I don’t know the reasoning behind why some Columbo episodes were 75 minutes long and others ran to 95 minutes. “Any Old Port in the Storm,” the 2^nd episode of the 3^rd season, is a brilliant 75-minute-long case weighed down by twenty extra minutes. 

The fabled Carsini Winery is run by elder son Adrian Carsini (Donald Pleasance), whose ability to recognize and create fine wine is unparalleled. His business plan is for the vineyard to create a very limited stock and concentrate on making these six wines the best of any in their field. For that, he has earned the acclaim of his peers in the industry; however, Adrian’s plan does not show good business sense as he refuses to manufacture less expensive wines to appeal to the working man’s palate and budget. 

Unfortunately for Adrian, his younger brother Ric (Gary Conway, who should’ve been shirtless through this entire episode!) inherited the land. Always in need of money to pay for his extravagant lifestyle, Ric informs Adrian that he intends to sell the property to the fictional equivalent of the Gallo Brothers. Outraged, Adrian strikes his brother down, ties up his unconscious body and hides it in the wine cellar, turns off the air conditioning, and makes his way to New York for a week’s wine buying tour with his long-time secretary, Karen Fielding (Julie Harris). By the time he returns, Ric has expired, and Adrian stuffs his bloated body in a scuba outfit and throws it off a nearby cliff into the ocean. 

Most of the padding to this episode comes from our being let in on every step of Adrian’s perfect plan. But it is an interesting plan, considering that the murder itself happened at the spur of the moment. Unfortunately, Adrian’s luck runs out when fellow Italian, Lieutenant Columbo, who used to stop the grapes in his grandfather’s bathtub for homemade wine, is assigned to the case. 

What sets this one apart from all I’ve watched before is the genuine respect and affection that the sleuth and the killer show each other. Part of Columbo’s plan is to learn as much as he can about fine wine in order to trap Adrian, and as he starts to demonstrate his newfound knowledge, his antagonist seems genuinely pleased. Even when Columbo admits that some of his antics amount to mere deduction and/or trickery, Adrian is genuinely impressed with Columbo’s skill as a detective. This mutual admiration society continues right up to the final moments when the Lieutenant performs a truly kind gesture for the now-fallen Carsini. 

All of this is great, and the last half of the episode benefits from some wonderful scenes. Chief among them is a dinner to which Columbo invites Adrian and Karen in order to “apologize” for having suspected him. Of course, it’s all a trap, and a good one. But the highpoint is Donald Pleasance, whose performance here is the acme of a great all-around portrayal. 

So why will this excellent episode receive such a low ranking from me – if we happen to rank it in our upcoming Columbo draft? Because it is in no way a “distaff” episode of the series. Julie Harris is not Adrian’s accomplice or even a major figure through most of the episode. True, she lies for him at one point because she wants power over the man she has secretly loved. Adrian’s response to this, both in word and deed, is delightful. Despite the padding, this is one I’d recommend – but Harris hardly rates at all among Columbo’s female adversaries.

From wine to roses . . . or, in this case, to “Rosie,” the name of the leading character in the classic Hollywood musical, Walking My Baby Back Home. This was an actual film from 1953 starring Donald O’Connor and Janet Leigh, only Leigh’s character was named Chris. Through the magic of Columbo, however, it’s also the name of a film made by Grace Wheeler, also played by Leigh, in the episode, “Forgotten Lady.”  In Columbo’s world, Grace made this film with her longtime dance partner Ned Diamond (John Payne), but their partnership ended when a drunken Ned crashed his car and ended his career. When Grace discovered that nobody wanted to cast her as a solo star, she retired from Hollywood and married a wealthy doctor named Henry Willis (Sam Jaffe). 

A film retrospective reignites interest in Grace and her not-so-dormant desire to work, and she decides to return to the stage in a revival of One Touch of Venus. But when her husband refuses to finance the project, Grace murders him, staging it to look like a suicide while she hangs out in their home screening room watching Walking My Baby Back Home. Her loyal butler Raymond (a charming Maurice Evans) provides changes the reels of the film, and Grace’s clever timing and dancer’s grace provides her with an alibi. Unfortunately for Grace, Lieutenant Columbo is dragged to the Willis house at 1am, where even his exhaustion can’t prevent him from seeing something is wrong with this supposed suicide. 

Nine programs into this 21-episode series of Distaff Columbo, and a clear favorite has emerged. Never mind the 95-minute running time (although I could easily have done without the subplot/padding of Internal Affairs trying to force Columbo to take his first gun test on the firing range in ten years.) Never mind that we’re sort of retreading the same territory that we found in “Requiem for a Falling Star” of a show business milieu with Leigh replacing Anne Baxter and Columbo tripping over himself in adoration. That’s all here, but it is played completely differently. 

Watching Columbo enter the crime scene and slowly start to realize the star power of the people he’s dealing with is a delight, and his fanboy respect for Grace is real. There’s a beautifully filmed moment early on where you see him deciding that Grace killed her husband, and it’s clear from his sagging back that the realization upsets him. As the episode progresses, Grace begins to unravel, despite the incredible support she receives from the adoring Ned and butler Raymond. Is it her guilt, or is it the tension derived from trying to put on a new show? Or is it the doggedness of Lieutenant Columbo, with whom Grace shares an almost tender relationship, despite the fact that she cannot remember his name?

The ending reveals all, and it does so in a way that is genuinely heartbreaking. That’s a hard thing to achieve in a formulaic show like Columbo. The ending itself deviates from the formula in that it is not a typical confrontation between sleuth and killer. This time, Columbo, looking dapper in a tux, puts his case forth to Grace’s friend Ned and then comes up with a singular path to moving forward that elevates everything we’ve seen before. 

Between 1958 and 1963, Janet Leigh created four performances that have always meant a lot to me. First, there was Susan Vargas in Touch of Evil, one of the most disturbing noirs of all time; in 1960, she played Marion Crane in Psycho – and told reporters from then on that she never took another shower; then in 1962 she played the least showy and most human role in The Manchurian Candidate as Sinatra’s girlfriend; and finally (although it was the first Janet Leigh performance I ever saw), she utilized her musical chops as, of all characters, Rosie in Bye, Bye Birdie.Leigh is truly wonderful here, creating a mixture of ruthlessness and vulnerability that can’t help but move you. It will be very hard to top this, but since the next two episodes I cover include the magnificent Ruth Gordon, I’m going to keep an open mind!