Columbo is an American crime drama television series starring Peter Falk as Lieutenant Columbo, a homicide detective with the Los Angeles Police Department.[2][3] After two pilot episodes in 1968 and 1971, the show originally aired on NBC from 1971 to 1978 as one of the rotating programs of The NBC Mystery Movie. Columbo then aired on ABC as a rotating program on The ABC Mystery Movie from 1989 to 1990, and on a less frequent basis from 1990 to 2003.
Columbo is a shrewd and exceptionally observant homicide detective whose trademarks include his rumpled beige raincoat, unassuming demeanor, cigar, old Peugeot 403 car,[4][5][6] love of chili, and unseen wife (whom he mentions frequently). He often leaves a room only to return with the catchphrase "Just one more thing" to ask a critical question.
The character and show, created by Richard Levinson and William Link, popularized the inverted detective story format (sometimes referred to as a "howcatchem"). This genre begins by showing the commission of the crime and its perpetrator; the plot therefore usually has no "whodunit" element of determining which of several suspects committed the crime. It instead revolves around how a perpetrator known to the audience will finally be caught and exposed. The clues Columbo finds to help him solve the case are sometimes revealed to the audience beforehand, but often not until the episode's end.
The series' homicide suspects are often affluent members of high society; it has led some critics to see class conflict as an element of each story.[7] Suspects carefully cover their tracks and are initially dismissive of Columbo's circumstantial speech and apparent ineptitude. They become increasingly unsettled as his superficially pestering behavior teases out incriminating evidence.[7] His relentless approach often leads to self-incrimination or outright confession.
Episodes of Columbo are between 70 and 98 minutes long, and they have been broadcast in 44 countries. The show has been described by the BBC as "timeless" and remains popular today.[8]
Martin Landau and Falk in the 1973 episode "Double Shock," in which Landau played a dual role as twins
Richard Kiley and
Falk in
Season 3 Episode 8, "A Friend in Deed", 1974
After two pilot episodes, the show originally aired on NBC from 1971 to 1978 as one of the rotating programs of The NBC Mystery Movie. Columbo then aired on ABC under the umbrella of The ABC Mystery Movie from 1989 to 1990.[9] After The ABC Mystery Movie was canceled, Columbo episodes continued to premiere on ABC on a less frequent basis; the last episode was broadcast in 2003 as part of ABC Thursday Night at the Movies.[10]
In almost every episode, the audience sees the crime unfold at the beginning and knows the identity of the culprit, typically an affluent member of society. Once Columbo enters the story (he rarely appears in the first act), viewers watch him solve the case by sifting through the contradictions between the truth and the version presented to him by the killer(s). This style of mystery is sometimes referred to as a "howcatchem", in contrast to the traditional whodunit. In structural analysis terms, the majority of the narrative is therefore dénouement, a feature normally reserved for the very end of a story. Episodes tend to be driven by their characters, the audience observing the criminal's reactions to Columbo's increasingly intrusive presence.
When Columbo first appears in an episode, his genius is hidden from the viewer by his frumpy, friendly, and disarming demeanor. While the details, and eventually the motivations, of the murderers' actions are always shown to the viewer, Columbo's true thoughts and intentions are sometimes concealed until the end of the episode. He occasionally begins to whistle the tune "This Old Man" as the pieces begin to fall into place.
Columbo generally maintains a friendly relationship with the murderer until the end, and sometimes even after their confession or incrimination, despite both characters being aware of their adversarial positions. The detective usually suspects the murderer within moments of their meeting, or even earlier, often based on their reaction to the news of the victim's death. The murderer in turn almost always immediately sees through Columbo's scruffy and absent-minded manner to his underlying investigative intellect, and accordingly takes steps to divert his efforts by disguising evidence, manipulating witnesses, manufacturing evidence to lead Columbo towards a different suspect, and/or feigning irritation as an excuse for declining requests for searches and interrogations. In some cases the murderer will even taunt Columbo over his inability to prove their guilt. There are two sides to Columbo's character: the disarming and unkempt detective and the hidden genius sleuth. The genius sometimes starkly manifests itself through his eyes, as when the magician The Great Santini escapes from police handcuffs that Columbo coyly presents him during Santini's show ("Now You See Him..."). In some instances, such as the avenging elderly mystery writer in "Try and Catch Me" and the terminally ill and deluded actress in "Forgotten Lady", many viewers find the killer more sympathetic than the victim.[11]
Each episode is generally concluded with Columbo proving the killer's guilt, though some episodes, such as "Swan Song", go on to show the killer confessing or quietly submitting to arrest. There are few attempts to deceive the viewer or provide a twist in the tale. One exception is "Last Salute to the Commodore", where Robert Vaughn is seen elaborately disposing of a body, but is proved later to have been covering for his alcoholic wife, whom he mistakenly thought to be the murderer. Sometimes, Columbo sets up the murderer with a trick designed to elicit a confession. An example occurs in "Dagger of the Mind", in which Columbo flips an evidentiary pearl into the victim's umbrella, bringing about incriminating activity from Nicholas Frame and Lillian Stanhope.
Development and character profile
[edit]
Peter Falk as Lt. Columbo, 1973
The first
Columbo pilot, "
Prescription: Murder", guest starring Gene Barry, Nina Foch, and William Windom, was filmed at the
Stahl House.
The character of Columbo was created by the writing team of Richard Levinson and William Link, who said that Columbo was partially inspired by Fyodor Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment character Porfiry Petrovich,[12][13] as well as G. K. Chesterton's humble cleric-detective Father Brown. Other sources claim Columbo's character is also influenced by Inspector Fichet from the French suspense-thriller film Les Diaboliques (1955).[14]
The character first appeared in a 1960 episode of the television-anthology series The Chevy Mystery Show, titled "Enough Rope". This was adapted by Levinson and Link from their short story "May I Come In", which had been published as "Dear Corpus Delicti" in the March 1960 issue of Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine. The short story featured a police lieutenant then named Fisher.[15] The first actor to portray Columbo, character actor Bert Freed, was a stocky character actor with a thatch of gray hair.[16]
Freed's Columbo wore a rumpled suit and smoked a cigar; he otherwise had few of the other now-familiar Columbo mannerisms. The character is still recognizably Columbo and uses some of the same methods of misdirecting and distracting his suspects. During the course of the show, the increasingly frightened murderer brings pressure from the district attorney's office to have Columbo taken off the case, but the detective fights back with his own contacts.
Although Freed received third billing, he wound up with almost as much screen time as the killer and appeared immediately after the first commercial. This delayed entry of the character into the narrative of the screenplay became a defining characteristic of the structure of the Columbo series. This teleplay is available for viewing in the archives of the Paley Center for Media in New York City and the Beverly Hills Public Library in Los Angeles.
Levinson and Link then adapted the TV drama into the stage play Prescription: Murder. This was first performed at the Curran Theatre in San Francisco on January 2, 1962, with Oscar-winning character actor Thomas Mitchell in the role of Columbo. Mitchell was 70 years old at the time. The stage production starred Joseph Cotten as the murderer and Agnes Moorehead as the victim. Mitchell died of cancer while the play was touring in out-of-town tryouts; Columbo was his last role.
The NBC Mystery Movie program worked on a rotating basis – one per month from each of its shows. Top left:
Dennis Weaver in
McCloud. Top right:
Richard Boone in
Hec Ramsey. Bottom left:
Peter Falk in
Columbo. Bottom right:
Rock Hudson in
McMillan & Wife
In 1968, the same play was made into a two-hour television movie that aired on NBC. The writers suggested Lee J. Cobb and Bing Crosby for the role of Columbo, but Cobb was unavailable and Crosby turned it down because he felt it would take too much time away from golf. Director Richard Irving convinced Levinson and Link that Falk, who excitedly said he "would kill to play that cop", could pull it off even though he was much younger than the writers had in mind.[17]
Originally a one-off movie of the week, Prescription: Murder has Falk's Columbo pitted against a psychiatrist (Gene Barry). In this movie, the psychiatrist gives the new audience a perfect description of Columbo's character. Due to the success of this film, NBC requested that a pilot for a potential series be made to see if the character could be sustained on a regular basis, leading to the 1971 ninety-minute television production, Ransom for a Dead Man, with Lee Grant playing the killer. The popularity of the second film prompted the creation of a regular series on NBC, that premiered in September 1971 as part of The NBC Mystery Movie wheel series rotation: McCloud, McMillan & Wife, and other whodunits.
According to TV Guide, the original plan was that a new Columbo episode would air every week. However, Falk refused to commit to such a busy schedule given his steady work in motion pictures. As a result, the network decided to air Columbo segments once a month on Wednesday nights. The high quality of Columbo, McMillan & Wife, and McCloud was due in large part to the extra time spent on each episode. The term wheel show had been previously coined to describe this format, but no previous or subsequent wheel show achieved the longevity or success of The NBC Mystery Movie.
Columbo was an immediate hit in the Nielsen ratings and Falk won an Emmy Award for his role in the show's first season. In its second year the Mystery Movie series was moved to Sunday nights, where it then remained during its seven-season run. The show became the anchor of NBC's Sunday night lineup. Columbo aired regularly from 1971 to 1978. After NBC canceled it in 1978, Columbo was revived on ABC between 1989 and 2003 for two seasons as part of The ABC Mystery Movie followed by 14 made-for-TV movie "specials".
Columbo's wardrobe was provided by Falk; they were his clothes, including the high-topped shoes and the shabby raincoat, which made its first appearance in Prescription: Murder.[18] Falk said of the raincoat, "I just felt comfortable in it."[19] Falk often ad libbed his character's quirky behaviors—fumbling through his pockets and finding a grocery list, asking to borrow a pencil, or getting distracted by something irrelevant in the room during a tense moment with a suspect. He inserted these idiosyncrasies into his performance to keep his fellow actors off-balance. He felt it helped to make their confused and impatient reactions to Columbo's antics more genuine.[18] According to Levinson, the catchphrase "one more thing" was conceived when he and Link were writing the play: "we had a scene that was too short, and we had already had Columbo make his exit. We were too lazy to retype the scene, so we had him come back and say, 'Oh, just one more thing.' It was never planned."[17]
A few years before his death, Falk expressed interest in returning to the role. In 2007, he claimed he had chosen a script for one last Columbo episode, "Columbo: Hear No Evil". The script was renamed "Columbo's Last Case". ABC declined the project. In response, producers for the series announced that they were attempting to shop the project to foreign production companies.[20][21] Falk was diagnosed with dementia in late 2007. During a 2009 trial over his care, physician Stephen Read stated that Falk's condition had deteriorated so badly that he could no longer remember playing a character named Columbo, nor could he identify Columbo. Falk died on June 23, 2011, aged 83.[22][23][24]
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