PARIS PRECINCT. Episode: “A Woman Scorned.” Etoile Production for MPTV, syndicated, 1954-1955, 26 half-hour episodes in black and white. Cast: Louis Jourdan and Claude Dauphin. Technical adviser: Inspecteur Jean Couade. Created by Jo Eisinger. Produced by Andre Hakim.

    Yet another police procedural based on “real” cases, Paris Precinct used the files of the Paris, France police department. Shot on location in Paris, the series was produced for American syndication by Etoile Production, a company owned by Louis Jourdan, Claude Dauphin, producer Andre Hakim and writer Jo Eisinger.

“A Woman Scorned.” Teleplay by Charles K. Peck Jr. Guest Cast: Giselle Preville, Jean Ozenne, Bruce Kay, Nicole Francis, and Phillippe Clay. Directed by Sobey Martin. *** While on a date with an American soldier, a young blond woman dies from poisoned brandy.

    The episode can be found on YouTube in more than one place including here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NXaCbwmy3ZM

    “A Woman Scorned” was a typical TV mystery of the era. The simple story was told in the linear style procedural fans are accustomed to with one twist that made it worth watching for the rest of us. It begins with the murder then introduced our detectives who began a step-by-step search for the killer.

    Our two detectives are different enough to make a good team. Louis Jourdan plays the serious Inspecteur Beaumont, lead detective and show’s narrator. Claude Dauphin is charming as the lighthearted Inspecteur Bolbec.

    In their first scene we see the two detectives differences through their reading material. Jourdan’s Beaumont is reading a police file, while Dauphin’s Bolbec is enjoying a cheap noir paperback The Blonde Died Young. Bolbec jokingly envies the fictional detective who has made love to three beautiful blondes and one redhead in the first hundred pages.

    “A Woman Scorned” suffers from some overacting from the supporting cast, one of the common flaws of early TV caused by talentless newcomers or actors who were inexperienced in the subtleties of acting on television versus stage or film.

    The episode featured more sets and characters than the usual 50s TV syndication low budget series, partly to give our detectives another excuse to drive through the Paris streets as they moved from one character’s location to another.

    There is a surprising absence of fights and chases in “A Woman Scorned,” but that may not have been typical for the series. In Billboard (April 16, 1955), Leon Morse reviewed the Paris Precinct episode “The Convict” and commented favorably on the action scenes such as the bar-fight and a chase across the rooftops of Paris. Morse believed the show should appeal to melodrama fans looking for something off beat.

    Writer Charles K. Peck Jr. career would include film (Seminole, 1953), TV (Caribe, 1975) and Broadway (La Strada, 1969). His script for “A Woman Scorned” lacked the action one expects from 50s crime TV, but it had its moments, most notably the twist involving the murder weapon.

    Director Sobey Martin stuck with the style of the time, begin with master shot, cut to close ups, and toss in an occasional odd angle such as from overhead. Martin would work for many TV series including Boston Blackie, but he is best known for his work with Irwin Allen and series such as Lost in Space and Time Tunnel.

    As with most of the early TV syndicated series, specific dates for the series can be difficult to determine. The first mention of the series I could find was in Broadcasting for November 23, 1953 (followed by Billboard, November 28, 1953). Plans were for 117 half hour TV-film episodes to be done in color and distributed by MPTV. Filming had to start May 1, 1954 due to Louis Jourdan’s commitment to a Broadway play (most likely, The Immoralist). Paris Precinct was expected to air September 1954.

    In Billboard, May 29, 1954, the series was being offered for sale. Twenty-six episodes were available. Also offered were thirty-nine half hour episodes that would be available in color by September 1, 1954. The additional thirteen episodes most likely were never filmed.

    As for Paris Precinct being shot in color but airing in black and white, Billboard (October 23,1954) ran an item about MPTV desire to shoot its TV-Film series in color (tint), but producers had discovered the black and white prints were fuzzy on the air.

    “The first twenty six segments of Duffy’s Tavern were tinted, and the last thirteen were monochrome,” noted the article, “as are MPTV’s subsequent shows which were originally planned for tint.”

    September 25, 1954 Billboard mentions MPTV had yet to sell Paris Precinct (and Sherlock Holmes) to any TV station or sponsor. In October, UM&M took over the sales of Paris Precinct (Billboard, October 23, 1954).

    In December 1954, Max Factor agreed to sponsor the series in four major markets, New York, Detroit, Chicago, and Los Angeles (Billboard, December 25,1954).

    Shulton (Old Spice) agreed to sponsor Paris Precinct in a nation-wide campaign aimed at thirty-five markets in March 1955. In what would be Old Spice’s first TV commercials, Louis Jourdan starred in thirteen commercials to be used with the series. The commercials, filmed by Transfilm, Inc in New York, were sixty seconds or twenty seconds each and filmed live with a jingle. (Billboard, March 5, 19, and 28, 1955).

    The production details listed in Billboard (May 28, 1955) gave the initial release date for Paris Precinct as December 1954, and twenty-six episodes were available for syndication.

    “A Woman Scorned” is a mildly entertaining half hour mystery that will appeal to those who enjoy an old-fashioned police procedural or those who enjoy seeing 1954 Paris. Hopefully, more episodes will someday surface.

EDWARD MARSTON – The Vagabond Clown. St. Martin’s, hardcover, August 2003.

   Marston is a wonderfully prolific writer. Besides two separate series written as by Keith Miles, which as it happens is his real name, he has three additional series under this particular pseudonym, all historical mysteries: (1) with Christopher Redmayne, an architect, and Jonathan Bale, a constable in 1600s London, England; (2) the Domesday series, with Ralph Delchard, soldier and Gervase Bret, lawyer in medieval England; and (3), of which this is the latest, a series featuring Nicholas Bracewell, book holder for Westfield’s Men, an accomplished acting company in Elizabethan times.

   A book holder includes the jobs of both stage manager and road manager, and Nicholas has his work cut out for him in The Vagabond Clown, what with one clown incapacitated with a broken leg, and the second, recruited from a debtor’s cell, subject to serious bouts of wine, women and japery.

   Murder and other calamities also follow the trail of the travelers as they make their way from London to Dover, making adjustments to their plays as they go. The jealousies and acrimony between the two clowns make for fine amusement, and it is hard to imagine how the life of troupers like these on the road could be better described.

   The solution to the mystery is more than a little weak, alas, with motivations hidden until the very end, far too late to be of any help to the reader at home, though the culprits themselves are painfully obvious. An uneven entry in the series, therefore, but one that’s definitely worth reading.

PostScript: For the sake of completeness, the detective novels written under the Keith Miles byline are (1) the Alan Saxon mysteries, in which the current day golfer goes from country to country solving crimes and (2) a rather new series following the adventures of Merlin Richards, a young Welsh architect and a Frank Lloyd Wright protégé, taking place in Phoenix and Chicago in the 1920s and 30s.

   This is embarrassing. Marston/Miles can write faster than I can read.

[UPDATE] 10-03-12. Here it is, nine years later. The Vagabond Clown was the 13th in the Nicholas Bracewell series; there are now 16. Other current totals:

Eleven books in the Domesday series.
Six books in the Christopher Redmayne series.
Ten books in the Inspector Robert Colbeck series (begin in 2004).
Five books in the Captain Rawson series (begun in 2008).
Two books in the Inspector Harvey Marmion and Sergeant Joe Keedy series (begun in 2011).

       As by Keith Miles:

Six books in the Alan Saxon series.
Two books in the Merlin Richards series.

       As by Martin Inigo (not mentioned above):

Two books in the Dan Hawker series

   In the past nine years, if my count is correct, Marston/Miles has written 23 books.

LUCAS TODD – Showdown Creek. Macmillan, hardcover, 1955. Toronto Star Weekly Novel, newspaper supplement, Saturday 19 November 1955. Permabook M-3044, paperback, 1956

FURY AT SHOWDOWN. United Artists, 1957. John Derek, John Smith, Carolyn Craig, Nick Adams, Gage Clarke, Robert Griffin. Screenplay: Jason James, based on the novel Showdown Creek, by Lucas Todd. Director: Gerd Oswald.

   Showdown Creek is the kind of spare, gritty tale that Westerns should aspire to. Researching this, I can find no other book attributed to Lucas Todd, the author, nor any bio/bibliographic background on him, but perhaps that’s as it should be for a book that celebrates the outcast as this once does.

   As the story opens, Brock Mitchell is trying to ramrod a one-horse ranch for his broken-legged Uncle Ben and live down a reputation as a smart-ass hellion. Uncle Ben has arranged financing to get him through lean times, but the deal’s hit a snag, and nobody seems to know what the delay is —- until Mitchell learns that Chad Deasey, an ex-con with a grudge against him, has hit town and put up a respectable front, tied in with the most prominent local lawyer (soon to turn up dead) and persuaded the town banker to put the brakes on Uncle Ben’s deal, apparently just to ruin him and repay Mitchell for killing Deasey’s brother in a fair fight back in Brock’s gun-toting days.

   It’s pretty standard stuff for a Western: crooked banker, shady lawyer, upright hero handy with a gun, honest ranchers and even a purty blue-eyed widder woman trying to understand it all. Author Todd seems to know something about moving cattle around (not all western writers do) and he puts it across as he ladles out the more standard ingredients into his prairie stew, giving Peters a hot-headed sidekick and adding something about the railroad coming through.

   But he also tinges all this with an almost intangible feel for the dilemma of a flawed man painfully misunderstood. Every fight, shoot-out and unsolved crime echoes not only in physical violence but also in the looks Brock gets from the good citizens of Showdown Creek: the rumors, conversations broken off when he enters a room, and his increasing isolation from a community he needs.

   It’s intriguing stuff, and if it never quite rises to the level of Camus, the sense of alienation is still strong enough to lift this above the run-of-the-range shoot-’em-down and linger in the memory.

   Showdown Creek was filmed, appropriately enough, by Gerd Oswald, himself something of a Hollywood pariah, who was given only five days and a cast of unknowns and no-talents to do the job —- the only two players you ever heard of in this movie are John Derek and Nick Adams, so you see what I mean about the acting.

   The marvel is that Fury at Showdown emerges as a tight, deeply-felt tale of guns, cattle and youthful angst.

   Given the low budget and tight schedule, Fury at Showdown is necessarily a town-bound western, rarely leaving the claustrophobic confines of office, saloon and jail for the free range that now seems more like a false promise than the reality of the West.

   Somehow, though, that only helps convey the sense of constriction felt by the hero (or supposedly felt; this is John Derek acting, remember) as he struggles to reach some wide open plain of the soul, free of the town’s censure.

   That sounds like tall boots for a B Western to fill, but writer Jason James tweaks the story significantly — in his version, Chad Deasey has always been a respectable citizen and it’s Brock Mitchell who’s the ex-con, just released from jail for killing Deasey’s brother — and director Gerd Oswald puts it across with well-judged camera work and a sense of pace that never falters.

   Fury at Showdown never got much attention, and it’s far from ideal, but definitely worth your time.

MICHAEL RALEIGH – A Body in Belmont Harbor. Paul Whelan #2. St. Martin’s, hardcover, 1993. iUniverse, paperback, May 2000.

   When I found this in the library last week I vaguely remembered reading the first in the series, Death in Uptown, but couldn’t remember anything about it. Not particularly promising, but it was a lean library day, so I checked it out anyway. Good move.

   PI Paul Whelan is a Chicago native who works the dangerous Uptown neighborhoods. As your basic hardboiled PIs tend to be, he’s somewhat at loose ends when a lady asks him to follow a man she suspects of murdering her husband two years ago. The police ruled it a suicide, but she doesn’t believe that; particularly since a small-time hood called her and said he had evidence against the man, then turned up in Belmont Harbor, murdered.

   Whelan doesn’t see much there, but the money’s good, and he takes the case. This quickly brings him in contact with Al Bauman, a legendary and irascible Chicago cop whom he helped and with whom he clashed in the first book. Bauman is investigating the hood’s murder, and Whelan’s involvement isn’t wanted. We know how that goes, though.

   This is one of the better PI books I’ve read lately. The story is told in a straightforward third-person narrative, from Whelan’s point of view other than the prologue. Whelan is a sympathetic and believable character, more reminiscent of Marlowe than Spenser though without the wisecracks. He manages to be both tpugh and vulnerable, and credibly so.

   The cop, Bauman, is also very well portrayed, seems one of the more realistic ones I’ve come across. There is a wealth of Chicago color, particularly in the area of restaurants and taverns, and although I don’t know from Chicago, it seemed real to me. The plot mechanism was the weakest part of the story, but wasn’t so bad as to cause outrage. All in all, I liked it considerably.

       The Paul Whelan series —

Death in Uptown. St. Martin’s 1991
A Body in Belmont Harbor. St. Martin’s 1993
The Maxwell Street Blues. St. Martin’s 1994
Killer on Argyle Street. St. Martin’s 1995
The Riverview Murders. St. Martin’s 1997

Editorial Comments:   For more information about the author, he has a webpage here. I have three of the five Paul Whelan novels, but I’ve never read one. Barry’s review of this one tells me that I may have made a mistake about that.

  SWING HOSTESS. PRC, 1944. Martha Tilton, Iris Adrian, Charles Collins, Cliff Nazarro, Harry Holman, Betty Brodel, Philip Van Zandt, Earle Bruce. Music and lyrics by Jay Livingston, Ray Evans and Lewis Bellin. Director: Sam Newfield.

    There are maybe three reasons to watch this low-budget wartime musical, and the first, by a wide margin, is Martha Tilton, perhaps best known as a longtime singer for the Benny Goodman band. In Swing Hostess she plays an aspiring singer named Judy Alvin who can’t seem to catch a break in show business, what with a series of never-ending mixups between who sang what song on which recording disk, missed phone calls and messages, and a competitor (Betty Brodel, sister of Joan Leslie) who can’t sing but whom fortune seems to smile upon a lot more often.

    Miss Tilton made only a handful of movies, and was one of the stars in even fewer, but she has a pleasant and relaxed onscreen presence that should have opened the door for making many more. She sings six songs in Swing Hostess, all charmingly and in good cheer. Back in the 1940s you’d have gotten your money’s worth from this film from the music alone. (If you’re of a certain age, today as well, for that matter.)

    Another interesting aspect of Swing Hostess is that a sizable portion of it takes place at Judy Alvin’s day job, as she waits for bandleader Benny Jackson (Charles Collins) to notice her. Instead of self-contained juke boxes, back in 1944 they apparently consisted of units with phone lines to a central location where the operators would locate the 78 on a rack and play it back to the person on the other end whose nickel or dime it was. I’ve not been able to find anything online about this kind of operation, if it really existed, so if anyone knows more, tell me about it.

    The plot is really rather dopey and not worth saying anything more about, but some of the supporting cast is worth a mention. I’ve probably heard comedian Cliff Nazarro’s double talk ability before, but if so, I’d forgotten about it. All I can say is amazing. Earle Bruce, whose nice guy character seemed to be on a direct path to Judy’s heart, is dumped in the middle of the movie and sent off to the army instead. This gives bandleader Benny Jackson a clear shot, which he takes full advantage of, but since this was the only movie that Bruce ever made, even at this late date I’m going to cry foul.

KATHLEEN MOORE KNIGHT – Footbridge to Death. Doubleday/Crime Club, hardcover, 1947.

   What I said about “overwrought prose” [in my recent review of Sea Fever, by Ann Cleeves] goes double for this one, but along with it is a plot that’s complex and totally satisfying as an honest-to-goodness detective novel. I’ll go so far as to say that books like this are the reason I started reading mystery fiction in the first place.

   This is an Elisha Macomber story — he’s Chairman of The Board of Selectmen on Penberthy Island, somewhere off New Bedford on the Massachusetts mainland, and while they do have a police force, when it comes to murder, he’s the detective in charge — a warm-hearted philosopher-psychologist who’s as hard-boiled as anyone when it comes to finding out the facts in the case.

   There is a prologue in the book — you may be interested in knowing — but this time it’s one that’s there for a reason, and that’s to keep us on our toes. We know as soon as Elisha does that Mme Caron, the newly arrived Frenchwoman on the island, is suspected of aiding and abetting the enemy when she was in Europe — and that’s enough to keep you guessing: is this an espionage story, or is it one of merely domestic violence?

   There is a marriage in trouble, in other words, preceded by a broken railing on a bridge, an attempted poisoning, then murder followed by another — surprisingly, this one that of one of the leading suspects in the first. No one liked the second victim very much, and any one of them could have done it, as well as various and sundry townspeople with a stake in either the family fortune or the fortunes of war.

   The atmosphere (and prose) is often dark and brooding, a perfect reflection of the post-war years — reunions not always being the happy affairs they’re cracked up to be. But detective novels like this are very much like the old shell game. You’ve got to keep your mind on the story as well, or (like me, at least in part) you’re bound to find yourself snookered again.

[UPDATE] 09-28-12.   Most of the revisions were small ones. I was tempted to cut down on my own overwrought prose, but for the most part, I resisted. I did make some changes to clarify certain matters regarding the plot, or at least I hope I did.

   The crack I made about prologues is a carryover from several reviews in earlier issues of Mystery*File, in which I expressed my extreme distaste for them. For now, I’ll leave it at that. If the reviews I’m referring to ever show up on the blog, we’ll revisit the idea.

      Previously on this blog:

Terror by Twilight   [reviewed by me]
Borderline Murder, as by Alan Amos   [reviewed by Ray O’Leary]
The Trouble at Turkey Hill   [reviewed by me; includes a list of all the Elisha Macomber titles]
Port of Seven Strangers   [reviewed by me]

LOOKING FOR TROUBLE. 20th Century, 1934. Spencer Tracy, Constance Cummings, Jack Oakie, Morgan Conway, Arline Judge, Judith Wood, Paul Harvey, Joseph Sawyer, Franklyn Ardell, Paul Porcasi, Charles Lane. Director: William A. Wellman. Shown at Cinevent 38, Columbus OH, May 2006.

   Tracy made a number of very enjoyable films before his MGM years that include this pairing with Jack Oakie in which the two star as telephone lineman troubleshooters.

   The brash, fun-loving Oakie is thrown off-balance by his assignment with the more experienced, hard-bitten and terse Tracy. Tracy, disillusioned by the shady activities of his former partner (Morgan Conway, whom Tracy has had dismissed) and by problems with his girlfriend (Constance Cummings), not the least of which is her occasional dating of Conway, quits, only to return precipitously when Oakie learns of an impending bank robbery in which Conway is involved and which implicates Cummings.

   Wellman’s tight direction of this Zanuck production and the highly capable cast made this one of the more satisfying films of the weekend. A contrived earthquake (several production levels below the mighty quake of San Francisco) added little to the film beyond some obstacles for Oakie and Tracy to overcome in rescuing Cummings, but this momentary lapse didn’t significantly diminish my enjoyment of the film.

DOROTHY GARDINER – The Seventh Mourner. Doubleday Crime Club, hardcover, October 1958. Popular Library, paperback, 1964, as The 7th Mourner.

   Sheriff Moss Magill, of Notlaw, Colo., population 415 counting two unborn babies and home of the third worst hotel in the country, is left $100,000 in the will of a late citizen of Notlaw — though her death does not seem to deplete the population — if he will escort her ashes to Scotland and bury them on top of a mountain.

   For reasons not made clear, Magill is not interested in the money and does not want to go to Scotland. However, the stipulations in the will lead him to believe, again for reasons not made clear, that one or more of the legatees might be murdered if he doesn’t.

   Magill is an engaging character and worth meeting despite his not preventing murder. In addition, Gardiner presents the Scottish Highlands lovingly. But more should have been done with Magill’s culture shock, and the mystery aspect undoubtedly could have been handled better. For example, the villains are obvious and witless.

   Enjoy Magill and the scenery and try not to pay too much attention to the plot.

      The Sheriff Moss Magill series —

What Crime Is It? Doubleday 1956.
The Seventh Mourner. Doubleday 1958.
Lion in Wait. Doubleday 1963.

Editorial Comment:   Considerably more about the author and a complete crime fiction bibliography for her may be found following my review of The Trans-Atlantic Ghost, her first book, written in 1933. (Be sure to read the comments, too.)

ERLE STANLEY GARDNER – The Case of the Sleepwalker’s Niece. William Morrow, hardcover, March 1936. Pocket 277, paperback, December 1944; 17th printing (shown to the right), July 1953. Reprinted several additional times, both hardcover and soft. TV episode: Perry Mason, 28 September 1957 (Season 1, Episode 2).

   Veteran and long-time readers of detective novels always know what’s going to happen when the lights go out at night in a large house full of guests and two individuals decide to change bedrooms at the last minute. Warning bells go off every time, don’t they? They should. It never fails.

   And when you have an uncle who’s been known to go sleepwalking before, carrying a large carving knife along with him, you also know exactly who’s going to be accused of the murder that occurs, don’t you? You needn’t answer. It’s a rhetorical question.

   This was a very early case for Perry Mason, either the eighth or ninth. (The Case of the Stuttering Bishop was published the same year, but if Niece was published in March, my money would be placed on it being the earlier of the two, making it the eighth.) The Mason persona changed over the years, the harder-boiled version gradually becoming softer over time. The novels being serialized in The Saturday Evening Post may have had much to do with it, with the process accelerating even more when the TV series with Raymond Burr came along.

   In Sleepwalker’s Niece Perry skates inside the boundaries of proper judicial behavior, and just barely. A key point in the murder is a question of timing. When was the murder knife in the locked cabinet when it should be and when it not there? Just to confuse matters a little, Perry buys an identical knife from a hardware dealer who just happens to be the fiancé of the secretary of the defendant, who also happened to be in the house the night of the murder.

   And Perry of course has the knife along with him when the case goes to trial. There is a lot more to the book than the murder, though. Besides nearly a dozen possible suspects, or so it seems, there is also a pending divorce action, a case of business fraud, a neurologist who says the defendant’s nervous affliction is phoney, plus wills, pre-nuptial agreements and more.

   It’s a complicated case, with all these ingredients in it, and it’s no wonder that from the bottom of page 201 to the top few lines of page 203 there is one solid chunk of text — a single paragraph without a break — which is what it takes for Perry to explain all the details to Della Street when the trial is over.

   From me to you as a would-be reader of this novel, the moral of the tale is to keep an eye on Perry every single instant. He has rabbits in a hat he can pull out at any time, and he brings his own hat.

   It might also be noted (so I will) that he and Della also have eyes on each other. It was fun to see Paul Drake pop into Perry’s office just in time to see Perry and his devoted secretary break away from each other after more than a peck on the cheek.

THE MOST DEADLY GAME. ABC / Aaron Spelling Productions. 10 October 1970 through 16 January 1971. Created by Mort Fine and David Friedkin. Executive Producer: Aaron Spelling. Cast: Ralph Bellamy as Mr. Arcane, George Maharis as Jonathan Croft and Yvette Mimieux as Vanessa Smith.

    “Murder is the most deadly game. These three criminologists play it.” The Most Deadly Game featured three criminologists working together to solve only the most unusual crimes.

    Before we get to the series itself, lets deal with its back story. The series original title was Zig Zag, and was listed as a pilot for ABC in Broadcasting (November 17, 1969). It was an Aaron Spelling production with no cast mentioned but the “key creative people” were listed as David Friedkin, Mort Fine, Joan Harrison and Aaron Spelling.

   Over at the Thrilling Detective website, an article by Ted Fitzgerald cites Ric Meyers’ TV Detective (A. S. Barnes & Co., 1987) claim that Eric Ambler (Checkmate) created Most Deadly Game. Producer Joan Harrison was married to Ambler, but I have found no evidence that Ambler and not Mort Fine and David Friedkin created the series.

    In Broadcasting (March 2, 1970), Zig Zag appeared on the announced ABC fall schedule for September 1970. It was to air on Saturdays at 9:30-10:30pm (Eastern) and listed Ralph Bellamy, George Maharis, and Inger Stevens as the cast.

    The three were promoting the series when on April 30, 1970, Inger Stevens was found dead.

    The series executive producer Aaron Spelling had produced a TV movie called Run Simon Run (December 1, 1970, ABC) that starred Burt Reynolds and Inger Stevens. During the picture the two stars became romantically involved.

    Aaron Spelling wrote (with Jefferson Graham) in his book Aaron Spelling: A Prime Time Life (St. Martins, 1996):

    While a fifteen-minute presentation film of Zig Zag (with Stevens) still exists, no completed pilot has been found. Currently, YouTube has an early ABC promo that may be from the presentation reel:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vXsjEAqIfVA

    In Broadcasting (April 3, 1970), the series was still called Zig Zag. Stevens’ obit in Broadcasting (May 11,1970) called the series The Most Deadly Game.

    Another problem facing the series before it even began was its time slot, opposite the popular NBC Saturday Night at the Movies and CBS’s Mary Tyler Moore Show and the first half hour of Mannix.

    ABC was last in the ratings. Broadcasting (November 16,1970) noted that in the “latest Nielsen report” nine of the bottom twelve series in the ratings were on ABC and one of them was The Most Deadly Game. After just a month on the air, ABC cancelled the series.

    I have seen four of the twelve episodes (thirteen if you count the missing pilot “Zig Zag”):

“Breakdown” (10/31/70) Written by Leonard B. Kaufman. Directed by George McCowan. Produced by Joan Harrison. Guest Cast: Jessica Walters, Tom Bosley, Joe Don Baker, and Terry Carter. *** A corporate psychiatrist is murdered. The company boss hires Arcane to solve the murder so the company can get rid of the nosy cops. Conveniently that weekend there was a psychological retreat scheduled where the five most likely suspects would spend seventy-two hours role-playing and talking about themselves. Jonathan and Vanessa go undercover. It ends with an unbelievable role-playing confession, then a chase and fight.

         Opening of the episode “Breakdown”:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J1V3VW0yTE4

         Early scene from “Breakdown”:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u7V8vLv7IYI

“Photo Finish.” (11/14/70) Written by John McGreevey. Directed by Norman Lloyd. Produced by Joan Harrison. Guest Cast: Marlyn Mason, Eileen Brennan, and Stephen Young *** Someone named ‘Scorpio, Mars In The Eighth House’ is sending Arcane pictures of murder victims and begging Arcane to stop him or her.

    The astrology gimmick is used for act break graphics, but the killer never mentions astrology, not even during the cliché nut-job confession scene at the end. Arcane does not tell the police about the photos he is receiving from his murderous Pen-pal despite the fact people keep dying. Three victims and they figure out motive, but a missed guess of identity of the killer puts Vanessa and friend in danger.

“War Games.” (11/28/70) Written by Jack Miller. Directed by Lee Madden. Produced by David Friedkin and Morton Fine. Guest Cast: Barbara Luna, Pat Harrington Jr., Billy Dee Williams, Dan Travanty (later known as Daniel J. Travanti of Hill Street Blues) and Peter Brown. *** The police believe Jonathan killed his former military commander who had been shot while recreating battles with toy soldiers (the cops are looking for a 38 caliber gun, unaware the murder weapon was a toy cannon).

    Four men, who with Jonathan had survived a suicide mission ordered by the Colonel, all confess to killing the old man. This ruins the cop’s day, as now he has to find actual evidence. Add the wife and you have your required five suspects. Heavy-handed clues make the motive obvious and the ending a major letdown.

“Lady from Praha.” (1/9/70) Written and Produced by David Friedkin and Mort Fine. Directed by Gene Nelson. Guest Cast: Bert Convy, May Britt, Brenda Benet, and Hank Brandt *** A foreign spy is killed during a foxhunt. His government hires our three because it believes the American government did it. They are given five suspects to check out.

    The spy angle then is virtually ignored. Actions make little sense as the killer tries to kill Jonathan for no reason other than the writer needed an act break. There is a locked room mystery that lasts only a couple of scenes and has a lame solution. (No one would notice a bellboy leaving a hotel room.)

   The clues are so clumsy and obvious we know who the killer is long before our brilliant criminologists. Then when they finally figure it out, no one tells the police. Instead Jonathan goes macho and runs off alone to get revenge and nearly gets killed. But all ends well, and Arcane happily looks on as Jonathan and Vanessa share a romantic moment.

    Ralph Bellamy gave his usual professional if not exciting performance as Mr. Arcane, wise respected criminologist and father figure to his two young protégé.

    George Maharis played Jonathan Croft as the typical condescending macho hero of the era. Jonathan was a widower with a growing romantic interest in his co-detective Vanessa.

    Vanessa Smith had a growing romantic interest in Jonathan as well. As a young girl her father had been executed for a crime he had not committed. Arcane, who had been too late proving her father innocent, had taken Vanessa in and raised her. Vanessa was no Emma Peel. A girl’s girl but independent, she may let Jonathan handle the fights, but she insisted on doing her part taking on danger.

    Watching Yvette Mimieux as Vanessa Smith walk through a room was the highlight of the series. They never used “that” camera angle on Joe Mannix, and for good reason.

    The Most Deadly Game wanted to be a traditional mystery in a television world that depends more on characters than plot. It was a two-hour mystery shoved into a sixty-minute time slot. There were too many suspects, too many pointless red herrings, and too many series regulars to develop for any quality mystery to survive.

    Clues such as the killer using an exotic astrology name need to mean something. Red herrings are fine but they still have to be explained.

    We needed to believe in our main characters. They needed to be special, they should be brilliant criminologists, not bumbling around clueless or even worse wrong. They don’t have to work with the cops, but no one should die while they are withholding evidence.

    The Most Deadly Game is available only in the collector market. The series is not worthy of recommendation, but worthy of regret that it could have been so much better.

       Additional Sources:

Thrilling Detective

Inger Stevens Memorial Site