Twenty-Two
Encyclopedia
"Twenty Two" is an episode of the American television series The Twilight Zone
. The story was adapted by Rod Serling from a short anecdote in the 1944 Bennett Cerf
Random House anthology, Famous Ghost Stories,which itself was an adaptation of "The Bus-Conductor," a short story by E. F. Benson published in The Pall Mall Magazine
in 1906.
As she exits her room she sees an elevator, and notices that the nurse is on the elevator. The Nurse's face is hidden in the shadows, but Liz sees her clearly as the elevator door closes. Liz sees the elevator floor indicator panel, which shows that the elevator has gone to the basement of the hospital. Liz rides the same elevator to the basement. She gets off the elevator, and approaches a room with a set of swinging doors. The word "morgue" is printed on the doors, and over the doorway she sees the number "22". The strange nurse then emerges from the room and says: "Room for one more, honey." Liz screams and runs back to the elevator.
Liz claims that the dream is not a dream - that it is really happening. Her doctor states that this is impossible, and to prove it he brings in the nurse who works in the basement on the night shift. This nurse is obviously not the nurse in Liz's dream. The doctor then suggests that Liz prove that her dream is only a dream by changing some small part of the dream...such as not reaching for the glass of water. That night Liz has the dream again. This time though she dreams that there is a pack of cigarettes beside the drinking glass. She starts to reach for the glass, but stops herself. Then, instead of reaching for the glass of water she reaches for the cigarettes. She removes a cigarette from the pack on the nightstand, takes a lighter from the stand, and lights the cigarette.
As she returns the lighter to the stand she accidentally drops the lighter on the floor. As she reaches for the lighter, her other hand strikes the drinking glass, which falls to the floor and shatters. From here the dream plays out as before, and Liz again goes to the morgue. In the next scene we see Liz in hysterics, and a nurse holding her as the doctor gives her an injection, presumably a sedative. The doctor leaves the room and goes to the nurses station. Although the doctor is still not convinced that Liz's dream is anything more than a dream, he comments to the nurse how odd it is that Liz, who has never been to the hospital morgue, knows the room number of the morgue...room 22.
Later, apparently cured, Liz is discharged from the hospital. We next see Liz at an airport, preparing to go to Miami Beach. As she picks up her ticket from the airport ticket counter she learns that her plane is designated as Flight 22. She begins to experience details from her dream: she hears the loud ticking of a clock on the wall, bumps into a woman carrying a vase - which falls to the floor and shatters - and hears loud footsteps.
In a long, slow shot, Liz walks across the tarmac, climbs the stairs, and approaches the plane...and a stewardess who looks just like the dream-nurse appears, intoning her same terrifying message, "Room for one more, honey." Screaming, Liz runs back down the stairs and toward the terminal, falling to the ground. In the next scene we see Liz in the terminal with concerned airport staff attempting to comfort her. As they look out the window they see Flight 22 take off, and then explode.
, the protagonist is again male, also with the name Hugh Grainger, haunted by a man driving a hearse, and has a premonition about a fatal bus crash.
The opening scene with Nichols running down a hallway, up to Serling's opening narration, is all performed in one uninterrupted shot.
As the Twilight Zones second season began, the production was informed by CBS
that, at about $65,000 per episode, the show was exceeding its budget. By November 1960, 16 episodes, more than half of the projected 29, were already filmed, and five of those had been broadcast. It was decided that six consecutive episodes would be videotaped at CBS Television City
in the manner of a live drama and eventually transferred to 16-millimeter film for future syndicated rebroadcasts. Eventual savings amounted to only about $30,000 for all six entries, which was judged to be insufficient to offset the loss of depth of visual perspective that, at the time, only film could offer. The shows wound up looking little better than set-bound soap operas and, as a result, the experiment was deemed a failure and never tried again.
Even though the six shows were taped in a row, through November and into mid-December, their broadcast dates were out of order and varied widely, with this, the fifth one, shown on February 10, 1961 as episode 17. The first, "The Lateness of the Hour
", was seen on December 2, 1960 as episode 8; the second, "Static
" appeared on March 10, 1961 as episode 20; the third, "The Whole Truth" was broadcast on January 20, 1961 as episode 14; the fourth was the Christmas
show, "The Night of the Meek", shown as the 11th episode on December 23, 1960; and the last one, "Long Distance Call
", was broadcast on March 31, 1961 as episode 22.
The Twilight Zone (1959 TV series)
The Twilight Zone is an American anthology television series created by Rod Serling, which ran for five seasons on CBS from 1959 to 1964. The series consisted of unrelated episodes depicting paranormal, futuristic, dystopian, or simply disturbing events; each show typically featured a surprising...
. The story was adapted by Rod Serling from a short anecdote in the 1944 Bennett Cerf
Bennett Cerf
Bennett Alfred Cerf was a publisher and co-founder of Random House. Cerf was also known for his own compilations of jokes and puns, for regular personal appearances lecturing across the United States, and for his television appearances in the panel game show What's My Line?.-Biography:Bennett Cerf...
Random House anthology, Famous Ghost Stories,which itself was an adaptation of "The Bus-Conductor," a short story by E. F. Benson published in The Pall Mall Magazine
The Pall Mall Magazine
The Pall Mall Magazine was a monthly British literary magazine published between 1893 and 1914. Started by William Waldorf Astor as an offshoot of the Pall Mall Gazette, the magazine included poetry, short stories, serialized fiction, and general commentaries, along with extensive artwork...
in 1906.
Opening Scenes
Liz Powell runs through the corridor of the hospital basement, pushes the elevator button and, as the doors open, lurches into the elevator. The elevator descends to the basement level; she exits and walks down the hall. She sees doors swinging, revealing the entrance into Room 22, the hospital morgue, as a nurse steps out and says, "Room for one more, honey." Liz screams and runs back into the elevator as the camera pans to the left to reveal Rod Serling standing and speaking in front of the entrance:Opening narration
"This is Miss Liz Powell. She's a professional dancer and she's in the hospital as a result of overwork and nervous fatigue. And at this moment we have just finished walking with her in a nightmare. In a moment she'll wake up and we'll remain at her side. The problem here is that both Miss Powell and you will reach a point where it might be difficult to decide which is reality and which is nightmare, a problem uncommon perhaps but rather peculiar to the Twilight Zone."Synopsis
While in a hospital, Liz Powell, an over-worked professional dancer, has a strange, and reoccurring nightmare. In this nightmare Liz experiences a false awakening - a vivid dream about awakening from sleep - in which she sees herself awakening suddenly to the loud sound of a ticking clock. As she reaches for a drinking glass full of water the ticking sound becomes so loud that it drowns out all other sounds. Her hand shakes so violently that she loses her grip on the glass, which drops to the floor and shatters. Suddenly the ticking sound stops. Liz then hears strange footsteps outside her door.As she exits her room she sees an elevator, and notices that the nurse is on the elevator. The Nurse's face is hidden in the shadows, but Liz sees her clearly as the elevator door closes. Liz sees the elevator floor indicator panel, which shows that the elevator has gone to the basement of the hospital. Liz rides the same elevator to the basement. She gets off the elevator, and approaches a room with a set of swinging doors. The word "morgue" is printed on the doors, and over the doorway she sees the number "22". The strange nurse then emerges from the room and says: "Room for one more, honey." Liz screams and runs back to the elevator.
Liz claims that the dream is not a dream - that it is really happening. Her doctor states that this is impossible, and to prove it he brings in the nurse who works in the basement on the night shift. This nurse is obviously not the nurse in Liz's dream. The doctor then suggests that Liz prove that her dream is only a dream by changing some small part of the dream...such as not reaching for the glass of water. That night Liz has the dream again. This time though she dreams that there is a pack of cigarettes beside the drinking glass. She starts to reach for the glass, but stops herself. Then, instead of reaching for the glass of water she reaches for the cigarettes. She removes a cigarette from the pack on the nightstand, takes a lighter from the stand, and lights the cigarette.
As she returns the lighter to the stand she accidentally drops the lighter on the floor. As she reaches for the lighter, her other hand strikes the drinking glass, which falls to the floor and shatters. From here the dream plays out as before, and Liz again goes to the morgue. In the next scene we see Liz in hysterics, and a nurse holding her as the doctor gives her an injection, presumably a sedative. The doctor leaves the room and goes to the nurses station. Although the doctor is still not convinced that Liz's dream is anything more than a dream, he comments to the nurse how odd it is that Liz, who has never been to the hospital morgue, knows the room number of the morgue...room 22.
Later, apparently cured, Liz is discharged from the hospital. We next see Liz at an airport, preparing to go to Miami Beach. As she picks up her ticket from the airport ticket counter she learns that her plane is designated as Flight 22. She begins to experience details from her dream: she hears the loud ticking of a clock on the wall, bumps into a woman carrying a vase - which falls to the floor and shatters - and hears loud footsteps.
In a long, slow shot, Liz walks across the tarmac, climbs the stairs, and approaches the plane...and a stewardess who looks just like the dream-nurse appears, intoning her same terrifying message, "Room for one more, honey." Screaming, Liz runs back down the stairs and toward the terminal, falling to the ground. In the next scene we see Liz in the terminal with concerned airport staff attempting to comfort her. As they look out the window they see Flight 22 take off, and then explode.
Episode notes
The original 1906 story by E.F. Benson features a large, middle-aged male protagonist named Hugh Grainger from the English country visiting a friend in London. He is haunted by a man dressed like a bus conductor - but driving a horse-drawn hearse. He sees the same man a month later later actually driving a bus that is involved in a tremendous auto accident. The 1944 Cerf anecdote features instead a young New York woman visiting the Carolina plantation of distant relatives, with the hearse's coachman eventually revealed to be the operator of a medical building elevator that plummets when its cables break. The 1944 film, Dead of NightDead of Night
Dead of Night is a British portmanteau horror film made by Ealing Studios, its various episodes directed by Alberto Cavalcanti, Charles Crichton, Basil Dearden and Robert Hamer. The film stars Mervyn Johns, Googie Withers and Michael Redgrave...
, the protagonist is again male, also with the name Hugh Grainger, haunted by a man driving a hearse, and has a premonition about a fatal bus crash.
The opening scene with Nichols running down a hallway, up to Serling's opening narration, is all performed in one uninterrupted shot.
As the Twilight Zones second season began, the production was informed by CBS
CBS
CBS Broadcasting Inc. is a major US commercial broadcasting television network, which started as a radio network. The name is derived from the initials of the network's former name, Columbia Broadcasting System. The network is sometimes referred to as the "Eye Network" in reference to the shape of...
that, at about $65,000 per episode, the show was exceeding its budget. By November 1960, 16 episodes, more than half of the projected 29, were already filmed, and five of those had been broadcast. It was decided that six consecutive episodes would be videotaped at CBS Television City
CBS Television City
CBS Television City is a television studio complex located in the Fairfax District of Los Angeles at 7800 Beverly Boulevard, at the corner of North Fairfax Avenue...
in the manner of a live drama and eventually transferred to 16-millimeter film for future syndicated rebroadcasts. Eventual savings amounted to only about $30,000 for all six entries, which was judged to be insufficient to offset the loss of depth of visual perspective that, at the time, only film could offer. The shows wound up looking little better than set-bound soap operas and, as a result, the experiment was deemed a failure and never tried again.
Even though the six shows were taped in a row, through November and into mid-December, their broadcast dates were out of order and varied widely, with this, the fifth one, shown on February 10, 1961 as episode 17. The first, "The Lateness of the Hour
The Lateness of the Hour
"The Lateness of the Hour" is an episode of the American television anthology series The Twilight Zone that was originally broadcast in the United States on December 2, 1960.-Synopsis:...
", was seen on December 2, 1960 as episode 8; the second, "Static
Static (The Twilight Zone)
"Static" is an episode of the American television anthology series The Twilight Zone.-Opening narration:As Ed Lindsay retrieves his old radio from the boarding house basement, he says to a boy watching him, "Don't you know what a radio is?". "Sure", says the kid, "but I've never seen one like that ...
" appeared on March 10, 1961 as episode 20; the third, "The Whole Truth" was broadcast on January 20, 1961 as episode 14; the fourth was the Christmas
Christmas
Christmas or Christmas Day is an annual holiday generally celebrated on December 25 by billions of people around the world. It is a Christian feast that commemorates the birth of Jesus Christ, liturgically closing the Advent season and initiating the season of Christmastide, which lasts twelve days...
show, "The Night of the Meek", shown as the 11th episode on December 23, 1960; and the last one, "Long Distance Call
Long Distance Call
"Long Distance Call" is an episode of the American television anthology series The Twilight Zone.-Synopsis:A boy communicates with his father's European-immigrant mother, who had recently died, using a toy telephone that she gave him on his birthday before her passing. The boy, Billy, runs out in...
", was broadcast on March 31, 1961 as episode 22.
See also
- List of The Twilight Zone episodes
- Dead of NightDead of NightDead of Night is a British portmanteau horror film made by Ealing Studios, its various episodes directed by Alberto Cavalcanti, Charles Crichton, Basil Dearden and Robert Hamer. The film stars Mervyn Johns, Googie Withers and Michael Redgrave...
, a 1944 anthology film featuring a fatal-crash-premonition segment