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
