmas Eve, he'd "like to see the meek inherit the earth".

Still in his outfit, he returns to the bar but is refused re-entry by Bruce. Stumbling into an alley, he hears sleigh bells. A cat knocks down a large burlap bag full of empty cans; but when he trips over it, it is now filled with gift-wrapped packages. As he starts giving them away, he realizes that the bag is somehow producing any item that is asked for.

Overjoyed at his sudden ability to fulfill dreams, Corwin proceeds to hand out presents to passing children and then to derelict men attending Christmas Eve service at Sister Florence's "Delancey Street Mission House". Irritated by the disruption and outraged by Corwin's offer of a new dress, Sister Florence hurries outside to fetch Officer Flaherty, who arrests Corwin for stealing the presents from his former place of employment.

At the police station, Dundee reaches into the garbage bag to display some of the purportedly stolen goods, but instead finds the empty cans and the cat. Angry at having his time wasted, he throws accusations of incompetence at Flaherty and disbelief at Corwin's claim that the bag is supernatural. Dundee challenges Corwin to produce a bottle of cherry brandy, vintage 1903. Corwin reaches into the bag to hand Dundee his exact request, and is set free. He continues to distribute gifts until midnight, when the bag is empty.

A man named Burt, whose desired pipe and smoking jacket had come from Corwin's bag, sees Corwin again and points out that Corwin himself has not received a gift. Corwin says that if he had his choice of any gift at all, "I think I'd wish I could do this every year". Returning to the alley where the gift-laden bag had presented itself, he encounters an elf sitting in a large reindeer-hauled sleigh, waiting for him. Realising that his wish has come true and he is now the real Santa Claus, Corwin sits in the sleigh and sets off with the elf.

Emerging from the precinct, Flaherty and Dundee, now slightly tipsy from Corwin's brandy, look upward upon hearing the tinkle of bells and see Corwin, in Flaherty's words, "big as life, in a sleigh with reindeer, sittin' next to an elf", ascending into the night sky. Dundee invites Flaherty to accompany him home and share some hot coffee, with brandy poured in it, adding, "...and we'll thank God for miracles, Flaherty..."

Closing narration

A word to the wise to all the children of the twentieth century, whether their concern be pediatrics or geriatrics, whether they crawl on hands and knees and wear diapers or walk with a cane and comb their beards. There's a wondrous magic to Christmas and there's a special power reserved for little people. In short, there's nothing mightier than the meek.

The original narration, on December 23, 1960, ended with the words, "and a Merry Christmas, to each and all", but that phrase was deleted in the 1980s and is now excluded from reruns, VHS releases and the five-DVD set The Twilight Zone: The Definitive Edition.^{[citation needed]} The phrase is heard in the Blu-ray release of Season 2 as well as the version streamed by Netflix, but with noticeably different sound quality from the rest of Serling's narration. As broadcast on the MeTV Network on Christmas Day 2019, the last line has been restored in syndication.

Credits

Directed by Jack Smight
Written by Rod Serling
Produced by Buck Houghton
Art Carney as Henry Corwin
John Fiedler as Mr. Dundee
Robert P. Lieb as Flaherty
Val Avery as the Bartender
Meg Wyllie as Sister Florence
Kay Cousins as Irate Mother
Burt Mustin as Old Man (Burt)
Trains by Lionel Corp.
Reindeer Furnished by Santa's Village – Skyforest, California

Billed (in order of appearance)

Andrea Margolis (Girl pleading for "a job for my daddy")
Jimmy Garrett (Boy pleading for "a big turkey pot Christmas dinner")
Nan Peterson (Blonde in the bar, sitting next to the sleeping drunk)
Matthew McCue (Collins, one of the derelicts at the mission)
Larrian Gillespie (Elf)

Production

By November 1960, The Twilight Zone's second season had already broadcast five episodes and finished filming sixteen. However, at a cost of about $65,000 per episode, the show was exceeding its budget. As a result, six consecutive episodes were videotaped and subsequently kinescoped to 16-millimeter film for TV transmission and future syndicated rebroadcasts. "The Night of the Meek" was one of those six. Total savings on editing and cinematography costs amounted to only about $30,000 for all six entries – not enough to justify the loss of depth of visual perspective, which gave those shows an appearance akin to that of stagebound live TV dramas, or even daytime soap operas which, at the time, were quickly and cheaply produced live on one or two sets. The experiment was therefore deemed a failure and never attempted again.

Personnel and cast with multiple Twilight Zone or related credits

Jack Smight appears in three other Twilight Zone episodes: "The Lonely", "The Lateness of the Hour", and "Twenty Two"
Art Carney later appears as Santa Claus in CBS' December 1970 hour-long Muppet special, The Great Santa Claus Switch, and in ABC's December 1984 television film, The Night They Saved Christmas (The name of Carney's "Night of the Meek" character, Henry Corwin, is a tribute to Serling's idol, Norman Corwin)^[1]
John Fiedler played a bureaucratic angel in third season's penultimate episode, "Cavender Is Coming", a failed sitcom pilot replete with a laugh track
Burt Mustin plays one of the residents of the old-age home in third season's "Kick the Can"
Andrea Margolis' second appearance came in the following week, "Dust", in which she portrays Estrelita, a little Mexican girl
Nan Peterson's three other appearances are in "Walking Distance", "The Whole Truth", and "From Agnes—With Love", in which, as here, she is unbilled

Remake

This episode was remade into an episode of the 1980s version of The Twilight Zone called "Night of the Meek", which starred Richard Mulligan as Henry Corwin and William Atherton as Mr. Dundee
There was a radio adaptation of The Twilight Zone episode "The Night of the Meek" which starred Christopher McDonald

References

^ Romano, Carlin, Inquirer book critic. "He Was So Outspoken About TV He Was Called Its Leading Critic in 1961. (The Philadelphia Inquirer, February 2, 1993)"

Sources

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

[1] Romano, Carlin, Inquirer book critic. "He Was So Outspoken About TV He Was Called Its Leading Critic in 1961. (The Philadelphia Inquirer, February 2, 1993)"

[1]

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"