Thu 5 Nov 2015
A TV Review: MIAMI UNDERCOVER “Sunken Treasure” (1961).
Posted by Steve under Reviews , TV mysteries[4] Comments
“Sunken Treasure.” An episode of Miami Undercover, Ziv, syndicated, 24 April 1961 (Season 1, Episode 14). Lee Bowman (Jeff Thompson), Rocky Graziano (Rocky). Guest cast: George N. Neise, Adrienne Bourbeau, Gene Damian, Nora Hayden. Music: Johnny Green. Writer: Gerald Drayson Adams. Director: Howard W. Koch.
The gimmick here is that posing as a man-about-town playboy, detective Jeff Thompson is actually working undercover for a Miami Beach hotel association. Rocky Graziano is his live-in assistant who also prepares his breakfast.
There are a couple of other episodes still in existence out of run of 38 — and if you go searching, you may find them online. It’s not likely, but even if someone came up with a complete set on DVD, I wouldn’t pay a lot of money for copies. Based on my sample of size one, I’d say the series was competently done, but where it counts, it was little more than mediocre.
A couple of Jeff’s friends, a young married couple who run a small boating operation, are taken in by a pair of con-artists who want some stolen diamonds to be brought up from the ocean as salvage from a sunken Spanish galleon. (I may have the details wrong — there’s a lot of plot that’s stuffed into a mere 25 minute episode — but it’s close enough.)
Lee Bowman’s was 47 when he made this series, his movie career far in the past, and while still spry, he looks older. Rocky Graziano’s only contribution is to be enthusiastic, which he does just fine. Adrienne Bourbeau is not the Adrienne Barbeau, but the statuesque Nora Hayden makes a very fine substitute for Jane Russell, who probably was not available.
Nothing is made of Jeff’s undercover status. Perhaps the married couple know him only as a playboy (an aging one), but the two con-artists know who he is from the get-go. There is a bomb involved toward the end of this episode, but it’s easily disposed of, and the whole affair is laughed off as a lark, just another day at the beach. Miami Beach, that is.
November 5th, 2015 at 1:38 pm
Over at Internet Archive is the episode “The Thrush” with Larry King playing a disc jockey:
https://archive.org/details/MiamiUndercoverTheThrush
I agree totally with your review. The problem I had was this was one of those syndicated series where everyone involved was there for the paycheck. No effort was made to make the stories, characters or even the setting interesting or appealing.
November 5th, 2015 at 9:43 pm
I remember the Larry King episode. This one played like it was an ad made by the Miami Hotel Association along with the Miami Beach Chamber of Commerce. It wasn’t a bad set up for a series, just Bowman was tired and Rocky, despite his charm, had little to do.
There is a sociological element that in thee late Fifties it was still possible to sell an aging actor as serious playboy on the small screen and not pathetic.
It seemed designed to give everyone involved a job more than anything else.
November 6th, 2015 at 8:00 am
Aging playboys were Big in the 1930’s.
Audiences couldn’t get enough of sophisticated money-bags like Adolphe Menjou and Warren William. These guys led glamorous lives and always had glamorous mistresses.
But after 1945 the type faded out of Hollywood.
November 6th, 2015 at 4:03 pm
Menjou and William were a better class of aging playboy than Lee Bowman.