A Penny for Your Thoughts

"A Penny for Your Thoughts"
	The Twilight Zone episode
Episode no.	Season 2; Episode 16
Directed by	James Sheldon
Written by	George Clayton Johnson
Featured music	Stock
Production code	173-3650
Original air date	February 3, 1961
Guest actors
	<templatestyles src="Plainlist/styles.css"/> Dick York; June Dayton; Dan Tobin; Hayden Rorke; Cyril Delevanti; James Nolan;
Episode chronology
← Previous; "The Invaders"	Next →; "Twenty Two"
	List of season 2 episodes; List of Twilight Zone episodes

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"A Penny for Your Thoughts" is episode 52 of the American television anthology series The Twilight Zone, written by George Clayton Johnson. It originally aired on February 3, 1961 on CBS.

Plot

Hector Poole, a sensitive, insecure bank clerk, gains telepathic powers after tossing a coin that miraculously stands on its edge. He discovers that he is able to "hear" other people's thoughts, and is surprised to hear the things people are thinking around him.

He first "hears" his boss thinking about a weekend affair he is planning with his mistress. Then a businessman, Mr. Sykes, thinks about taking out a large loan to pay for a run at the horse track to win back money he has embezzled from his company. Hector informs his boss, Mr. Bagby, and thwarts the businessman's plans. Hector also "hears" the thoughts of Miss Turner, a co-worker who admires him from afar and wishes he would be more assertive.

Shortly afterwards, Hector hears an old, trusted employee, Mr. Smithers, apparently planning to steal cash from the bank. He takes Miss Turner into his confidence and reveals his psychic abilities to her, and tells what he heard. She urges him to tell Mr. Bagby, which he does. Smithers proves to be innocent of the plan, but he privately admits to Poole that he had fantasized for years about stealing money from the bank but would never go through with such a plan because he is too much a coward.

Mr. Bagby fires Hector, but reinstates him when he discovers that Mr. Sykes has been arrested for gambling with company money. With Miss Turner's telepathic encouragement, Hector makes the case to Mr. Bagby that he deserves to be accounts manager, but when the bank manager resists reason, Hector uses his knowledge of his boss's adultery to blackmail him into granting the promotion and into giving Mr. Smithers a long-overdue vacation.

After work, as Hector returns home with Miss Turner, he inadvertently knocks the standing coin over. His mind-reading ability is gone, but he is a man changed for the better.

This is one of the rare episodes that concludes with the protagonist's life ending happier and fulfilled for his experience in the Twilight Zone.

Cast

Dick York as Hector B. Poole
June Dayton as Helen Turner
Dan Tobin as Mr. Bagby
Hayden Rorke as Mr. Sykes
Cyril Delevanti as Mr. Smithers
James Nolan as Mr. Brand
Frank London as The Driver
Anthony Ray as The Paperboy
Patrick Waltz as The Security Guard

References

DeVoe, Bill. (2008). Trivia from The Twilight Zone. Albany, GA: Bear Manor Media. ISBN 978-1-59393-136-0
Grams, Martin. (2008). The Twilight Zone: Unlocking the Door to a Television Classic. Churchville, MD: OTR Publishing. ISBN 978-0-9703310-9-0

External links

"A Penny for Your Thoughts" at IMDbLua error in Module:WikidataCheck at line 28: attempt to index field 'wikibase' (a nil value).
TV.com episode page

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"

A Penny for Your Thoughts

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Cast

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