The Night of the Meek (The Twilight Zone, 1959)
"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. It was one of six episodes shot on videotape in a short-lived experiment aimed at cutting 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: 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, stops and 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 ". 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 suspects Corwin of stealing the presents from his former  place of employment and arrests him. 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 a 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. Realizing 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. 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". 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 and thereafter, the last line has been restored in syndication. Production. "The Night of the Meek" was one of six "Twilight Zone" episodes shot on videotape instead of film in an attempt to cut  costs. By November 1960 "The Twilight Zone"'s season two 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 at CBS Television City and eventually transferred to 16-millimeter film ["kinescoped"] for syndicated rebroadcasts. Total savings on editing and cinematography amounted to only about $30,000 for all six entries, not enough to justify the loss of depth of visual perspective, which made the shows look like stage-bound live TV dramas (such as "Playhouse 90 , which was also produced at CBS), or even daytime soap operas, which, at the time, were quickly and cheaply produced live on one or two sets. The experiment was deemed a failure and never attempted again. The Night of the Meek (The Twilight Zone, 1959) 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. It was one of six episodes shot on videotape in a short-lived experiment aimed at cutting costs. Introductory scene/opening narration. As snow begins to fall, a drunk