(C) Daily Kos
This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered.
 . . . . . . . . . .



Celebrate Columbo’s Day with Stephen Spielberg and Peter Falk in “Murder by the Book” [1]

['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']

Date: 2023-10-09  

Greetings! It’s the second Monday in October, and while some people spend this day celebrating the idiot who sailed to the Caribbean and said “Yep, this sure looks like India, alright!”, around here we prefer to spend it contemplating the life and contributions of a much better person, Lieutenant Columbo. Happy Columbo’s Day, everyone!

Last year, we took a look at the very last episode of Columbo ever produced, from 2003, This year, we’re going to review the very first regular series episode of Columbo, “Murder by the Book,” which aired on NBC on September 15, 1971. If you like this, be sure to check out my earlier writeups from 2015 on.

Peter Falk had already donned the celebrated raincoat of television’s greatest detective twice before for made-for-TV movies, in 1968’s “Prescription: Murder” and 1971’s “Ransom for a Dead Man,” but “Murder by the Book” marked Columbo’s debut as a television mainstay as one-third of the NBC Mystery Movie wheel series. Jack Cassidy, who played the murderer, was more famous as a Broadway performer and father of actors David and Shaun Cassidy than he was for his TV work; despite a couple of decades of guest roles on shows such as Gunsmoke, I Spy, and Hawaii Five-O, Cassidy died too young to achieve the kind of notoriety for which he may have been destined. Of more interest to today’s audiences is the fact that this episode was directed by a very young Steven Spielberg, as one of his earliest Hollywood productions. Though the 24-year-old Spielberg had already helmed a few television episodes before stepping behind the camera for this one, “Murder by the Book” represented a new opportunity for him — the chance to establish the look and feel for a brand new series without following in the footsteps of other directors. He didn’t disappoint.

On to the show. We hear the sounds of typing as the camera tracks a sweet 1968 Mercedes-Benz 280 SE convertible down a Los Angeles city street from far above. The camera zooms out and reveals that we are in an office, and the typing is being done by Jim Ferris (Martin Milner), one-half of the writing team behind the wildly popular “Mrs. Melville” series of mystery novels. (The first typed sentence we read is “‘J’acuse,’ said Mrs. Melville, pointing at the doctor,” showing that there’s no accounting for taste.) Interrupted by an insistent knock, Jim opens an office door and finds a man pointing a revolver at him.

It’s all just a joke, as the gunman turns out to be Ken Franklin (Jack Cassidy), Jim’s writing partner on the Mrs. Melville novels. Ken exposits that the writing team has lately decided to split up, a decision that Ken is clearly unhappy about, though he gamely produces a bottle of champagne to toast “our divorce.” As Ken raises his glass, he surreptitiously places a Zippo-style cigarette lighter on a desk. Over Jim’s protests, Ken insists on taking him to Ken’s new cabin for some fishing and drinking. On the way to the car, Ken hands Jim a list of items he’d like to take from the office, but as Jim reads it it turns out to just be a list of names. Oops! Ken must have left the correct list at the office. Apparently Ken is a real scatterbrain in general, because he then declares that he forgot his lighter in the office and heads back in to pick it up. As Jim waits in the car, Ken lets himself back into the office and proceeds to trash the place. He plants the list of names in a desk drawer, retrieves the lighter, and exits the office.

Down near the cabin, Ken pulls into the parking lot of a small general store to pick up some supplies, and greets the proprietor, a toothy lady named Lilly La Sanka (Barbara Colby, who was tragically murdered in Hollywood in 1975; the LAPD reopened the case in 2019, and it remains unsolved). Lilly is enchanted to see him, and he gives her an autographed copy of a Mrs. Melville novel as a gift. (In a cute in-joke, the book is called “Prescription: Murder”—the title of the first Columbo pilot episode from 1968.) “I’d rather have the storyteller than the story,” the lovelorn Lilly says. Ken strings her along for a bit and swears he doesn’t have a date with him this time—he’s all alone, just down to do a little fishing and contemplation. In the back room, he places a phone call to Joanna (Rosemary Forsyth), Jim’s wife, and tells her he left Ken at the office and headed to the cabin.

At the cabin, Jim is feeling guilty: he promised to take Joanna out for dinner tonight, and here he is kicking back with Ken at the cabin. Ken, whom we gather has had some experience lying to women, suggests that Jim give her a call and tell her he’s stuck late at the office working to finish the book. Sitting on a tarp-covered couch, Jim is advised by Ken, who hasn’t yet taken off his driving gloves, to place a direct dial call rather than going through the operator so Joanna doesn’t know he’s not at the office. None of this is suspicious at all. As Jim talks to his wife, Ken takes out a revolver and shoots him dead.

At the writers’ office, Joanna tells the police she heard her husband being shot over the phone, while they mansplain that there’s not even a body and this all may be some big practical joke. Distraught, Joanna goes to the hallway to get a drink of water, where she is greeted by a shabby little man in a dilapidated raincoat. Yes, it’s Lieutenant Columbo (Peter Falk), in his very first regular-series appearance, looking exactly as middle-aged as he would 40 years later. Columbo purrs that the poor li’l lady must be very tired after her big ordeal and offers to drive her home.

“Driving her home” turns out to include making her an omelet in her own kitchen using her own eggs, which comes off as very presumptuous and creepy today and really ought to have raised a few red flags even in 1971. Nevertheless, Joanna puts on a pot of coffee and they talk about the case. Joanna doesn’t think much of Ken, and for good reason: “Ken hasn’t written a word of a Mrs. Melville novel in years,” she says; he preferred instead to handle all the publicity, such as appearing on talk shows and talking to film people. Columbo also learns that the writing team was breaking up, and Ken hadn’t handled it well. If Jim had started telling people he did all the writing, Columbo reasons, it would have been tough on Ken’s ego.

Their conversation is interrupted by Ken at the door, who says he just got in from San Diego and wants to check in on Joanna. “I’ll tell you something, Lieutenant,” Ken says as Joanna goes to fix him a drink. “See, if Mrs. Melville were on this case, oh, she’d be leaps and bounds ahead of you by now.” Instead of punching him, Columbo acts very interested in this Mrs. Melville, whom he claims never to have heard of. Returning to the office with the detective, Ken declares that this was a professional hit job, and goes to Jim’s desk to retrieve the list of names he gave to Jim early that morning to get his fingerprints on. The names are those of the top organized crime figures on the West Coast, and Ken explains that Jim was working on a big nonfiction mob exposé. One of those guys must have rubbed him out, Ken says. Columbo notes a minor discrepancy in the way the paper was folded, to which Ken grins and congratulates him on finally beginning to think like the fake detective lady he and Jim made up, and loads him up on Mrs. Melville novels to help him in his criminal investigation.

“Oh, Mr. Franklin, uh, there actually — there is one thing,” Columbo says on his way out the door. So close! Joanna called Ken at the cabin when she heard her husband get shot, upon which Ken got in his car and drove back to LA straight away. “You know, me, I’da taken a plane,” Columbo says. Um, really? LA is only a two-hour drive from San Diego, as the episode itself acknowledges. Even if planes took off to LA every half hour, as Columbo says, would it really save that much time to drive to the airport, buy a ticket, wait to board the plane, sit in the plane as it waits for takeoff clearance at San Diego’s single-runway airport, disembark at LAX, find a taxi, and go to Joanna’s place? Granted the process of flying was much less complicated at the time, but this was also before deregulation, so even short-hop flights would have been pretty expensive on a police lieutenant’s salary, and even a wealthy man like Ken would have had to think twice about it given that he’d then be on the hook to fly back down to retrieve his car. “Look at it this way,” Ken says, “You add up all the time it takes to drive to and from an airport, how much time do you really save?” THANK YOU. Mrs. Melville books in hand, Columbo stares thoughtfully at the novelist as if this had not occurred to him.

Later that night, Ken drives back home and calls Columbo at the cop shop. Absently opening his mail, he tells the lieutenant he’d better come over right away, because someone has dumped Jim’s body on his front lawn. The police arrive, and we get our first look at the shitty 1960 Peugeot 403 convertible that would serve as Columbo’s main hooptie for the next 40 years. Ken offers the lieutenant a drink, and Columbo requests a bourbon. On duty!? This is clearly not yet the Columbo we would come to know. Addressing the elephant in the room, Columbo notes that Jim’s death means the end of the gravy train for Ken… unless the two writers had taken out insurance policies on each other.

Changing the subject, Ken suggests that the body was dumped on his lawn to warn against getting any more involved in La Cosa Nostra’s business, capisce? Swilling his bourbon on his way out, Columbo notices the opened mail, and wonders why Ken would have gone to the trouble to open his mail after finding a body on his lawn. Really? Shock and nervous energy can make people do a lot of funny things. “I just did it to distract myself,” Ken says, making his second great point of the night. “I mean, you gotta remember one thing, that’s a great shock.” Yes, it really is. Our hero clearly is not quite on his game at this stage in his career.

In my favorite shot of the episode, Columbo and Mr. Tucker (Bernie Kuby), an insurance salesman or adjuster or something, visit a hot dog stand called Tail O’ the Pup, which is shaped like a giant hot dog. “I’m gonna have a hot dog,” says Columbo. “Oh, I guess I will too,” says Tucker. What are the odds?? Columbo has a few questions about the insurance policies Tucker’s company wrote for Ken and Jim. Tucker is reluctant to divulge confidential client information until Columbo raises the specter of a court order. I think I’m going to contact my own insurance company and find out their attitude toward divulging my private information to the police because they don’t feel like dealing with a warrant.

Cut to a theater lobby, where Ken is condescendingly explaining to his latest piece of arm candy that he had figured out the mystery by the end of the first act. They run into Lilly from the general store, who pulls Ken aside for a little chat. Ken demurs, telling her he was planning to take his date to a late supper, an answer that does not satisfy Lilly. “I suppose I’ll have to find someone else to tell my story to,” she says, all pretense of friendliness disappearing from her face. “It’s a mystery story. Very interesting, really. It’s all about this… witness.”

Ken and Lilly have gone to a fancy restaurant, probably the one Ken was going to take his date to. Lilly is having a wonderful time spending a romantic evening with the man she’s blackmailing, but Ken is more interested in learning just what exactly Lilly has been a witness to. Well, Lilly explains, the papers said Jim was killed in his office, but when Ken came into her store the other day she looked out the window and spotted Jim in Ken’s car. Ken just wants to drop the pretense and find out how much she wants. Blah blah blah, fifteen thousand dollars, Lilly says. With an oily charm, Ken says he’s happy to oblige, and they share a laugh over the whole thing.

Ding dong. Ken’s maid opens the door to find Columbo on the front porch with an armful of Mrs. Melville novels. She lets him into the parlor, where the lieutenant waits as Ken finishes up a softball interview and photo shoot for a magazine. That being over, Columbo enthuses about how much he’s enjoyed reading the books, which he thinks are the best things he’s ever read. Ken is atypically uninterested in flattery and just wants to kick Columbo out, but the thing is, Columbo checked with the phone company and learned there was a call placed from Ken’s cabin to the Ferris household on the day of the murder, so what’s up with that? Thoroughly annoyed, Ken explains that he had called Joanna to let her know that he and Jim had patched up their differences — which is true, but that was actually the call he made from the general store to provide an alibi for the murder call from the cabin.

Down south again, Ken has brought Lilly the money and the two of them are enjoying another romantic dinner at her place. Everything is all lovey-dovey and Lilly sees no indication that Ken might be viewing her as a loose end he wants to tie up permanently. Ken plays along, and eventually suggests that they row out to the middle of the lake for a swim. At long last, Lilly slowly begins to realize that a nighttime swim in a deserted lake with her blackmail victim might not be wise. Ken acts offended that she would even think such a thing, and invites her to take a look at the money. While Lilly is distracted, he slips behind her and brains her with a champagne bottle.

It looks like Ken and Lilly are going to take that nighttime swim after all, except that Lilly is dead and Ken will be returning alone. Ken rows out to the middle of the lake, dumps the body overboard along with a couple of champagne bottles, capsizes the rowboat, and swims back to shore.

Next morning, the local constabulary is on the case, and Ken watches from the dock, fishing gear in hand as divers return with the overturned boat. Later, back at the cabin, Ken is stowing his gear when he is pestered by, you guessed it, Lieutenant Columbo. It seems that Ken made the cabin sound so great that the detective thought he’d come scout the place out for a rental cabin for his next vacation. While he’s here, though, Columbo wonders if Ken knows anything about that poor Miss La Sanka who was found dead in the lake that morning. Ken says he didn’t know her very well apart from buying groceries from her from time to time. Ignoring Ken’s attempts to dissuade him from attempting to rent a cabin nearby, Columbo asks Ken what the nightlife is like in the area. “Nightlife? None,” replies Ken. “Just sleep and crickets.” Columbo finds this perplexing, because “last night I called to tell you that I was coming, but there was no one at home.” Ken seems troubled by this revelation, even though there are any number of reasons why someone might not pick up a ringing telephone at a secluded cabin — such as, for example, if they rowed out on the lake for some peace and solitude.

Columbo drives up to the general store and asks a local officer for permission to look around a bit. He goes behind the counter and into the living area attached to the shop. In typical Columbo fashion, he pokes around looking for something out of the ordinary until he stumbles upon a champagne cork on the floor. Drifting back into the front of the store as a sergeant briefs some reporters, Columbo spies a copy of a Mrs. Melville novel on a shelf behind the counter. Opening it, he finds an inscription: “To my Lili [sic], Love Always. Ken.” (The “Lilly” spelling comes from the end credits, but it’s hard to know what writer Steven Bochco and the producers really intended.)

Back in LA, Columbo lays it all out for Joanna: “It means that he knew her. It means that he knew her not casually, the way he said. It means that he knew her reasonably well.” The inscription plus the champagne cork, while not dispositive evidence, starts to look damning if you assume Ken committed the murder, as Columbo is convinced he did. Ken is living considerably above his means, Columbo says, and he needed the money from the insurance policy he took out on Jim. He correctly surmises that Lilly was blackmailing him — bank records show that Jim withdrew $15,000 yesterday and then deposited it again today. Columbo is almost there, but not quite: he needs Joanna to tell him everything she knows about the two men and their relationship. As she downloads, the detective grabs a matchbook to light his cigar… a matchbook upon which Jim had written the beginning of an idea for a mystery story. Columbo regards the matchbook, lost in thought.

Ken visits his office and finds Columbo waiting for him, his nose buried in a Mrs. Melville novel. Columbo tells the furious author that he’s there to arrest him for Jim’s murder. Ignoring Ken’s bluster, Columbo goes through the unimpressive evidence he’s collected so far, then drives it home: The second murder was unplanned and sloppy, Columbo says, but the first one was meticulously planned down to the last detail, just like a Mrs. Melville mystery — which made it too good for Ken, who hadn’t written a sentence in years, to have come up with. Which means that someone else must have come up with it… someone like Jim. And with that, he produces a scrap of paper from Jim’s home upon which he had jotted down another story idea: “Idea for a Melville book, perfect alibi: A wants to kill B Drives B to a remote house and has him call his wife in city, tells her he’s working late at the office. Bang, bang.” Exactly as Ken ended up doing to Jim.

As would go on to happen regularly in this show, Ken goes ahead and confesses on the spot rather than try to make the DA prove this theory in court. Here, at least, we get a hint as to why Ken’s ego lets him take the blame/credit for the crime: “You want to know the irony of all this? That is my idea. The only really good one I ever had. I must’ve told it to Jim over five years ago. Who ever thought that idiot would write it down?” The police escort Ken out of the office under the watchful eye of Mrs. Melville, from a portrait hanging on the wall.

So that’s the first episode in the books. How was it? A lot of Columbo fans regard this as one of the series’s genuine masterpieces, and indeed just last month Slate ranked this episode as one of the 40 greatest stand-alone TV episodes of all time. As for myself, I must confess that this episode is not one of my favorites. It’s a bit slow, comes off as more dated than other episodes of the era, and Falk doesn’t yet have the great detective’s mannerisms down. Nevertheless, it’s a fun ride and a great way to introduce newbies to the show. Give it a shot.

“Columbo: Murder by the Book” is available to paid subscribers on Peacock, the streaming service from NBC. If you can’t get enough of this episode, Columbophile has a great writeup over on his own site, and be sure to catch Gerry and Iain’s discussion on the Columbo Podcast. See you next year!

[END]
---
[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/10/9/2198320/-Celebrate-Columbo-s-Day-with-Stephen-Spielberg-and-Peter-Falk-in-Murder-by-the-Book?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=latest_community&pm_medium=web

Published and (C) by Daily Kos
Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified.

via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds:
gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/