Tue 15 Aug 2017
TV Series Review: I’M THE LAW “The Killer” (1953)
Posted by Steve under Reviews , TV mysteries[17] Comments
I’M THE LAW “The Killer.” Syndicated; Cosman Productions / Television Corporation of America. 3 July 1953. (Season 1, Episode 21). George Raft (Police Lt. George Kirby). Guest Cast: Lawrence Dobkin, Nestor Paiva, June Vincent. Screenplay: Jackson Gillis. Director: Robert G. Walker.
I’m the Law was a syndicated mystery series starring George Raft that ran for 29 episodes in different markets in 1953. Raft played a New York City police lieutenant who wore a hat and a a bulky overcoat no matter the weather, inside and out (if this one episode I recently happened upon typified the rest of the series).
And let me say up front that this particular episode is not very good. It begins with a public stenographer being bumped off by a mobster because she was given too many secrets to type up. And whose fault is that? Her death is made to to look like an automobile accident (I think), but the marks on her neck indicate right away that she was strangled.
The black and white photography is good, and it’s always fun to see familiar actors’ faces again, but you can turn your mind off while watching rest of this one, in case you ever do. George Raft is no better (or worse) than many similar roles he played over the years.
August 15th, 2017 at 7:53 pm
Fun Facts:
I’m The Law was owned and produced by Lou Costello and his brother Pat, who were gambling pals of George Raft.
Lou was in the second season of his Abbott & Costello Show; adding a syndicated cop show with a star attached was diversification, early TV style.
Mill Creek’s 12-disc set of Classic TV Detectives includes three I’m The Law episodes, one of which is apparently the pilot:
the credits are arranged differently – they’re mostly at the beginning, with nods to Jackson Gillis (I’m guessing that he created the format) and David Victor as writers, Jean Yarbrough as producer (he also produced the A&C show), and George Archainbaud as director (he later did many of Gene Autry’s Flying A westerns).
The other two are from later in the series, with similar credits to the show you’ve got here.
Footnote:
George Raft had a piece of I’m The Law, which he’d hoped would solve some money problems for him.
He wound up losing it all when the IRS went after Lou Costello, concurrently with the release of the show.
It happens …
August 15th, 2017 at 11:03 pm
Very nearly an overload of information, Mike, except when it comes to old TV shows, I can never have enough. Thanks!!
So there are three more episodes that have managed to survive. It is good to know, but I probably won’t a point of getting the set of Mill Creek shows. You never can tell, though.
This one that I just watched comes from a DVD entitled JOHNNY LEGEND PRESENTS TV NOIR. Johnny Legend is th fellow who introduces the set. He looks like one of the band members of Z. Z. Top, with shades and a long scraggly beard.
I watched the first show from this set last August: TREASURY MEN IN ACTION “The Case of the Deadly Dilemma,†starring Charles Bronson
https://mysteryfile.com/blog/?p=41870
then I lost the disk until it suddenly turned up a couple of days ago when I was looking for something else. Had the case all along. It was the disk itself that went missing.
Others on the disk, which I will be watching soon are an episode of
HOLLYWOOD OFFBEAT, starring Melvyn Douglas, then an episode of POLICE STATION.
Noir? Probably not, not really.
August 15th, 2017 at 10:43 pm
Much ado about nothing we hadn’t seen done as well before.
August 15th, 2017 at 11:09 pm
A lot of truth to that. Nothing in this episode that is urging me to watch more. But as a historical artifact, from the days just before my family got our first TV, very enjoyable!
August 16th, 2017 at 2:20 am
After writing this, I went looking around the selling sites:
The excavators at Alpha Video have issued a collection of four I’m The Law episodes that are apparently different ones from the one you’ve reviewed here and the three from the Mill Creek set.
So that’s eight Laws that somehow survived the unbenign neglect that befalls so many TV antiques.
That’s almost enough to get on cable …
I remember first seeing I’m The Law sometime in the late ’50s, on channel 7 in Chicago – the same station that carried The Abbott & Costello Show reruns (package deal, most likely).
I did take time to look at the apparent pilot on the Mill Creek set.
It’s called “The Cowboy And The Blind Man Story”, with guest star – Percy Helton.
(Now if that doesn’t draw your fire …)
August 16th, 2017 at 11:05 am
I may check out the Alpha Video compilation, Mike. I hadn’t spotted that one before. But $25 and up as the asking price for the Mill Creek set, I don’t think so. Not with all of the other dreck in it. Not even with Percy Helton in the pilot.
August 16th, 2017 at 8:39 am
Producer Jean Yarbrough was a major force in Bad Movies. Besides Abbott & Cosrtelli he worked with The Bowery Boys, Bela Lugosi and Rondo Hatton, and his last feature film was the truly dreadful HILLBILLYS IN A HAUNTED HOUSE, with Lon Chaney Jr, Basil Rathbone, John Carradine and a guy in a gorilla suit.
August 16th, 2017 at 11:02 am
I seem somehow to have missed this one, Dan. And I now consider myself forewarned.
August 16th, 2017 at 10:15 am
Just back from looking up Jean Yarbrough:
After Hillbillys In A Haunted House, Jean Yarbrough spent the last several years of his career in TV, in service of older stars – mainly Walter Brennan on The Guns Of Will Sonnett.
His only Movie Of The Week was The Over-The-Hill Gang, with the aforementioned Brennan, plus Andy Devine, Edgar Buchanan, Pat O’Brien, and several others I’ll remember once I hit Submit.
I suppose it’s a sign of my own advancing age that I cut considerable slack for old hands who stay active to the end …
August 16th, 2017 at 11:00 am
It was quite a career he had, going all the way back to 1926. IMDb lists 127 directing credits for him, but it’s far more than that, because (for example) I’M THE LAW is listed only once, but he directed eleven different episodes.
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0946391/reference
August 16th, 2017 at 12:06 pm
Jackson Gillis also had a nice career, penning over 30 and co-producing over 100 of the Perry Mason episodes. He also wrote some of the more imaginative George Reeves Superman episodes. He was a former army intelligence officer who retired to Moscow, Idaho in the 1990s, where Donald Trump owns property, but I’ll let CNN sort that out.
August 16th, 2017 at 12:22 pm
I recognized his name from a couple of hardcover mysteries he wrote toward the end of his TV career. From Hubin:
GILLIS, JACKSON (Clark) (1916-2010)
The Killers of Starfish (n.) Lippincott 1977 [Washington (state)]
Chain Saw (n.) St. Martin’s 1988 [Washington (state)]
I remember reading the first one. Not so sure about the second.
August 16th, 2017 at 4:31 pm
3. David, shame on you. There are many other examples of books and films that appear here I could say the same thing. But often it is the sameness that is the interesting point. You can’t examine 50’s detective shows without noticing the sameness.
I’M THE LAW is a great example of the attitude of the police and the public’s view of cops. Its borderline fascist, star ego title could only exist in that era.
2. Steve, HOLLYWOOD OFFBEAT is must viewing for TV PI fans. The opening was pure PI narration cliche where he speaks in third person. It is so over the top it now inspires laughter. It was originally called STEVE RANDALL and started on the DuMont TV network (1952/53) then moved to CBS for the summer of 1953.
August 16th, 2017 at 4:59 pm
Add: Jackson Gillis.
Gillis put in a couple of stints on Columbo, both 0.1 and 0.2.
He’s been given credit for what many Columbo fans consider the greatest single final scene in the entire series: “Suitable for Framing”, with Ross Martin.
August 16th, 2017 at 5:48 pm
Before I’M THE LAW, Gillis’s only TV writing credits were for CHEVRON THEATER and RACKET SQUAD. His career could only go up from there, and it did.
August 16th, 2017 at 10:45 pm
Steve:
Before I’m The Law, there weren’t many places where writer could get credits; filmed TV was still ramping up.
Guys like Jackson Gillis – and for that matter David Victor, his collaborator here – were among the inventors of the whole form.
And you get to a form by trial and error – you gradually find out what works, and build on that.
I’m looking at my Racket Squad DVDs from Alpha Video (eleven so far), and you’d be surprised to see who wrote many of them …
August 17th, 2017 at 12:02 am
Like most of the best TV writers of the 50s, Jackson Gillis got his start in radio. He wrote for some of the best West Coast radio series such as LET GEORGE DO IT, THE WHISTLER, ROCKY JORDAN and JEFF REGAN.