Faith and the Fifth Dimension: "The Big Tall Wish" (April 8, 1960)

“The Big Tall Wish” isn’t an episode about racism. But like much in America that “isn’t about race,” it is.

“In 1960,” writes Marc Scott Zicree in The Twilight Zone Companion, “casting [Black actors] in a dramatic show not dealing with racial issues was something practically unheard of, but this was a deliberate move on Serling’s part.”

And it was an admirable one. Zicree quotes Serling as calling out Hollywood for the “sin of omission” it was committing in passing over Black actors for roles even as it claimed it was “desperate for the so-called ‘new face.’”

I’m glad Serling created this episode to showcase a talented cast of Black actors, and would be curious to know whether he tried to create others during the series’ run. And I’m glad Serling didn’t think Black actors should be limited to stories directly about race.

At the same time, the words Bolie Jackson (Ivan Dixon) speaks about the futility of wishing and the world’s lack of magic take on extra weight because a Black man in 1960 America speaks them:

Little boys with their heads full up with dreams. . . . When do they suddenly find out that there ain't any magic? When does somebody push their face down on the sidewalk and say to 'em, “Hey, little boy, it's concrete—that's what the world Is made out of, concrete.”

I find myself wondering if the vivid image Bolie uses is more than a metaphor.

I wonder the same thing when he tells young Henry Temple (Steven Perry)—who has claimed, correctly, that his “big tall wish” changed the outcome of the boxing match, giving Bolie the victory—that Henry is “too big to have nutsy thoughts” or “to believe in fairy tales”:

Somebody gotta take you by the hair and rub your face into the world till you get the taste and feel of the way things are.

Maybe I’m making unjustified assumptions—the episode never shows Bolie on the receiving end of racist violence—but Bolie sounds like a man who’s known violence outside of as well as inside the boxing ring. He sounds like a man whose whole life, not just his face, is filled with cuts and bruises from battles fought and often lost.

And if that’s the case—if Bolie Jackson is talking about more than boxing injuries, if he’s also talking about blows dealt to his pride and dignity by a racist society—it’s little wonder he tells young Henry, “I can’t believe. I’m too old and I’m too hurt to believe.” He says, “I've been wishing all my life. . . . I got a gut ache from wishing.”

Because Bolie can’t bring himself to believe in Henry’s “big tall wish” and the magic it worked, he finds himself, rather than his opponent, flat on his back in the ring, being counted out by the ref.

Serling’s closing narration says Bolie “left a second chance lying in a heap” because he “shares the most common ailment of all men: The strange and perverse disinclination to believe in a miracle, the kind of miracle to come from the mind of a little boy.”

Should we take Serling’s characterization of Bolie’s “disinclination to believe” at face value? Is he arguing we should all adopt Henry’s belief in magic and miracles? I think about Jesus saying the kingdom of heaven belongs to children (Matthew 19.14) and wonder if this episode is appealing for some kind of “child-like faith” (though Jesus never commends children’s faith, but their humility—read Matthew 18.1-4).

Ultimately, I think the episode gives us a more nuanced possibility to ponder.

After his disbelief causes Henry’s wish to come undone, Bolie tells the boy:

Maybe there is magic, and maybe there's wishes, too. . . . I guess the trouble is there's not enough people around to believe.

Without Bolie’s final words, “The Big Tall Wish” comes perilously close to blaming its protagonist for his suffering: the lost boxing match, the countless cuts and bruises, the time his face has been smashed up against the world’s concrete.

But with his final words, it becomes an eloquent argument that no one person’s wishing, no matter how big and tall and fervent, is enough to end the pain and change life for the better.

Surely Rod Serling was under no illusion that his one Twilight Zone script for a Black cast would immediately change Hollywood’s or the country’s prejudices and practices. But he did something to turn the wish for greater equality into reality.

Change only comes and when there are “enough people around to believe” in the change wished for. Wishes can only bring about real magic and only do real good when enough people share them, and channel their wills into ways to make those wishes come true.