Wed 5 Aug 2015
TV Mystery Review: CHARLIE PARADISE “The Tragic Flute” (1964).
Posted by Steve under Reviews , TV mysteries[12] Comments
CHARLIE PARADISE. “The Tragic Flute.” An episode of Brenner, CBS, 19 July 1964 (Season 2, Episode 10). Ron Randell (Charlie Paradise). Guest star: Edward Binns as Roy Brenner, with Bob Pastene, Gerald S. O’Loughlin, Severn Darden, Rebecca Sand, Kathy Willard, Fred Gwynne. Story/screenplay: Peter Stone and James Yaffe. Director: Gerald Mayer.
I’m listing this pilot for a proposed TV series the same way it is in the end credits. The opening title is for a series called Brenner (1959-64), with the name of the episode being “Charlie Paradise.” Edward Binns was the star of the series, playing a police lieutenant for the NYPD named Roy Brenner. Co-starring as Brenner’s son Ernie, a young patrolman for the department, was James Broderick; in the course of the series, they often found themselves working together.
Son Ernie does not appear in this episode, however, the last of 26. When an old woman whom no one has seen in person for many years is found dead in her dilapidated apartment, Lt. Brenner, having no leads, essentially turns the case over to Charlie Paradise, the owner of a beatnik club in Greenwich Village, and the center of the bohemian art movement for the city, whether jazz, poetry or art.
It’s an interesting story line, and Ron Randell fits his role well. The solution to the case is provided by an artist with integrity but living in abject poverty. There’s what’s essentially a dead man’s clue to the killer, which cleverly could be any of the suspects. I can’t imagine networks bigwigs relating much to either the setting or the characters living in it, however, and once and done was all they wrote for Charlie Paradise.
Note: Based on what others have discovered about the series, all of the episodes were filmed in 1959, including this one, then spread out over the years as parts of summer replacement series. The 1964 date is the first and only time this episode was aired. Also, for more on the Brenner series itself, Ted Fitzgerald wrote up a review of it some seven years ago on this blog. Read it here.
August 5th, 2015 at 6:50 pm
Randell was Bulldog Drummond and the Lone Wolf at the end of the B programmer cycle. I recall him best for a guest shot on THE FARMER’S DAUGHTER with Ingrid Stevens where he played a British spy novelist friend of congressman William Windom who wrote about a secret agent named John Pond.
Wonder where they got that idea.
August 5th, 2015 at 7:57 pm
In which I infer and deduce, based on content and context:
– A 1959 production date indicates that the product template is the “new hit of the year”, Peter Gunn. (Jazz club, Cary Grant lookalike lead, offbeat character actors, etc.)
– Ron Randell, Australian-born and long in the USA, had just come off a British-produced series called O.S.S., which had a short run on ABC a year or so earlier, so he was reasonably fresh in the minds of the nets.
_ Writers:
Peter Stone was at this point at the entry level in the script biz. He was second-generaton; his father was John Stone, who’d produced detective movies for Fox (Charlie Chan) and Columbia (Boston Blackie), among others.
Peter Stone went on to a successful screenwriting career, his best-known films being Mirage and Charade.
Co-writer James Yaffe was famed for having published his first short story in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine when was 16 years old, in 1943. He went on to write many more short stories and novels, as well as occasional forays into radio and TV (like this one).
– The two guys in the screen grab with Randell are Fred Gwynne (who plainly did this before Car 54) and Severn Darden (one of Second City’s most colorful alumni).
I just looked at my DVD wall and found this episode in my Brenner box set; it just moved to the head of my watch list.
Back later …
August 5th, 2015 at 8:24 pm
Do let us know what you think, Mike. Second opinions are always welcome.
All of your comments are right on. It’s fun to come across old relics like this and match up characters with names of actors and so on, and facts about them.
I bought my set of BRENNER about seven years ago, when I posted that review of the series that Ted Fitzgerald did. To my regret and dismay, I realize that I have not even opened it.
August 6th, 2015 at 12:03 am
It is now later …
According to the closing credits, Charlie Paradise carries a 1960 copyright by Plautus Productions, Herbert Brodkin’s company. Plautus also produced the far more serious Defenders and Nurses programs, starting the following year, 1961.
From the episode itself, it seemed clear that Fred Gwynne’s character was going to be the only other regular, besides Ron Randell; he was a barkeep/bouncer/factotum to Charlie – perhaps his role would have been more active in future episodes.
As it was, the fact that Gwynne’s new job on The Munsters was to begin in the fall of ’64 may have been a factor in CBS’s decision to run this episode that summer.
I got to thinking about Ron Randell, and the last time I remember seeing him – on General Hospital, sometime in the mid-’80s. He was a bad-guy spy master, recurring over a couple of years.
A number of interesting people turned up on GH during this period, including Keye Luke, Hurd Hatfield, Alan Young (as a bad guy), Miss Jeff Donnell (as a family maid for over a decade), Guy Doleman (one of The Prisoner‘s Numbers Two), and quite a few others I’m sure I’ll recall once I hit Submit.
… but that’s another story …
So now I’ll leave you to open your Brenner set.
Happy hunting …
August 6th, 2015 at 11:47 am
Mike D–
And when I open my BRENNER set, I think I’ll watch this one first. My review was based on watching the one in my set of Rare Pilots, and the first half was so dark that some scenes were pure blackness. The credits were cut off before the copyright date showed up also, so it’s good to know that all of the BRENNER episodes were filmed at the same time, 1959-60. For a while it was thought they brought the cast together and filmed more episodes in 1964, but not so.
Did you think the would-be CHARLIE PARADISE series had any long term possibilities? By the time it aired I’d have to think the concept was all old hat and rehash, and I’m sure the network thought so too, long before then. In the summer of 1964 I’m sure the only use any leftover BRENNER shows had, including this pilot, was to take up airtime.
August 6th, 2015 at 11:36 am
I too have the series on DVD waiting to be watched. I bought it as a fan of Peter Stone who wrote my favorite movie of all time WHO’S KILLING THE GREAT CHEFS OF EUROPE.
I watched one episode, was bored and put it away. I will go back and watch CHARLIE PARADISE and report in:)
Google the series “Brenner” and there is very little information about the series outside this site’s review and the usual databases.
Scheduling for BRENNER: I need to check but I think it was not unheard of for summer series to disappear and come back during the days of radio and early TV.
Summer of 1959 the series aired Saturday at 9-9:30 opposite ABC’s DODGE DANCING PARTY while on NBC was either BLACK SADDLE or THE DEPUTY.
According to the Chicago “Tribune” CBS was looking for another time slot for BRENNER when it replaced the series with MR. LUCKY in October.
Summer 1961 the series ran on Monday at 10:30-11 opposite of ABC’s PETER GUNN while NBC returned the time slot to local stations.
Summer 1964 the series ran on Sunday 9:30-10 opposite ABC’s ARREST AND TRIAL and NBC’s BONANZA.
August 6th, 2015 at 7:40 pm
Full disclosure:
The original Brenner series was more in the mode of Naked City than anything else. Very dark, gritty, mean streets of Manhattan, no music score, that sort of thing.
CBS was partnered with Herbert Brodkin in this; my guess is that they were trying to figure out which way to go with a series that was never intended to be more than a placeholder anyway (that happened a lot in those days).
How something as off-the-wall as Charlie Paradise found its way into the Brenner package – one of the mysteries, your guess is as good as mine.
Its “long-term” possibilities would have been tied to whatever CBS’s program needs were in 1960; as we now know, they went with the highly similar Mr. Lucky (from the Peter Gunn stable) that year.
So there too.
It occurs to me that Charlie Paradise comes from the period that saw CBS’s phantom Nero Wolfe project that we all had such fun with here a while back.
Probably just coincidence, but taken together with this, we could come up our own theories about the evolution of TV programming practices over the years …
… is it possible to evolve sideways?
August 6th, 2015 at 8:01 pm
I just happened to remember this:
In early ’64, CBS saw an hour on Sunday fall open after Judy Garland’s variety show flamed out.
On short notice, they came up with two panel games: The Celebrity Game and Made In America.
This latter had a celeb panel trying to guess how the guests amassed their personal fortunes (sort of a knockoff of What’s My Line, which was on later that same night anyway).
Made In America flopped instantly (backstage production problems didn’t help), and CBS had a half-hour to fill … and there were those unused Brenners lying around, and the rest you know.
That happened a lot back then, too …
Oh, and that other panel, Celebrity Game?
That show actually did fairly well – it did a couple of summer rounds, before it evolved into Hollywood Squares …
… but that’s another story (aren’t they all?) …
And before I forget –
The Dodge Dancing Party was what Lawrence Welk was calling his show back then (sponsors were everything in those days).
August 7th, 2015 at 12:07 am
CHARLIE PARADISE was a pilot for a TV series that took advantage of the common practice to use an established series (BRENNER) to introduce a possible new series.
The two shows were little alike. While BRENNER was a member of THE ASPHALT JUNGLE/ NAKED CITY docudrama group of serious socially conscience aware cops, CHARLIE PARADISE turned to PETER GUNN, the PI crime show with absurdist humor for its role model.
Both benefited from great writing, acting and directing.
CHARLIE PARADISE and BRENNER differed in more than just influences. Edward Binns is near perfect in BRENNER, able to handle the difference in stories from humor to serious quite well. Ron Randall was perhaps the weakest part of CHARLIE PARADISE.
CHARLIE PARADISE had an interesting premise – beloved Charlie helps the unique people of a small community hidden inside New York city. I really enjoyed Gerald O’Loughlin and his delivery of Peter Stone’s dialogue. Most notable of the episode was the ending with a fair play clue that fooled me.
How CBS handled BRENNER was odd. From copyright dates we can assume twenty-five episodes of BRENNER and one CHARLIE PARADISE were filmed in 1959-60. In the summer of 1959, CBS aired 14 of the 26 episodes. From TV TANGO TV logs CBS in the summer of 1961 aired 16 episodes – the original 14 were rerun and two not shown in 1959 were shown, leaving 11 episodes unaired. Huh? Why not show the unaired episodes first in 1961 then run those seen in 1959? The unaired episodes including CHARLIE PARADISE aired in 1964.
Finally, the three-disc DVD box set of BRENNER contains only fifteen episodes of the 26 aired. Have the other 11 disappeared?
August 11th, 2015 at 10:45 pm
This just in:
Gerald S. O’Loughlin passed away on July 31, aged 93.
In lieu of flowers, the family asks that “you buy a meal for someone down on his luck.”
(Thanks to The Obit Patrol.)
August 11th, 2015 at 11:32 pm
Some 115 credits on IMDb, mostly as a character actor and mostly on TV. He had quite a career. Thanks for sharing this, Mike. I hadn’t heard the news till now.
August 12th, 2015 at 11:45 am
I remember him from THE ROOKIES where he played the boss cop role.
It is fun to see these guys you disliked in the 70s show you they knew how to act but got stuck in thankless roles.
In CHARLIE PARADISE O’Loughlin use of breathing gave his character an eccentric touch while not interfering with the role as the commercial artist who wanted talent instead.
There is a BRENNER with Simon Oakland where he showed the ability to play a character into a real person as opposed to the screaming authority figure he was typecast as in the 70s (KOLCHAK, TOMA, etc).
Sad how even character actors can get type-casted.