The Man in Black and the Man in Brown

Johnny Cash guest-starred in one of the best episodes of Columbo I've seen, 1974's "Swan Song". He plays a gospel singer who murders his domineering wife played by Ida Lupino. I kind of wish there'd been more and juicier scenes between those two but, like most of the show's murder victims, she's not around for long. Cash is the central attraction, though, for his less professionally honed but fascinatingly raw performance.

Really, it overwhelms this typical Columbo plot so much that I suspect the writers, conscious of their inadequacy, made the story as simple as possible and let the performances suggest nuance all by themselves. A lot of the episode feels improvised, particularly a couple of odd scenes where Columbo (Peter Falk) interviews witnesses who ramble on about unrelated matters, not unlike the way Columbo himself usually does. He's amused when a funeral director insists on giving him an unsolicited sales pitch but seems more exasperated when a seamstress won't stop babbling about the prudence of ordering extra bolts of nylon.

Cash plays Tommy Brown, a gospel singer apparently famous for singing songs much more upbeat and religious than Cash was known for. Lupino's character is blackmailing him into giving all his profits to her church. She knows about his habit of sleeping with underage girls and has one of said girls ready to testify if need be. So Tommy kills them both by drugging them in his private plane--which he also pilots--and bailing out before it crashes into a mountain. In a couple days, he's already giving private, poolside concerts for bikini babes.

An odd scene for Johnny Cash, to be sure. Yet he is kind of playing himself and the episode is oddly sympathetic to him. I feel like he improvised a lot, too--something about the way he keeps calling Columbo "Columbo" instead of "lieutenant". Cash himself, of course, was known for his sympathy with criminals and it comes through in the vulnerable fury he gives vent to between bitter laughs. Columbo seems stunned half the time watching him.

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