Fri 28 Apr 2023
A TV Episode Review: TIGHTROPE! “The Chinese Pendant†(1960).
Posted by Steve under Reviews , TV mysteries[5] Comments
TIGHTROPE! “The Chinese Pendant.†Screen Gems / CBS, 29 March 1960 (Season 1, Episode 28). Michael Connors. Guest cast: Ted de Corsia, Mary Castle, Philip Ahn, Lisa Lu, Jeanne Carmen (as Saba Dareaux). Directed by Irving J. Moore.
Tightrope! the TV series lasted but one season on CBS, but that was back when a season consisted of well over 30 episodes, in this case 37, running throughout the entire 1959-60 season. Mike Connors played an undercover cop in each of the stories, every week getting into scrape after scrape, but managing to escape just in the nick of time at the end.
He has two problems hanging over him in “The Chinese Pendant.†The first he knows about – trying to get in with a mob boss by posing as a skilled diamond thief – the other he doesn’t – that of a would-be killer whom Connors sent to prison, and who wants revenge.
Narrating the stories, Connors had a new name in each episode, but apparently he often went by “Nick.†Even though posing as a crook, he was suave enough to catch the eye of some very good-looking women; two, in fact, in this episode. Old time movie fans will recognize the name of Philip Ahn, who plays a fence this time around and whose career lasted some 40 years or more. His daughter, played by Lisa Lu, you may remember as Hey Girl in the Have Gun, Will Travel TV series, and who quite remarkably is still active today.
There’s a lot of plot in “The Chinese Pendant,†and one could only wish the show was 60 minutes long instead of a very cramped 30 minutes. I enjoyed the series immensely back when it was originally on, and I enjoyed it equally so the other night when I discovered this episode on YouTube. See below, if still there:
April 29th, 2023 at 7:12 pm
I watch these once in a while on YouTube and I’m always impressed by how tightly they are plotted and how much they get into thirty minutes.
The fact Connors character remains shadowy and hard to nail down makes him all the more mysterious as much secret agent as undercover cop.
April 29th, 2023 at 7:31 pm
I always have second thoughts after posting a review, and in this case it was about whether the show would have been better off with 30 minute episodes, as it was, or 60 minutes.
If the latter, as I was leaning toward, unless they were careful, it might have seemed padded. At 30, it was as if every minute counted.
April 30th, 2023 at 9:24 am
One wonders why Connors, with his patented suave cockiness, didn’t make more of a splash on the big screen; but everything worked out well for him in the end, because Mannix had a long run and really is kind of iconic.
April 30th, 2023 at 1:41 pm
David Janssen was another actor who was more successful on the small screen than he was in films.
On the other hand, Steve McQueen.
May 1st, 2023 at 9:05 pm
It’s hard to define why a television star doesn’t gel on the big screen the way they do on the more intimate small screen, the list is long of the ones who just didn’t have the same impact after being small screen hits, Conners, Janssen, Caruso, Robert Vaughn, David McCallum, Craig Stevens, Lloyd Bridges, Patrick McGoohan …
Ironically a few film stars struggled on the small screen, notably James Stewart and Henry Fonda.