The Twilight Zone (1959) s03e35 Episode Script
I Sing the Body Electric
You're traveling through another dimension- a dimension not only of sight and sound, but of mind, a journey into a wondrous land whose boundaries are that of imagination.
Your next stop, the twilight zone.
I understand how you feel, nedra.
Well, george, i'm going to tell you this, and i want you to hear me out because i'm not going to repeat it.
Baby-sitters and nurses are not the same thing as parental care.
It's been a year since their mother died, and little anne has become more sickly and hostile every day.
She's unhappy and she's insecure.
Well, you're right about anne, nedra, but tom and karen are happy enough.
Oh, nonsense.
They're only covering up.
They're sad, unhappy children.
They have no base, they have no anchor.
They have no direction.
They're like little flotsam and jetsam.
Nedra, it takes time.
Anne needs more time.
So do i.
You'vehadtime.
This is ridiculous.
Anne's problem is a kind of sickness, and it's getting worse and worse and without guidance, she isn't going to be any better two weeks from now or a month from now.
Nedra where are my dears? Your father and i have had a very probing talk.
A very revealing one.
And i told him, and i see no reason why i shouldn't tell you.
I'm not at all pleased with the way things have gone in this house since your poor mother died- not at all pleased; not at all pleased.
I'll be in touch with you.
George, you can be sure i won't lose touch.
I'm sure of that, nedra.
Well, good-bye for now, then.
Good-bye, anne, dear.
Oh, you poor, poor little dears.
Poor, unhappy little dears.
Good-bye, children.
Bye, aunt nedra.
She wants to take us away, doesn't she, dad? Does she, daddy? Is that what she was here for? She doesn't approve of the way i'm bringing you up.
She says i'm too busy.
Perhaps i am.
She says that your sitters and nurses have been, uh, well, too mean or too nice or too young or too old.
She says that you're unhappy.
Are you unhappy? Oh, of course not.
Well, love you don't need.
Love i can give you.
But guidance how do you buy guidance for your children? Someone here all the time.
Someone around who cares.
What do you do, advertise? Some kind, gentle soul who will care.
" Dad? Hmm? Listen to this: "I sing the body electric.
" What does that mean? "Sing the body electric" is the motto of facsimile limited.
"I sing the body electric"? Let me see that, tom.
"Inventors and makers of electrical shadows, "effigies, mimics, mannequins.
Dr.
Cheyney.
"To parents who worry "about inadequate nurses and schools, "who are concerned "with the moral and social development of their children, "we have perfected an electronic data processing system.
" An electric? Well, what does that mean, daddy? "An electronic data processing system in the shape of an elderly woman built" a woman? Yeah.
Sort of a robot.
"a woman built with precision.
"With the incredible ability of giving loving supervision to your family.
" Can they build a machine like a human? I don't know.
It doesn't it doesn't sound so good.
But maybe we ought to investigate.
I sing the body electric.
They make a fairly convincing pitch here.
It doesn't seem possible, though, to find a woman who must be ten times better than mother in order to seem half as good, except, of course, in the twilight zone.
Are they going to make her out of wicker? Well, l-i don't know.
Let's wait and see.
Won't you come in, please? We've been expecting you.
Just to convince you that facsimile limited can do everything that it claims that it can.
This way, please.
Eyes- soft brown, vivid blue.
Any color you choose.
Hair- white, grey, red, brown.
Aren't they beautiful? Ears- all sizes, all shapes.
Slender or sturdy.
Short or tall.
This can't be oh, no.
These are just the bits and pieces.
Just the eyes, the lips, the limbs from which you will choose the elements which will become your, uh grandmother? You mean we get to pick out the color of eyes she'll have? And how tall? Exactly.
You will pick them out and put them down this chute where they will be conveyed to our factory.
I think she should have blue eyes.
These eyes here.
No, these.
They're like the brown aggies i play marbles with.
Look! Those hands are nice and plump.
I want thin fingers.
Hey, her voice.
Listen.
"I sing the body electric.
" From walt whitman's poetry.
Her voice is too high.
"I celebrate myself and sing myself.
" Again, walt whitman.
Too low.
"The armies of those i love engirth me, and i engirth them.
" That's just right.
That's it.
Could you build her like my mother? If you wish.
Exactly like her? Yes.
Then i don't want her.
I don't want her to be like my mother.
I'd hate her.
Anne, please.
Excuse me.
Tom, you want her to look like mother, don't you? Sure.
Then we don't care what anne thinks.
Nah, she's crazy.
I can win any game of marbles with those, and if she had eyes like these gosh.
Oh, if she only had long hair.
Hey, aggies.
Brown aggies.
I can win any game of marbles with those.
You must be tom and karen and that's anne, of course.
Who are you? Give me any name.
Melissa, lavinia, melvina what would you like? Grandma.
Say it a few times.
It'll sound fine.
I know you're thinking i'm not a robot, but i'll prove it.
Here.
Wind me up.
A key.
You don't wind robots up.
They run on electricity.
But you do want proof though, don't you? And if she had eyes like these oh, if she only had long hair.
I see you have a kite.
Get it.
But i'm all out of string.
No, you're not.
There.
It's flying! What did you say my name was? Grandma! Hey, anne, look what grandma's done! Look! How high shall we fly it? The moon.
The moon it is.
Oh, grandma! Dad! Dad! Grandma, is that a new car out front? Ask your father.
Dad, is that our car?! It sure is.
I came home early to surprise you.
Can we take a ride in it? Well, of course we can.
Where's anne? She wanted to stay in this afternoon.
Oh.
Well, you children go on out and play for a little while.
I'll be out in a few minutes.
Then we'll take a run down to the soda fountain, how about that? Wonderful! Come on, tom.
I'm sorry about anne.
You've been good to us, and for us.
Now, don't worry about anne.
She'll accept me eventually.
You see, mr.
Rogers, children are the most complicated things in the world.
I could be the greatest cook in the world, the finest, most exciting playmate, the most incredibly interesting companion, but those are very tiny niches- a shelf in the stomach, a very small ledge in the brain.
It's the heart i have to enter- the child's heart- and this is a deep place, difficult to reach.
But that too will come.
Anne, we're going for a ride.
Will you come with us? I want to stay home.
I don't want her here.
Anne, you mustn't say that.
I don't want her here! Do i bother you, anne? I never wanted you here.
It was them- father and tom and karen.
They wanted you, but i didn't.
They needed you, but i never needed you.
Anne.
But it's true.
You sit and you talk to her, and you eat the food she makes, and you make believe, father.
That's what you do.
You make believe as if it were a game.
As if she were real.
But she's not real.
She's a machine.
Nothing but an old machine! Anne.
Anne, you'd be surprised, my dear how much a machine can do besides playing and cooking.
This machine, for example- this machine can love.
Love? Love who? You, anne.
I can love you, and i do.
I love you more than more than tongue can tell.
You don't love me.
You can't.
She said she loved me.
She? My mother.
She said, "i love you," but she lied.
She lied! And you're like her.
I hate her, and i hate you! She's run away before.
I'll go after her.
There's no place for her to go.
No place to go, except to me.
Anne.
Get away.
You're just old junk.
Anne, why do you hate me? Because you're like her.
Your mother.
I hate her! Why do you hate her, anne? Because.
Because? Because she lied.
She said she loved me.
Didn't she? She ran away.
Ran away? She left me! You mean she died.
No! You mean she died.
Yes.
But she let herself die.
She shouldn't have done that to me! She shouldn't! She left me! She left me.
Anne! Anne, darling, don't cry, don't cry.
Take it easy, take it easy.
Anne.
Anne, look! Look, she's you're just old junk.
Old junk! Get away.
Get away.
Old junk.
That's my voice.
Your voice, anne.
Grandma.
Grandma, you're alive! Alive.
But the car.
Nothing can hurt me.
Then you're not like mother? In this way, no.
You can't run away? I can't.
I won't.
You'll never die? Never.
Oh, grandma.
Your mother died too when you were young.
How did you know that? Did you ever forgive her for running away like that and never coming back? No, i never did.
Anne now, she'll be all right.
She had nowhere to turn.
She was afraid that aunt nedra and everybody would run away and leave her alone.
Everyone except you.
To live forever.
Now, let us all go home and finish our lunch.
Last one home is an old maid.
An old maid? Hey, dad, are we going to be old maids? Not on your tintype.
As of this moment, the wonderful electric grandmother moved into the lives of children and father.
She became integral and important.
She became the essence.
As of this moment, they would never see lightning, never hear poetry read, never listen to foreign tongues without thinking of her.
Everything they would ever see, hear, taste, feel would remind them of her.
She was all life, and all life was wondrous, quick, electrical- like grandma.
Thank you, tom.
We're going to miss you, grandma.
And i you.
More than tongue can tell.
Why do you have to leave? You're going off to college now, and you won't need me.
That's the way it should be.
I'm not the world.
The world's out there, and it needs you.
What's going to happen to you now, grandma? I'll go back to facsimile limited, "i sing the body electric", and be sent out to help raise another family like yourselves or perhaps i'll be taken apart, redistributed.
They won't destroy you? Oh, no, darling.
My mind my soul, you might say, will go for a while into a room of voices.
A room of voices? A great, dim room where the minds and souls of all the other mechanical grandmothers are brought and stored for a month or a year.
And in that room, we'll talk to each other, and we'll tell what we learned from the world and from the families we lived with.
And i'll tell what i learned from anne and karen and tom.
But you taught us.
Do you really think i learned nothing from you in return? No.
Everything you ever said or did, everything you ever laughed or cried about, i'll share with the other machines in the room of voices, and someday someday what, grandma? For a reasonable creature, i have an unreasonable dream.
Someday, after 300 years, if i'm very wise and very good, perhaps i'll gain life.
Oh, grandma, you don't have to wait.
You've always been alive to us.
I'll get it, grandma.
No, no, no, now.
Do me a favor, would you? Go on upstairs.
I've never been one for good-byes.
I'm a silly, sentimental, old grandmother, but i want to take with me the past.
Now, go ahead.
Quickly.
But, grandma darling, go on.
That's fine.
Quickly.
There.
Run on.
Go on.
A fable? Most assuredly.
But who's to say at some distant moment, there might be an assembly line producing a gentle product in the form of a grandmother, whose stock in trade is love.
Fable? Sure.
But who's to say? Rod serling, creator ofthe twilight zone, will tell you about next week's story after this message.
And now, mr.
Serling.
Next week onthe twilight zone, two incredibly talented people join forces to show us what happens when an accident-prone, discombobulated lady with six thumbs and two left feet meets a hapless guardian angel who knows more about martinis than miracles.
Miss carol burnett and mr.
Jesse white.
They're the chief ingredients to a very funny stew.
Next week, "cavender is coming.
" For america to flower spiritually and intellectually, we need more and better college facilities.
Help the college of your choice.
Your next stop, the twilight zone.
I understand how you feel, nedra.
Well, george, i'm going to tell you this, and i want you to hear me out because i'm not going to repeat it.
Baby-sitters and nurses are not the same thing as parental care.
It's been a year since their mother died, and little anne has become more sickly and hostile every day.
She's unhappy and she's insecure.
Well, you're right about anne, nedra, but tom and karen are happy enough.
Oh, nonsense.
They're only covering up.
They're sad, unhappy children.
They have no base, they have no anchor.
They have no direction.
They're like little flotsam and jetsam.
Nedra, it takes time.
Anne needs more time.
So do i.
You'vehadtime.
This is ridiculous.
Anne's problem is a kind of sickness, and it's getting worse and worse and without guidance, she isn't going to be any better two weeks from now or a month from now.
Nedra where are my dears? Your father and i have had a very probing talk.
A very revealing one.
And i told him, and i see no reason why i shouldn't tell you.
I'm not at all pleased with the way things have gone in this house since your poor mother died- not at all pleased; not at all pleased.
I'll be in touch with you.
George, you can be sure i won't lose touch.
I'm sure of that, nedra.
Well, good-bye for now, then.
Good-bye, anne, dear.
Oh, you poor, poor little dears.
Poor, unhappy little dears.
Good-bye, children.
Bye, aunt nedra.
She wants to take us away, doesn't she, dad? Does she, daddy? Is that what she was here for? She doesn't approve of the way i'm bringing you up.
She says i'm too busy.
Perhaps i am.
She says that your sitters and nurses have been, uh, well, too mean or too nice or too young or too old.
She says that you're unhappy.
Are you unhappy? Oh, of course not.
Well, love you don't need.
Love i can give you.
But guidance how do you buy guidance for your children? Someone here all the time.
Someone around who cares.
What do you do, advertise? Some kind, gentle soul who will care.
" Dad? Hmm? Listen to this: "I sing the body electric.
" What does that mean? "Sing the body electric" is the motto of facsimile limited.
"I sing the body electric"? Let me see that, tom.
"Inventors and makers of electrical shadows, "effigies, mimics, mannequins.
Dr.
Cheyney.
"To parents who worry "about inadequate nurses and schools, "who are concerned "with the moral and social development of their children, "we have perfected an electronic data processing system.
" An electric? Well, what does that mean, daddy? "An electronic data processing system in the shape of an elderly woman built" a woman? Yeah.
Sort of a robot.
"a woman built with precision.
"With the incredible ability of giving loving supervision to your family.
" Can they build a machine like a human? I don't know.
It doesn't it doesn't sound so good.
But maybe we ought to investigate.
I sing the body electric.
They make a fairly convincing pitch here.
It doesn't seem possible, though, to find a woman who must be ten times better than mother in order to seem half as good, except, of course, in the twilight zone.
Are they going to make her out of wicker? Well, l-i don't know.
Let's wait and see.
Won't you come in, please? We've been expecting you.
Just to convince you that facsimile limited can do everything that it claims that it can.
This way, please.
Eyes- soft brown, vivid blue.
Any color you choose.
Hair- white, grey, red, brown.
Aren't they beautiful? Ears- all sizes, all shapes.
Slender or sturdy.
Short or tall.
This can't be oh, no.
These are just the bits and pieces.
Just the eyes, the lips, the limbs from which you will choose the elements which will become your, uh grandmother? You mean we get to pick out the color of eyes she'll have? And how tall? Exactly.
You will pick them out and put them down this chute where they will be conveyed to our factory.
I think she should have blue eyes.
These eyes here.
No, these.
They're like the brown aggies i play marbles with.
Look! Those hands are nice and plump.
I want thin fingers.
Hey, her voice.
Listen.
"I sing the body electric.
" From walt whitman's poetry.
Her voice is too high.
"I celebrate myself and sing myself.
" Again, walt whitman.
Too low.
"The armies of those i love engirth me, and i engirth them.
" That's just right.
That's it.
Could you build her like my mother? If you wish.
Exactly like her? Yes.
Then i don't want her.
I don't want her to be like my mother.
I'd hate her.
Anne, please.
Excuse me.
Tom, you want her to look like mother, don't you? Sure.
Then we don't care what anne thinks.
Nah, she's crazy.
I can win any game of marbles with those, and if she had eyes like these gosh.
Oh, if she only had long hair.
Hey, aggies.
Brown aggies.
I can win any game of marbles with those.
You must be tom and karen and that's anne, of course.
Who are you? Give me any name.
Melissa, lavinia, melvina what would you like? Grandma.
Say it a few times.
It'll sound fine.
I know you're thinking i'm not a robot, but i'll prove it.
Here.
Wind me up.
A key.
You don't wind robots up.
They run on electricity.
But you do want proof though, don't you? And if she had eyes like these oh, if she only had long hair.
I see you have a kite.
Get it.
But i'm all out of string.
No, you're not.
There.
It's flying! What did you say my name was? Grandma! Hey, anne, look what grandma's done! Look! How high shall we fly it? The moon.
The moon it is.
Oh, grandma! Dad! Dad! Grandma, is that a new car out front? Ask your father.
Dad, is that our car?! It sure is.
I came home early to surprise you.
Can we take a ride in it? Well, of course we can.
Where's anne? She wanted to stay in this afternoon.
Oh.
Well, you children go on out and play for a little while.
I'll be out in a few minutes.
Then we'll take a run down to the soda fountain, how about that? Wonderful! Come on, tom.
I'm sorry about anne.
You've been good to us, and for us.
Now, don't worry about anne.
She'll accept me eventually.
You see, mr.
Rogers, children are the most complicated things in the world.
I could be the greatest cook in the world, the finest, most exciting playmate, the most incredibly interesting companion, but those are very tiny niches- a shelf in the stomach, a very small ledge in the brain.
It's the heart i have to enter- the child's heart- and this is a deep place, difficult to reach.
But that too will come.
Anne, we're going for a ride.
Will you come with us? I want to stay home.
I don't want her here.
Anne, you mustn't say that.
I don't want her here! Do i bother you, anne? I never wanted you here.
It was them- father and tom and karen.
They wanted you, but i didn't.
They needed you, but i never needed you.
Anne.
But it's true.
You sit and you talk to her, and you eat the food she makes, and you make believe, father.
That's what you do.
You make believe as if it were a game.
As if she were real.
But she's not real.
She's a machine.
Nothing but an old machine! Anne.
Anne, you'd be surprised, my dear how much a machine can do besides playing and cooking.
This machine, for example- this machine can love.
Love? Love who? You, anne.
I can love you, and i do.
I love you more than more than tongue can tell.
You don't love me.
You can't.
She said she loved me.
She? My mother.
She said, "i love you," but she lied.
She lied! And you're like her.
I hate her, and i hate you! She's run away before.
I'll go after her.
There's no place for her to go.
No place to go, except to me.
Anne.
Get away.
You're just old junk.
Anne, why do you hate me? Because you're like her.
Your mother.
I hate her! Why do you hate her, anne? Because.
Because? Because she lied.
She said she loved me.
Didn't she? She ran away.
Ran away? She left me! You mean she died.
No! You mean she died.
Yes.
But she let herself die.
She shouldn't have done that to me! She shouldn't! She left me! She left me.
Anne! Anne, darling, don't cry, don't cry.
Take it easy, take it easy.
Anne.
Anne, look! Look, she's you're just old junk.
Old junk! Get away.
Get away.
Old junk.
That's my voice.
Your voice, anne.
Grandma.
Grandma, you're alive! Alive.
But the car.
Nothing can hurt me.
Then you're not like mother? In this way, no.
You can't run away? I can't.
I won't.
You'll never die? Never.
Oh, grandma.
Your mother died too when you were young.
How did you know that? Did you ever forgive her for running away like that and never coming back? No, i never did.
Anne now, she'll be all right.
She had nowhere to turn.
She was afraid that aunt nedra and everybody would run away and leave her alone.
Everyone except you.
To live forever.
Now, let us all go home and finish our lunch.
Last one home is an old maid.
An old maid? Hey, dad, are we going to be old maids? Not on your tintype.
As of this moment, the wonderful electric grandmother moved into the lives of children and father.
She became integral and important.
She became the essence.
As of this moment, they would never see lightning, never hear poetry read, never listen to foreign tongues without thinking of her.
Everything they would ever see, hear, taste, feel would remind them of her.
She was all life, and all life was wondrous, quick, electrical- like grandma.
Thank you, tom.
We're going to miss you, grandma.
And i you.
More than tongue can tell.
Why do you have to leave? You're going off to college now, and you won't need me.
That's the way it should be.
I'm not the world.
The world's out there, and it needs you.
What's going to happen to you now, grandma? I'll go back to facsimile limited, "i sing the body electric", and be sent out to help raise another family like yourselves or perhaps i'll be taken apart, redistributed.
They won't destroy you? Oh, no, darling.
My mind my soul, you might say, will go for a while into a room of voices.
A room of voices? A great, dim room where the minds and souls of all the other mechanical grandmothers are brought and stored for a month or a year.
And in that room, we'll talk to each other, and we'll tell what we learned from the world and from the families we lived with.
And i'll tell what i learned from anne and karen and tom.
But you taught us.
Do you really think i learned nothing from you in return? No.
Everything you ever said or did, everything you ever laughed or cried about, i'll share with the other machines in the room of voices, and someday someday what, grandma? For a reasonable creature, i have an unreasonable dream.
Someday, after 300 years, if i'm very wise and very good, perhaps i'll gain life.
Oh, grandma, you don't have to wait.
You've always been alive to us.
I'll get it, grandma.
No, no, no, now.
Do me a favor, would you? Go on upstairs.
I've never been one for good-byes.
I'm a silly, sentimental, old grandmother, but i want to take with me the past.
Now, go ahead.
Quickly.
But, grandma darling, go on.
That's fine.
Quickly.
There.
Run on.
Go on.
A fable? Most assuredly.
But who's to say at some distant moment, there might be an assembly line producing a gentle product in the form of a grandmother, whose stock in trade is love.
Fable? Sure.
But who's to say? Rod serling, creator ofthe twilight zone, will tell you about next week's story after this message.
And now, mr.
Serling.
Next week onthe twilight zone, two incredibly talented people join forces to show us what happens when an accident-prone, discombobulated lady with six thumbs and two left feet meets a hapless guardian angel who knows more about martinis than miracles.
Miss carol burnett and mr.
Jesse white.
They're the chief ingredients to a very funny stew.
Next week, "cavender is coming.
" For america to flower spiritually and intellectually, we need more and better college facilities.
Help the college of your choice.