As I was researching the career of James Earl Jones, I found out he had a detective series from 1990-91 called Gabriel’s Fire. The series has not been officially released on DVD but the pilot has been posted on YouTube.
Gabriel Bird (James Earl Jones) is an ex-cop serving a life sentence for murder. A friend is murdered in the prison yard and his friend’s lawyer Victoria Heller (Laila Robins) wants Bird’s help to find the killer, but Bird refuses to cooperate. She decides she wants his cooperation and so sets out to have him freed from prison and gets his two-decade-old murder conviction thrown out on a technicality.
If Heller getting Bird released from prison and getting a murder conviction thrown out without his cooperation is so uncomplicated (compared to actual cases) that it calls to mind comedian Ryan’s George’s catchphrase, “super easy, barely an inconvenience,” Bird’s reaction is much more grounded. While Heller had hoped for gratitude and for Gabriel to agree to help her investigation, what she gets is anger from a man who had long ago given up hope of getting out, and now has to cope with an unfamiliar world he isn’t ready for.
Jones is compelling throughout the episode, capturing the range of emotions of a man who has forgotten what it’s like to be on the outside and is unsure of his place of the world, plagued by his own feelings of guilt, and his fear of being abandoned and forgotten. He’s a man in his 50s who’s trying to figure out who he is. It’s a difficult process, but with some highlights. One of the best scenes is shortly after his release, when he orders a hot dog. It’s a simple scene that shows Jones’s superb talent.
Beyond establishing Bird as a character, and also establishing some plot points that could be addressed in the series proper (his missing ex-wife and daughter, and the police having it in for him), the episode spends most of its time with Bird in the stage of “rejecting the call to adventure,” a stage of the hero’s journey. When he does finally take the case, he manages to solve it within minutes of screen time. The pilot probably would have benefitted from being TV movie length. Still, for as quick as the resolution was, it was still dramatically satisfying and moved Bird’s character forward.
All in all, it was a fascinating hour of television that left me eager to view more. It’s easy to see that Jones won an Emmy for his work on the series. I really hope that rights holders will make this series available on streaming or DVD.
James Earl Jones passed away on September 9th. He was a part of American culture in so many ways. His voice was Darth Vader and Mufasa, and his “People Will Come” speech from Field of Dreams is something every good baseball fan watches every year.
Yet there were other roles. One of my earliest experiences with James Earl Jones was in the 1980s “Mathnet” sketch on PBS’ Square One TV, where Jones plays Chief Thad Green. These programs helped build my love of mysteries. I decided to review one of these cases that made its way onto the Internet.
Background:
Square One TV aimed to teach kids mathematic principles through a series of sketches. These included game shows, sitcom parodies, a Pacman-themed video sketch called “Mathman”, an animated do-gooder called Dirk Niblick, and there was even music videos. Who could forget the Meatloaf-inspired 8% of My Love?
But the segment I loved the best, and which came to dominate the show in its later seasons was “Mathnet.” This Dragnet pastiche features two mathematicians who use math to solve criminal cases. The narrator/Joe Friday parody was Kate Monday (Beverly Leech). In later seasons, she’d be replaced by Pat Tuesday (Toni Di Buono). The partner throughout was Office George Frankly (Joe Howard), who leaned into the zaniness Harry Morgan brought to the role of Bill Gannon. Jones played their boss, Chief Thad Green.
The character’s name is a major Easter egg for fans of the original Dragnet. The name of the second boss on the Dragnet radio series and during the first Dragnet TV episode in 1951 was Thad Brown. This indicates the level of awareness and respect the creative team had for the source show, even though they were making a kids’ TV sketch.
“The Problem of the Passing Parade” was aired as a 9-minute segment on each daily episode of Square One between February 9 and February 13, 1987. The program begins when Green asks the two mathematicians to help him use some math to plan the logistics for a parade to honor music legend Steve Stringbean (a Bruce Springsteen knock-off played by Alan Schrock). They work out various aspects of security and crowd control using math, but then get word that Stringbean has been kidnapped. With the aid of a young eyewitness, and drummer nicknamed Rimshot (Andre Gower), who is a friend of the kidnapped superstar, they set out to solve the case.
Educational Value:While I was very entertained by the series as a kid, watching it as an adult nearly forty years later, I realized, “They were teaching us some things.” Some of the mathematics in this particular episode may have been a bit over viewers’ heads, likely with the hope that they would retain them long-term as they dealt with some of the mathematics of music and the chromatic scale. But for the purpose of the episode, they make it simple enough that your average elementary school kid can follow it. Beyond just the type of math, the episode teaches problem-solving skills. It also introduces kids to the ideas of databases and gives an understanding of how those work, which is something that would become very relevant in the lives of many viewers. In addition, the whole episode makes math look like something relevant that viewers would use in their everyday lives, without being preachy about it. It’s a very solid and worthwhile approach that still stands up.
Comedy: Joe Howard is a delight as George Frankly, making the character hilarious and lovable. While he’s a bit kookier than Gannon, that works for fine on children’s television. Yet he’s never too wacky, can contribute to the problem-solving and knows his math. However, whenever they’re not calculating, George can deliver the most unexpected lines as Kate Monday somehow tries to keep the case moving along despite George’s beautiful strangeness, such as when he does an oral recitation of “I Love a Parade.”
Kate Monday begins segments after Monday by saying they’re watching clips from the previous day’s show, which is an amusing bit of fourth wall breaking.
The Mystery: The case has a reasonable benefit. Like Dragnet, it’s a procedural approach, as they use different mathematical methods and follow clues in order to locate Steve Stringbean. One of the key clues involves touch-tone dialing, which many children of the 1980s and 1990s might appreciate, but might be unfamiliar to more recent arrivals to the planet. Beyond that, it’s a good mystery story that, due to the nature of being told in nine-minute segments, requires big cliffhanger moments every few minutes.
The episode also captures some of the key stylistic beats of Dragnet without becoming farcical about it. Two scenes in particular stood out: a press conference in Green’s office where they speak to reporters about the case, and the capture of the criminals. This was a series that (when it wanted to) could really capture the cadence of the show was imitating.
The Chief: Given that Jones’ passing led to me taking this trip down memory lane, I focused a bit more on his performance. Chief Green, like the captains on the old Dragnet series, has the job of being the voice of authority, and the one who assigns cases to our heroes. In this episode, Green also interacts with the press. Jones was a pro and he delivers everything you could ask for. At this point in his career, he had already won a Grammy, a Tony, and a Golden Globe, and gotten nominated for an Emmy and Oscar. He was arguably overqualified for the part, but still, he adds an air of legitimacy to the proceedings.
Negatives: If there is one part of the proceeding that’s a bit off, it’s Rimshot, in particular, some of his dialogue, which seemed weirdly anachronistic and unnatural. It feels like dialogue from the late 1950s or 1960s, not the 1980s. For me, this sounded a discordant note.
Overall thoughts: This is a fun “Mathnet” story that has all the elements that would make it a beloved favorite that connected with so many viewers. It’s a great mix of math, mystery, and clever nods to Dragnet. Some elements (such as the evolution of databases and telephone technology) do make the story a bit of a cultural artifact that shows how things used to be done rather than providing insight into the way things are currently done. However, it also represents an approach to educational TV that’s not often taken in the 21st century and deserves another look.
The Telltale Clue was a summer 1954 TV series starring Anthony Ross (the original actor to play Danny Clover in Broadway’s My Beat) as Captain Richard Hale of “The Criminological Division” of the Police Department. Each week he solves a case where a key clue leads to the solution of the crime.
This particular episode of The Telltale Clue aired July 29, 1954. It is noteworthy for having been written by Gore Vidal under a pseudonym, and also for featuring a young Leslie Nielsen.
The story opens with a woman with a bullet wound being thrown from a moving car. With her dying words, she says she was shot by her husband. While that’s a strong piece of evidence, Captain Hale needs more. He finds a whole family’s worth of suspects, with her husband, mother-in-law, and sister-in-law all sure she was cheating on her husband.
As a mystery, the story is reasonably well-done. The mystery is a puzzle and manages to throw out a real red herring. However, as an overall production, it operates very close to the sort of melodrama that defined New York’s radio culture, and would figure in its future as a soap opera mecca for decades to come. In some ways, it’s an odd series to be on television, as CBS chose to launch this as a police procedural when more realistic programs like Dragnet were dominating the airwaves.
Most of the performances play to the heightened, almost soap-operatic style, and certainly Ross fits that mold. Captain Hale is still a sympathetic character in the end, but has to cut a probable solution in under thirty minutes. Ross does a good job, but the same can’t be said for many of his fellow actors, as there are a few bad performances that are either a bit too stiff or a bit too over-the-top for the story.
Twenty-six-year-old Nielsen turns in a solid performance. As with all of Nielsen’s work prior to Airplane in 1980, he turns in a solid dramatic performance as a man who knows more than he’s letting on.
All in all, this is a decent TV episode if you enjoy early live television and if you like your mysteries a little bit soapy.
We continue our reviews that focus on Batman actors as part of our Amazing World of Radio Summer Series, focusing on their old-time radio work. This week, we take a look at Tallulah Bankhead’s starring role in the 1944 film Lifeboat.
Eight American and British citizens are survivors of a passenger ship sunk by a Nazi U-boat. The first to arrive is famed photographer Connie Porter (Tallulah Bankhead), and she is joined by others, including an engine room crewman (John Hodiak), a wealthy industrialist (Henry Hull), the ship’s steward (Canada Lee), a nurse (Mary Anderson), and a mother (Heather Angel) who lost her baby. The cast is rounded out by actors Gus Smith and Hume Cronyn. They then pull up a U-boat crew survivor (Walter Sleazak), who has plans of his own.
While set in the middle of the ocean, the action is confined to the titular lifeboat, which both gives the film a claustrophobic feel, and a resemblance to a well-done stage play. This effect is furthered by director Alfred Hitchcock’s decision to forgo the orchestral score during the body of the film, with the only music coming from characters singing accompanied by another character on a flute.
That the film feels like a stage play makes it a natural vehicle for Tallulah Bankhead, one of the greatest stage actresses of her era, making a relatively rare film appearance. She gives a performance that shows a nice range. While by default, Connie is a very cynical character, there are softer and lighter moments, as well as a few more extreme moments. At each point, Bankhead is flawless.
Another stand-out performance was William Bendix, best known for his comedy roles, particularly his radio/television work in The Life of Riley. Bendix shows some real dramatic chops in his performance as Gus. Walter Sleazak also portrays a surprisingly complex Nazi character, who is eerily likable for most of his time on screen.
The film is smartly written, and while it’s got a pro-Allies propaganda message, it’s subtler than many of its contemporaries, which caused major controversy at the time. While different from many other Hitchcock vehicles, it still has many hallmarks of the great director’s other work. The limits on budget imposed by wartime hardship are apparent but it makes the most of what it has.
With strong performances all around, this remains an entertaining and engrossing war-time drama even 80 years later.
Rating: 4 out of 5
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We continue our reviews that focus on Batman actors in other detective and mystery programs as part of our Amazing World of Radio Summer Series, focusing on their old-time radio work. This week, we take a look at Vincent Price, who guest starred in the final Snoop Sisters TV movie, A Black Day for Bluebeard.
Background
The Snoop Sisters was part of NBC’s classic Mystery Wheel programs, which featured rotating detective programs designed to be aired in a ninety-minute time slot. Rather than being a full hour weekly program, each series would turn out several “movies” each year. The anchors of this format during its run were McCloud, McMillan and Wife, and the best of them all, Columbo. Viewers would tune in at the same time each week and see one of these programs. The wheel program began the NBC Sunday Mystery Movie.
In addition to the three mainstays, other series rotated on Sunday. In There was a Wednesday (later Tuesday) Mystery movie series launched as well. None of these series made it long-term in this format, mostly lasting only a season or two. One of these series was The Snoop Sisters, which aired in rotation as part of the Tuesday Mystery Movie. The series was part of the mystery wheel during the 1973-74 season and there were a total of five Snoop Sisters movies made.
The series focused on two elderly sisters, spinster mystery writer Ernesta Snoop (Helen Hayes) and her widowed sister and poet Gwendolyn Snoop Nicholson (Mildred Natwick) who drive around in a mid-1920s Lincoln and end up stumbling into mysteries that they solve with the help of their chauffer Barney.
The Plot:
The sisters are attending a festival of a friend and horrible horror movie actor Michael Bastion (Price) who is hoping to revive his career, and shows off his showmanship by arriving in a coffin. However, his wife is upset with him and uses the occasion of the festival and his attempted comeback to publicly announce she’s divorcing him.
She gets murdered during one of Bastion’s films and, unfortunately for him, he’s said some incriminating things that make him look like he murdered his wife for her money. However, Bastion insists that his wife wrote him out of her will and turns to the sisters to prove his innocence.
Review:
The Snoop Sisters has been compared to Murder, She Wrote for both having older female writers as the lead characters. While the concept is similar, the feel of the films is a bit more like Miss Marple but with a decided comedic edge to the material.
Both leads are delightful and bring a great sense of balance. Ernesta is the more serious-minded and somewhat more straight-laced sleuth. She does the heavy-duty questioning of witnesses and the humor she brings is a lot more subtle. Gwendolyn is the fun sister. She might be pushing 70 but thinks nothing of cosplaying as the Bride of Frankenstein at the horror movie marathon. She makes up outrageous cover stories to get them into places to investigate, hilariously stalls Bastion so he doesn’t get in the way of their investigation, and even improvs being a palmist to stall for time.
Vincent Price is good in this, playing a character that has a lot in common with him. Not only did Bastion make a lot of horror movies, he also has many extravagant tastes and, like Price, is an expert cook. One big difference is that Bastion is a bad actor, while Price was a good one. Bastion’s poor acting is the reason the sisters believe in his innocence. He’s too bad of an actor to actually fake innocence or surprise. Thankfully, only a good actor like Price can play a bad one like Bastion and have a result that’s good. Price is a marvelous guest star, as Bastion has some fun, over-the-top moments, but also does a good job playing the straight man to Gwendolyn’s scheming.
The story leans more towards the comedy than the mystery angle. That can work and mostly does. My main complaint is that before they even begin to investigate the murder, Bastion sends them to his house to retrieve his wife’s will. This means it takes a good long while to get the actually investigating of the murder. While there were some funny moments, plotwise, it comes across as padding. There are also a few minor plot elements that could have been improved. While this was enjoyable, this is a story that feels like it could have been a bit more tight.
Connections:
Roddy McDowell, who also played a villain in the 1960s Batman series, is among the guest stars in this series. On the creative end, three old-time radio veterans contributed to the story. The episode was directed by David Friedkin, who was part of the old-time radio writing team with Mort Fine. They wrote many old-time radio programs, including Broadway’s My Beat. The story was by Jackson GIllis, who wrote for many radio programs, including Let George Do It. One of the co-writers of the screenplay was Tony Barrett, who was a versatile radio character actor who also wrote for some radio programs towards the end of the Golden Age of Radio.
Rating:
I’d gotten the Snoop Sisters DVD a while back but hadn’t gotten around to watching it and was glad this series gave me an excuse to try the series out. Overall, if you love a good cozy mystery with a comedic spin, particularly with an older protagonist, this is a fun film to watch.
Rating: 3.75 out of 5
Availability:
The Snoop Sisters is not available on streaming anywhere. However, unlike many of the shorter-lived mystery wheel series, this one did receive an official DVD Release. (Affiliate link.)
We continue our reviews that focus on Batman actors in other detective and mystery programs as part of our Amazing World of Radio Summer Series, focusing on their old-time radio work. This week, we take a look at Eli Wallach, who guest starred on the first episode of the second season of Naked City, which aired on ABC on October 12, 1960.
Background:
During its 39-episode first season from 1958-59, The Naked City had been a critical success as a well-acted half-hour police drama that was noted for shooting from real locations in New York City. It was not a ratings hit and was canceled after one season. However, the series had its supporters at the network, including a sponsor, which got the series a new lease on life as it returned for the 1960-61 season. Horace McMahon reprised his role from the half-hour series as Lt. Mike Parker. The second season would feature a new protagonist, Detective Adam Flint (played by Paul Burke).
The first episode, “Death of Princes”, would be key to giving the show a strong start. The series had landed a notable guest star in Eli Wallach, whose most memorable roles were ahead of him, but who had already won a Tony and a BAFTA.
Review:
The relaunched Naked City has a perfect opening sequence, beginning on a calm Sunday morning, that’s shattered when a shooter (played by a pre-Columbo Peter Falk) opens fire on a police officer. A shootout then commences over three minutes, ending with the shooter out of bullets and telling the detective’s partner, Peter Bane(Eli Wallach) that he’s out of ammo and drops his gun. Bane guns him down anyway, with Flint arriving just in time to see it happen. Bane insists that, from his angle, it didn’t look like the shooter had dropped the gun, and that it was a clear case of self-defense, leaving it as a case of conflicting testimony with no definite evidence.
This is the third suspect that Bane has gunned down since coming to his current precinct (while also winning several medals) and Flint wants a new partner. Lt. Parker wants Flint to watch Bane. Flint hates the idea of spying on a fellow cop and prefers to leave the matter to internal affairs. Meanwhile, Bane has an endgame of his own. Bane has covered up crimes for three people and is blackmailing them into participating in a robbery of the box office at a Madison Square Garden charity boxing match. In their final meeting, he lets them know that in the course of committing the crime, he’ll murder two people to ensure there are no witnesses who can identify him.
There’s a lot to commend in the episode. It’s beautifully shot and flawlessly directed. But for its length, it feels cinematic in the best noir tradition. Paul Burke does a great job as Flint, showing him in this first outing to be a sensitive and complicated man who is trying to do the right thing, but finds himself in a very uncomfortable position. The episode also established Flint’s relationship with up-and-coming actress, Libby Kingston (Nancy Malone) and she plays a pivotal part in helping Flint resolve his dilemma. The blackmailed conspirators all feature solid performances including George Maharis and old time radio veteran Jan Miner.
Yet, this episode belongs to Eli Wallach, who brings Bane to life. Bane is a challenging character to play because the episode makes clear, Bane is evil. Truly evil characters are hard for actors to play without turning them into snarling cartoon characters. But this is exactly the sort of character Wallach could bring to life. His portrayal captures the nuances of the Bane and makes it totally believable that he could survive and thrive on the police force for many years. Bane is intelligent and cunning, he quotes Shakespeare and has a certain charisma. But he’s also utterly corrupt and a sadist. He’s a malign influence and is seeking to turn his three blackmail victims into co-conspirators in a double murder. The character is horrible yet absolutely compelling.
The fundamental question of the story that’s not resolved until its final minutes is whether anyone will dare to take him on and stop him.
Overall, “The Death of Princes” is a superb start for Naked City‘s new format and a compelling episode, with the episode and Wallach’s performance holding up very well more than sixty years later.
We continue our reviews that focus on Batman actors in other detective and mystery programs as part of our Amazing World of Radio Summer Series, focusing on their old-time radio work. This week we look at Milton Berle, guest starring in a 1993 episode Matlock, in a script he co-wrote.
In “The Last Laugh,” the notoriously frugal Ben Matlock (Andy Griffith), after sneering at the ridiculous bids being put up by fellow rich people at a charity auction, gets into a bidding war and wins dinner with a once-famous elderly comedian Harvey Chase (Milton Berle) for the princely sum of $225 ($496 in today’s money). Matlock goes down to a comedy club where Chase is performing, but for no one particular, as his act can’t draw flies. Ben thinks everything Chase says is hilarious and is in peels of the most over-the-top unnatural laughter imaginable, which somehow makes Chase’s routine work.
Chase is fired by the club owner and replaced by one of those new, edgy, dirty comics like those on cable TV. Harvey does the only thing he can – goes in and gets plastered on crème de menthe and heckles the new comic. The potty-mouthed comic is then found murdered, and all signs point to Harvey Chase, including a blood-stained handkerchief found on Harvey, and the powerful odor of crème de menthe at the crime scene. Matlock’s efforts are challenged by the fact that Harvey is always “on” and it’s tough to get a serious answer for him.
In terms of what works in this episode, there are a few really nice moments for Berle as a comedian. There are some jokes that land and are actually pretty funny, and he has a really poignant dramatic scene that captures the feeling of having enjoyed success and fame in the entertainment industry, and then the world moving on.
But the rest of the episode is honestly a bit of a mess. I’ll admit my biases. The era of Matlock when the show had moved to ABC with Matlock assisted by his other daughter Leanne (played by Brynn Thayer) and a dull-witted law school associate who serves as his assistant (Daniel Roebuck) was probably my least favorite era of the show. But there were good episodes. This just wasn’t one of them.
The episode manages to feel rushed and padded at the same time. The A-plot of who actually committed the murder is rushed, and the B-plot of what Harvey is up to and his feeling about his career and being forgotten is massively padded out. A ridiculous amount of time is taken up by Harvey’s improbable attempt to jump bail and leave town by catching a bus out of Atlanta. While Matlock always played a bit fast and loose with rules of procedure and evidence, the mystery reveal on the stand comes right out of nowhere. The police have searched the murder’s home without any evidence, and apparently without notifying the prosecutor, because the episode is almost over.
The script is over-indulgent to the guest star (and co-writer) to the extreme. Leanne is not a fan of Harvey’s at all, but Ben insists she’ll be won over and she is, even though nothing in the script makes that make sense.
Probably the worst part of this is how the script treats the star. Matlock is given short shrift throughout. The scene where Matlock comes into the empty comedy club and does painfully bad stand-up is painful to watch. Even during the courtroom scene, the script has him uncharacteristically mocking a prosecutor by mimicking her tone of voice like a fourth grader. While Matlock was known for blowing his fuse, this seems out of place. He does as good a job as could be expected in the confrontation scene, which, along with some of Berle’s stronger moments, make up the redeeming parts of the episode.
Overall, there are really strong moments that show that both as a comedian and a dramatic actor, even late in life, Berle had a lot to offer. As a mystery writer, not so much.
We continue our reviews that focus on Batman actors in other detective and mystery programs as part of our Amazing World of Radio Summer Series, focusing on their old-time radio work. This week we look at Ida Lupino’s last television acting appearance in an episode of Charlie’s Angels called “I Will Be Remembered”, which aired on March 9, 1977.
Aging Hollywood Actress Gloria Gibson (Lupino) is looking to stage a career comeback by playing the mother’s role in a remake of a film she made as a young actress. However, she’s been seeing ominous and horrifying sights right out of her old movies. She’s a friend of Charlie’s and Charlie suspects a “gaslight” scheme and so has the Angels (Farrah Fawcett, Kate Jackson, and Jackly Smith) go undercover to find out the truth.
Ida Lupino turns in a tour de force performance. She’s compelling and owns every scene she’s in. Like Burgess Meredith in Mannix a few weeks ago, Lupino delivers a performance that’s massively above what anyone would expect for a TV mystery guest actor. She also has a really great speech on the difference between screen acting and stage acting in making her case to be given the part.
As for the rest of the episode, I have to confess I’ve never seen an episode of Charlie’s Angels before, but it’s a series that you know something about even if you haven’t seen it, particularly the central premise of three beautiful female private eyes working for a male boss who is never seen. The series also had a reputation as being a bad program that tried to use the leads’ sex appeal to paper over weak scripts.
I was pleasantly surprised by the episode. It was a good, competently plotted mystery. Each of the three angels took their own part in the investigation, had her own moment to shine. The mystery was interesting and had a clever solution that didn’t become readily apparent until the last five minutes. While I wouldn’t put it in the same class as the era’s best detective programs, like Columbo or The Rockford Files, this particular episode was a fun hour.
There were a few bits of cheesy dialogue, and two of the Angels crashed through a security gate for no good reason but that’s kind of par for the course for 1970s programs. If there is one issue with the episode, it’s that the solution of how the perpetrators did what they did offers a broad hand-wave solution that’s a massive stretch for at least one incident.
Still, with Ida Lupino’s great performance, this was a solid outing for Charlie’s Angels.
Rating: 3.75 out of 5
This episode of Charlie’s Angels is currently available for free viewing on Tubi
We continue our reviews that focus on Batman actors in other detective and mystery programs as part of our Amazing World of Radio Summer Series, focusing on their old-time radio work. This week, we take a look at Art Carney’s performance in one of two leads in a 1976 TV movie that was a pilot for a short-lived TV series called Lanigan’s Rabbi. The film was based on the first of Harry Kemelman’s Rabbi Small novels.
In a small California town, the local rabbi, David Small (Stuart Margolin, The Rockford Files), is facing problems from within his own congregation, from board members who want the synagogue to build a bowling alley, rather than actually doing the sort of youth work Rabbi Small thinks is important. Things get far worse for the already besieged rabbi when the body of a secretly pregnant maid who worked for a woman in his congregation is found murdered in his car after a rainstorm. He ends up getting drawn into the mystery despite Chief of Police Paul Lanigan (Carney) trying to get him to leave the case alone.
Rabbi Small is a likable character who is very well realized by Margolin. If you, like me, are most familiar with his work playing Jim Rockford’s Shady friend, Angel, this character is a huge change of pace. Rabbi Small has a cunning intellect that makes him a great amateur sleuth, but he also has the right mix of eccentricity, constantly losing his keys, even forgetting that he’s on his way to a wedding when he stops in to visit Chief Lanigan. It’s reminiscent of Columbo with Margolin’s own unique spin.
Carney’s Chief Lanigan strikes a really neat balance. The police foils for amateur detectives are usually belligerent idiots, arrogant know it-alls, or bumbling fools. Lanigan is a good cop and nobody’s fool. He initially tries to dissuade Rabbi Small from his investigation for sensible reasons; normal cops don’t usually want local clergymen going out and trying to solve crimes. However, Lanigan relents as he comes to like and respect Rabbi Small. He has his own eccentricities, as illustrated by his comic battle against his wife’s desire to buy a new suit. The rabbi and the chief bond throughout the episode and the great chemistry between Margolin and Carney helps to sell the relationship.
There are some really strong guest performers, including Lorraine Gary (Jaws) and Robert Reed (The Brady Bunch). Janet Margolin (no relation to Stuart) has some very strong performances as Miriam Small and delivers a key clue that helps lead to the solution.
One thing I really liked was the open credits sequence that tied into the motif of the murder happening during a rainstorm. It was really a great way to add atmosphere.
The mystery itself offers a lot of twists and clues, and just the right number of suspects, all of whom have surprisingly sordid interrelated motives. Given the way, the movie plays out, the solution is a bit of a surprise. However, it borrows from one of the great classic clerical detectives, Father Brown.
Overall, this is a very good production with two likable leads and an engaging storyline. And if you like TV mystery films, this is worth checking out. Currently, it is only available on YouTube, as a 1980s replay of the TV film as a late movie (complete with 80s commercials).
We continue our reviews that focus on Batman actors in other detective and mystery programs as part of our Amazing World of Radio Summer Series, focusing on their old-time radio work. This week, we take a look at Cesar Romero’s guest appearance in the first episode of the 1986 mystery series Blacke’s Magic.
Blacke’s Magic was NBC series in which Hal Linden (Barney Miller) and Harry Morgan (Dragnet and Mash) play son and father. Linden is Alexander Blacke, a stage magician who also serves as a part-time consultant to the police on seemingly impossible cases, and Morgan is an old-school conman who will often lend his son some assistance. The series was created by mystery legends Richard Levinson and William Link.
The series was preceded by a pilot TV movie. This episode firmly establishes the status quo for the new ongoing series, as Alexander is called in to investigate the seemingly impossible disappearance of a 10-ton statue brought from a museum where it had been brought by an Italian businessman (Romero). The CCTV was running and nothing appeared on camera. It appeared to have vanished without a trace.
Cesar Romero displays the typical charm and charisma that made him so fun to watch throughout his career, whether playing a dashing hero in the 1940s or the Clown Prince of Crime. He’s a delight to watch in this, even though it becomes clear from early on that he’s behind this. This isn’t really a spoiler as this episode is less about “whodunit” and more about figuring out why and, more importantly, how.
The solution to the case is actually pretty clever, although there are a few finer points of it which would warrant an expert in 1980s technology weighing in.
Linden and Morgan play well off each other, with Linden making for a believable magician, and the more sober and responsible of the pair, while Morgan captures the lovable rogue with eccentric quirks that call to mind his character on Dragnet, Bill Gannon, despite having been on the opposite side of the law. The episode did have a subplot of a glory-hungry insurance agent (Jane Badler) trying to hog media publicity that takes up time but is really hard to care about.
The series, which ran for only thirteen episodes, is a real curiosity. The concepts seem to be an amalgam of ideas from other obscure detective programs. The prominence of the “impossible crime” element is reminiscent of Banacek; the protagonist being a magician calls to mind Bill Bixby’s series The Magician, and one of our leads being a conman calls to mind Tenspeed and Brownshoe. These were all programs that aired within the previous fifteen years. Like Blacke’s Magic, none of these made it long-term.
Beyond that, this is a series that doesn’t feel like the decade that produced it. I don’t say that as a criticism but more as an observation. This doesn’t feel like it fits into the same decade that gave us Murder, She Wrote; Magnum, PI; Matlock; Simon & Simon; and the Perry Mason movies. Only the trappings (clothes, cars, and some of the elements of the solution) feel of its time. The style of the story and the way the two leads relate wouldn’t have been out of place in a 1940s B-detective film. I liked it, but I could definitely see why audiences in 1986 might not have gone for it.
Still, this was a fun curiosity, boosted by a strong performance from Cesar Romero.
We continue our reviews of Batman actors in other detective and mystery programs as part of our Amazing World of Radio Summer Series, focusing on their old-time radio work. This week, our focus is on Van Johnson, who played the Minstrel, and I’m posting a review of an episode of Murder She Wrote in which he appeared. (Note: A version of this was posted in 2019 in support of our Summer of Angela Lansbury series.) This episode was the eighth episode of Murder She Wrote that aired on November 25, 1984. It is available on Amazon.
The Review:
In the middle of a baseball game at the Cabot Cove Founder’s Day Picnic, a car chases a wealthy out-of-town businessman, hits him, and disappears. Several witnesses testify that no one was driving. The same car then runs down the businessman’s partner.
The businessman claims they were there at the invitation of a disgruntled former employee, Daniel O’Brien (Van Johnson), who wanted to meet with them. O’Brien is an inventor who had made plans for the driverless car and jumps to the top of the suspect’s list.
What Works
Murder by remote-controlled vehicle is a novel murder method, particularly for 1984.
Cabot Cove is very much a work in progress at this point as the show tries to grasp the feel of it. There’s a nice scene that captures the spirit of many small towns when a grocery store clerk points out O’Brien is an out-of-towner and Jessica points out that he’s lived there six years which leaves the clerk unimpressed.
It also feels like they’re still establishing Sheriff Tupper (Tom Bosley), who is a bit out of his depth about the whole case. I like the scene where Jessica provides him with a gentle and respectful nudge that gets him to stop spinning his wheels.
O’Brien has a former colleague (June Allyson) as a house guest, and the two have very sweet chemistry together.
There’s a fun discussion about driverless cars and technology that’s fascinating, if just a bit quaint for modern viewers in a time when driverless cars are becoming a reality.
What Doesn’t Work
Let’s start with the murder. The business partner is killed on a road with two shoulders, and he faced a choice. He could run up a hill with an impossibly high grade on his left, or he could run down a hill into a forest filled with trees. Our victim chooses to run up the hill, which he can’t climb, and the car hits him. If he had run into the forest he would have been fine.
While I can believe the victim panicked and did something stupid, it makes the killer’s plan look a bit haphazard, because the whole thing could have been avoided with common sense.
In the scene that made the teaser for the episode, Jessica is trapped in the remote-controlled car as it careens towards the edge of a cliff. It looks exciting, but in context, it makes little sense.
Tupper had spent an entire day searching for anywhere the car might have gone, hadn’t found it, and decided to go with the theory that a large truck had driven it away. Jessica points out that there’s a place that Tupper hadn’t looked. Tupper refuses to go check, complaining about his budget, and so Jessica goes off by herself, finds the car, and gets inside it. The killer, watching from an ominous van, remotely locks Jessica in, and guides the car down the highway, following it through Cabot Cove, towards the edge of a cliff over the ocean … and then stops it.
This is a scene where nothing makes sense. Tupper is unrealistically stubborn. Jessica has no reason to get in the car and get behind the wheel. The killer has no reason to send Jessica on a scary ride through Cabot Cove unless they were going to kill her, which they weren’t.
It’s true the car needed to be found as part of the killer’s plan, but once it’s found, mission accomplished. They did the remote-controlled chase for no good reason and exposed the van they were driving in to scrutiny. You can interpose your own reason for this, such as equipment failure or the killer losing their nerve, but that’s the audience having to fix the writer’s mistake as you won’t find it in the episode.
The clue to solve the case is simple, but a little bit too simple. I pretty much had guessed the involved parties already but didn’t feel too smart for doing so.
Overall: This episode is flawed and continues an odd streak in Murder She Wrote’s first season where episodes set on the West Coast are way better than the East Coast stories.
Still, it’s got one of the more interesting premises so far and you also have June Allyson and Van Johnson bringing some golden age magic. So despite its flaws, this episode is far more entertaining than it deserves to be and makes for good viewing.
Rating: 3.75 out of 5 This post contains affiliate links, which means that items purchased from these links may result in a commission being paid to the author of this post at no extra cost to the purchaser.
We continue our reviews that focus on Batman actors in other detective and mystery programs as part of our Amazing World of Radio Summer Series, focusing on their old-time radio work. This week, our focus is on Ethel Merman.
She guest starred in a 1965 episode of the anthology series, The Kraft Suspense Theater, in “Twixt the Cup and the Lip,” a comedic heist story. A gallery employee (Larry Blyden) is fired by his employer for being far too honest, after telling two gallery patrons that a $2 million scepter was overpriced. He’s given two weeks working notice before his employment is terminated. His fiancee complains that he’s a doormat. So the employee does the only things he can do: start taking long lunches and coming in late now that the boss has fired him anyway. He dons a turtleneck sweater and cap (a sure sign in the mid-1960s of a heel turn), and hatch a multi-person conspiracy to steal the scepter with the aide of a corrupt ex-cop (Charlie McGraw), his landlady (Merman), a washed-up actress, and her daughter (Lucille Burnside), a wannabe actress.
The episode is fairly entertaining. It’s easy to sympathize with most of the characters to an extent except the sleazy ex-cop. Merman adds to every scene she’s in and manages to make the most of a small part. The plot itself has a few turns, as some of the co-conspirators begin plotting double-crosses. At least one of these felt a bit forced. The ending is fun, but a little bit too pat. Still, Larry Blyden turns in a really earnest and fun performance as the protagonist, and Ethel Merman adds just a touch of star power to make “Twixt the Cup and the Lip” a thoroughly watchable bit of 1960s television.
Peter Falk first played Columbo in 1968. However, the character first came to television in 1960, played by Bert Freed in a one-off episode of The Chevy Mystery Show a 1960 Summer Anthology show. This original television performance made its way onto the Internet. (More on how that happened later on.) So I took a look at the OG Columbo story.
“Enough Rope”, the episode featuring Freed as Columbo, would later be expanded by writers and Columbo co-creators Richard Levinson and William Link, first into a stage play and then as the mystery movie that would introduce Falk as Columbo – Prescription: Murder. The basic plot of both “Enough Rope” and Prescription: Murder is the same. Dr. Roy Fleming (played by Richard Carlson in “Enough Rope”), a New York psychiatrist, murders his wife and, with the help of his mistress, gives himself a perfect alibi. He arrives to find the bumbling police Lieutenant Columbo (Freed) investigating the case, and it becomes apparent as the episode goes on that Columbo knows Fleming did it.
The biggest surprise about this episode is that it’s in color, which was rare for television in the 1960s. Although given the relatively small number of color sets in the US at the time, it’s safe to say most people who saw it watched it in black and white. The color is great and a real treat for this episode. The episode was not aired live, but it was recorded live, so that if a line was flubbed or a minor mistake was made, the cast just moved on. This gives the production a bit of a stage play feel.
There’s a temptation to compare Freed’s performance to Falk’s iconic take on the character, which isn’t fair. Not only wouldn’t Falk take on the role until 1968, the fairly unrumpled NYPD detective Falk portrayed in the first Columbo film, Prescription: Murder, bore little resemblance to how we think of the character today. That character wouldn’t be really formed until 1971. So given that Freed’s performance came before Falk’s, and before Thomas Mitchell’s stage performance, it deserved to be evaluated on its own merits.
Freed was a skilled character actor and does a great job creating a detective character for which there wasn’t much precedent. On first impression, Freed seemed a lovable chubby oaf of a detective, only to show more and more flashes of his true cunning. You can also see some of the genesis of the ideas that would define the Columbo character.
I like Carlson as Fleming more than Gene Barry in the same role in Prescription: Murder. He’s a little more believable as a psychiatrist. He runs the gamut of emotions nicely as the walls close in and he finds himself in a battle of wits with Columbo.
While Freed and Carlson are terrific, the rest of the cast is just okay. The series was hosted by Walter Sleazak in those early days when TV anthologies had hosts. Some, like Ronald Reagan on the General Electric Theater, added charm and warmth. Others, like Rod Serling or Alfred Hitchcock added a bit more atmosphere to the strange tales they told. Sleazak adds nothing. He’s just a guy having a smoke while recapping the episode so far for anyone tuning in late.
The ending to the story is a bit mixed for me. I’ve always felt that Prescription: Murder, with its feature-length runtime, is too long. With “Enough Rope”, I find myself thinking that an hour is a bit short for this mystery. The length of Columbo episodes during the 70s is really just right. The result in “Enough Rope” is relatively simple, although in style, the final clue definitely has the feel of some later Columbo episodes. I don’t quite care for the clinching moment which resolves the battle of wits between Flemming and Columbo in a less satisfying way. It’s not bad for a 1960s Mystery Anthology show but it gives me more appreciation for the far better ending that Levinson and Link gave Prescription: Murder.
Overall, “Enough Rope” is a fun mystery for the era and really represents a chance to witness the first draft of Columbo and what was already there before Peter Falk came along. So it’s of interest to fans of Columbo or fans of TV mystery drama and is worth watching…while you can watch it.
Rating: 4.0 out of 5.0
How This Got on the Internet
The Paley Center at UCLA held a live online screening of “Enough Rope” in April 2021. The event was to be live and not subject to being rewatched. The portion they archived included interviews with experts. The episode showed up last year on the Internet Archive with the UCLA branding attached and was posted to YouTube. The video I’ve linked above is titled a “Remaster.” Whether this removed the UCLA branding or perhaps is from another rare copy of this program, I don’t know. The copyright on “Enough Rope” was not renewed, and so this episode is in the public domain. I’m not certain what recourse anyone could have. But it’s early days and the circumstances of the release of the episode leaves me uncertain whether this will remain on the Internet forever.
Tales of Wells Fargo is set in the 1870s and 1880s. This episode came from a sixth and final season where the show expanded its format to an hour and went from black-and-white to color.
In “New Orleans Trackdown,” a Wells Fargo stage is held up by two robbers. They are defeated by a passenger who uses a form of foot-fighting martial arts. However, just as stage driver Beau McCloud (Jack Ging) thinks the day has been saved, his rescuer knocks him out and takes a box from the mailbag.
It turns out that the jewelry box contained a necklace that was insured for $250,000 (nearly $7.5 million in today’s dollars, assuming the episode was set in 1880). Wells Fargo agent Jim Hardie (Dale Robertson) recognizes the description of the technique used by the second robber as a gentlemanly foot fighting technique used in New Orleans. So Hardie grabs his fanciest outfit and travels to New Orleans.
There he interviews the jeweler (Bob Bailey) who sent the necklace and insured it. He finds that it was purchased from a prominent and formerly wealthy New Orleans family who isn’t doing as well after the Civil War.
Review
Confession: I’d never seen an episode of Tales of Wells Fargo before watching this, and I can’t recommend this as an entry point, though not because the story was hard to follow. It was probably a much better show than this in its early days. In its first two seasons, Tales of Wells Fargo was a top ten show. This episode’s quality is far below that.
The most interesting thing about this episode is the oddity of seeing Bob Bailey, the voice of the most noted insurance investigator of them all, playing a beneficiary of a big insurance policy. The initial stage robbery was also pretty good.
After that, the episode really seems to move at a glacial pace. We learn that Beau McCloud got a promotion (yay, I guess) so that the series could retool for its last twenty episodes with other characters. The scenes in New Orleans are tedious, focusing on the family that sold the jewels and their inability to let the wheel-chair bound matriarch of the family know that they are no longer filthy rich. There is a point to be made there, but the show is awfully long-winded in making it.
The show could have worked with a little less time spent on the family and a little more intrigue and mystery over what happened to the necklace. However, the series undermined the sense of mystery with a character who seemed to exist to make clear who the bad guy was. It felt like the writers were unsure what to do with an hour-long run time, and the result was meandering and tedious.
As for Bob Bailey’s performance, he was fine, but there wasn’t a whole lot to his character. The writing gave Bailey little to work with.
The later episodes of Tales of Wells Fargo are only available with the Starz app. If you subscribe to Starz or can get a free trial to watch it, and you’re curious to see one of Bob Bailey’s last acting roles, than maybe it’s worth watching.
Otherwise, I can’t recommend it. “New Orleans Trackdown” is a below-average show of once-solid TV series.
“Christmas Party,” is set in the 1950s. Archie Goodwin (Timothy Hutton) agrees to create a fake marriage license to allow an enchanting dancing partner to press her boss and hot and cold romantic interest to give her a firm answering on marrying her. She invites Archie to the Christmas party of the design company her boss owns. When his boss, legendary private detective Nero Wolfe gets too pushy in insisting Archie instead drive him to an appointment, Archie to uses the license to make Wolfe believe he’s about to get married and to Wolfe’s horror, bring a woman to live in Wolfe’s house or leave Wolfe’s employ for good.
Things go wrong for Archie when the boss is murdered and the license (which could prove Archie a forger) is missing and could be found by police. It’s only when he arrives home that Archie finds how bad things are and that the honor and dignity of Nero Wolfe are at stake if they don’t solve the murder…and quickly.
This is a bit of an oddity in my Christmas viewing habits. I tend to go for uplifting traditional feel-good Christmas stories. However, “Christmas Party” is in the words of the froggy-voiced victim, “My secret public vice” entertainment-wise as I mention watching it on Twitter nearly every year.
Part of the pleasure is having an excuse to touch base with one of the best TV mystery series ever. I’d argue it’s the last great faithful adaption of old school detective fiction that we’ll ever see. The high points of the series are all present in this episode: There’s the stylish costuming and generally elegant set design that gives the series an authentic feel. There’s the marvelous ensemble cast that make up the bulk of guest characters each week. And there’s the writing that faithfully conveys Stout’s stories with a minimum of tampering.
As for the plot itself, it’s a pretty standard Rex Stout plot. Stout is the master of creating all these little worlds (usually within the realm of New York City) which are civilized on the surface but one homicide away from all the pent up hostility and petty rivalries within the group exploding to the surface. The solution is stylistic and bold, but not particularly brilliant. What makes this story standout is the Wolfe-Goodwin relationship. Despite Archie’s constant ribbing and the way they get on each other’s nerves, it transcends the mere employer-employee relationship. Mentor/mentee and Surrogate Father/Son are certainly fair ways to describe it. This story highlights the hidden warmth of what’s often a tempestuous relationship in a way that’s true of the clever subtlety of Rex Stout, and that aspect does more than anything else to make it fit the season.
There are minor quibbles to be had with it. The portrayal of Lilly Rowan, a semi-important recurring character in the books, as jealous of Archie having a dance partner on another night is far from book-accurate, although it does serve to provide the episode a nice TV original bookend. And of course, the plant rooms appear and reminds fans of the one way the early 2000s series fails in comparison to its much less-regarded 1980s predecessor: in its portrayal of Wolfe’s famous room full of orchids.
This doesn’t detract from its status as a solid entry in the TV show.
Rating: Satisfactory
Note: In a crime against great television, A Nero Wolfe Mystery is not available legally on any streaming service and the DVDs are all out of print. However, the series is worth seeking out however you can find it whether through your local library, an eBay auction, or fan-posted YouTube video.
