Totally, Robert Culp was my favorite guest star on "Columbo," especially the one where he's the owner of the Los Angeles professional football team and he runs out of the stadium box, puts on a white hat and jacket to drive the Ding-A-Ling Ice Cream truck from the Rose Bowl out to kill Dean Stockwell. Or the one where he's the researcher of subliminal imagery and Columbo inserts subliminal pictures at a movie screening to make Robert Culp go to his office and look for the pistol calibration insert hidden inside the lamp. Or the one with William Shatner as the TV detective where he overacts his brains out -- that's a classic. Leonard Nimoy was really good in the one where he was a surgeon who used the dissolving sutures to give Grandpa Walton (Will Geer) a heart attack. It's the only one I really remember where Columbo gets angry enough to slam his fist on Leonard's desk. I also like the pilot episode with Gene Barry as the bad guy just because the sets are so groovy and swank. There are so many good episodes, they're well worth buying on dvd. And the holidays are coming up.
"MacMillan and Wife" was kind of weird. I mean, it was set in San Francisco, Nancy Walker as the smart-aleck housekeeper was almost the star of the show by the end of the series, John Schuck as Mac's go-to guy was kind of weird (he went on to star in the notable "Holmes and Yo Yo" series about the detective cop and his robot partner), and Susan St. James was rather yummy, yet at the same time, rather insane, and Rock Hudson, was probably more attracted to John Schuck than to Susan St. James, and he looked really weird after he shaved off his moustache. If you like plaid jackets, fat ties, pants with wide flares, and bright shag carpeting, you'll love "MacMillan and Wife."
Ninety-minutes of Dennis Weaver is just too much to take. He used to do commercials for some bank in California, like Great Western or Downey Savings or somebody, so he just reminded me of that usually if I saw "McCloud." Though he is more watchable in "Duel," still, ninety minutes of Dennis Weaver stressing out is just not in my schedule. Probably a great guy, but I can't watch. Kind of like Jack Klugman. I totally dug Jack Klugman in "The Odd Couple" and that one "Twilight Zone" episode, the one I think where he's a pool player. Anyway, I totally dug him, but I just couldn't watch "Quincy" without flipping the channels; however, since it followed immediately after James Garner in "The Rockford Files" on NBC Friday nights, almost anything following that show would have been a let-down.
What I don't like is when they bring "Columbo" or "The Rockford Files" back ten, fifteen years later, and it's just not quite the same. It was kind of tough to watch the "Rockford Files" movies without Noah Beery Jr. as "Rocky," and in the "Columbo" revivals I could only think of Peter Falk as the grandfather in "Time Bandits" or the CIA guy in "The In-Laws" ("Serpentine!"). I had the same difficulty with Robert Culp and Bill Cosby in the "I Spy" revisitation, and the Eddie Murphy version of that show was just a big mistake. I guess that's my hangup more than theirs, since actors all gotta work, although I'm just as happy to watch Peter Falk in "All The Marbles" or James Garner in "Promise" with James Woods, or Robert Culp in any series he guest stars now. Actually Culp is a pretty interesting guy as he's done a lot of writing, independent film making, and I believe he was a journalist at one time.
I've always been a fan of James Garner. I saw him at an airport once picking up his luggage and from the back his shoulders looked as wide as a doorway. An annoying coworker of mine was friends with, I think, one of Garner's daughters and she said he was always grumpy with her, so I knew he was a cool guy. I even liked his crappy movies, like "A Man Called Sledge" which I think Vic Morrow directed. Not a good film at all, but Garner plays a bad guy and it's pretty violent and fun, and "Mr. Buddwig" has great New York City location shots and Suzanne Pleshette is scrumptious, though that movie is otherwise a tough one to endure. On the other hand, "Grand Prix" had fantastic wide-screen first-person race photography with triple split-screens for maximum Cinerama Dome effect, and Garner does a lot of his own driving. Garner plays Philip Marlowe in an adaptation of Raymond Chandler's "The Little Sister," and Rita Moreno spices it up just as she did on "The Rockford Files" a couple of times. And you can't forget "The Skin Game" with Louis Gossett Jr., who would also do great work on "The Rockford Files." Don't leave out "Support Your Local Sheriff" and "Support Your Local Gunfighter." Come to think of it, Isaac Hayes, "Chef" on "South Park," played Gandolph Finch on "The Rockford Files" who kept calling Rockford "Rockfish." While I was never a "Magnum, P.I." fan, Tom Selleck was a riot as the annoyingly golden-boy detective Lance White on "Rockford," and they were thinking of spinning Tom Selleck off for his own show then. I've heard that Garner anonymously drove a stunt car in Steve McQueen's "The Getaway," but was yanked when the insurance people found out.
There are actually two great Garner stories that I can't guarantee to be true, but one was that on the set of "Health" with Lauren Bacall and Dick Cavett, Garner set up Cavett by having Bacall send Cavett to her dressing room to fetch something for her, and Garner left a phony Bacall diary in her room where he knew Cavett would find it and read that she thought he was a twit and an egomaniac. Cavett did sneak a peek and read it and was crushed, thinking that the great Lauren Bacall hated him, and Garner didn't let Cavett off the hook until years later. The other was on the Universal Studios lot where "Rockford" was produced and there was someone who scored TV shows who used a theme too similar to Mike Post's "Rockford" theme, and Garner told the guy to knock it off. This music guy kept on with it, and one day when Garner was leaving the lot in his car he saw he was right behind this guy so he got out and confronted him at the gate. The guy gets out of his car, there are some words, and Garner clocks the guy across the jaw. Music guy starts screaming he's going to sue and tries to include the guard as a witness, who shrugs his shoulders and begs off, saying he didn't see anything since he was talking to a driver on the entrance side. Garner walks back, asks the guard if he's sure he didn't see the punch, and when the guard says, no, really he didn't, Garner punches the music guy again and says, "There, you saw it now." Apparently Garner got a standing ovation in the lunch room days later on the lot.
Well I guess I've killed enough time here at the office, so I can clock out and get some dinner. Do not forward my calls.
-P
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