The 50th Anniversary of Columbo

It was 50 years ago today, on September 15 1971, that Columbo debuted as one of the rotating television shows on The NBC Mystery Movie. It would prove to be the most successful shows on The NBC Mystery Movie. It outlived The NBC Mystery Movie itself. When The NBC Mystery Movie ended its run in 1977, Columbo continued to air as a series of television movies in the 1977-1978 season. Columbo was revived in the 1988-1989 season as one of the shows on The ABC Mystery Movie. When The ABC Mystery Movie went off the air at the end of the 1989-1990 season, Columbo would continue on ABC as a series of TV movies that lasted until 2003.

Columbo centred on Lt. Columbo (played by Peter Falk), a detective with the Los Angeles Police Department. Lt. Columbo was usually unshaven and almost always wore a rumpled raincoat. He smoked cheap cigars. On the surface he appeared to be bumbling and overly deferential to the point that he was almost always apologizing. While Columbo might appear bumbling, he possessed a razor sharp mind. He was an excellent judge of human nature, a sharp observer who picked up on clues others might miss, and a genius when it came to deductive reasoning.

While Lt. Columbo was a sharp contrast to other television detectives, the show itself was a sharp contrast to other mystery series. Quite simply, it was a prime example of the inverted detective story, in which the crime is shown at the beginning of the story and the culprit is known to the reader (or in the case of Columbo, the viewer) from the start. Indeed, one gets the feeling even Lt. Columbo realizes who has committed a murder from the beginning. It is just a matter of gathering enough evidence before he can arrest them.

Here it must be pointed out that Lt. Columbo actually pre-dates the show bearing his name. The character's origins go back to "May I Come In" by Richard Levinson and William Link, first published in Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, March 1960. In the story there is a smallish detective named Lt. Fisher. Richard Levinson and William Link adapted the story as the episode "Enough Rope"for The Chevy Mystery Show, which aired on July 30 1960. In "Enough Rope" Lt. Fisher became Lt. Columbo, played by Bert Freed. Messrs. Levinson and Link were disappointed with how the episode turned out, and then set about adapting "Enough Rope" as a play. The play was titled Prescription: Murder and featured Thomas Mitchell (who played Uncle Billy in It's a Wonderful Life) in the role of Lt. Columbo. While Lt. Columbo was only a secondary character in the play, it became clear audiences loved the character.

It was for that reason that when Prescription: Murder was adapted as a television movie, Lt. Columbo occupied centre stage. The role of Lt. Columbo was first offered to Lee J. Cobb, who turned out to be unavailable. It was then offered to Bing Crosby, who turned it down. The role finally went to Peter Falk, who had appeared in such movies as Murder Inc. (1960), for which he was nominated for Best Supporting Actor, and The Great Race (1965), as well as the TV series The Trials of O'Brien. Prescription: Murder aired on NBC on February 20 1968. The movie proved so successful that NBC wanted a series spun off from it, but Richard Levinson, William Link, and Peter Falk did not want to do a regularly scheduled television show at the time.
vFor the 1971-1972 season NBC was planing an umbrella series, The NBC Mystery Movie. As an umbrella series The NBC Mystery Movie would rotate various programs in the same time slot. One of the programs NBC wanted as part of The NBC Mystery Movie was a Columbo series. Fortunately, Richard Levinson, William Link, and Peter Falk were more agreeable to a regular TV series at this point, and so a pilot, "Ransom for a Dead Man," was commissioned. "Ransom for a Dead Man" aired on March 1 1971 and proved to be a success. Columbo was then added to the rotation of The NBC Mystery Movie, along with McCloud and McMillan & Wife.

Columbo became the most popular shows to emerge from The NBC Mystery Movie and in many respects it easy to see why. Much of the appeal of the show was Peter Falk's performance as Lt. Columbo. He was nominated for ten Emmys for playing the character, and won five. In addition to Peter Falk, Columbo always featured big name guest stars. The culprit in every single episode was always some big name star, and murderers on the show were played by such actors as Eddie Albert, Anne Baxter, Robert Culp, Martin Landau, Ross Martin, and many others. The murder victims were often big name stars as well. Among the actors who appeared as victims on Columbo were Richard Anderson, Pat Crowley, Anne Francis, Martin Milner, Martin Sheen,  Forrest Tucker, and others. Big name guest stars even appeared in secondary roles, some of which were sometimes rather small. In the episode "Negative Reaction," Larry Storch played a driving instructor. In "Lovely But Lethal," Vincent Rice played the head of a cosmetics company.

Beyond the appeal of the show's many guest stars, Columbo probably also appeals to many because it pits an everyman, Lt. Columbo, against the rich and powerful. The murders that Lt. Columbo investigate always seem to take place among the affluent. The murderers on Columbo were almost always rich, powerful, and intelligent. They also tended to be arrogant, leading them to underestimate the overly polite, often bumbling Lt. Columbo, much to their eternal regret at the end of the episode. Speaking as a fan of the show since childhood, I think most viewers take great satisfaction in Lt. Columbo taking down rich, powerful, and overly arrogant individuals a peg or two.

The success of Columbo would lead to a series of books, the first of which was published in 1972. There would be another series of books published between 1994 and 1999. In 2010, Columbo co-creator William Link  wrote an anthology of short stories featuring the character, The Columbo Collection. It was published in 2010.

The last episode of the original run of Columbo, "The Conspirators," aired on May 13 1978. NBC was not finished with Columbo, as a spinoff, Mrs. Columbo, debuted on NBC on February 26 1979. On the original show, Columbo often referred to his wife, but Mrs. Columbo ignored the continuity of the original show to the point that it was unbelievable. Kate Mulgrew played Kate Columbo, supposedly the wife of Lt. Columbo. The casting of Kate Mulgrew in the role posed some problems with continuity, in that at the time Miss Mulgrew was only 24 years old. That means when Prescription: Murder first aired, she would only been 13. As it is, the show had been launched over the objections of Columbo creators Richard Levinson and William Link. As time passed the show would be renamed Kate Columbo, with Kate having gotten later. Still later, the show was renamed Kate the Detective and Kate Loves a Mystery, with the producers entirely ditching the show's original premise. Regardless, the 1989 revival of Columbo would entirely ignore Mrs. Columbo, making it clear the two shows did not share continuity.

It was in the 1988-1989 season that Universal Television and ABC sought to revive the NBC Mystery Movie concept with The ABC Mystery Movie. Columbo was one of the original programs on this new umbrella series, along with Gideon Oliver and B. L. Stryker. Columbo proved to be the only show on The ABC Mystery Movie to have any success, outlasting the umbrella series by several years. The last episode of Columbo, "Columbo Likes the Nightlife," aired on ABC on January 30 2003.

While the original run ended in 1978 and the revival in 2003, Columbo has persisted in reruns ever since the last episode of the original run. To this day Lt. Columbo remains one of the most popular characters on American television. It is safe to say that Columbo will still be around for another fifty years.