Novel Ways to Commit Murder

 

 

This is my entry in the Classic Television Blogathon hosted by Classic Film and TV Corner

 

Who remembers Columbo? Probably close to 90% of you, I bet...

It was one of four recurring mystery series stories that ran during the 1970's. The show, The NBC Mystery Movie, was what is referred to in the language of the film industry as a "wheel" series. Originally the show would have a different character each week in a rotating fashion. One week it would be Columbo, the next week it would be McCloud (featuring Dennis Weaver as a New Mexico police deputy on loan to the New York City Police Department) and then the next week it would be McMillan and Wife (featuring Rock Hudson and Susan St. James as a husband and wife team solving murders). Additionally, for a brief period, Hec Ramsey (featuring Richard Boone as a lawman in the turn of the century old west) appeared in the mix, but that one never really took off.

The popularity of The NBC Mystery Movie series also spawned several imitations that tried to cash in on the concept. The NBC Wednesday Mystery Movie also featured a rotating group of private eyes/ police detective dramas, some of which did garner some attention. Quincy, M.E., a series featuring Jack Klugman as a medical examiner in Los Angeles, got it's start under that banner, but most of the others are probably only known to those of us who were alive at the time of the series. (I always wished Lanigan's Rabbi, a series based on the mysteries of Harry Kemelman about a Jewish rabbi who constantly found himself in the middle of crime investigation, had made it, but it never took off).

For that matter, the whole project of the additional mystery "wheel" of The Wednesday Mystery Movie never really garnered the audience that NBC hoped for. I can't really say why, because a check of the TV schedule for that night, for the most part, had it up against ABC Movie of the Week, which was just made-for TV movies, and Cannon. Cannon, which starred an overweight William Conrad as a private eye, was pretty good, to be fair, but I thought some of those stories on the NBC wheel had potential.

Although both McCloud and McMillan and Wife both had their share of popularity, neither of them really had the lasting effect that Columbo did. After all, those other two only managed to get one, that's it, one follow up TV movie in the late 80's, at the same time they were resurrecting Columbo. That series, on the other hand, got 13 follow up TV movies in the 80's and 90's. Much of this had to do with how endearing Falk was as the title character to be sure. 

But the unique thing about Columbo as a mystery series was that we, as the audience, already knew who the murderer was and how he committed said murder. The hook was watching how Columbo (Peter Falk) would gradually break it all down and come across the clues that lead him to solve the murder. All the while coming across as a scatterbrain to his potential nemesis (the murderer in question).

 

Additionally, you got to see some pretty big names featured as the "Murderer of the Week".  Over the span of the 7 seasons of the original series as well as the 13 follow up TV movies we got to see Columbo match wits with the likes of Eddie Albert, Gene Barry, Dabney Coleman, Robert Culp, Faye Dunaway, Dick van Dyke, Lee Grant, Lawrence Harvey, Janet Leigh,  Roddy McDowell, Ray Milland,  Ricardo Montalban, Leonard Nimoy, Donald Pleasence, and William Shatner.

One of the more interesting actors playing the villain in these episodes was Jack Cassidy. Although Cassidy never really hit the big time in feature films, he was a recognizable face on TV, making guest appearances on dozens of TV shows in the 60's and 70's, as well as being a face on several celebrity game shows of the era. Whether or not you know the name, you would surely recognize his face if you grew up at that time.

 

Even if you don't know who he is, you would surely be familiar with his two sons, who were also big time faces in the 70's.

 

David (left) and Shaun (right) Cassidy

 

Cassidy played the villain in three episodes of Columbo.  If he hadn't passed away in 1977, I feel sure he could have gotten the casting call to play another villain when the TV movie Columbo fad hit the airwaves back in the 90's.

So, I am going to cover two of his better performances on Columbo. A website I saw when researching this blog entry, one dedicated to the whole series (Columbophile), ranks both of these episodes in his top 5 episodes. And I wholeheartedly agree.

 

Columbo "Murder by the Book" (aired Sept. 15, 1971):

"Murder by the Book" was the 3rd episode of the first season of the series (although officially, it was the first of the actual season run, since the first two were "one off" TV movies airing in winter of 1967-68 and the winter of 1970-71).

The central story is that Ken Franklin (Jack Cassidy) and Jim Farris (Martin Milner) have a successful tour as the writing team who created an amateur sleuth named Mrs. Melville. I say "team" because both their names are on the cover, but it becomes evident early on that Farris has been doing the bulk of the writing and that Franklin has been just the face you see on TV and in public. Franklin, according to Farris' wife, Joanna (Rosemary Forsyth), hasn't written a word of the Mrs. Melville books in years.

 

So Farris and Franklin have decided to terminate the partnership. Or Farris has determined that at least. It turns out that Franklin has a different termination in mind...

In a rather intricate plot, Franklin lures Farris to his cabin in the boondocks south of LA. Farris, although reluctant, agrees.  He even agrees to phone Joanna and claim he is "working late" at the office, so that Joanna thinks he is still in LA. When Franklin gets Farris to the cabin, he shoots his partner, all while Farris is on the phone with his wife, giving her the "ruse" that Franklin gave him to use.

In preparation, just before the pair leave LA, Franklin ransacks Farris office to give the impression that there was something going on in Farris own private life. Franklin has concocted a story that Farris was supposedly working on a new book which was supposed to be an expose of East Coast syndicate (read "Mafia", although that word is never used.)

 

Columbo is on the scene at the office, although as a homicide detective he is only there on his own initiative, since there is no indication that a homicide has been committed as yet. Franklin, having been called at his cabin by Joanna, commits his first mistake, in Columbo's thinking, by driving back to LA instead of flying.

The plot thickens when Franklin dumps the body on his front lawn, and tells Columbo that it is apparently a warning from the Mob, even though, as he admits, he, Franklin, had nothing to do with Farris new book idea. Columbo is slightly confused, since when Franklin called the police about the body, he was at the same time opening his mail. Why would anyone bother with opening their mail when there was a dead body on his front lawn, Columbo wonders.

In the meantime Franklin has to deal with Lily La Sanka (Barbara Colby), a woman who owns a store near Franklin's cabin.  Lily has an unrequited infatuation with Franklin, but she also saw Franklin with Farris just before Farris was murdered. So she knows that Farris was not in his office, but at the cabin. Instead of going to the police with her information, she tries to blackmail Franklin, offering to keep her knowledge to herself in exchange for $15,000.

 

Knowing that this is a loose end he must clean up, Franklin ends up luring Lily to a rendezvous where he kills her. Now he has two murders on his hands.  He tries to convince Columbo that he barely knew Lily, but Columbo finds an autographed copy of the new Mrs. Melville book with an inscription that reads "to my darling Lily" which  indicates to Columbo that their relationship was not so nearly as distant as Franklin intimated.

Little things like that keep Columbo hot on the scent of Franklin as the guilty party. What with the fact that Joanna has already told Columbo that Franklin's input into most of the Mrs. Melville books was negligible, and the fact that Farris had the habit of writing down brief ideas on scraps of paper and matchbooks, Columbo finds a piece of paper that pretty much encapsulates what Franklin did in reality. And Columbo presses Franklin with the evidence.

It turns out, in the denouement, that the idea that was on the paper was actually the "only good idea" that Franklin had ever posited during their partnership. 

The series just barely getting started there are a few things that became a regular part of the series that are missing from this episode.  For one thing, the classic "oh, just one more thing" line that would often be a part of the series never happens in this episode. But even without some of those quirks that would later endear the character to the audience, the episode clicks.  And of course, one of those things is an excellent villain. Cassidy is definitely one of the more believable and more sinister villains of the series.

A couple of other things: This was an early effort by Steven Spielberg as a director. Spielberg was still basically an unknown in Hollywood, still several years away from Jaws, but he had done some directing in TV by this time, in particular a segment of the first episode of Rod Serling's follow up to The Twilight Zone, Night Gallery. Also this was an early effort by scriptwriter Steven Bochco, who would later come to fame as a writer and creator for such shows as Hill Street Blues and L.A. Law.

 

 

Columbo "Publish or Perish" (aired Jan. 18, 1974):

Riley Greenleaf (Jack Cassidy) has a problem. Greenleaf is a publisher and his cash cow, the very talented Alan Mallory (Mickey Spillane) is about to jump ship and sign with another publisher. 

 

Greenleaf is so adamant about not having his prize writer go to a competitor that he is willing to kill off the man.  As such he has hired a would-be assassin, Eddie Kane (John Chandler), to break in to Mallory's apartment and shoot him.

 

But Greenleaf isn't going to do this without setting himself up with an alibi, because, after all, being that he has shown some reluctance to let bygones be bygones, obviously he would be the first candidate to be investigated should anything happen to Mallory. So he makes damn sure that his assassin knows that he should kill Mallory at a specific time, thus making an alibi that Greenleaf sets up for himself eliminate him as a suspect.

But Greenleaf has an even more devious mind than just that. He has Kane use a gun that will prove to only have Greenleaf's fingerprints on it. And to leave the gun and the key (which only Greenleaf supposedly has the second copy) on the floor of Mallory's apartment.

Meanwhile Greenleaf sets himself up with his alibi.  He is (supposedly) getting drunk in a town far away from the murder scene. And not only that, but just to put the final candle on the cake, he intentionally runs into another car in the parking lot as he is leaving the bar, one which has a husband and wife in it, thus establishing that he was nowhere near Mallory's place when he was shot.

 

So when Columbo arrives on the scene, he finds the key and also the gun. Open and shut case, thinks Columbo. Not only that, but initially Greenleaf says he can't remember where he was last night.  He woke up in the drunk tank at the jail is all he can remember. He has to admit that the evidence seems to prove that he actually did kill Mallory, probably in a drunken rage.    

 But fortunately for Greenleaf a call comes in from his insurance agent. He was in an accident in a parking lot of a bar across town. Relieved, Greenleaf says it's a good thing those people came forward. Except, Greenleaf makes his first stumble, because no one had said the accident involved more than one person... So how would he know there was more people than one in the car.

 

These things never get by Columbo. He points it out to Greenleaf, but of course Greenleaf manages to worm his way out of the faux pas... so he thinks.  But in addition there is the problem of the key.  How did the killer get the key?  Conveniently Greenleaf says he was in the habit of keeping it in his glove compartment in his car and it appears that both were stolen at some point.

But the key found in the apartment doesn't open the lock on the door.  Mallory had changed the locks a few weeks before. Greenleaf thinks he's in trouble, but he manages to get a new key for the door.  And he goes to see Eddie.  He poisons Eddie, who was a loose end anyway, plants the key on him. He thin types up a rough draft of the script that Mallory was working on, thus making it seem that Eddie had the original idea and killed Mallory and framed Greenleaf in the mix. And blows up the apartment, making it seem that Eddie, who was a demolitions expert, accidentally blew himself up.

 

The problem with the outline was that Greenleaf, who had been getting updates on Mallory's story because he was bribing a messenger for the typing service that was typing up the story from Mallory's vocal tapes, was going by the current story line. So, even though the incriminating plot outline that he left in Eddie's office seems to indicate that Mallory and Greenleaf had stolen Eddie's idea, there is no way that Eddie's "original" idea was really his, because Mallory had changed the ending only a few days ago.

The reason Mallory had changed the ending was that there was an interest in filming the story for a movie, starring Rock Hudson, but the original idea had the main character die, and Hollywood demanded the change. Because "for $100,000 you don't kill Rock Hudson". Mallory had edited his original outline to leave the central character of the novel alive at the end, not dead as he had originally envisioned it. So, in essence, Eddie could not have come up with the idea 9 months before after all.

Not only do you get Falk in his usual scatterbrained manner discerning the clues, and Jack Cassidy who probably is one of the better actors to play a villain on Columbo, but you get the added bonus of John Chandler's absolutely unhinged ex-Vietnam vet. Chandler's screen time is fairly brief, since he is after all just a secondary character, but I really believed he could have pulled off the things he does.  

One of the reasons that Eddie is willing to do this deed is that Greenleaf has promised to publish Eddie's own book, one on how to make bombs the right way.  This is one of the plot points that I found slightly unbelievable, because what publisher in his right mind would publish such a book? 

(Of course, a guy named William Powell had written a book in 1971, The Anarchist's Cookbook, which detailed how to do such things, but that book was published underground, not by a reputable publisher. BTW, according to a note on Amazon, the author himself has tried to take that book out of circulation as he claims he no longer agrees with what he wrote. Given the time of the show, 1974,  it would still have been relevant to some sects of society, since the ultimate goal of such groups, the end of the Vietnam War, was still a year or so way.)

 

There are a lot of details that become relevant at later points in the story, so this is one you have to be on your toes to watch.  In some of the episodes you could doze off for a few minutes and not miss much, but this one requires that you keep your full attention on it lest you miss some intricate clue. I will say that I agree with the rankings of the writer of the aforementioned blog, Columbophile, on these two episodes taken only for their position in his ranking. "Publish or Perish" is a better episode than "Murder by the Book", and it is more satisfying in the long run, although the way that Cassidy's character concedes defeat at the end is little to quick.  It seems to me that there is still some wriggle room for Greenleaf to get out of it even with the evidence that Columbo has stacked up against him.

Either way, these two episodes are a great introduction (or re-introduction, as the case may be) to the character of Columbo. If you are not blessed with access to a compilation of the series you can still access some of the episodes online.  The Columbophile blog has some of them here, including these two.

Well, that's it for now.  

Quiggy