Gilbert Gottfried's Amazing Colossal Podcast - Mini #178: "Columbo" Guest Killers
Episode Date: August 23, 2018This week: Bing Crosby declines! Gilbert mimics Donald Pleasence! Steven Spielberg impresses Peter Falk! Remembering Jack Cassidy! And the Man in Black bumps off Ida Lupino! Learn more about your ad c...hoices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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Insurance should be too. Contact a licensed TD Insurance advisor to learn more. Hi, this is Gilbert Gottfried, and I'm here with my co-host Frank Santopadre,
and this is another edition of Gilbert and Frank's Amazing Colossal Obsessions
with black blues singer, Kneelis.
He's Kneelish. He's knee-less.
For a while there, I was adding a few body parts back, but I think I'm on the slide again.
The good news is there is such a thing as a knee replacement.
Yes.
I don't know about the head.
But he doesn't have, he was born without legs.
Born without insurance.
Yes!
Hi, Paul.
Hi.
How are you?
How many more of these are we going to do this summer?
I don't know.
We're running out of body parts.
These are the dog days of August.
I still have tongue with which to speak.
When I become tongueless, I'm really into it.
Oh, that'll be next.
That'll be next.
That'll be next.
Frank's going crazy on the effects button out there.
That was interesting.
Yeah.
So, Gil.
Yes.
Who's playing with their bottle?
That's Gilbert.
That's Gilbert.
I was like, what the hell that was?
That was me adding sound effects.
That's the sound of the booth at Nutmeg crumbling in on itself.
I thought it was Raybone's limbs regenerating.
This week, we thought we would do a producer of the month episode. Okay.
How do you feel about that?
I guess okay.
Okay.
Hey, we've got some bills to pay.
The podcast rent is due today.
Check our cash, it's all it takes.
And we'll make you a producer of the month.
This is from listener Ray Gustini.
He's one of my people.
Yes.
I assume it's Gustini and not Justini,
because then he would have an I in there, but he does not.
We do this on Patreon from time to time.
We do produce for the month.
We do Gilbert Sings.
Yeah.
Our listeners, our faithful listeners, write in.
They post.
You can do it, too.
Yeah.
Not you personally.
I'm speaking to our listeners.
You can go to patreon.com slash
Gilbert Gottfried and
you can make
suggestions for songs
if you want Gilbert
to Gilbert did that
wonderful rendition of
Goodbye Yellow Brick
Road as Peter Lorre
that changed people's
lives.
A couple of weeks
ago he did I Am
Woman.
Oh that's right.
That was beautiful
for the Me Too
movement.
Perfectly timed.
And people can make suggestions too for, for Producer of the Month episodes.
And we will sort through them and find one that we can actually manage and pull off.
And this week's is Ray's idea.
And he wants to talk about the guest killers and murderers of Columbo.
Oh, excellent.
Isn't that an interesting premise?
That's an excellent one.
Yes.
Well, I mean, Dick Van Dyke.
There's a bunch.
But how many can you name off the top of your head that were podcast guests?
Okay, well, Dick Van Dyke's one.
Yes, he is.
I want to see how far you get with this.
Lee Grant never did.
Lee Grant was in the pilot.
He was in the second pilot.
Good say.
Second Columbo pilot.
So Dick Van Dyke, Lee Grant.
She's in Ransom for a Dead Man, which was the second.
Larry Storch, I think, was on.
Larry Storch was on a killer.
He wasn't a killer.
But I have a feeling he may have done a guest appearance.
I couldn't find Larry Storch. No?
But as long as we're doing podcasts...
Oh, listen, there's one other thing I wanted to ask you about.
There you go. I didn't find Larry Storch.
Did you find Larry Storch in your research?
Yeah, did he ever play... No, I didn't find him.
...Melis Raybone? A guest appearance.
I'll tell you who I did find. You got
Dick Van Dyke and Lee Grant.
Yes, Dick Van Dyke's
in a very famous episode. I saw Peter Falk and Lee Grant. Yes, Dick Van Dyke's in a very famous episode.
I saw Peter Falk and Lee Grant on Broadway years ago.
Prisoner of Second Avenue.
That must have been great.
That was terrific.
Yeah.
Of course, the movie was Lemon and Anne Bancroft.
I guess people didn't.
Here's what I have.
Do you have any other guesses
at podcast guests
who were killers?
I also have two podcast guests
who were victims.
Oh, jeez.
How about that?
Okay.
My mind always goes blank when...
All right, you got two of them.
You got Dick Van Dyke,
who is the killer in the episode
Negative Reaction
from season four, which is one of the the episode Negative Reaction from Season 4,
which is one of the more memorable episodes.
Yeah, he's a photographer.
Correct.
But you didn't get Joyce Van Patten.
Oh.
Who was the murderer in Season 6 episode Old Fashioned Murder.
Oh.
Our friend Joyce Van Patten, who we adore.
The other one you didn't get was someone who
co-starred with you
and I believe
Back by Midnight.
And he was a podcast guest.
Let's see.
Does Ed Begley Jr.
mean anything to you?
Ed Begley Jr. was the killer
in Columbo episode 64
called Undercover.
And one of his victims was Burt Young.
Oh, my God.
I love that they also got celebrities to play the victims.
Yeah.
That's what's funny.
So they're only there for a few minutes, right?
Yeah.
And the last one I found, did I find another killer?
No, but I found two Gilbert podcast guests who were victims of murders on Columbo.
Greg Evigan.
Oh.
In episode 60.
Or as I would have called him, Glenn.
Glenn Evigan.
Yeah.
Glenn Evigan was the victim in episode 61, A Bird in the Hand.
And Julie Newmar. Julie Newmar.
Yeah, I lost the episode, but Julie Newmar was a
victim. Oh, wait, I got a third one. Julie Newmar was a
victim in episode 17, Double Shock, and Chuck McCann
was a victim of Robert Culp's
in episode 21, Double Exposure.
So there you go.
Robert Culp would have been a great guest.
He would have been wonderful.
We could have talked about Demon with a Glass Hand and all kinds of other stuff.
Written by Harlan Elson, who also passed away, which we haven't mentioned.
I mentioned it on Facebook.
And as far as a villain who came back twice on Columbo was Jack Cassidy.
Correct.
Correct.
I was going to ask you about that.
I have a little quiz for you later.
Okay.
But I'll save it.
Paul, what do you-
Because I remember with the Jack, one of them, he's a magician.
Yes.
Yeah, like a Harry Blackstone kind of-
Yes.
Yeah.
Yes. Yeah, like a Harry Blackstone kind of. Yes. And at the end of the episode, when it's revealed that he's the killer and he's being arrested, Jack Cassidy says to Falk, he goes, I thought I commit the perfect murder. And he says, there's no such a thing, sir That's only an illusion That's a pretty good Peter Falk
That's a damn good Peter Falk
You've been holding out on me for 200 shows
Frankie, did you ever hear him do his Peter Falk?
I just did like a minute ago
Yeah, that was pretty impressive
How about Peter Falk singing Climb Every Mountain?
Yeah
When Kevin Pollack does it, he moves his eye.
Yeah.
It's very impressive.
So I got a couple trivia points here.
Jack Cassidy had how many appearances as a killer?
I thought two.
Three.
Three?
Three?
I don't know which they were in.
They kept bringing him back.
And one other person had three appearances as a killer, which was Robert Culp.
Robert Culp.
Yeah, that I knew.
He kept bringing Robert Culp back. But who had more than any other times was a killer four times?
Oh.
You mean more than Culp and Cassidy?
More than Culp and Cassidy were second place with three each.
Jeez.
Four times.
And you know him from another, mainly known from another series.
Patrick McGowan.
Oh, Patrick McGowan.
They brought him. Oh, and McGowan. They brought him.
Oh, and then there was that famous one with Donald Pleasance.
Yes.
He's the wine expert.
I was going to ask you about that one, too.
Now I have to strike that one from the quiz.
Okay.
There are two people who played a killer twice.
William Shatner.
Yes.
Who I also remember, I think, was in Twilight Zone twice.
Or was he more than twice?
Twice at least.
The diner thing and the creature
on the plane.
I think that was it.
And then the other killer, the other person who was a killer twice,
George Hamilton.
Oh.
Put his victims in a tanning booth.
Lock them in a tanning booth. Lock them in a tanning booth.
Lock them in a tanning booth.
And he had two, Falk had two of his friends on, John Cassavetes and Ben Gazzara.
Oh, yes.
That's right.
I didn't know you were such a Columbo watcher.
Yeah.
I'm not going to be able to stump you.
Yeah.
His second wife, Shira Denise, I guess, appeared in six episodes between 76 and 97.
Yeah.
A little backstory, too, on the show Columbo, which was created by the great William Link.
They wanted Bing Crosby.
You got me.
That's it.
Who was the other actor they wanted besides Bing Crosby?
Who else did they approach?
Ooh.
Crosby didn't want to give up his golf game.
I think...
It was Lee J. Cobb.
Oh, he would have been good.
Yeah, Lee J. Cobb.
Director Richard Irving convinced Levinson.
Richard Levinson.
I think for a while they wanted Skelton Knaggs.
Really?
Yeah.
I thought it was Scatman Crothers.
Yeah. They wantedman Crothers.
They wanted for Columbo.
Boy, now Scatman Crothers would have been a great
guest. Let's do a whole episode called
People Who Died Before We Started the
Show. That would have been a great guest.
That's right.
Obsessions of the Dead.
Then we'll do one called Better Podcast Ideas
than the one we had.
See, like, Columbo, it was like I always thought at the end somebody like a cop should come in and go, you know, you really don't have a case here.
Like, there was one where he said, you know, at John Cassavetes that that he was wearing a flower in his lapel, and then it wasn't there.
And I thought any lawyer, the worst lawyer in the country, could have gotten them all saying, what the fuck are you talking about?
Well, they had to come up with 69 episodes of this thing.
Do you want to hear some of the other celebrity killers?
No, no, no, because I'm going to save those for the quiz.
Okay, save those for the quiz.
But you can give me other Columbo-related trivia if you have it.
Let me see what I have here.
Off of Gilbert and Gilbert's comment about Bing Crosby, yeah, Cobb was unavailable.
Crosby turned it down because he felt it would take too much time away from the Lynx.
And he wanted to beat his kids more.
He needed more time.
He wanted to spend more time
beating his family. That's a beautiful
It's very time consuming.
That old excuse.
And it was Buddy Hackett
who said,
I want to know why
Bing Crosby
would beat his kids.
It's because Bing Crosby would be this kid's coach.
Bing Crosby couldn't get a hard-on.
Oh, what other podcast?
I ask you, ladies and gentlemen,
will you get Peter Falk and Buddy Hackett impressions and a Skelton
Kanags reference just tossed in?
Alright, I hope this isn't part of your quiz.
Let me try one question. As long as it's not
about a bad guy. It's
what is Columbo's
first name? Yeah, it's
hardly ever said.
It's not John. I happen to
know it because it's a name that I care very much about. It's not John. I happen to know it because it's a name
that I care very much about.
Oh.
It's Frank.
Frank?
Well, according to this,
I don't know who's,
what have I got here?
This is from an online site
called the Columbo File.
We'll give,
we'll take that word for it.
They say the lieutenant's
first name is never revealed,
but they have here a photo
that looks very much
like it says Frank Columbo on it.
I've seen it in other places.
Yeah?
We'll throw this out to our Colombo.
There was that really bad mistake of a show, Mrs. Colombo.
Mrs. Colombo.
Yeah.
Starring who?
Oh, who was it?
God.
The name, this name is right on the, was she in a Star Trek?
She sure was.
Also.
She sure was.
Mulgrew? Kate Mulgrew!
Kate Mulgrew! Gilbert Gottfried!
Gilbert Gottfried!
Excellent. She's been in that very chair, Gilbert.
Has Kate Mulgrew been in here to record?
She's been in there, yep. Oh, how about that?
Not bad, Gil.
That one would have killed me. You're exhausted?
I'd have given my right eye for the
Columbo information. Is she Captain
Janeway? Captain Janeway?
Captain Janeway Any Trekkers?
Any Trekkies here?
But who, Mr. Smartass
Okay
Who was the first actor to portray Columbo on the stage?
The stage
The first appearance
Well, let me go back
William Link and Richard Levinson
Link created the character.
He's still alive, William Link.
We should actually find him.
He's 84.
I'll let you wait.
Created the character.
This was first performed.
The stage play was called Prescription Murder,
and it was first performed at the Curran or Curran C-U-R-R-A-N, that's Curran Theater
in San Francisco in
1962.
An Oscar winner played him.
Do you know who it is?
He was 70 years old at the time.
Huh.
Uncle Billy, Thomas
Mitchell. Wow.
Uncle Billy from It's a Wonderful Life.
Thomas Mitchell was the original Columbo.
He died of cancer while the play was touring in out-of-town tryouts.
It was his last role.
And then in 68, that play was made into a two-hour television movie.
See, him dying of cancer is something I would have come up with.
And saved for the end of the show.
For as we were signing off.
To make people kill themselves.
It was turned into a two-hour television movie.
It's actually relevant because it's 50 years ago.
It's 68.
We love to talk about 68 and 78.
And 50 years ago, that was the television debut of Peter Fox.
It was part of Name of the Game, wasn't it?
No, it was part of the NBC mystery movie.
Oh, mystery movie.
Yeah, the Name of the Game was its own series.
Name of the Game was the magazine with the weird stuff that would.
Yeah, that was the show with Gene Barry and Tony Franciosa.
And Gene Barry is relevant here because he was the killer in the first Columbo pilot,
which was Prescription Murder that I was getting to.
But also, Columbo was played by another actor, and I never heard of this actor.
He was played by Bert Fried, a character actor with a thatch of gray hair
I was sure you'd know who that was
Actually, I'm wrong
He was the first actor to play Columbo
And Thomas Mitchell was the second actor to play Columbo
So I stand corrected
Thomas Mitchell, of course, I know
I never heard of him
Did you ever hear of this character?
No
This actor, Bert Fried?
Was Thomas Mitchell in a production of Death of a Salesman?
He may have been.
He may have been.
Like as Happy or Biff?
He's in a production of, he plays Santa in a bad production of Miracle on 34th Street.
And of course he was the Scarlett O'Hara's father in Gone with the Wind.
If people don't know, it's a wonderful life.
Shame on you. So Bert Fried was the first actor O'Hara's father. Yes. And Gone with the Wind. If people don't know, it's a wonderful life. Shame on you.
So, Bert Fried was the first actor to play Columbo.
Thomas Mitchell was the second actor to play Columbo.
And who directed, I know Rayburn's already on this,
who directed the first legit Columbo episode that was not a pilot?
And the killer in that was Jack Cassidy.
That's the one you're talking about,
murdered by the book,
who was the director.
Was he ever heard from again?
He was certainly heard from again.
As a matter of fact...
Not Spielberg.
It is, in fact, Steve Spielberg.
How did you do that?
Who I believe was 25 years old.
Yeah, because he had also,
he directed that three-story episode
of the Twilight—
Night Gallery.
Night Gallery.
With Joan Crawford.
That must have been right either just before or just after Jaws, because wasn't he 26?
And Roddy McDowell.
Well before Jaws.
No, but Jaws, he was in his 20s, wasn't he?
Yeah, he was 27.
Oh, okay.
But this was 1971.
So, no, my math is off.
He was 20—I think he was 25 here.
Well, people can look up his birthday through the math.
I know he was very young, and I know that Peter Falk supposedly recognized his talent right away
and said, this kid, well, you say it.
This kid's too good for Columbo.
This kid's too good for Columbo.
That's pretty good.
All right, let me quiz you.
He should do a movie with, I don't know, a shark or something
Yeah, he was doing television in those days
And yes, the night gallery
Yeah, he did a lot of TV
And then he also did, what was it called, The Duel?
Well, that was
With the truck?
Yes, with Dennis Weaver
What a great movie
That was terrific
Terrific movie called Something Evil with Sandy Duncan.
We will return to Gilbert Gottfried's amazing colossal podcast after this.
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Okay, Gil.
Here's the quiz.
Let me see how many.
You already named a couple of these.
This comes from the Fun Trivia site.
Suitable for framing.
Pits the shabby-looking detective against an art critic who murdered his uncle
and then tries to pin the deed on his aunt.
Does this ring a bell?
Oh, no.
Name the actor who gained fame as a detective on TV's...
This will give it away.
Was it Ross Martin, John Cassavetes, Robert Conrad, or Nicole Williamson?
You don't know this episode.
I'm going to say Ross Martin.
Ross Martin is correct.
Ah!
Ding, ding.
His claim to fame was Artemis Gordon in Wild, Wild West,
but he played a psychotic blackmailer stalking Lee Remick
in the terrific silver screen gem Experiment in Terror,
also directed by Blake Edwards, if people don't know that movie.
This one you knew.
This actor played one of the most sympathetic killers in the series.
He disposed of his spendthrift brother in order to save the family winery
in an episode called Any Old Port in a Storm.
That was the Donald Pleasance.
Yeah.
The choices they give here are Donald Pleasance, Charles Gray, Kurt Juergens, or Patrick McGowan.
They're trying to throw you off by giving you other Bond villains.
Yeah.
He also, I think in that, when they're drinking the wine in the car, and he says, you know, oh, he tells Columbo this is an excellent choice.
And he says, it's the only thing I really cared about.
There you go.
Another extra bonus.
A Donald Pleasance impersonation.
But it's more popular than you think.
The kids are clamoring for a Donald Pleasance impersonation.
Most impressionists get up and go, but if it for Donald Pleasence impersonation. Most impressionists get up and go,
but if it was Donald Pleasence, it might go something like this.
Let's see if you or Ray Bone, you're a wonder.
Let's see if you or Ray Bone knows this one.
The episode Swan Song featured this timeless country western singer.
Ah, Johnny Cash.
Look at you.
How'd you know that? I was going to Look at you. How'd you know that?
I was going to give you choices.
How'd you know that?
Yeah.
Yeah.
What were you talking about
when you said you have
all kinds of useless stuff
in your head?
Oh, boy, do I ever.
In the episode
Requiem for a Falling Star,
I know our Columbo listeners
are jumping on these
or screaming at these,
screaming at their device.
Columbo simultaneously pursues and idolizes a former matinee idol whose secretary died in a suspicious fire.
Does this ring a bell?
Was the killer played by Faye Dunaway, Betty Davis, Anne Francis, or Anne Baxter?
Just grabbing out of my ass, I'll say Anne Baxter.
You will be correct.
Her famous portrayal of an attractive aspirant willing to do whatever it takes to become a marquee actress in All About Eve is the most notable of her 40-year career.
Maybe you'll know this one.
Famous as a child actor from the Our Gang comedies, this performer plays a senatorial candidate
who murders his campaign manager,
then attempts to frame it as an attempt on his own life.
Was it Jackie Coogan, Mickey Rooney, Robert Blake, or Jackie Cooper?
Well, we know two of those were not our gang members,
so you got a choice of two.
There you go.
Wow.
So it's either Jackie Cooper.
Or Robert Blake.
Yeah.
Ray Bone, have a guess?
I'm going to wait for Gilbert because I saw it in the research.
I'm going to say Cooper.
You're going to be right again.
Three out of three.
Wow.
Yep.
And what do we have for our guests this week?
Nothing.
Your old knees.
In a rare role as a baddie, this veteran of Disney films and a successful 60s sitcom shines as Paul Galesco,
a world-famous photographer who murders his wife and then pins the crime on an unsuspecting ex-convict.
That's the Dick Van Dyke episode.
I'll give you one more.
Let me see.
How do we stump Gilbert Gottfried?
Oh, no, you already mentioned Patrick McGowan, so we won't go to him.
In Try and Catch Me, this veteran of stage and screen
matched wits with Columbo as a mystery writer
who exacts her own special vengeance on the shiftless husband of her now deceased niece.
Who is this actress?
Was it Lillian Gish, Helen Hayes, Geraldine Page, or Ruth Gordon?
Ooh.
I'll give you a hint.
Yeah.
She bit George Segal on the ass in Where's Papa?
Ruth Gordon.
Very good.
Very, very, very good.
You know, I was leaning toward that one anyway.
I was going to say.
You did very well for a guy who was only guessing.
I'll go through these very, very quickly by season.
Yeah, Spielberg directed the first legit episode, Murder by the Book.
The killer was Jack Cassidy.
One of his victims was Martin Milner.
Yeah.
Robert Culp was the killer was Jack Cassidy. One of his victims was Martin Milner. Yeah.
Robert Culp was the killer in the second one.
Then Eddie Albert.
Then Ross Martin, who we talked about.
Roddy McDowell in episode six.
Patrick O'Neill.
Remember that actor?
Yeah.
Who was his victim in that episode?
Episode number nine, Blueprint for Murder.
Forrest Tucker.
Forrest Tucker. Forrest Tucker.
Must have made an interesting chalk outline.
John Cassavetes was the killer in episode 10.
A toad in black.
Then Ray Moland.
Robert Culp again.
Richard Basehart.
Richard Basehart.
And Baxter we talked about.
Leonard Nimoy was the killer in episode 15, A Stitch in Crime.
A Stitch in Crime.
And then Lawrence Harvey in The Most Dangerous Match.
I do not have plots for these.
And Martin Landau in a dual role in the episode called Double Shock.
And the person he, one of the people he killed was Julie Newmar.
And the other was Paul Stewart.
Also from Citizen Kane.
Oh, wow. Who I believe we talked about.
Yes.
On this show with Tony Roberts.
Yeah, he was doing that accent.
Yeah.
In Citizen Kane.
Who was he in Citizen Kane?
He's the.
He would talk like that.
He's the reporter.
No, I think he was someone who worked for Kane.
Is he?
And he's doing, like, a European accent.
Isn't he the reporter doing the investigation?
Do I have this wrong?
Was it Adeline Ladd who was the reporter?
Maybe, maybe.
I think Adeline was the reporter.
You're right, you're right.
And he's, like, he's got, like, white hair.
And, uh... Oh, because And he's like, he's got like white hair and,
oh,
because he says to him,
he goes,
well,
is there anything else that I can tell you?
Yes,
yes,
Paul Stewart's
the manservant.
Yes,
I have many stories
I can tell you
about Mr. Kane.
Vera Miles
played the murderer.
Martin Sheen was her victim.
Donald Pleasence, Jackie Cooper, we talked about.
Robert Culp.
Here's your other Jack Cassidy episode.
Publish or perish?
Episode 22.
Jose Ferrer killed Lou Ayers in episode 23.
Mind over mayhem.
Johnny Cash, we talked about.
His victim was Ida Lupino.
Richard Kiley.
All these great actors.
You know, we talk about shows that are time capsules.
This is one of those shows.
You make a great point that they got celebrity, you know, well-known actors in for the victims,
which is very unusual because they're only on screen for the first few minutes,
most of these people, presumably.
Robert Conrad.
Dick Van Dyke killed Don Gordon,
somebody we wanted on this podcast.
Patrick McGowan, Robert Vaughn was a killer.
Oscar Werner was a killer.
And George Hamilton we talked about.
And yeah, they brought back Jack Cassidy again.
Oh, here's the one where he's the magician.
Now you see him.
Oh, okay.
Season 5, 1976.
And who was his victim? You'll love this. Nehemiah Pers him. Oh, okay. That's season five, 1976. And who was his victim?
You'll love this.
Nehemiah Persoff.
Oh!
Yeah, Nehemiah Persoff, because it takes place in Vegas, and he's the casino owner.
Correct, yes.
And Nehemiah Persoff knows that Jack Cassidy was a former Nazi.
Yes, that is correct.
That is correct.
Now, here's a Columbo episode that should have been written by Gilbert Gottfried.
This is episode 40.
It's called The Bye Bye Sky High IQ Murder Case.
The killer was Theodore Bickell.
Oh.
And his victim was Sorrel Book.
Oh.
If that's why I didn't write that one.
I don't know how you managed to not write that one.
This may be my favorite, though.
Murder Under Glass, episode 42.
The killer directed by Jonathan Demme.
Yeah.
No less. A young Jonathan Demme. The killer was directed by Jonathan Demme, no less, a young Jonathan Demme.
The killer was Louis Jourdan, and his victim was Frank Pantangeli, Michael V. Gotso.
Oh!
Pretty cool stuff.
Yeah.
So, we actually managed to connect Columbo to some Gilbert Gottfried podcast guests.
There you go.
And Gilbert impressed once again.
I'd like to see some of those again.
I forgot how good those were. I think I'm going to get those on DVD
and do a binge or see if they're on Netflix or whatever.
I didn't know you knew so much about the show.
I know.
Yeah.
And I never considered myself a major fan of Columbo.
You did pretty well.
Yeah.
Yeah.
What were the, you mentioned the
NBC mystery movie. Yes. Columbo was a part of the
NBC mystery movie. Do you know why, as I take us out?
Falk refused to commit to the arduous schedule
required for an episode that would air every week.
In fact, it would mean shooting an episode every five days.
So the network arranged for the Columbo segments to air once a month on Wednesday nights.
The high quality of Columbo, can you name the other three shows that it debuted with?
Okay, well, the name of the game.
No, that was its own series, the name of the game.
Macmillan and Wife?
Correct.
Um...
One was a Western.
Oh, oh, with Dennis Weaver.
Was that the one that was like the Clint Eastwood one?
Yeah, it was sort of a knockoff of Clint Eastwood's Coogan's Bluff.
Yeah, yeah.
Oh, God.
Called McCloud.
McCloud, yes.
The other one was an actual Western.
The one that I was going for was Heck Ramsey with Richard Boone.
Ah.
Who was famous for Have Gun, Will Travel.
The high quality of Columbo, Macmillan, and Wife and McCloud was due in large part to the extra time spent on each episode.
It was called a wheel show.
A wheel show coined to describe this format.
How about that?
That was the Sunday night, I think it was the,
was it the Sunday night mystery movie or the, I don't know.
There was one on Wednesday and there was one on Sunday
and they called it the NBC mystery movie.
And then they did it again.
They repeated that formula.
There was one with Tony Curtis called McCoy.
Oh, yeah. There was one with, I think,
the black actor James McKeachin called Tenafly. I think the Snoops. Tenafly,
I remember. I think the Snoop Sisters with Helen Hayes was part of the
Wheel Show. I can't remember. Our listeners will know.
Tenafly didn't last long.
There was Tenafly.
There was, I think Tony Curtis was a con man who got out of jail and then solved crimes.
And definitely the Snoop sisters.
And I can't remember the other one.
There was something called Faraday and Company.
That sounds very familiar.
Does any of this ring a bell?
Yeah.
I don't know.
And the NBC mystery movies.
That's good nostalgia.
Yeah.
Let's hear a little Falk as we go out.
Oh, well, I just, old business.
I just remembered.
You got old business.
Yes.
Good.
Take us out on it.
Darren, I got a call from Bill Macy.
Oh, I thought you were going to say Jackie Mason called you.
No.
How's Bill?
Bill sounded great on this call.
Good, good.
He was up.
He had a lot of energy.
He was cursing us out.
Did he threaten to show you his dick again?
Yes.
Okay.
Yeah.
He was so...
So Bill Macy is still crazy as ever.
He's going strong.
Yeah.
Bill.
I have a Bill Macy theory.
Let's hear it.
On the mini we did, when Darrow was trying to get him kind of through you guys to tell the story about when he was in the hospital.
Yes, yes.
But his wife was sitting next to him.
Yeah.
On the other side.
Oh, he didn't want to tell it with his wife sitting there.
I think he kind of, I think he felt embarrassed and he was just sort of pretending nothing ever happened.
Maybe.
Maybe.
Bill doesn't strike me as the kind of guy who feels embarrassed.
Anyway, we want to thank listener Ray Gustini
for that fun idea.
Yeah.
Okay,
and to take us out,
Columbo.
Excuse me, sir.
I don't...
I know you're busy, sir,
and I don't want
to bother you.
This has been
Gilbert and Frank's amazing Colossal Obsessions.
You know, the wife and I, we watch this show all the time.
This is our favorite show.
Because, you know, my wife, she likes trivia.
And, you know, she always gets angry at me because
if I don't know the name of
an actor or something,
so it's a very entertaining
show.
Neither one of us knows
what the fuck Paul Raybould
is doing.
It's a Columbo-esque
takedown of Paul Raybould.
I never liked Columbo-esque takedown of Paul Rambo. I never liked Columbo.
I'll see you next week.
Oh, there's just one more thing. ¶¶
Субтитры создавал DimaTorzok ¶¶ ¶¶ Thank you. ¶¶
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