Columbo

Note: This article is on the television program "Columbo." You may also be looking for the city of Colombo.

Columbo was an American crime fiction TV series created by Richard Levinson and William Link. It aired regularly from 1971 to 1978, and sporadically from 1989 to 2003. It starred Peter Falk as Lieutenant Columbo, a homicide detective with the Los Angeles Police Department.

History of the show

The character of Columbo first appeared in 1960 on the NBC anthology series The Chevy Mystery Show. Columbo was played by Thomas Mitchell in the role. The production starred Joseph Cotten as the murderer and Agnes Moorehead as the victim.

Up to this point the writers had regarded Columbo as only a supporting role, but they soon found that he was stealing attention away from the stars.

Finally, the play was made into a television movie for NBC in 1968. Mitchell had died, and the writers suggested Lee J. Cobb and Bing Crosby for the role, but Cobb was unavailable and Crosby turned it down. Director Richard Irving convinced Levinson and Link that Falk, who wanted the role, could pull it off even though he was much younger than what the writers had in mind.

The TV-movie pitted Falk's Columbo against a murdering physician played by Gene Barry.

The popularity of the character prompted the creation of a regular series on NBC that premiered the fall of 1971 as part of the wheel series NBC Mystery Movie, initially on Wednesday night. Columbo was an immediate hit in the Nielsen ratings and Falk won an Emmy Award for his role in the first year of the series. In the second season it was moved, along with the other shows in the Mystery Movie rotation, to Sunday night and ran for a total seven seasons. After cancellation in 1978, it was revived in occasional made-for-television movies on ABC.

Description

Falk's Columbo was a shabby, apparently slow-witted police detective, although, as the criminals eventually learned, appearances can be deceiving. Columbo solved his cases through close attention to tiny inconsistencies in a suspect's story, hounding them until they confessed. Columbo's signature technique was to exit the scene of an interview, invariably stopping in the doorway to ask "just one more thing" of a suspect, which always brought to light the key inconsistency. In the 1970s, the character rose to the level of an icon on American television.

The series is noted by TV critics and historians for the way it reversed the cliches of the standard whodunit story. In a typical murder mystery, the identity of the murderer is not revealed until the climax of the story, and the hero uncovers clues pointing to the killer. In an episode of Columbo, the audience sees the crime unfold at the beginning and knows exactly who did it. This allows the story to unfold more from the criminal's point of view, rather than that of Columbo himself. The real star of the story is the criminal, and the audience watches as he (or she) frantically tries to cover his tracks, being hounded by the persistent police lieutenant at every step, until he finally slips up and Columbo catches him. As the killer is nearly always wealthy, the show can be seen as an expression of class conflict.

Guest contributions

Directors

Steven Spielberg and Jonathan Demme both directed episodes of the show during its first run. Steven Bochco was once a writer.

Guest stars/murderers

Guest stars who played murderers included Leonard Nimoy, Robert Culp (three times, sporting various moustaches!), Jack Cassidy (again, three times), Ross Martin, Ed Begley Jr., Tyne Daly, William Shatner (twice), Patrick McGoohan (many times!), Robert Vaughn, Laurence Harvey, Ruth Gordon, Janet Leigh, John Cassavetes, Ray Milland, George Wendt, Johnny Cash, Martin Landau, Donald Pleasence, Louis Jourdan, Vera Miles, Roddy McDowall, Faye Dunaway, Fisher Stevens, Rip Torn, Billy Connolly, Ian Buchanan, Dick Van Dyke, José Ferrer, Oskar Werner, Richard Kiley, Robert Conrad, and Theodore Bikel. Peter Falk's wife, Shera Danese, appeared in six Columbo episodes.

Spin-off

A spin-off TV series, Mrs. Columbo, was aired in 1979, but it received a dismal reception and was swiftly cancelled. It disappointed fans of the original movies because it had "Mrs. Columbo" as Detective Columbo's divorcée. Many Columbo episodes featured the detective speaking about his wife and the fans found the possibility of divorce unthinkable. Eventually, it was established that the character of Kate Columbo was of no relation to the detective, thereby allowing the never-seen Mrs. Columbo to continue to play a part in the Peter Falk TV movies.

Biography of Lt. Columbo

The following details of Lt. Columbo's life have been gleaned from statements the character has made:

Columbo was born and raised in New York City in a neighborhood near Chinatown. The Columbo household included the future policeman's grandfather, parents, five brothers and a sister. His father wore glasses and did the cooking when his mother was in the hospital having another baby. His grandfather let him stomp the grapes when they made wine in the cellar. He is Italian on both sides.

Columbo's first name is never revealed in the series. When pressed, he would insist that it was "Lieutenant". Some fans claim that his police badge says "Philip Columbo", but others claim that this first named was deliberately invented by the author of a trivia book (the author wanted a false piece of trivia in his book to aid him in catching copyright violators).

Columbo's father, who never earned more than $5,000 a year, taught him how to play pool, an obsession that stuck with the future detective. Hardly a model child, Columbo broke street lamps, played pinball and ran with a crowd of boys that enjoyed a good prank. His boyhood hero was Joe DiMaggio, and he also liked gangster pictures.

During high school, he dropped chemistry and took wood shop. While he dated a girl named Theresa in high school, he met his future wife. After serving in the Army during the Korean War, Columbo joined the New York police force and was assigned to the 12th precinct. He trained under Sergeant Gilhooley, a genial Irishman who tried to teach him the game of darts. He moved to Los Angeles in 1958.

Columbo is compulsive about little details. Little things keep him awake at night and he likes to bounce ideas off his wife. The Columbos have an unknown number of children and a basset hound named Dog. Columbo doesn't carry a gun. He drives a 1959 Peugeot 403 convertible. He is prone to airsickness and seasickness and he can't swim. He is squeamish and doesn't like autopsies or even looking at photographs of 'messy' murders.

He is not good with numbers. He likes cooking, limericks, Westerns, Italian opera, Strauss waltzes, golf, classical music, bowling, and football on television. He is a self-proclaimed expert at tuning in TV sets. In 1972, he made $11,000 a year. He is extremely stingy and for his 25th wedding anniversary, rather than buying her silver he considered taking his wife camping. His parents and his grandfather are dead. His favourite food is chili (with crackers) which he eats at a greasy spoon owned by Barney who he sometimes chews over a case with. Columbo also loves coffee and drinks it black. He loves cigars (usually the cigarette-cigar kind), which he smokes regularly. He speaks Italian and a little Spanish.