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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Mike Hammer Doesn't Meet Columbo

Mickey Spillane guest starred as a victim in the 1974 Columbo episode "Publish or Perish". Like most victims on the show, he's not around for long, not like his starring role in The Girl Hunters more than a decade earlier. He didn't quit his day job as a pulp writer, which is probably for the best. He more or less comes off well playing a pulp writer on Columbo. Not writing detective stuff, as Spillane did in real life, but Vietnam war stuff.

The villains are two--a publisher (Jack Cassidy) and the explosives nut (John Chandler) he hires to kill Spillane. Chandler gives an effective, over the top performance, almost on the level of Frank Gorshin--he seems like a real maniac. He does the job for Cassidy in the hopes Cassidy will publish the book he's written on homemade bombs.

Cassidy is more of a deliciously cheesy '70s TV villain. Columbo's tactic for outsmarting him is clever and pretty satisfying for anyone who likes to analyse writing.

Landing Landau(s)

The only thing more dangerous than Martin Landau is a pair of Martin Landaus. But their opponent is Lieutenant Columbo in the 1973 episode "Double Shock", an episode that also features Paul Stewart, Jeanette Nolan, and Julie Newmar.

Newmar's pretty scrumptious, too, playing the fiancée of murder victim Paul Stewart. She's overenthusiastic and her performance is as wonderfully campy as you might expect from the former Catwoman. She's a welcome spectacle but Landau provides something a bit stronger in two roles as the twin brothers implicated in the murder.

Which one of them did the deed, though? Like many murderers on Columbo, they stood to inherit a lot of money. Landau is amazing at subtly differentiating the two between a gregarious TV host and a repressed banker with a gambling addiction.

There's also small but very rewarding plot garnish between Columbo and the murder victim's housekeeper played by Jeanette Nolan. Peter Falk shows up masterfully again playing a man heavily sleep deprived. As his cigar drops ashes on the crime scene, the victim's exercise room, Nolan quite justifiably is enraged by the disrespect. I was so happy for a scene like this to show that Columbo's untidiness is not a quirk without consequences. Though, of course, it indirectly leads to his discovering a clue.

Columbo is available with commercials on Amazon Prime.

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Substitute Pieces

For anyone who plays chess, "The Most Dangerous Match", the 1973 episode of Columbo, holds plenty of points of interest. The writers clearly had more than casual knowledge of chess and the competitive chess world, drawing together a plot about rival grandmasters that feels credible, as far as their personalities, and satisfying, in terms of the murder motive.

Laurence Harvey, father of the bounty hunter Domino, plays grandmaster Emmett Clayton who happens to have a personal connexion to his opponent, Tomlin Dudek (Jack Kruschen), having once been in a relationship with Dudek's assistant (Heidi Bruhl).

She takes delight in the idea of Dudek beating Clayton in the only thing he cares about. The two grandmasters end up having dinner together along with an impromptu game using food and cutlery. When Clayton loses, the buildup makes it very clear just how badly it cuts his pride and sense of identity. His desire to not only murder Dudek but to make the death as humiliating as possible for him makes perfect sense to any serious player who's had a losing streak.

But in that kind of chess, no grandmaster can compare with Columbo (Peter Falk). Falk's great, of course, putting the screws into Harvey and Harvey, who died that same year, is pretty good, never playing it as an over the top maniac, just as a terribly sensitive man.

Columbo is available on Amazon Prime with commercials.

Murder Most Illogical

It's Columbo verses Spock in "A Stitch in Crime", a 1973 episode of Columbo. Well, Leonard Nimoy, anyway, two years before his I am Not Spock autobiography. In 1973 he was still playing Spock in animated form but the murderous surgeon he plays here is indeed pretty far from the Vulcan science officer. It's a good episode though more for Peter Falk than Nimoy.

An especially dishevelled Columbo shows up to the crime scene with a hard boiled egg, asking if there's any coffee. He explains to suspects and witnesses throughout the episode how he hasn't had much sleep. The effect is sort of like Super Columbo, it's pretty charming, especially when he loses his temper at Nimoy who seems to outright taunt him at one point.

Anne Francis, who'd appeared in the season one episode "Short Fuse", returns as a different character, the murder victim who spots Nimoy's attempt kill another victim by using temporary suture instead of permanent suture in a heart surgery. Pretty clever, really.

Columbo is available on Amazon Prime with commercials.

When Columbo Fought Cassavetes

John Cassavetes seems an odd fit for a Columbo episode but he makes for a good one. It's not surprising considering Cassavetes directed Peter Falk in several films. The two must have got on very well and certainly they have a fascinating chemistry as actors in this episode, "Etude in Black", which was directed by Nicholas Colasanto (who played Coach on Cheers).

Also somewhat out of place is Blythe Danner as Cassavetes' wife. I would not want to try eating natto with hair like that.

Usually the guest cast includes older movie stars or C list actors from the 60s. The former is represented here by Myrna Loy in a very small role but Cassavetes, as murderer and maestro, dominates the episode with an angry, maniacal performance.

He murders his beautiful pianist lover so that his wife doesn't find out. Unfortunately for him, Columbo is hot on his trail. The detective's technique for getting under the skin of suspects with impertinent rambling is particularly good here. Several scenes start with him doing something slightly strange that later turns out to be legitimately important. Like one scene where Cassavetes shows up at his mechanic's to find Columbo playing around in his car.

Turns out Columbo was checking the mileage to figure out that the car had travelled the distance to the victim's home and back on the night of the murder.

Cassavetes' character all but froths at the mouth. There are a few genuinely unnerving moments where he gets angry and you think he might kill someone else without premeditation. He dresses really well, though. I really want these red boots:

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A Rumpled Coat and a Keen Nose

I'm five episodes in on the first season of Columbo and already the great detective's methods are getting to seem more uncanny than anything. I just finished "Lady in Waiting" last night, from December, 1971, written by Steven Bochco. Bochco at least goes to the trouble of making the villain played by Susan Clark rather sloppy.

I love how we get footage of how she imagines the crime will go--her victim, her brother, coming up to their mansion, finding his key is missing, and then coming in through her glass door so she can "accidentally" shoot him under the pretence of thinking he's a burglar. It all goes wrong when it turns out he has a spare key hidden in the floor pot. Even so, Columbo (Peter Falk) solves the crime with pretty tremendous inferences about grass stains on shoes and a late edition of the newspaper sitting on the table by the door.

It's no wonder he turns out to be an angel in Wings of Desire. I mean, it's fortunate Peter Falk's weird charm makes Steven Bochco's writing seem magical instead of corny. Never underestimate a man with a dead eye. Peter Falk sure would've been a great Odin.

Some of it's carefully contrived, of course. I'm on the fence over whether I like how he buttons only the bottom button of his suit jacket. On a three button jacket like that you're supposed to only button the middle one. Wearing it like this once or twice makes him seem like he dressed in a rush or in distraction but every episode is a bit much. I love the earth tones and the green tie, though, and it's great how his dusty old brown car perfectly goes with his ensemble.

Every episode seems to have a special guest star, the best so far being Ray Milland in "Death Lends a Hand" and Suzanne Pleshette in "Dead Weight", the former giving the silly story an improbable sense of gravity and the latter just as delightfully doing the opposite alongside a murderer played by Eddie Albert.

Columbo is available on Amazon Prime via imdbTV, free with commercials.

From Page to Screen

After two pilot episodes in which, particularly the first one, the action was often confined to sound stages, the first regular episode of Columbo, "Murder by the Book", gets a massive upgrade with director Steven Spielberg at the helm. The 1971 episode comes long before he became an established name as a feature film director but the episode greatly benefits from Spielberg's talent for dynamic visuals already in ample evidence.

An early shot establishes the murder victim (Martin Milner) working in his high rise office before the camera tracks out through a window to show the murderer (Jack Cassidy) arriving far below. No cardboard sky backdrop for Mr. Spielberg.

The teleplay by Steven Bochco concerns two writing partners who have created a series of murder mystery books together with a female protagonist somewhat like Miss Marple. The almost immediately coy and adversarial relationship between Cassidy and Columbo (Peter Falk) has the murderer condescendingly giving our hero a stack of books to learn how it's done. And Columbo, of course, is never put off balance, happily reading all of them and gushing like a fan boy next time he sees Cassidy.

Columbo's introduction in the episode is subdued--as usual, he appears separate from the other cops in a strangely mundane circumstance, in this case by a water cooler to meet the victim's wife (Barbara Colby). The contrast with the smug and bitter Cassidy is great. In these first three episodes, the relationship between detective and murderer doesn't usually seem to be about what the two are doing to each other now, trying to break each other down now, as watching both see how well they've lain the groundwork for their plans to execute themselves. It's like watching two inventors stand back while their robots fight each other.

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Raincoat Chic

You should never underestimate the shabby lieutenant with the glass eye. That's what I've gleaned so far from watching the two pilot episodes of Columbo. The first, from 1968, is better written but has lower production values while the second, from 1971, has better production values and isn't as well written. Both were directed by Richard Irving and written by Richard Levinson and William Link, both are entertaining, the second one is slightly better.

The first one is about a psychiatrist (Gene Barry) who kills his wife for her money and the second one is about a lawyer (Leslie Williams) who kills her husband for his money. Both cases allow for striking contrast between Columbo's rumpled raincoat and the culprit's swanky digs, especially the second one, where the murderess puts her feet up in a mansion that looks vaguely like something out of a Cocteau film.

The first episode, which had its origins as a stage play from years earlier, has a more complex, well thought out plot. The psychiatrist's plan for covering up his crime, and his relationship his attractive mistress, are more complicated, though the cheapness of the penthouse set detracts a bit from verisimilitude.

For the big chunk of the episode before Columbo shows up, well over twenty minutes, it feels like fourth rate Hitchcock. Then Peter Falk walks in and things get interesting.

The cat and mouse between him and the murderer is entrancing as we watch Falk to see how much of his discomfort is feigned and how much of what he lets slip is his genuine obsession. The second pilot makes the wise decision to bring him in almost from the beginning, bumbling about the murderess' palatial porch, looking for a lost pen.

The plot here, slightly inspired by Double Indemnity (which appears briefly on a television screen) involves the inconvenient daughter of the murdered man. Columbo capitalises on the girl's suspicions in a climax that doesn't quite make sense but is amusing enough you forgive it.

Columbo is available on Amazon Prime with limited commercials via imdb.