Recap / Columbo S 02 E 05

Edith Head! Now you know where Edna Mode came from.

Episode: Season 2, Episode 5
Title:"Requiem for a Falling Star"
Directed by: Richard Quine
Written by: Jackson Gillis
Air Date: January 21, 1973
Previous: Dagger of the Mind
Next: A Stitch in Crime
Guest Starring: Anne Baxter, Mel Ferrer, Kevin McCarthy (actor)

"Requiem for a Falling Star" is the fifth episode of the second season of Columbo.

Nora Chandler (Anne Baxter) is an aging movie actress. She was the wife of studio executive Al Cumberland, but since his death in a boating accident 12 years ago Nora's only companion has been her loyal assistant Jean (Pippa Scott).

Nora is not at all pleased to find out that Jean has fallen in love with muckracking gossip columnist Jerry Parks (Mel Ferrer). And if that isn't bad enough, Jerry has discovered something very incriminating about Nora: that a few years before she cooked the books at her production company and scammed the studio out of two million dollars. Jerry demands a large sum as blackmail. Instead, Nora lays a trap at Jerry's house, setting fire to some gasoline which envelops Jerry's car and sets it ablaze.

As it turns out, however, it was Jean, not Jerry, who'd been driving the car. Jean's murder is turned over to Nora Chandler's biggest fan, Lt. Columbo of the LAPD.

Kevin McCarthy (actor) plays Frank Simmons, boss of Nora's studio.

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Tropes:

• The Alleged Car: Columbo's Peugeot is looking more ratty than usual. The security guard at the studio gate is surprised to find out that it isn't for "the demolition derby sequence".
• And Starring: Mel Ferrer gets the "Special Guest Star" credit.
• Blackmail: Jerry blackmails Nora over her financial shenanigans. The first twist in this twistier-than-usual episode comes when we find out that Frank Simmons already knew about this and was willing to overlook it—he and Nora have been dating.
• Bluffing the Murderer: How Columbo finally gets Nora. He borrows a Shriners ring and shows it to Nora. Nora, thinking that Jerry dug up her husband, races back to her bungalow and right to the fountain. Columbo arrests her.
• The Cameo: Edith Head As Herself! She gets Columbo a more fashionable tie. All seven of Head's Oscars are on her desk; she won her eighth and last a year after this episode for The Sting.
• Camp: Nora's assistant Tom only has a few moments onscreen, but managed to leave this impression.
• Casting Couch: It seems Al Cumberland subjected Nora to this years ago, as Jerry tells Columbo.
• Celebrity Paradox: We see Edith Head's seven Oscars. One of them was for All About Eve, which starred...Anne Baxter.
• Chekhov's Gun: All the comments about Al Cumberland and his mysterious disappearance, how they found his wrecked boat but never found the body. Then there's an observation about his Shriners ring, about how he and Nora were the same height, about how Nora categorically refuses to sell her house, about how the fountain in her backyard doesn't work. All those things are crucial to the solution.
• Creepy Crossdresser: Nora dressed in men's clothing to trick people into thinking Al was alive and then got on a boat, where he was presumed drowned.
• Crime After Crime: Nora kills Jean by blowing up Jerry's car, and then later injures Jerry in a hit-and-run, all in order to bury the actual truth of her having previously murdered Al.
• Driving a Desk: One scene has Nora behind the wheel, fleeing from the cops in an obviously fake Driving A Desk moment. Then the camera zooms out to show that it really is a fake moment, as Nora is shooting a driving scene for her movie.
• Everybody Knew Already: Parks' big reveal to Simmons that Nora was Stealing from the Till lands like a lead balloon when Simmons rips up the evidence and tells Parks that Nora revealed the truth to him about it days beforehand. Unfortunately, she has more than one Dark Secret.
• Fake Action Prologue: The very first shot is Nora firing several bullets through a glass door and into a man on the other side. It's a movie shoot.
• Fake Faint: Nora Faints in Shock when she finds out that she actually killed Jean, Or so we think. It turns out to have been an act.
• Foreshadowing: One of the scenes Nora is shooting has her character being harshly accused of murdering her own husband. In the end, it's revealed that Nora herself murdered her husband 12 years ago and hid his body under the fountain all this time.
• Graceful Loser: After Columbo springs his trap and she realizes the game is up, Nora pours a drink and pours one for Columbo too, chatting amicably about Al's murder before going away with him.
• Grievous Bottley Harm: Nora reveals that years ago, she accidentally murdered her husband Al by whacking him in the head with a bottle.
• He Knows Too Much: The real motive, as the ending reveals. Nora wasn't trying to kill Jerry, she killed Jean on purpose, because she was scared that Jean would reveal to Jerry the tell-all biographer that Nora killed her husband Al Cumberland.
• I'm Your Biggest Fan: Columbo's starstruck around Nora because of this. The two of end up striking a sweet rapport as a result.
• I Need a Freaking Drink: Nora's need to knock back a drink, after Jerry's suggestion that he knows another secret, is what triggers Columbo's suspicions. Later, after he reveals his solution, Nora has another drink before Columbo takes her away.
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall: All the comments about Nora being "an aging actress sliding downhill", with her career past its prime, also apply to Anne Baxter, once an A-lister but doing TV by the 1970s.
• Murder by Mistake: The audience is initially led to believe that Nora was attempting to murder Jerry, and in a moment of impulsiveness, ended up killing Jean by mistake. Then it's revealed that she didn't make a mistake. Jean was her actual target and she had set things up so Jean would be in Jerry's car.
• Never Found the Body: Al Cumberland's body was never found after his 1960 boating accident. Because he's actually buried in Nora's backyard.
• The Reveal: Unlike most Columbo episodes, which plainly lay out the killer's motives at the beginning, this one intentionally misleads the audience as to Nora's true intentions for most of the episode (that Jean's death was an accident and the real target was Jerry). Then it turns out that Nora really did mean to kill Jean, because she knew too much about a dark secret; Nora murdered her husband years ago.
• Self-Deprecation: Columbo, while visiting Nora, learns that one of her old movies is on TV and turns it on. When Nora catches him watching it, she laughs embarrassedly and says she didn't like the movie when she filmed it, and even less now.
• Stealing from the Till: Nora straight-up admits to scamming the studio out of $2 million. It turns out that wasn't the motive at all.
• Wham Line: "In order to lay water pipe, someone would have to dig up the lawn, wouldn't they?"
• Wham Shot: After Nora commits her act of murder by setting Jerry's car ablaze, she is seen in a restaurant where she's approached by Jerry, revealing it wasn't him she murdered.
• White-Dwarf Starlet: "Who cares about an aging actress sliding downhill?", says Jerry to Columbo. Although Nora is still working, she's come down several pegs in show business.