[It’s criminal how little I’ve written in this space about one of my favorite characters and cultural works. Well that changes this week, as I’ll be AmericanStudying a handful of the most contextually compelling—ie, not necessarily the most memorable, but the most connected to historical and cultural contexts—of Columbo’s murderers!]
[NB. Some inevitable SPOILERS in each of these posts!]
On two ways to AmericanStudy Patrick McGoohan’s first Columbo murderer.
This might be as surprising to you as it was to me when I first realized it, but Patrick McGoohan didn’t play a Columbo murderer until the show’s 28th episode, S4 E3 By Dawn’s Early Light. In case you’re not a super-fan, that detail is surprising for a couple interconnected reasons: McGoohan was very good friends with Peter Falk and played a murderer four times across the show’s arc, the most of any actor; he also directed four episodes, including two in which he didn’t appear as an actor. I don’t know that any individual outside of Peter Falk (and maybe Dog) is more associated with Columbo than this legendary Irish American actor, probably best known still for the short-lived but beloved cult classic TV show The Prisoner (1967-68). And while that aforementioned number and variety of connections between McGoohan and Columbo is unquestionably part of the reason for the association, I’d argue that it’s also and especially due to the iconic nature of his characters and episodes—with none higher on the list for me (many folks prefer superspy Nelson Brenner in the also-excellent Identity Crisis, which like yesterday’s episode Lady in Waiting also features a young Leslie Nielsen in a dead-serious role!) than Colonel Lyle Rumford in By Dawn’s Early Light.
Part of what makes Rumford such a compelling character is the very unique setting and world that he represents: he’s the director of a military academy for teenage boys, a job he’s clearly been performing for decades (the murder victim, the academy’s brash and arrogant owner William Haynes, is the grandson of the founder who appointed Rumford, and was himself a student at the academy under Rumford). That makes him both a counterpart and yet a contrast to Monday’s subject, Eddie Albert’s General Martin Hollister from Dead Weight—a contrast both because I’m pretty sure Rumford never saw any actual combat (in the episode’s most thoughtful scene, a quiet conversation between Rumford and Columbo, he likens his duties at the academy to wartime efforts) and because he is entirely straight-laced compared to the flashy Hollister; but a counterpart because this is a man for whom his military service has been and remains the defining aspect of his identity. Given the October 1974 date of this episode’s premiere, with the Vietnam War still raging on, that’s a complicated layer to Rumford indeed, one summed up by his line “Nobody wants to play soldier anymore.”
That line isn’t just about the military in the Vietnam War era, however. One of the most interesting ways to contextualize the 1970s Columbo seasons is to remember just that, that they were part of that complex and compelling decade in American culture and society. Rumford, clearly intended to be a good deal older than the 45-year-old McGoohan, is in every sense a vestige of a pre-70s, and even pre-60s, America; William Haynes, whose plan to turn the academy into a co-ed college is the motivation behind Rumford’s decision to murder him, is quite overtly meant to symbolize the new era. But while audience members are intended to sympathize with Rumford in that dichotomy (Haynes is one of the more unlikable Columbo murder victims), it’s also the case that the students whom we get to know well—and especially Cadet Springer, the sensitive young man Rumford is attempting to frame for the explosion that kills Haynes—are likewise very much of their 70s moment, and Columbo clearly connects more with them than he does with Rumford (even if he understands the older man). I’m not sure any Columbo character more reflects 1970s America than does Lyle Rumford, a tribute to McGoohan’s performance as much as the episode’s great writing.
Next VillainStudying tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What do you think? Columbo takeaways you’d share?
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