Columbo season 9

Last updated

Columbo
Season 9
No. of episodes6
Release
Original network ABC
Original releaseNovember 25, 1989 (1989-11-25) 
May 14, 1990 (1990-05-14)
Season chronology
 Previous
Season 8
Next 
Season 10
List of episodes

This is a list of episodes from the ninth season of Columbo .

Episodes

No. in
series
No. in
season
TitleDirected byWritten byMurderer played byVictim played byOriginal air dateRuntime
501"Murder: A Self Portrait" James Frawley Robert Sherman Patrick Bauchau as Max Barsini Fionnula Flanagan as Louise Barsini; Harold Harris as Harry ChudnowNovember 25, 1989 (1989-11-25)88 min

Temperamental artist Max Barsini (Patrick Bauchau) effectively lives with three women: his ex-wife, Louise (Fionnula Flanagan), his young live-in model Julie (Isabel García Lorca), and his current wife Vanessa (Shera Danese). Barsini takes delight in the way they fight for his attention. But when Louise begins seeing a therapist, Dr. Hammer (George Coe), who is also her new fiancé, Barsini fears she will reveal that he killed his first agent, who was robbing him. He kills Louise, then makes it look like she drowned at the beach while he was at Vito's bar, painting. Columbo poses for Barsini while investigating him.

Final clue/twist: Columbo can prove that a spot on Louise's face was not washed-up make-up but was instead remnants of "Barsini red", a special color mixed only for Barsini, and that it was on the cloth she was benumbed with.
512"Columbo Cries Wolf" Daryl Duke William Read Woodfield Ian Buchanan as Sean Brantley Deidre Hall as Dian HunterJanuary 20, 1990 (1990-01-20)92 min

When Dian Hunter (Deidre Hall), the partner of men's magazine publisher Sean Brantley (Ian Buchanan), vanishes after expressing a desire to sell her 51% interest to a rival, suspicion falls on Sean and his girlfriend Tina (Rebecca Staab). Columbo sets out to find the body, eventually digging up much of Brantley's estate and breaking open the walls. But after the search turns into a full-blown media event, Dian resurfaces, explaining she needed some time to herself. Dian and Sean planned the disappearance as a publicity stunt to increase sales. But to his shock, she actually intends to sell now that her holding is more valuable. Sean proceeds to then kill Dian for real and hides the body, believing that Columbo will not be allowed to search for it again.

Final clue/twist: Dian apparently left wearing a fur coat. Columbo gets suspicious when he sees all her remaining fur coats in plastic storage bags, deducing that Brantley put the body in the missing bag. Knowing he will not be supported in a second full search, he phones the pager Dian wears as a wristlet: it is on her body, behind a finished section of the replacement wall being installed; which Columbo tears down. (The word Columbo uses to ring the pager is "Gotcha".)
523"Agenda for Murder" Patrick McGoohan Jeffrey Bloom Patrick McGoohan as Oscar Finch Louis Zorich as Frank StaplinFebruary 10, 1990 (1990-02-10)92 min

Oscar Finch (Patrick McGoohan) is a lawyer who uses underhanded methods to get his clients off, like coercing Paul Mackey (Denis Arndt), who worked for the D.A.'s office, into destroying evidence against racketeer Frank Staplin (Louis Zorich) in 1969. Twenty-one years later, Mackey is chosen by a presidential candidate, Governor Montgomery (Arthur Hill), to be his vice presidential running mate. Finch himself hopes that he might be appointed as the next Attorney General. Staplin, facing another indictment, threatens to expose the long-ago favor and ruin Finch's and Mackey's political futures if he doesn't arrange the destruction of another document. Finch decides to murder him. He scatters cigar ashes to make it seem he was in a late-night meeting with a contributor when the murder occurred. Finch walks to Staplin's house, shoots him and makes his death look like a suicide.

Final clue/twist: After Columbo learns that Staplin hadn't eaten any of the cheese on the dish at the crime scene, but that the block of cheese had had a piece bitten off from it, he assumes that the murderer must have taken a bite. CSI can fabricate a toothprint from the cheese and Columbo finds more than enough samples of Finch's toothprint on his discarded pieces of chewing gum - proving that he was at the crime scene.

McGoohan won a second Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actor in a Drama Series, following his part in "By Dawn's Early Light".
534"Rest in Peace, Mrs. Columbo" Vincent McEveety Peter S. Fischer Helen Shaver as Vivian Dimitri Edward Winter as Charlie ChambersMarch 31, 1990 (1990-03-31)93 min

The episode, which uses the in medias res structure, opens at the funeral of Columbo's wife, and is partially told in flashbacks. Vivian Dimitri (Helen Shaver) is a real estate executive whose recently deceased husband had been sent to prison by Columbo. She seeks revenge by plotting to kill the Columbos. But first she murders her boss, Charlie Chambers (Edward Winter), her husband's partner who avoided prison by informing on him. Vivian shoots Chambers in his office, using her affair with the married Leland St. John (Ian McShane) to establish an alibi. Then she plants evidence to make it look like Chambers was killed by disgruntled residents of a new housing development he was constructing. Her plan is then to kill the Columbos with a jar of poisoned marmalade. Roscoe Lee Browne plays her psychiatrist, Dr. Steadman.

Final clue/twist: Figuring out Dimitri's plan, Columbo and the police fake the death of his wife. After staging the fake funeral, Columbo invites Vivian into what she thinks is his house. He makes himself toast with marmalade. While Columbo pretends to be dying of poison, Dimitri confesses to all three murders. He then reveals that he had suspected her all along, and had the marmalade tested as soon as she gave it to him. They are actually in the home of another officer, who recorded the confession, and the marmalade jar is a different one lacking poison.

Aired as part of the ABC Saturday Mystery series. [1]
545"Uneasy Lies the Crown" Alan J. Levi Steven Bochco James Read as Wesley Corman Marshall R. Teague as Adam EvansApril 28, 1990 (1990-04-28)92 min

Dentist Wesley Corman (James Read) decides to get rid of his unfaithful wife, Lydia (Jo Anderson), and use her money to support his gambling habit. When Adam Evans (Marshall R. Teague), a Hollywood heartthrob having an affair with Lydia, comes under his care, Corman puts a time-release poison made from digitalis under a crown. It takes effect when the couple are together that evening and Corman is playing cards, thereby framing Lydia for the murder. Paul Burke co-stars as Horace Sherwin, Lydia's father, also a dentist.

Final clue/twist: Columbo traps Corman by taking advantage of the fact that Corman was never good at chemistry. He orders Evans' body exhumed and demonstrates to Corman that if there was indeed digitalis, it would have caused a chemical reaction with the porcelain in the crown, making a blue stain on Evans' tooth underneath the crown. Before they begin to examine Evans' mouth, Corman confesses. However, Columbo was bluffing, as digitalis causes no such reaction with porcelain.

This same storyline was first used in the McMillan (formerly McMillan & Wife) episode "Affair of the Heart" that had aired in 1977. Bochco shared writing credit for the earlier version with Leonard Stern.
556"Murder in Malibu" Walter Grauman Jackson Gillis Andrew Stevens as Wayne Jennings Janet Margolin as Theresa GorenMay 14, 1990 (1990-05-14)90 min

Jess McCurdy (Brenda Vaccaro) fails to convince her sister, best-selling romance novelist Theresa Goren (Janet Margolin), to break up with her boyfriend Wayne Jennings (Andrew Stevens), a playboy/tennis bum half her age and a gold digger. McCurdy, who harbors a silent crush on Jennings, impersonates her sister on the phone with Jennings and dumps him. Jennings reacts by killing Goren. He arranges an alibi for the murder, but is unable to immediately leave the scene without being spotted, so he returns and shoots her corpse with a different gun. He allows Columbo to "catch" him for the second murder, to which he confesses, so that he is cleared of the crime when the autopsy proves Goren was killed by the first shot.

Final clue/twist: Columbo determines that Goren was redressed to disguise the time of the murder. Only someone close to the victim would have a reason to do this, to fabricate an alibi. Moreover, the killer put Goren's panties on backwards, a mistake that only a single man could have made, because a woman or married man would have known that the tag for this brand of panties always goes on the left side.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Peter Falk</span> American actor (1927–2011)

Peter Michael Falk was an American film and television actor, comedian, singer and television director and producer. He is best known for his role as Lieutenant Columbo on the NBC/ABC series Columbo, for which he won four Primetime Emmy Awards and a Golden Globe Award (1973). In 1996, TV Guide ranked Falk No. 21 on its 50 Greatest TV Stars of All Time list. He received a posthumous star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2013.

<i>Columbo</i> American crime drama television film series

Columbo is an American crime drama television series starring Peter Falk as Lieutenant Columbo, a homicide detective with the Los Angeles Police Department. 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 less frequently on ABC from 1989 to 2003.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Patrick McGoohan</span> Irish actor, writer, director and producer (1928–2009)

Patrick Joseph McGoohan was an American-born Irish actor, director, screenwriter, and producer of film, television, and theatre. Born in New York City to Irish parents, he was raised in Ireland and England, began his career in England during the 1950s and became well known for the titular role, secret agent John Drake in the ITC espionage programme Danger Man (1960–1968). He then produced and created The Prisoner (1967–1968), a surrealistic television series in which he featured as Number Six, an unnamed British intelligence agent who is abducted and imprisoned in a mysterious coastal village.

The NBC Mystery Movie is an American television anthology series produced by Universal Pictures, that NBC broadcast from 1971 to 1977. Devoted to a rotating series of mystery episodes, it was sometimes split into two subsets broadcast on different nights of the week: The NBC Sunday Mystery Movie and The NBC Wednesday Mystery Movie.

<i>McMillan & Wife</i> American police procedural television series

McMillan & Wife is an American police procedural television series that aired on NBC from September 17, 1971, to April 24, 1977. Starring Rock Hudson and Susan Saint James in the title roles, the series premiered in episodes as part of Universal Television's wheel series NBC Mystery Movie, in rotation with Columbo and McCloud. Initially airing on Wednesday night, the original lineup was shifted to Sundays in the second season, where it aired for the rest of its run. For the final season, known as McMillan, numerous changes were made that included killing off St. James' character of Sally McMillan.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Russ Columbo</span> American singer, violinist, and actor

Ruggiero Eugenio di Rodolfo Colombo, known as Russ Columbo, was an American baritone, songwriter, violinist, and actor. He is famous for romantic ballads such as his signature tune "You Call It Madness, But I Call It Love" and his own compositions "Prisoner of Love" and "Too Beautiful for Words".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Crooner</span> Type of singer

A crooner is a singer that performs with a smooth, intimate style that originated in the 1920s. The style was made possible by better microphones that picked up quieter sounds and a wider range of frequencies, allowing the singer to access a more dynamic range. This suggestion of intimacy was supposedly wildly attractive to women, especially younger ones such as teenage girls, known at the time as "bobby soxers". The crooning style developed out of singers who performed with big bands, and reached its height in the 1940s to late 1960s.

"Prisoner of Love" is a 1931 popular song, with music by Russ Columbo and Clarence Gaskill and lyrics by Leo Robin.

William Theodore Link was an American film and television screenwriter and producer who often worked in collaboration with Richard Levinson.

Richard Leighton Levinson was an American screenwriter and producer who often worked in collaboration with William Link.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bruce Kirby (actor)</span> American actor (1925–2021)

Bruce Kirby was an American character actor.

An unseen character in theatre, comics, film, or television, or silent character in radio or literature, is a character that is mentioned but not directly known to the audience, but who advances the action of the plot in a significant way, and whose absence enhances their effect on the plot.

Joseph Christopher Columbus Morris, better known as Crazy Chris Columbo or just Chris Columbo, was an American jazz drummer. He was sometimes credited as Joe Morris on record, though he is no relation to free jazz guitarist Joe Morris or trumpeter Joe Morris.

Javier Esparza Coronado is a Mexican retired Luchador, or professional wrestler, currently working as a match maker for Consejo Mundial de Lucha Libre (CMLL). Esparza is best known under the ring name Franco Columbo, a name he uses even after retiring from wrestling.

Columbo is an American crime drama television series starring Peter Falk as Lieutenant Columbo, a homicide detective with the Los Angeles Police Department. Season 2 aired on NBC from September 1972 to March 1973.

The final 14 episodes of Columbo were produced sporadically as a series of specials, spanning 13 years from 1990 to 2003. These episodes have since been released on DVD in several regions as "season 10". Two of the episodes, "No Time to Die" and "Undercover", were based on 87th Precinct novels by Ed McBain and thus do not follow the usual Columbo format.

<i>Crosby, Columbo, and Vallee</i> 1932 film

Crosby, Columbo, and Vallee is a 1932 Warner Bros. Merrie Melodies cartoon short directed by Rudolf Ising. The short was released on March 19, 1932. It lampoons the popularity of crooners among young women, with popular crooners Bing Crosby, Russ Columbo, and Rudy Vallée being the namesake of the film.

<i>Mrs. Columbo</i> 1979 American television series

Mrs. Columbo is an American crime drama television series, initially based on the wife of Lieutenant Columbo, the title character from the television series Columbo. It was created and produced by Richard Alan Simmons and Universal Television for NBC, and stars Kate Mulgrew as a news reporter helping to solve crimes while raising her daughter.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Columbo (character)</span> Fictitious character in eponymous American TV detective crime drama series

Lieutenant Columbo is the main character in the American detective crime drama television series Columbo created by Richard Levinson and William Link. Columbo is a shrewd and exceptionally observant homicide detective who often disguises his aptitude with his inelegant, shambling manner; trademarks of his blue-collar ethos include his rumpled beige raincoat, cigar and relentless investigative approach.

References

  1. "COLUMBO: REST IN PEACE MRS. COLUMBO {ABC SATURDAY MYSTERY} (TV)". The Paley Center For Media. Retrieved September 10, 2013.