Thu 4 Oct 2012
A TV Review by Michael Shonk: PARIS PRECINCT “A Woman Scorned” (1954-55).
Posted by Steve under Reviews , TV mysteries[20] Comments
PARIS PRECINCT. Episode: “A Woman Scorned.†Etoile Production for MPTV, syndicated, 1954-1955, 26 half-hour episodes in black and white. Cast: Louis Jourdan and Claude Dauphin. Technical adviser: Inspecteur Jean Couade. Created by Jo Eisinger. Produced by Andre Hakim.
Yet another police procedural based on “real†cases, Paris Precinct used the files of the Paris, France police department. Shot on location in Paris, the series was produced for American syndication by Etoile Production, a company owned by Louis Jourdan, Claude Dauphin, producer Andre Hakim and writer Jo Eisinger.
“A Woman Scorned.” Teleplay by Charles K. Peck Jr. Guest Cast: Giselle Preville, Jean Ozenne, Bruce Kay, Nicole Francis, and Phillippe Clay. Directed by Sobey Martin. *** While on a date with an American soldier, a young blond woman dies from poisoned brandy.
The episode can be found on YouTube in more than one place including here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NXaCbwmy3ZM
“A Woman Scorned†was a typical TV mystery of the era. The simple story was told in the linear style procedural fans are accustomed to with one twist that made it worth watching for the rest of us. It begins with the murder then introduced our detectives who began a step-by-step search for the killer.
Our two detectives are different enough to make a good team. Louis Jourdan plays the serious Inspecteur Beaumont, lead detective and show’s narrator. Claude Dauphin is charming as the lighthearted Inspecteur Bolbec.
In their first scene we see the two detectives differences through their reading material. Jourdan’s Beaumont is reading a police file, while Dauphin’s Bolbec is enjoying a cheap noir paperback The Blonde Died Young. Bolbec jokingly envies the fictional detective who has made love to three beautiful blondes and one redhead in the first hundred pages.
“A Woman Scorned†suffers from some overacting from the supporting cast, one of the common flaws of early TV caused by talentless newcomers or actors who were inexperienced in the subtleties of acting on television versus stage or film.
The episode featured more sets and characters than the usual 50s TV syndication low budget series, partly to give our detectives another excuse to drive through the Paris streets as they moved from one character’s location to another.
There is a surprising absence of fights and chases in “A Woman Scorned,†but that may not have been typical for the series. In Billboard (April 16, 1955), Leon Morse reviewed the Paris Precinct episode “The Convict†and commented favorably on the action scenes such as the bar-fight and a chase across the rooftops of Paris. Morse believed the show should appeal to melodrama fans looking for something off beat.
Writer Charles K. Peck Jr. career would include film (Seminole, 1953), TV (Caribe, 1975) and Broadway (La Strada, 1969). His script for “A Woman Scorned†lacked the action one expects from 50s crime TV, but it had its moments, most notably the twist involving the murder weapon.
Director Sobey Martin stuck with the style of the time, begin with master shot, cut to close ups, and toss in an occasional odd angle such as from overhead. Martin would work for many TV series including Boston Blackie, but he is best known for his work with Irwin Allen and series such as Lost in Space and Time Tunnel.
As with most of the early TV syndicated series, specific dates for the series can be difficult to determine. The first mention of the series I could find was in Broadcasting for November 23, 1953 (followed by Billboard, November 28, 1953). Plans were for 117 half hour TV-film episodes to be done in color and distributed by MPTV. Filming had to start May 1, 1954 due to Louis Jourdan’s commitment to a Broadway play (most likely, The Immoralist). Paris Precinct was expected to air September 1954.
In Billboard, May 29, 1954, the series was being offered for sale. Twenty-six episodes were available. Also offered were thirty-nine half hour episodes that would be available in color by September 1, 1954. The additional thirteen episodes most likely were never filmed.
As for Paris Precinct being shot in color but airing in black and white, Billboard (October 23,1954) ran an item about MPTV desire to shoot its TV-Film series in color (tint), but producers had discovered the black and white prints were fuzzy on the air.
“The first twenty six segments of Duffy’s Tavern were tinted, and the last thirteen were monochrome,†noted the article, “as are MPTV’s subsequent shows which were originally planned for tint.â€
September 25, 1954 Billboard mentions MPTV had yet to sell Paris Precinct (and Sherlock Holmes) to any TV station or sponsor. In October, UM&M took over the sales of Paris Precinct (Billboard, October 23, 1954).
In December 1954, Max Factor agreed to sponsor the series in four major markets, New York, Detroit, Chicago, and Los Angeles (Billboard, December 25,1954).
Shulton (Old Spice) agreed to sponsor Paris Precinct in a nation-wide campaign aimed at thirty-five markets in March 1955. In what would be Old Spice’s first TV commercials, Louis Jourdan starred in thirteen commercials to be used with the series. The commercials, filmed by Transfilm, Inc in New York, were sixty seconds or twenty seconds each and filmed live with a jingle. (Billboard, March 5, 19, and 28, 1955).
The production details listed in Billboard (May 28, 1955) gave the initial release date for Paris Precinct as December 1954, and twenty-six episodes were available for syndication.
“A Woman Scorned†is a mildly entertaining half hour mystery that will appeal to those who enjoy an old-fashioned police procedural or those who enjoy seeing 1954 Paris. Hopefully, more episodes will someday surface.
October 5th, 2012 at 11:44 am
I’m starting to wonder how long you can keep doing this, Michael. Each of the series you’ve been profiling lately has been even more obscure and unknown than the one before.
I’ve watched the video clip of this one, and I think you’ve nailed it in your review. The story is moderately interesting, no more than that. On the other hand, other than the Hitchcock series, I can’t think of many TV mystery shows that were very successful in a 30 minute format.
October 5th, 2012 at 12:24 pm
I have an endless number of forgotten TV series still to review, including some from just a few years ago. I am still watching my HARRY O second season, so these reviews of shows with only a few episodes available are perfect.
I also find interesting stuff surfing the internet for these never heard of shows.
My favorite for this review was the LA Times obit of Charles K. Pike Jr claiming he was nominated for an Oscar as writer/producer of SEMINOLE (he wasn’t). Yep, newspapers are never wrong like the internet.
October 5th, 2012 at 12:31 pm
Steve, as for 30 minute TV mystery shows. I have a fondness for RICHARD DIAMOND. I have a review waiting to finish on NBC’s DANTE with Howard Duff. A few episodes are available at the moment on YouTube. I consider that series to be among the best mystery/crime series ever made and put on the same list as T.H.E. CAT and PETER GUNN.
October 5th, 2012 at 9:38 pm
Making a buck in the fifties with syndicated television was tough going. Dangerous Assignment did not work out well, nor did The Falcon, or I’m The Law, which I thought pretty good. The Lone Wolf did a little better because Gross-Krasne had other shows making the round and therefore the sales team was in more or less permanent place. Even so, they did not make a second season, which is another story. Highway Patrol, of course, went through the roof. Now, about color:
Donald Hyde, one of the four partners in The Lone Wolf West Corporation, the others, Louis Hayward, Jack Gross and Phil Krasne, became partnered with Ian Warren in Great Britain and set up The Pursuers. He brought Hayward in after an initial episode or two had been produced with a lesser known British actor. Nothing wrong with him, just not obviously saleable in the states.
After several of the Hayward episodes had been shot, Abe Lastfogel, head of the William Morris Agency came by and made this proposal/suggestion: shoot the remaining episodes in color and he would personally guarantee a sale to NBC. A sale, not a time slot. Louis was quite enthused about this, his partners not so much. The Saint with Roger Moore eventually filled this niche.
As for The Pursuers, it remains to this day essentially unseen in the United States except for a local New York cable deal that I did with Teeleprompter Cable in 1969.
October 5th, 2012 at 11:35 pm
#4. Barry, I know what you mean, but DANGEROUS ASSIGNMENT was a hit in syndication and owned by NBC (though it never made the network schedule).
1952 was the beginning of the syndication boom as the FCC lifted a long multi-year hold on new TV stations. By 1954 when PARIS PRECINCT became available there were over two hundred and fifty syndicated programs available (according to Billboard at the time, if my memory is correct).
MPTV had an impressive library (remember my review of PHILO VANCE) but was having problems keeping salesman in all the many regions of the country. That is why they turned sales over to UM&M.
MPTV needed an edge versus ZIV, CBS-TV Films and countless other producers. I suspected they wanted to use color as that edge but never solved how to film color (tint) and black & white under a budget.
You wonder why they bothered with color with so few stations then able to show programs in color and so few viewers with color TVs.
By the sixties only William Paley refused to accept color as TV’s future (he was still ticked the FCC picked the RCA (NBC) system over the CBS system).
You are right Barry, one of the causes for the forgotten series is their lack of color. But today, Me-TV and others are finding there is a market for those shows.
October 5th, 2012 at 11:53 pm
Michael,
My understanding of this is slightly different. There was money made for the sales unit. Brian Donlevy invested in Dangerous Assignment and did not come out. Take a look at the quality of his later projects. Done strictly for a buck and not so good a one. George Raft lost $300,000.00 on I’m The Law. Someone surely made money on these things. The Lone Wolf did fairly well and MCA/Universal licensed the series for subsequent runs. I believe there are two keys to successes in this field: controlling production and controlling sales, but from a strictly financial point of view controlling sales trumps production.
My comments re color go to at least in part Paris Precinct not going to color. More costly, but a longer shelf life. The Cisco Kid, color, Gene Autry some color. I don’t care esthetically, but color was always the future.
October 6th, 2012 at 12:15 am
And… that these productions are still be marketed has little or no meaning to the people involved fifty years ago. And more. It is the equivalent of a grey market. Useful certainly but unrelated to anything other than the souvenir industry.
October 6th, 2012 at 11:11 am
#6. You bring up a prime source of the Hollywood saying, “the most creative person in Hollywood is the studio’s accountant.”
James Garner owned most of THE ROCKFORD FILES but it took him years fighting in court with Universal before he saw one penny from the show. Why? Universal claimed ROCKFORD had lost money.
Recently, a court of appeals reduced the millions Don Johnson had won at an earlier trial. Johnson who owned part of NASH BRIDGES had not seen a penny because the production company claimed the series lost money.
PARIS PRECINCT never was a success, but it introduced Louis Jourdan to the American public. Jourdan, who had just finished his award winning, critically acclaimed performance on Broadway, was ready for Hollywood and didn’t need the series to continue. For his future movie career, it is probably best the series failed commercially, while successfully showcasing his acting talent.
October 6th, 2012 at 11:25 am
Michael,
You are mistaken about Louis Jourdan who had been in American films since the late forties: Parradine Case, Letter From An Unknown Woman, Madame Bovary, The Happy Time, and several others. Paris Precinct was a career miscalculation. And that is all it was. He was fortunate to survive it.
The Rockford Files and Nash Bridges have nothing to do with fifties tv syndication. Not about creative book keeping. Just about how tough it was to earn a buck selling station group to station group. Occasionally it worked out for everyone. But really these things were mostly unfortunate for people whose careers were in decline. For those on the way up it provided a little exposure and a few dollars. Not many.
October 6th, 2012 at 11:28 am
#9. Except DANGEROUS ASSIGNMENT was a financial success for NBC.
October 9th, 2012 at 11:38 am
Daily Variety reviewed this show on October 25, 1954. It aired on KTTV in LA on Friday nights at 9:30.
The review, by Daku (Dave Kaufman, I believe), was pretty short and pretty dismissive, writing “Paris Precinct” off as a “Dragnet” ripoff — a “well-worn carbon with a Gallic accent.” Daku wrote that “Louis Jourdan and Claude Dauphin are the clever, clever characters with the Surete, who waltz their way through this one, wrapping up the case in less time than it takes to say Jack Webb.”
As the review also points out, the show ran without a “bankroller,” airing spot blurbs instead.
October 9th, 2012 at 12:51 pm
David, thanks for the correction of the premiere date as this moves it up to October 1954 from December (when Max Factor became its sponsor in L.A. and three other cities).
It shows how hard it is to pin point the premiere date of any syndicated series during the early era of TV.
“Billboard” of May 1955, page 32 (just a few months later) printed credit lines for syndicated series available for sale, information that probably came from the production companies, and they had the start date wrong by two months.
October 9th, 2012 at 1:02 pm
For the curious about my research material here is a link (that I hope works):
http://books.google.com/books/about/Billboard.html?id=CxwEAAAAMBAJ
The item mentioned in my post and above in #12 is on page 32. It is in the fourth (of five) column from the left under UM&M.
October 9th, 2012 at 1:55 pm
David speaking of “Variety,” who would have guess the parent company of Nikki Finke’s “Deadline” (Penske) would save the old dying historic institution?
October 9th, 2012 at 3:37 pm
Speaking of credits, Daily Variety review says that other than Jourdan and Dauphin, “No one else is credited, which is understandable”!
October 9th, 2012 at 3:37 pm
Michael, I don’t know that Variety is saved yet, do you?
October 9th, 2012 at 4:19 pm
#15. Odd, the copy you can watch via YouTube has credits at the end, including the standard thank you to the Paris police.
#16. Good point, that should be “saved.” While the name is better off today, the print edition still had Death waiting in the lobby.”Variety” may be “Variety” in name only after the changes.
But they now have an owner interested in Hollywood, so it sound good so far. I am hoping “Variety” posts its archive on the web and not behind a pay wall.
October 10th, 2012 at 10:28 am
About Variety (WARNING: Extreme Nostalgia ahead):
I started reading Variety back around 1971, when I began working in downtown Chicago; I’d get it at one downtown newsstand or another on Thursday or Friday, when it became available (their distribution was somewhat erratic back then).
This came about because of my growing interest in the television business, sparked by Les Brown’s book The Business Behind The Box; I figured that since Brown was Variety‘s TV-radio editor, that would be the place to go to find things out. The TV columnists in the Chicago papers were all but useless in this regard (a situation that remains the same 40-odd years on).
I also picked up Broadcasting when I could find it, which wasn’t often; their distribution was even more erratic than Variety‘s.
Together with TV Guide‘s occasional ‘insider’ stories, I may well have been the best-informed post-adolescent on the subject of TV in the greater Chicagoland area at this time (probably the only one).
Back to Variety:
It was a newspaper back then, printed on grimy pulp newsprint that left my hands black after any reading. The Silverman family still controlled the paper editorially, and I had a lot of fun picking up the famous Variety slang on the fly as I read each week.
This situation continued for roughly twenty or so years, as new ownerships came and went, and Variety gradually became slicker, both in paper quality and prose style. By the mid-1990s, Variety had become so slick that I barely recognized it as the same publication I’d picked up as a young outsider.
Not long thereafter, many of the downtown newsstands and bookstores stopped carrying it at all (Broadcasting disappeared from those places in the same way at this time), and so did my source for any real info about the TV business.
And no, I didn’t save any of them; I was still living with my folks in the early ’70s, with very limited space. Even later, on my own, this was my situation, and remains so to this day.
(My present-day collection of old TV Guides started only recently, which accounts for its incompletenes.)
Back to Variety again:
Variety has changed hands so many times in recent years that I’m surprised it’s still going at all. The new owners are mainly interested in the name ID, of course – I imagine that the old logo will be around in whatever form the publication assumes.
But let’s not kid ourselves: it hasn’t been “the same Variety” for a number of years – any more than it was “the same Variety” when I started reading it in the ’70s.
If the new version adds on Nikki Finke (possibly the most appropriately named person in America these days), consider that a sign of the times.
Oh, Paris Precinct …
… never saw that one. Ought to take a look sometime.
These USA/international co-productions from stone-age TV look to be a fruitful field for future researches.
October 10th, 2012 at 11:25 am
My life with “Variety” began in 1975. I was a wannabe TV writer trapped in Louisiana. I subscribed to Weekly Variety (I would even get a letter published – about what I forget). In 1976 I escaped LSU and became the Entertainment Editor for the Baton Rouge “Enterprise.” “Weekly Variety” was one of my few sources. ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY was another, it was a desperate time.
In the early 80s I moved to Hollywood and got to enjoy all the trades. “Variety” was the best for the insider information and the L.A. “Times” was the best for more general coverage (especially the Sunday Calendar section).
1994 my interest is writing for TV or film changed. At 40 I was too old for television and the film I was hired to write and produced had its money man lose everything in the Northridge earthquake. I was tired of all the might haves and near misses I had experienced in Hollywood and lost interest in insider Hollywood and “Variety.” Leaving the L.A. “Times” as my primary source of entertainment news.
Then the Tribune company bought and destroyed the “Times.” Luckily, the internet stepped in. I have seen entertainment field coverage change from where my creative writing teacher at LSU did not know what a screenplay was to a world where anyone with a internet connection can read detail accounts of this week’s box office or the overnight 18-49 ratings of last night’s TV show.
In such a world where does “Variety” fit in? The new owners have said Nikki Finke (who I find very entertaining to read) will not have anything to do with “Variety.”
It will be interesting in the coming days to see how “Variety” changes.
October 10th, 2012 at 12:34 pm
I will say this about Variety, having worked there in the late 80s and early 90s: The old model, created and developed by the Silvermans, was no longer working from the standpoint of either economics or relevancy, and when the old model no longer works you have to change it or go the way of the dinosaur. That was where Peter Bart came in, when he was installed as editor by Reed (I should add that no one FORCED the Silvermans to sell; they were just looking to make money, like practically everyone else, and from a financial standpoint they got out at exactly the right time).
Maybe you love Peter Bart or maybe you hate him, but he sure did make Variety not just relevant but vibrant again. I still know some of the people working there and they are very talented, hard-working people and I wish them the best under the new regime.