A Penny for Your Thoughts

"A Penny for Your Thoughts" is an episode of the The Twilight Zone.

Episode Details[]

Opening Narration[]

"Mr. Hector B. Poole, resident of the Twilight Zone. Flip a coin and keep flipping it. What are the odds? Half the time it will come up heads, half the time tails. But in one freakish chance in a million, it'll land on its edge. Mr. Hector B. Poole, a bright human coin - on his way to the bank."

Episode Summary[]

Hector Poole, a sensitive, insecure bank clerk, gains telepathic powers after tossing a coin that miraculously stands on its edge. He discovers that he is able to "hear" other people's thoughts, and is surprised to hear the things people are thinking around him. He first "hears" his boss thinking about a weekend affair he is planning with his mistress. Then a businessman, Mr. Sykes, thinks about taking out a large loan to pay for a run at the horse track to win back money he has embezzled from his company. Hector informs his boss, Mr. Bagby, and thwarts the businessman's plans. Hector also "hears" the thoughts of Miss Turner, a co-worker who admires him from afar and wishes he would be more assertive, and decides to take her into his confidence and reveals his psychic abilities to her. Shortly afterwards, Hector hears an old, trusted employee, Mr. Smithers, apparently planning to steal cash from the bank, and alerts Mr. Bagby. When Smithers proves to be innocent of the plan, he admits having fantasized for years about stealing money from the bank but would never go through with such a plan because he is too much a coward. Mr. Bagby fires Hector, but reinstates him when he discovers that Mr. Sykes has been arrested for gambling with company money. With Miss Turner's telepathic encouragement, Hector makes the case to Mr. Bagby that he deserves to be accounts manager, but when the bank manager resists reason, Hector uses his knowledge of his boss's adultery to blackmail him into granting the promotion and into giving Mr. Smithers a long-overdue vacation. After work, as Hector returns home with Miss Turner, he inadvertently knocks the standing coin over. His mind-reading ability is gone, but he is a man changed for the better.

Closing Narration[]

"One time in a million, a coin will land on its edge, but all it takes to knock it over is a vagrant breeze, a vibration, or a slight blow. Hector B. Poole, a human coin, on edge for a brief time - in the Twilight Zone."

Preview for Next Week's Story[]

This is Room 22 and on the other side of its doors lies an adventure that is as fascinating as it is inexplicable. It's a story that comes to us from Mr. Bennett Cerf, who describes it as "an age-old horror tale whose origin is unknown." We've dressed it up in some hospital wrappings and enlisted the performance of Miss Barbara Nichols. Next on The Twilight Zone, "Twenty-Two". Be prepared to be spooked. It's that kind of story.

Production Companies[]

Cayuga Productions
Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) (in association with)

Distributors[]

Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) (1959) (USA) (TV) (original airing)

Home media release[]

This episode is included on the Image Entertainment Vol. 29 DVD along with "A Nice Place to Visit", "Little Girl Lost" and "I Am the Night—Color Me Black".

External Links[]

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0734546/

v • e The Twilight Zone (original series) 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" • "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" • "Death's 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"