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It’s ladies day today for Columbo (5USA) as you can see how they get to grips with portraying female murderers in the 70s. First up at 9am it’s ‘Ransom for a Dead Man’ the second pilot. Lee Grant plays Leslie Williams, a woman who is not only ruthless enough to kill...(1/13)
She is, shock horror, ruthless enough to have a job as a lawyer! And a nasty successful one at that! Granted this is an early episode before they fully develop the ‘friendly jousting’ between Columbo and his prey, but it is striking how many ways the production team...
Show how horrid she is, as a wife, a step mother, a lawyer etc, a contrast with the smooth and calculating Gene Barry in the first pilot.
Next up at 10.55 it’s lady in waiting. Susan Clarke plays a woman who is portrayed initially as sympathetic, controlled by her manipulative brother into ending a relationship with the rugged straight-shooter Leslie Nielsen. However, once the murder occurs...
The story takes pains to show that the woman is not just wrong to commit murder, she is also wrong in thinking that she is able to run the family business as well as her brother, and that the inevitable consequences of a woman taking over a company is the woman becoming...
Brutal and overbearing, alienating everyone around her including her fiancé. Like in ‘Ransom for a Dead Man’, it’s the lack of ‘womanly’ qualities that are seen as just as bad as committing murder.
Skipping over ‘Last Salute to the Commodore’ at 12.30, in which Patrick McGoohan gets another chance to turn a show into psychedelic gibberish. Cathartic for the end of ‘The Prisoner’ perhaps, this approach is completely out of place for Columbo and wouldn’t have happened...
Had not they thought they were going to be cancelled at the end of the season.
So at 2.30 we have ‘Forgotten Lady’. Janet Leigh does Gloria Swanson in ‘Sunset Boulevard’, but with much more sympathy. This is a beautifully moving episode with one of the first big twists on the standard Columbo format. No spoilers but I think it works beautifully.
As with all the other woman centric episodes today, the murderer is surrounded by old grey haired guys desperately trying to ‘talk sense to the little lady’. Even though in this case she is more ‘wrong’ to do what she does, we instinctively have more sympathy with her...
Because the faded actress is a type we’re familiar with, and it’s written with a confidence not seen in the other episodes.
Amusingly ‘Forgotten Lady’ with Janet Leigh is followed by her ‘Psycho’ co-star Vera Miles in Lovely but Lethal’ (4.30 pm). Miles is having a whale of a time playing the head of a cosmetics company, and yes, there is sexism, but at least she is playing...
A ghastly ruthless person who is good at her job, so in that respect she at least on a par with the Robert Culps and the George Hamiltons of the Columboverse.
As there are fewer female killers in Columbo. It’s interesting to look at the parallels. ‘Make me a Perfect Murder’ (1977)has echoes of ‘Lady in Waiting’. Both have women who are patronised and devalued by a man, and murder that man in order to get their position...
We sympathise with both murderers, but at the same time we are shown that, in the end, the men were right. In MMAPM a female television producer is passed over for a job because her judgement doesn’t ‘cut it’ in the male world.
Then for the rest of the story we see her judgement is faulty. She screws up a variety show by showing too much faith in a friend, the star (another woman) with a drinking problem. In this case we are meant to see she is too soft.
In ‘Lady in Waiting’ the woman is too harsh. In the view of the writer she is playing the part of a man (badly) in a mans world and she’s turning off her fiancée, who liked her better when she was a pretty little princess.
