This time, Marion Crane did it and for a large amount of cash too.
Episode: Season 5, Episode 1
Title:"Forgotten Lady"
Directed by: Harvey Hart
Written by: William Driskill
Air Date: September 14, 1975
Previous: A Deadly State of Mind
Next: A Case of Immunity
Guest Starring: Janet Leigh, John Payne, Sam Jaffe
Title:"Forgotten Lady"
Directed by: Harvey Hart
Written by: William Driskill
Air Date: September 14, 1975
Previous: A Deadly State of Mind
Next: A Case of Immunity
Guest Starring: Janet Leigh, John Payne, Sam Jaffe
"Forgotten Lady" is the first episode of the fifth season of Columbo.
Grace Wheeler (Janet Leigh) is an aging, faded movie star, who was once part of the dance team "Diamond and Wheeler" along with Ned Diamond (John Payne, Miracle on 34th Street). After leaving a screening of one of her old films, Grace is inspired, and decides to make a comeback. She will star in a new show, with her old partner Ned as director.
Grace's enthusiasm is brought to a screeching halt after she comes home and tells her idea to her husband, Dr. Henry Willis (Sam Jaffe). Henry controls the family purse strings and refuses to fork over the $500,000 required to stage the show. Grace snaps. She slips an extra sleeping pill into Henry's drink, sneaks Henry's gun out of his car, enters his room, and shoots him in the head.
It appears to be an Open-and-Shut Case of suicide, Henry having been found in his own bed with his gun in his hand and with the door to his bedroom locked (Grace shimmied down a tree and re-entered the house). But as always, there's Lt. Columbo, who notices odd details, like how there's no dirt on Henry's slippers when he supposedly went outside to get his gun, or how it's strange that Henry was reading an amusing comic novel before deciding to kill himself.
John Payne's last role before he retired from acting.
Tropes:
- Absence of Evidence: A common trope on Columbo. In this episode he notices that Henry's slippers are completely clean, when he supposedly went to the garage to get his gun, and that he didn't dog-ear the last page in his book, like he usually does.
- Adam Westing: Leigh plays basically an expy of herself, a former A-lister whose career is in decline (Leigh's career had been mostly TV guest spots like this one since the mid-1960s). Grace Wheeler watches Walking My Baby Back Home, a real Janet Leigh movie. There also seems to be a little Ginger Rogers mixed in, as Grace was part of a famous movie dance team à la Fred Astaire and Rogers.
- All for Nothing: Even if Grace got away with murder, she would have died before her grand return.
- Artistic License – Law: When Ned decides to confess to Grace's murder, he's still taking quite a chance to spare her from dying in prison. While it's implied that he'll be fine, there's still the chance of him being charged as an accessory to murder after the fact if his defense fails in court. Justified because the viewers are likely to sympathize with his situation. The possibly of Grace being deemed insane due her extraordinary and fatal brain condition isn't considered either, even though she presumably has a strong case with her neural degeneration affecting her judgement. But again, Columbo doesn't want Grace to spend what little of her life is left in prison for something she couldn't even remember doing.
- Bland-Name Product: The Clip Show Song and Dance that Grace attends at the beginning is basically a copy of MGM's "That's Entertainment" compilations, the first of which was released a year before this episode.
- Celebrity Paradox: So that was "Grace Wheeler" in Walking My Baby Back Home, not Janet Leigh. So was Grace Wheeler in The Naked Spur, Psycho, The Manchurian Candidate and all those other movies like, well... Night of the Lepus?
- Chiaroscuro: An unusual bit of arty lighting for Columbo, as the Summation Gathering takes place in Grace's screening room, lit only by the beam from the projector, cigar smoke veiling Columbo's shadowy face as he explains that Grace did it.
- Could Say It, But...: "It's not gonna take much to break your story." "It might take a couple of months."
- Does Not Like Guns: A Running Gag for Columbo that's highlighted in this episode, when it's revealed that not only does he not carry a gun, he hasn't qualified on the shooting range in ten years. He pays another cop to take the test for him.
- Double-Meaning Title: The title not only references how Grace's acting days are behind her: she's suffering forgetfulness because she's secretly dying of a degenerative brain disease. So in other words, Grace is so "forgotten", she even forgot she herself was the murderer.
- Downer Ending: Poor Grace, dying of an aneurysm, left alone with her movies and her memories. And Ned, who's in love with her, takes the fall for the crime, risking his career and reputation to let her live out her final days in peace.
- Bittersweet Ending: Alternatively, the story ends on a rather decent note. Although she will die of her degenerative brain disease, Grace will do so in the peace and comfort of her own home. Ned will take the fall (and all that implies) but it doesn't change it's a testament of his selfless devotion for the woman he loved, as opposed to allowing her to die in prison, confused and lost. And as for Columbo, though he leaves without arresting the real culprit and with a heavy heart, he does so knowing the murderer can't cause any further harm.
- Foreshadowing: Hints that not all is well with Grace:
- She repeats her instructions to Raymond when he's driving her and Ned home.
- She seems genuinely confused when she hears Raymond pounding on Henry's door. For good measure, she's sitting all alone in her room, where there would be no need for her to fake concern.
- She seems confused about there being dance practice that day when it's only meant to be on Fridays, even though the current date is Friday.
- She keeps forgetting Columbo's name.
- She forgets the dance steps at rehearsal
- She sort of comes apart in an odd way at lunch with Ned when demanding her dancing partner be replaced.
- A more subtle example: Columbo dodging his firearms qualification exam shows he's willing to bend the law a bit, which he also does in regards to Grace.
- Internal Affairs: A rare appearance of IA on Columbo. An IA detective tracks Columbo down and demands that either he gets qualified on the shooting range or he loses his badge.
- Let Off by the Detective: Columbo doesn't make the arrest. It turns out that not only is Grace dying from a brain aneurysm—she's got two months to live, tops—she doesn't even remember that she killed Henry. So Ned "confesses" and Columbo arrests him, knowing full well that by the time they prove Ned's confession to be fake, Grace will be dead.
- Locked Out of the Loop: Dr. Willis elected to not tell his wife that she's dying from an incurable aneurysm that will burst at any time. This works out badly for Dr. Willis.
- Locked Room Mystery: Part of the mystery Columbo has to solve, as Henry was found dead with a gun in his hand and the door to his room was locked. Grace got out of the room by climbing a nearby tree.
- Never Suicide: As usual on Columbo, the "suicide" isn't.
- Newscaster Cameo: Army Archerd, a Real Life entertainment reporter and columnist, is the reporter on the red carpet outside the film that Grace attends in the opening scene.
- Oddball in the Series: The only Columbo episode ever where he doesn't arrest the bad guy. Grace Wheeler is Let Off by the Detective as she's terminally ill and mentally incompetent.
- Plot Hole: One of the weaker gotcha moments in Columbo history. His gotcha this time is the observation that the movie Grace was watching, Walking My Baby Back Home, is only 1 hour and 45 minutes long,note but somehow it ran a full two hours, which leaves at least 10 minutes unaccounted for even after she fixed the reel. So she must have killed Henry. The problem is that this does not place Grace in Henry's room. She could have easily answered that she'd done anything else during that 10-12 minutes, like fixing a drink, or using the toilet, or even dozing off on the couch and not noticing the reel coming apart. (If she hadn't forgotten she did it, anyway.)
- Poor Communication Kills: Henry's decision to not tell Grace that she's dying winds up getting him killed, when she shoots him so she can stage a musical that obviously will never happen.
- Series Continuity Error: Dr. Willis' bedroom was supposed to be on the other end of the house from the film room. However, when Columbo tries climbing down the tree outside the bedroom window, it's suddenly directly above the film room as Grace Wheeler sees him through the film-room window.
- She Cleans Up Nicely: In Columbo's first appearance he's even more rumpled than usual, having been woken up in the middle of the night and forgotten his jacket and tie. But for the last scene he shows up for Grace's movie screening in a tuxedo, looking smart.Raymond: You are looking unusually elegant, I must say.
- Shout-Out: Walking My Baby Back Home, starring a young, gorgeous Janet Leigh—uh, "Grace Wheeler"—is not only shown, it turns out to be a crucial plot point.
- Special Guest: Payne gets "Special Guest Star" credit.
- Tragic Dream: Grace's terminal brain aneurysm meant her dreams of resuming her career were doomed from the start.
- Tragic Villain: Grace just wanted to restart her career which was cut short for reasons beyond her control, but her husband refuses to fund it so she kills him. To make matters worse, it was all for naught in the end - the reason her husband was so adamant in keeping her in retirement was because she had a terminal brain aneurysm that was killing her and destroyed her short term memory, and her husband was just trying to give her some happy final months. By the end of the episode, she doesn't even remember she murdered her husband.
- Trophy Wife: Henry observes matter-of-factly that he knows Grace didn't marry him for love. The ending reveals however that he cared about her more than was obvious at the beginning.
- Wham Line: There's a one-two punch that helps to form the note the episode ends on:
- After Columbo explains to Ned that Grace was the one who killed Henry, he then proceeds to reveal a piece of evidence that muddies the waters for him: While he was digging through Henry's files, he came across a piece of paper concerning a patient named "Rosemary Landon", who is suffering from an inoperable brain aneurysm... Ned: (quietly) Rosemary Landon... (sudden realization; to Columbo) Rosie!Columbo: Rosie. That was Dr. Willis' code name for his wife. He didn't want her to know anything about it. That is a progressive memory disease that knocks out the memory cells. She can recall things from a long time ago, but she's very shaky about anything now. That's how I knew that Dr. Willis would never consent to her resuming her career. Because the strain of performing could literally kill her at any moment.
- And what makes things worse?Ned: ...how long has she got?Columbo: A week, a month, two months on the outside... My problem, sir, is I don't believe that she even remembers killing him.
- And what makes things worse?
- And then you get the capper: Upon overhearing Columbo discuss Henry's murder, Grace starts losing her composure, demanding to know where he gets off saying someone in her home murdered her husband, when he clearly killed himself. And just as Columbo is about to explain the situation, Ned butts in:Grace: (furious) I want to know once and for all what this Lieutenant is trying to say!Columbo: (aphrensively) Madam, the other evening we learned-Ned: (cuts Columbo off) Grace, this has gone on long enough. I killed Henry. I took the gun out of the glove compartment. I came through a rear window. I went up to his room and I shot him. And I made good my escape over the balcony.
- After Columbo explains to Ned that Grace was the one who killed Henry, he then proceeds to reveal a piece of evidence that muddies the waters for him: While he was digging through Henry's files, he came across a piece of paper concerning a patient named "Rosemary Landon", who is suffering from an inoperable brain aneurysm...
- White-Dwarf Starlet: Grace quite plainly has not dealt well with no longer being a star. She says "I was a big star!" to Henry while trying to talk him into backing the show. Ned comments about how Grace took it hard when she faded from the spotlight. (Her fading from the spotlight was largely his fault, as he got in a drunk driving accident which ruined his career, and hers too as she was his dancing partner.) The walls of the mansion are festooned with pictures of Grace from her acting career. She comforts herself at night by watching her old movies, a habit that echoes Norma Desmond. She murders her poor husband when he won't agree to bankroll her comeback, even though it was for her own good. She's so pathetically grateful for attention from old fan Lt. Columbo that she invites him over to watch Walking My Baby Back Home.
- Worth It: As Columbo leads Ned out at the end of the episode, he makes it clear it won't take long to the truth to come out about his claims of murdering Henry. The moment Ned says it could take a couple of months for that to happen, Columbo (fully understanding the implication) can't help but agree.
