An alcoholic trumpet player named Joey Crown is trying to get a friendly club owner to hire him as a musician.\u00a0 But Joey has a very bad reputation as an unreliable drunk.\u00a0 The man gives Joey some money but turns him down.\u00a0 Joey is at the end of his rope and decides to sell his trumpet to the local pawn shop.\u00a0 The shop owner gives him eight bucks but immediately puts it in the window for twenty-five.\u00a0 Even more depressed now he goes out and spends the money on booze.\u00a0 Staggering down the street he sees a speeding truck heading toward him and jumps in front of it.<\/p>\n
In the next scene it\u2019s twilight and Joey finds himself on the ground but apparently unharmed.\u00a0 He is amazed and slightly elated.\u00a0 He goes up to a few of the people walking on the street but no one seems to be able to hear or see him.\u00a0 And he discovers that he has no reflection in a mirror.\u00a0 After talking to himself for a while he wanders off in a puzzled mood.\u00a0 While walking down an alley he hears someone playing a very skilled trumpet solo.\u00a0 He finds a man in formal attire sitting on a fire escape playing.\u00a0 Joey compliments the man\u2019s playing.\u00a0 The man thanks him and asks if Joey would like to try the trumpet.\u00a0 Joey thanks him and takes the horn and plays it well.\u00a0 The man compliments him and speaks knowingly about various aspects of Joey\u2019s life.\u00a0 Joey asks him how he can see him but nobody else can.\u00a0 Joey thinks that both of them are dead and the living can\u2019t see them as ghosts.\u00a0 The man says that actually he himself is not dead, the others are dead and Joey is actually in a limbo state between life and death following his accident.\u00a0 The man says that Joey has the choice to live or die and he reminds Joey that he has a pretty wonderful gift of being able to bring emotion to others and joy to himself.\u00a0 He points out the good things in life that maybe Joey has forgotten about.<\/p>\n
As the man walks away Joey asks him his name and he says, \u201cGabe, as in Gabriel.\u201d<\/p>\n
In the next scene Joey is on the sidewalk and a crowd is forming around him.\u00a0 He is dazed from the impact with the truck but he hasn\u2019t been seriously injured.\u00a0 The truck driver is worried about police or insurance repercussions from the accident so he puts some cash in Joey\u2019s hand and asks him to forget about the accident.\u00a0 Joey walks away and sees the pawn shop.\u00a0 He uses the money from the truck driver to buy back his trumpet.<\/p>\n
That night Joey is on the roof of his apartment building happily playing the trumpet to himself when a young woman strikes up a conversation about how much she likes his playing.\u00a0 She says she\u2019s new to the City and wishes she had someone to show her around.\u00a0 Joey offers to show here around Manhattan and you can tell that his life is turning around in every way.<\/p>\n
Jack Klugman is Joey Crown.\u00a0 Klugman was in at least three Twilight Zone episodes and I actually had forgotten about this one altogether.\u00a0 This is the best of the three.\u00a0 It\u2019s a very sentimental and almost hackneyed.\u00a0 But for me it strikes the right balance.\u00a0 God doesn\u2019t come down out of the sky and blind Joey with the light of heaven.\u00a0 He sends an angel in the shape of a fellow musician to play a sweet trumpet song and talk man to man with him.\u00a0 Of course the Angel Gabriel is usually portrayed as blowing a blast on the trump of doom at the end of the world but a horn player takes his gigs where he finds them.\u00a0 I\u2019m feeling sentimental.\u00a0 It\u2019s an A.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
An alcoholic trumpet player named Joey Crown is trying to get a friendly club owner to hire him as a musician.\u00a0 But Joey has a<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[237,4,244,240,1661],"tags":[1743,38,1355,1194,44,309,265,1691,154,1692,838],"class_list":["post-6222","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","category-sff","category-sff-tv-reviews","category-tv-reviews","category-twilight-zone","tag-a-passage-for-trumpet","tag-review","tag-reviews","tag-rod-serling","tag-sci-fi","tag-sci-fi-tv-review","tag-science-fiction","tag-sff-tv-show-reviews","tag-tv-review","tag-tv-reviews","tag-twilight-zone"],"yoast_head":"\n