Kick the Can

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The Twilight Zone original series Season three (1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5) Fall 1961 – Summer 1962 List of The Twilight Zone episodes
Episodes: 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

“Kick the Can” is an episode of the American television anthology series The Twilight Zone.

[edit] Details

Episode number: 86
Season: 3
Production code: 4821
Original air date: February 9, 1962
Writer: George Clayton Johnson
Director: Lamont Johnson
Producer: Buck Houghton
Music: Stock (many cues taken from Bernard Herrmann’s score to Walking Distance)

[edit] Cast

Charles Whitley: Ernest Truex
Mr. Cox: John Marley
Ben Conroy: Russell Collins
Carlson: Burt Mustin

[edit] Synopsis

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

Charles Whitley, a retiree at the Sunnyvale Rest Home, thinks that he has discovered the secret of youth. He is convinced that if he acts young he will become young. The game of kick the can transforms him and his friends back into children, except for his best friend, Ben Conroy, who didn’t see the point.

[edit] Quotes

“We’ve got to be a little crazy, to make the magic work!”
“Summer! Grass! Run! Jump! Youth! Wake up, wake up! Oh, this is your last chance! I can't play kick the can alone.”
“There is magic in the world. I know there is.”
Rod Serling: “A dying place for those who have forgotten the magic of youth, who have somehow forgotten that childhood, youth, and age are curiously intertwined.”

[edit] Trivia

Charles Whitley's son is played by Barry Truex, Ernest Truex’s son.

Shortly after this episode aired, George Clayton Johnson got an idea for an expanded ending to the story: “What will become of these children who have been magically transformed from old to young?” he asked. “I propose adding the following scenes:”

At first the playing children run excitedly as they play kick the can. But now it begins to grow late. They are tired. They are hungry. However, there are no beds for them in this town, since they lived here as children many decades ago. One of the children wants to go to the bathroom. The smallest one begins to cry. All the fun is gone.

There is only one place for them to seek refuge from the cold and the night: the old folks’ home. They sneak back inside to sleep. One of them asks fearfully, “Will it be all right, Charles? Are we doing the right thing?”

“Yes,” says Charles, realizing what will happen, “It will be all right.”

They say their prayers: “Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep...”

As they close their eyes, we see another transformation as the children once again become old people.

And now Mr. Conroy and Mr. Cox return from looking for the old people to discover them sleeping soundly in their beds. Mr. Conroy, who was convinced that his friends had become children, now reverts to his practical-minded self. With relief they tiptoe away so that the old people can get their well-deserved rest.

—George Clayton Johnson, excerpt from “An Afterward” published in the October 1983 edition of The Twilight Zone Magazine

A variant of Johnson's new ending was eventually filmed as Steven Spielberg’s segment of Twilight Zone: The Movie.