Miniature (The Twilight Zone)

"**Miniature**"
"Miniature"
The Twilight Zone episode
Episode no.	Season 4; Episode 8
Directed by	Walter Grauman
Written by	Charles Beaumont
Featured music	Fred Steiner
Production code	4862
Original air date	February 21, 1963
Guest appearances
	Robert Duvall as Charley Parkes; Pert Kelton as Mrs. Parkes; Barbara Barrie as Myra; William Windom as Dr. Wallman; John McLiam as Museum Guard; Barney Phillips as Diemel; Claire Griswold as The Doll (Alice); Lennie Weinrib as Buddy; Joan Chambers as Harriet Gunderson; Chet Stratton as Museum Guide; Nina Roman as The Maid; Richard Angarola as The Suitor; Sally Kellerman as Office Worker;
Episode chronology
← Previous; "Jess-Belle"	Next →; "Printer's Devil"
	The Twilight Zone (1959 TV series) (season 4)
	List of episodes

"Miniature" is episode 110 of the American television anthology series The Twilight Zone. It originally aired on February 21, 1963 on CBS. The story centers on a man's obsession with a dollhouse whose figures seem to be alive.

Opening narration[]

To the average person, a museum is a place of knowledge, a place of beauty and truth and wonder. Some people come to study, others to contemplate, others to look for the sheer joy of looking. Charley Parkes has his own reasons. He comes to the museum to get away from the world. It isn't really the sixty-cent cafeteria meal that has drawn him here every day, it's the fact that here in these strange, cool halls he can be alone for a little while, really and truly alone. Anyway, that's how it was before he got lost and wandered into the Twilight Zone.

Plot[]

Charley Parkes thinks he sees a figure in a museum dollhouse that comes alive. He returns to the museum numerous times and gazes into the dollhouse. He keeps coming back and sees the doll in the house become animated (portrayed by a human actress). A guard tells him that the doll is not mechanical, but merely carved from a single block of wood, but this does not dissuade Charley.

Charley gradually falls in love with the figure, a woman who is in an abusive relationship with a male figure in the dollhouse. There is also a female housekeeper in the dollhouse. Charley is committed to a psychiatric hospital because of his belief that the figures in the dollhouse are alive and because he smashes the glass case of the dollhouse in an attempt to rescue the doll from the abusive male doll. He eventually is "rehabilitated", after some resistance, by pretending to be disabused of the delusion, and is returned to the care of his mother.

On the evening of his return home, his mother, sister, brother-in-law and a friend of his sister (who is interested in dating him) plan to celebrate his release with him, but discover that he has snuck out of the house. They contact the psychiatrist who treated Charley in the hospital and surmise that he has returned to the museum and the dollhouse. At the museum, Charley reveals his feelings for the figure. He relates to her in certain aspects (the woman dealing with an abusive suitor and Charley dealing with his overbearing mother).

The family members, psychiatrist, and museum guards search the museum for Charley but find nothing. Except for one guard, who glances into the dollhouse and sees Charley, now a miniature figure, finally together with his love in the dollhouse, sharing a stereoscope. Smiling, the guard decides never to reveal what he has witnessed.

Closing narration[]

They never found Charley Parkes because the guard didn't tell them what he saw in the glass case. He knew what they'd say and he knew they'd be right too because seeing is not always believing, especially if what you see happens to be an odd corner of the Twilight Zone.

Re-airing[]

Because of a pending copyright lawsuit over an earlier script that had been submitted with essentially the same concept,^[1] this episode was not included in the syndication package for The Twilight Zone. It was re-aired in 1984 as part of The Twilight Zone Silver Anniversary Special. For this showing, the dollhouse scenes were colorized in an early public demonstration of the then-innovative colorization process.^[2]^[3]^[4]^[5]

Critical reception[]

This episode's sterling reputation derives primarily from Robert Duvall's performance as the lead character Charley. It has been described as "great acting" (TV.com).^[6]

References[]

^ "The Twilight Zone (1959) trivia". www.moviemistakes.com.
^ Holden, Stephen (October 19, 1984). "Silver Anniversary for 'The Twilight Zone'". The New York Times. Archived from the original on May 24, 2015. Retrieved January 1, 2013.
^ DeVoe, Bill. (2008). Trivia from The Twilight Zone. Albany, GA as Bear Manor Media. ISBN 978-1-59393-136-0
^ Grams, Martin. (2008). The Twilight Zone as Unlocking the Door to a Television Classic. Churchville, MD as OTR Publishing. ISBN 978-0-9703310-9-0
^ Zicree, Marc Scott as The Twilight Zone Companion. Sillman-James Press, 1982 (second edition). ISBN 1-879505-09-6
^ *DeVoe, Bill. (2008). Trivia from The Twilight Zone. Albany, GA as Bear Manor Media. ISBN 978-1-59393-136-0

External links[]

"Miniature" at IMDb

[1] "The Twilight Zone (1959) trivia". www.moviemistakes.com.

[2] Holden, Stephen (October 19, 1984). "Silver Anniversary for 'The Twilight Zone'". The New York Times. Archived from the original on May 24, 2015. Retrieved January 1, 2013.

[3] DeVoe, Bill. (2008). Trivia from The Twilight Zone. Albany, GA as Bear Manor Media. ISBN 978-1-59393-136-0

[4] Grams, Martin. (2008). The Twilight Zone as Unlocking the Door to a Television Classic. Churchville, MD as OTR Publishing. ISBN 978-0-9703310-9-0

[5] Zicree, Marc Scott as The Twilight Zone Companion. Sillman-James Press, 1982 (second edition). ISBN 1-879505-09-6

[6] *DeVoe, Bill. (2008). Trivia from The Twilight Zone. Albany, GA as Bear Manor Media. ISBN 978-1-59393-136-0

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v t 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"