Sat 26 Feb 2022
A TV Episode Review: IRONSIDE “The Leaf in the Forest†(1967).
Posted by Steve under Reviews , TV mysteries[7] Comments
IRONSIDE. “The Leaf in the Forest.†NBC, 21 September 1967 (Season One, Episode Two). Raymond Burr (Robert T. Ironside), Don Galloway (Det. Sgt. Ed Brown), Barbara Anderson (Officer Eve Whitfield), Don Mitchell (Mark Sanger). Guest Cast: John Larch, Edward Andrews, Barbara Barrie, John Rubinstein, Bert Freed. Director: Leo Penn. Currently available online.
The basic setup for the series was established, in a TV movie entitled Ironside (March 28, 1967), but I’ve not seen that since it first aired, so I can’t provide any details beyond the following: Robert Ironside was a member of San Francisco Police Department until was crippled in an accident and confined to a wheelchair. Not wanting his expertise go to waste, he was hired as a consultant and given two liaison officers (Eve Whitfield and Ed Brown) to work for him, along with a personal driver (of a custom-fitted armored car).
The title of this episode comes from an old “Persian†saying along the lines of “The best place to hide a book is in a library, to hide a man is in a city, and to hide a leaf is in a forest.†Ironside quotes this to his crew when the death of an old woman in her apartment appears to be the sixth victim of a serial killer menacing the serial. The m.o. appears to be the same, but Ironside sees some crucial differences.
Raymond Burr was of course fresh from a long run as TV’s Perry Mason, and his popularity easily continued on to this series, which lasted eight seasons. As Robert Ironside, he was extremely observant and made an obvious effort to push his assistants to think the way he did, and not much succeeding, at least in this episode. Perhaps they got better.
In any case, by challenging them with the clues, he was doing the same for the benefit of the viewer, but without calling the members of his TV audience “children,†as he does on a couple of occasions, with some exasperation.
All in all, it’s a fairly easy case to solve, but it’s fun to see the cast as they start to come to grips with their roles. Of the guest stars, Barbara Barrie stood out way ahead of the others, as a wife faced with the hard decision to give her husband [PLOT WARNING!] an alibi for the killing or not.

February 27th, 2022 at 7:12 pm
I loved watching repeats of this twenty years ago. It apparently ran for 200 episodes, which is astonishing for any series. Not sure the premise really warranted so many, but people must have loved it.
February 27th, 2022 at 7:14 pm
Raymond Burr and friends. That is the premise.
February 27th, 2022 at 8:20 pm
I agree. The mystery of the week and the wheelchair helped, but Raymond Burr was the man.
February 27th, 2022 at 8:30 pm
I was a regular viewer. Not sure I would find much in it today, but at the time it was a decent weekly time killer with some decent mystery element and of course, Raymond Burr.
February 28th, 2022 at 1:31 am
Personally, I’m not a fan of Raymond Burr. But I do applaud him vigorously for his SUPERB movie roles and his always stalwart radio work. He had an extravagantly wonderful radio voice.
I’m too lazy to explain!
March 1st, 2022 at 2:58 pm
“The best place to hide a book is in a library, to hide a man is in a city, and to hide a leaf is in a forest.â€
is a variant on Father Brown’s remarks in “The Sign of the Broken Sword”:
“Where does a wise man hide a pebble?”
… “On the beach.”
“Where does a wise man hide a leaf?”
… “In the forest.”
“… But what does he do if there is no forest?… He grows a forest to hide it in,… A fearful sin…. If there were no forest, he would make a forest. And if he wished to hide a dead leaf, he would make a dead forest.”
I’ll leave it to you to check its context.
March 1st, 2022 at 6:31 pm
Thank you, sir. It’s been a long time since I’ve read Father Brown, over 60 years, but now that you’ve told me, it certainly sounds like something you’d read in one of his stories.
When Ironside quoted it the first time, he called it a Persian saying. The second time, he said it was Turkish. When his crew called him on it, he just smiled.