The Big Tall Wish

More interesting than suspenseful or surreal. Washed-up boxer Bolie has one last chance at staving off the inevitable, an upcoming match that might salvage his fading career. Neighbor boy Henry hero worships the fighter and makes a big tall wish that Bolie win the fight. However, Bolie's too experienced in hard knocks to believe in the boy's magic. So what does cynical Bolie do when reality is reversed and his opponent suddenly lies inert on the canvas. Just a moment before, it was Bolie lying inert. But now it's Bolie's victorious hand being raised (Henry's wish come true), instead of the other way around (reality). Looks like reality has given way to magic, but only so long as Henry makes it so by believing. Can he keep believing.

The mainly Afro-American cast performs well at a time when not many Black folks were seen on the little screen. Moreover, the wish vs. reality issue is treated in interesting fashion, though I'm not sure I buy the outcome. After all, Bolie is not just a hero to the little boy but to the downtrodden neighborhood as well. I like the way reviewer Dan… compares the issue here to M. L. King's overcoming the reality of Jim Crow. Good also to see movie vet Walter Burke picking up an easy payday.

All in all, it's an interesting entry, but somehow lacks lasting impact (visual, especially) of front-rank TZ.

This "Twilight Zone" episode from season one number 27 aired in 1960 called "The Big Tall Wish" a boxing themed one is one that's touching, heartfelt and sentimental. It involves a big tall and aging past his prime boxer named Bolie Jackson who's left with a dirty money hungry manager and a bum hand. Yet he finds support and hope from his inner city neighbor a little six year old boy who makes a wish to help him win. Will Jackson believe it and take it does he have faith? Really this episode is a take and twisted spin on the themes of dreams, hope, love, and belief. Overall pretty well done one for 1960's first season.

'Magic' is a metaphor for faith, people who inspire, and the optimism of a child in this likable, overlooked, and charmingly human entry. Quite aside from the fact that this is a TV drama from 1960 largely about black people (very progressive by Rod Serling at the time) it is about human decency that outshines the odds, the scars, and the corruption of boxing and life. Yet this is no corny fairy tale as cold reality clings on to struggling, aging boxer Bolie Jackson (Ivan Dixon) and little Henry (Stephen Perry). Rod Serling had a passion for the sport since boxing in the army during WW2, and of course wrote the famous TV play 'Requiem For A Heavyweight'. He gives the character Bolie Jackson some profound words about his profession. Ivan Dixon handled the role convincingly.

Please watch this episode and judge Bolie Jackson on your own score card.

It took me more than thirty years to catch this classic TWILIGHT ZONE episode, and it was worth it! THE BIG TALL WISH is one of the most poignant, realistic, and mature episodes in the entire series. Rod Serling had written boxing stories before, and would again, but in many ways this story of a washed up black heavyweight and his biggest fan is the most mature and complex.

Several reviewers have commented that it was ground-breaking for the time to tell a story about a black man and boy without making race and racial prejudice the central issue of the story. That is certainly true. But if you look closely, there is a theme in "The Big Tall Wish" that reflects on the early Civil Rights Movement and the conflicts within the black community.

The young black boy, Henry, believes that magic can change reality as long as people believe. Bolie Jackson believes there are no miracles and that life can never change for the better. If you read Martin Luther King's book WHY WE CAN'T WAIT he describes this very conflict at great length. While adults and seniors in the black community were initially cautious and pessimistic about the early sit-ins and boycotts, it was the young people and especially the children who were most eager to risk everything to make a change. Dr. King talks in his book about the old pessimism of Booker T. Washington giving way to the new dream of an integrated society.

Now listen to the feverish back and forth between Henry and Bolie and you can almost hear black America's anguished dialog with itself. After so many centuries of horror and heartbreak, the very idea of wishing for a better future seems like a sick joke, and surely an agonizing "gut ache" will result. But the alternative is death itself, man's final defeat in the ring. The "big tall wish" that Henry believes in is actually the very same "dream" that Martin Luther King was to express just a year or two after this television episode was broadcast.

A couple of technical notes: if you compare this early Season One episode to a Season Five boxing episode like "Steel" you can really see the way the show's budget was gutted as ratings began to fade. You can also see the way the TWILIGHT ZONE writers began to parody themselves. Granted that "Steel" is a fine episode in its own right, (thanks largely to an explosive performance by Lee Marvin and solid support by Joe Mantell) but the series decline is very much in evidence.

One wonders why an episode like "The Big Tall Wish" was never included in the TWILIGHT ZONE FAN FAVORITES collections now on sale at big box stores like TARGET. There's no reason devoted fans should have to sit through dreck like "The Last Rites of Jeff Myrtlebank" when masterpieces like this are relegated to that modern day Twilight Zone known as YouTube!

Boxing is a game that apparently develops philosophers in this Twilight Zone story. Ivan Dixon is an over the hill prize fighter now picking up the losing end of most purses as a trial horse for the up and comers which he was at one time.

Living at his apartment building are Kim Hamilton and her son Steven Perry and the kid still has a beautiful unsophistication about him. Just believe in magic and when he does, a down and out Dixon in his fight has some strange things happen.

This was one unusual drama for any anthology series let alone the Twilight Zone. Most did not have a majority black cast, but Rod Serling made it happen for his show. The only white member of the cast is Walter Burke playing Dixon's corner man.

The best part of the show which is charming and that's usually not a word associated with the Twilight Zone are the scenes with Dixon and young Perry.

I could almost hear Cliff Edwards as Jiminy Cricket singing When You Wish Upon A Star in the background. But ya gotta believe.