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Post by mikef6 on Jul 13, 2020 17:49:50 GMT
M Squad. Season 1, Episode 4 “Pete Loves Mary” Directed by Bernard Girard. October 11, 1957. Half-hour Dragnet-style police procedural with Lee Marvin as detective Frank Ballinger with the elite Chicago Police department, M Squad. When convicted killer Pete Wikowlski (Mike Connors) breaks prison and starts to leave dead bodies in his wake, Ballinger checks in on Wikowlski’s mother. She considers her son Pete to be dead but says her other son, Steve (Bobby Driscoll) is a good boy. Ballinger, though, suspects (correctly) that Pete has been in touch with Steve. Ballinger is determined not only to capture Pete but to save Steve from his brother’s influence. Like Dragnet, Lee Marvin narrates throughout, filling in narrative gaps so the story can fit a 25-minute format. Mike Connors later had his own detective series, “Mannix,” 8 seasons from 1967 to 1975. Bobby Driscoll is one of the most famous tragic stories about the rise and fall of movie stars. He was 20 years old in this episode, growing out of some wonderful years as a popular and critically acclaimed child star. Within a couple of years his life took a steep downward turn from which he never recovered. He was homeless and initially unidentified when his body was found in an abandoned NYC building in 1968. Sometimes Real Life can be more noir-ish than the movies.   Johnny Staccato. Ep. 25 “The Mask Of Jason” Directed by Paul Henried. March 3, 1960. Only one season of 27 episodes. Critics compared it unfavorable to “Peter Gunn.” Johnny (John Cassavetes) was a former jazz pianist turned P.I. He worked out of a club owned by Waldo (Eduardo Ciannelli). Waldo asks Johnny to take a job as bodyguard to a potential beauty and talent contest winner, Bonnie Howard (Mary Tyler Moore). She is being stalked by a man with a badly scarred face. What follows is a Spoiler but maybe a spoiler that will make you want to see this episode. It turns out that the scarred man is a gentle soul injured in a fire. Bonnie was his wife who left him because of his looks, divorced him by mail, and changed her name. All he wants is to talk to her once to convince her to come back to him. But she is exceedingly cruel and pulls a gun threatening to kill him. Here we get some serious noir lighting to make Mary's face look evil. I don’t think she had another opportunity to show a dark side until her Oscar nominated performance in “Ordinary People” (1980). For more Mary Tyler Moore early TV, see Richard Diamond, just below.   Richard Diamond, Private Detective. S.1 Ep. 1 “The Mickey Farmer Case” Directed by Roy Del Ruth. July 1, 1957. Richard Diamond had been a popular radio program with the lead voiced by Dick Powell. When Diamond came to TV, Powell recommended the younger David Janssen for the role. This half-hour mystery ran for 4 seasons. Each of the seasons after the first, set in a night time New York City with wet streets, saw a format change, e.g. the second season, under the influence of “77 Sunset Strip,” finds Diamond in sunny southern California and driving a convertible with a car phone. The next two seasons also saw changes in location and cast. In this premiere episode, a wounded fugitive, the title Mickey Farmer, with a hostage demands to talk to Richard Diamond. Farmer wants Diamond to protect his innocent girlfriend from his former partner who was a double-crosser. Now, let’s venture into myth busting territory and the old trivia chestnut about how the woman at Diamond’s telephone service, Sam, whose face is never seen, was Mary Tyler Moore. Well, the Real Deal is that Sam did not arrive on the show until the last two seasons and MTM only played her for 12 of Season 3’s 34 episodes.  
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Post by mikef6 on Jul 15, 2020 18:12:56 GMT
Martin Kane, Private Eye. S.2, Ep 17 “Movie Theater Murder” February 15, 1951. One-half hour. NBC. Martin Kane must have been a Time Lord because over its 5-year run, the title role was played by four different people. The first two seasons were unique for several reasons: first, the same actor, William Gargan, was on board for the longest run of any; two, the shows were broadcast live with all the blunders that come with live TV (in the story I watched, at 3:52, a TV camera enters the frame then quickly withdraws); and last, because the show was live, the commercials were worked into the play. A smoke shop owner named Happy was a gathering place for the cast members who would then converse about their favorite tobacco: Old Briar, Dill’s Best, Model, Tweed, and Copenhagen – all loose tobacco products for pipes, rolling cigarettes, and “dipping,” all from the United States Tobacco Company. The mystery itself is a good one with Kane picking up on a point in the random blather of a talkative Greek-American (Harold J. Stone) who won’t shut up no matter who yells at him.  Harold J. Stone, center  Mike Hammer. S.1, Ep. 1. “The High Cost Of Dying” January 7, 1958. One-half hour. Syndicated. 2 seasons, 78 total episodes. Hammer is not the vengeful vigilante of the books but Darin McGavin can be tough enough when he has to. The plot of the Hammer pilot shares some plot points with the S.1, Ep1 of Richard Diamond, the previous year (reviewed in the O.P.): the private eye is hired by a dying convict/criminal whose wife is under threat because of missing loot from a previous job. But the two differ in many details. There is a surprising amount of outdoor location footage as Hammer is required to drive to an upstate lake and take a motor boat out on the water.  Hammer takes some heat from his cop buddy, Pat Chambers  Philip Marlowe. One season. Ep. 1. “The Ugly Duckling” October 6, 1959. One-half hour. ABC. 26 total episodes. For me, Philip Carey would not be my first choice for playing Raymond Chandler’s famous Eye earlier embodied by Humphrey Bogart and Dick Powell. Carey seemed to me to be more suited for lighter, more intellectual fare, like Ellery Queen. But I was surprised to find that he was the most serious, the most uncompromising, never smiling, lead actor of any I have reviewed on this thread. He quite good. However, even though Carey is more tightly wound than the others, he is not distinctly Marlowe. He could have been named anything and no one would think of Marlowe. Still, this pilot episode is well acted with several now well-known and recognizable supporting players: Barbara Bain (Emmy winner for Mission: Impossible 10-years later) as an evil seductress, William Schallert, Rhys Williams, Virginia Gregg, and James Griffith.  Barbara Bain 
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Post by mikef6 on Jul 28, 2020 18:36:13 GMT
“Racket Squad” S.2, Ep. 18. “Accidentally On Purpose” January 3, 1952. “Racket Squad” was produced in 1950 to be syndicated to local stations but was picked up by CBS where it ran for three seasons (June 7, 1951 – September 28, 1953). Reed Hadley stars as Captain Braddock, the head of the police division that investigates crimes involving fraud and con games. Its purpose was to educate the first generation of TV watchers about common scams. This episode concerns a shady used car dealer (John Doucette) and his fast talking salesman (Billy Halop, formally from the Dead End Kids). The episode went into quite a bit of technical detail about how junker cars can be jerry rigged to look and feel like a prize purchase long enough to get it off the lot. Hadley ended every show making the most of his deep speaking voice by addressing the audience directly and saying, “I’ll close this case now, or rather, the courts will. But there will be others because that’s the way the world is built. Remember, there are people who can slap you on the back with one hand and pick your pocket with the other. And it could happen to you.”   "Peter Gunn" S.1. Ep. 1 “The Kill” September 22, 1958. Many of the most remembered TV shows from the 1960s only ran for two or three seasons. “Peter Gunn” was one of those, playing at first on NBC. After its first two seasons, it was dropped by NBC and then picked up by ABC. ABC made a few format changes ("Mother's" was no longer Gunn's headquarters and Mother herself (Hope Emerson) was gone along with her jazz club), but canceled after one season. It must have had a dedicated core audience (I was among it), but not seen widely. In the first episode, Gunn (Craig Stevens) is asked by Mother to talk to gangster George Fallon (Gavin MacLeod, later of The Mary Tyler Moore Show and The Love Boat) about the protection money he wants her to pay. Fallon not only refuses to relent but sends a message along with a bomb to Mothers, sending Gunn out for justice. Also with series regulars Lola Albright as Gunn’s girlfriend, a singer at the club and Herschel Bernardi as Lieutenant Jacoby of the police. Jack Weston plays Fallon’s top tough guy (who cracks pretty easily). Like so many half-hour mysteries, it needs a narrator – in this case, Gunn – to set up the plot, give us a wrap-up, or fill us in on developments that the show just didn’t have time to include.   
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Post by mikef6 on Aug 6, 2020 18:06:13 GMT
Dangerous Assignment Ep. 35 “The Venetian Story” 1952. 39 episodes total. This one season syndicated half hour adventure drama starred Brian Donlevy as government agent Steve Mitchell. Donlevy had originated the role on radio in 1940. I remember the title sequence very well from childhood. We see Donlevy walking a foggy street toward the camera. He pauses under a street light in the foreground and puffs a cigarette. Suddenly, a thrown knife sticks into the lamp post. Donlevy gives it a quick look then ducks out of the frame. Cut to the main title. In this adventure, Mitchell travels to Venice to try and recover a valuable part to a code machine that had been lost in a canal. He meets up with a couple of thugs who couldn’t have been more welcome as they are played by James Griffith and Strother Martin. As Mitchell says about them at the finish: “Those who play both ends against the middle often end up on the bottom.”   The Lone Wolf. Ep. 15 “The Las Vegas Story” July 16, 1954. 39 episodes total. A one season syndicated half hour adventure drama starred Louis Hayward as Michael Lanyard, The Lone Wolf. While visiting Las Vegas, Lanyard makes a date with Dena (Nancy Gates) but on his way runs into an old pal, Steber (Paul Langton). Langton is a detective on the San Francisco force in town to find a fugitive – his own brother. Feeling bad about the task he asks Lanyard to track down the brother for him. Seems simple enough until murder and double-crosses raise their ugly heads. Hayward plays The Lone Wolf as a true tough guy who doesn’t take being lied to lightly. The Lone Wolf had earlier been an eight picture movie series from 1939-1943. That series was a copycat of The Falcon films which was , in turn, a copycat of The Saint movies. Louis Hayward, Lanyard in this last gasp of The Lone Wolf, was the first actor to play The Saint. Thus, a circle has closed.  Louis Hayward and Dona Drake 
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Post by amyghost on Aug 6, 2020 19:32:36 GMT
Just for fun, here's a pretty well forgotten noir-esque show that ran from 1959 to 1961:  Next time you find yourself dozing off as the old inspector begins waxing nostalgic about Kleiner, Foster and Brownie, show a little respect for the man. He was one bad dude in those days. |
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Post by mikef6 on Aug 6, 2020 20:37:39 GMT
Just for fun, here's a pretty well forgotten noir-esque show that ran from 1959 to 1961: Next time you find yourself dozing off as the old inspector begins waxing nostalgic about Kleiner, Foster and Brownie, show a little respect for the man. He was one bad dude in those days. Thanks, I am going to add this to my list of Classic TV Noir. Episodes are available on YouTube, one with Burt Reynolds.
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Post by mikef6 on Aug 23, 2020 20:53:21 GMT
Naked City. S.1, Ep. 1 “Meridian” September 30, 1958. This first episode and the whole first season of “Naked City” were half-hour shows. After taking a year off, the show returned in an hour format for three more years. This begins as Jim Halloran (James Franciscus) is reporting for his first day out of uniform and in the detective bureau. He is mentored by veteran cop Dan Muldoon (John McIntire). His first case involves a couple of teenage street kids who get a gun and attempt a holdup with chaos following. As the producer tells us in voice over at the start, everything is shot on location in New York City – the streets, the buildings, the apartments – there are no studio sets.   The Lawless Years. S. 1, Ep. 8 “The Payoff” January 11, 1959. This three season series lost the race to be the first crime series set in the 1920s by about half a season. The premiere episode aired on April 16, 1959 while “The Untouchables” had started the previous January. Another unusual aspect – at least in this episode – is that the POV is not that of law enforcement but of the racketeers and criminals. James Gregory stars as Barney Ruditsky of the NYC Police but the story follows Tony Sappio (Burt Reynolds in one of his earliest movie/TV credits). Sappio is a too ambitions young punk who intends to take over the mob but gets in over his head. Ruta Lee is his girlfriend who switches her favors to Big Ed, Tony’s boss. Tony plots to get back at them both. It is worth your while to become acquainted with this series.   I Spy S.1, Ep.1 “So Long, Patrick Henry” September 15, 1965. Trivia question: who was the first African-American actor to star as a regular on a dramatic TV series in America? Well, I suspect denizens of the Classic Film Board will know right away. The answer is Bill Cosby in “I Spy.” The other distinctions of the show are location shooting all over the world (Hong Kong in this first story) and the other is the amount of violence. Robert Culp co-starred with Cosby as American spies posing as a pro tennis player (Culp) and his trainer (Cosby), but tennis almost never shows up. These guys, especially Culp, seem to have a license to kill. Five Chinese agents bite the dust in this episode. The assignment is to go to Hong Kong and meet with a former U.S. Olympic athlete (Ivan Dixon) who defected to China several years ago and try to talk him into returning home. But it is not going to be that easy. The Chinese have more sinister plans for him than a PR coup against the U.S. The episode ends with a James Bond joke about how his women come in different colors (“Goldfinger” had opened in the U.S. earlier in the year). Cicely Tyson also guest stars.  
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