A Passage for Trumpet

"**A Passage for Trumpet**"
"A Passage for Trumpet"
The Twilight Zone episode
Episode no.	Season 1; Episode 32
Directed by	Don Medford
Written by	Rod Serling
Featured music	Lyn Murray, including trumpet cues
Production code	173-3633
Original air date	May 20, 1960
Guest appearances
	Jack Klugman as Joey Crown; Frank Wolff as Baron; John Anderson as Gabe; Mary Webster as Nan; Ned Glass as Nate (Pawnshop Owner); James Flavin as Truck Driver;
Episode chronology
← Previous; "The Chaser"	Next →; "Mr. Bevis"
	The Twilight Zone (1959 TV series, season 1)
	List of episodes

"A Passage for Trumpet" is episode 32 of the American television series The Twilight Zone.

Opening narration

Joey Crown, musician with an odd, intense face, whose life is a quest for impossible things like flowers in concrete or like trying to pluck a note of music out of the air and put it under glass to treasure.

The narration continues after dialogue between Joey and Baron.

Joey Crown, musician with an odd, intense face, who, in a moment, will try to leave the Earth and discover the middle ground - the place we call The Twilight Zone.

Plot

Joey Crown is a hapless trumpet player in New York City; he has no money, no friends, and no job prospects due to alcoholism. Looking for a chance to work again, he is turned down by the manager at his old club, who while appreciating Joey's abilities, knows how unreliable he is. Joey feels his life is worthless. He sells his beloved trumpet at a pawn shop for cash then, after a drinking binge, impulsively steps into the path of a speeding truck. When he comes to, he realizes that nobody can see or hear him and assumes that he is dead. None of the people he sees are ones he recognizes, though he goes to places with which he is familiar.

Joey makes his way back to the night club, where he is surprised to meet another trumpet player who can not only see him, but also recognizes him. He explains that Joey is in "a kind of limbo"; it is all the people he encountered who are actually dead. He offers Joey a choice to return to the living if he so chooses, while reminding him that he must "take what you get and you live with it." With the man's encouragement, Joey decides that he wants to go back, but first he asks for the man's name and the answer is, "Call me Gabe, [...] short for Gabriel."

Joey wakes up on the street after the collision, and is shaken, but uninjured. The nervous driver of the truck quickly pushes some money into Joey's hand, saying that his driving record is on the line. Joey buys his trumpet back. Later that night, he is playing the trumpet, alone on his apartment building's roof, when a young woman whose laundry is hanging there approaches him to express her admiration. She introduces herself as Nan, and says that she is new to the city. After seeing that she is romantically interested in him, an excited Joey offers to show her around town.

Closing narration

Joey Crown, who makes music, and who discovered something about life; that it can be rich and rewarding and full of beauty, just like the music he played, if a person would only pause to look and to listen. Joey Crown, who got his clue in the Twilight Zone.

Production notes

Beginning with this episode and lasting through the end of the season, a new title sequence featuring a blinking eye was shown. It featured shorter narration than the original opening. Also, these episodes featured a different star field at the conclusion, which looked more like blinking light bulbs than stars.

In his "limbo" state, Joey's reflection is supposed to be absent from any mirrors, but his reflection is clearly seen twice - once in the window of the theater ticket counter and the other in a jukebox against which he was leaning.

Uan Rasey, a veteran studio trumpeter, played for Jack on the soundtrack.

References

External links

"A Passage for Trumpet" at IMDb

v t e 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"