Reprint: "Days of Wine and Bradford Dillman"

From 2004 (and I later bought both of DVDs for Banacek as well as the Snoop Sisters set):

I had a "blast from the past" yesterday. While wandering the television dial I noticed the Hallmark Channel was just starting an episode of Banacek.

Thomas Banacek was one of the "gimmick" detectives of the 1970s. We started with the "different" ones: Ironside was in a wheelchair, Longstreet was blind, Cannon was overweight, Barnaby Jones was old, Columbo was sloppy. Then we got into the ethnic run, of which Banacek, who was Polish, was one of the first. (Later we had Nakia, who was Native American; Sarge, who fit both bills because he was Irish and an ex-cop turned priest; Tenafly, who was African-American, etc.)

Actually Banacek wasn't even a detective; he was an insurance investigator, a "finder" who tried to discover highly-insured items before the company paid off the claim. Dapperly played by George Peppard, he lived on Beacon Hill (the Boston setting was one of the draws) in a nice house, had a gorgeous classic car driven by a chauffeur, and was friends with Felix Mulholland, a rare book dealer. Banacek liked lovely ladies, money, fine wines, money, nice furnishings, money...well, you get the picture. Despite his mercenary proclivities, Banacek was a gentleman. Were a lady to sleep with him, he would be the ultimate lover, serve wine next to a bed with silk sheets, and "not tell" afterwards.

His other penchant was quoting obscure "Polish proverbs," including my favorite "Never play leapfrog with a unicorn."

Watching the episode brought back all those lovely memories of the halcyon days of the 1970s TV mystery series: the classic NBC Mystery Movie, which included McMillan and Wife, Columbo, Hec Ramsey, and McCloud (which started out on the earlier Four-in-One dramatic series) on Sundays and later Madigan, Tenafly, Faraday and Company, and The Snoop Sisters on the Wednesday/Tuesday edition, as well as the peacock network's classy Ellery Queen (which they didn't have class enough to renew), and also the different Quinn Martin series ("A Quinn Martin Production!" as the opening narrator always proclaimed): Barnaby Jones, Cannon, Nakia, The Streets of San Francisco, The F.B.I. and perhaps his most famous, The Fugitive. It of course featured a complement of guest stars who, had they only appeared on the NBC mystery series, one might refer to as the "Universal Studios Repertory Company."

The guests for this episode ("To Find a King") included many of the most classic members of the "rep company": Kevin McCarthy, Brenda Vaccaro, Pernell Roberts, Roger C. Carmel, and Logan Ramsey. There wasn't a mystery series these folks didn't turn up on, along with the following: Lawrence Pressman, William Windom, Craig Stevens, David Wayne, Howard Duff, Ida Lupino, Dean Stockwell, Anne Francis, Geraldine Brooks, Pat Harrington, Kip Niven, Robert Loggia, Ross Martin, Roddy McDowall, Stefanie Powers, Herb Edelman, Bert Convy, Peter Mark Richman, Beverly Garland--along with a whole horde of others. Ah, just the names make my mouth water for a decent mystery that didn't need T&A to cover up the holes in the plot!

The one guest star this episode didn't feature was that ultimate of 1970s mystery series guest stars, Bradford Dillman. Check out this guy's "Notable TV Guest Appearances" on the IMDb. And I'm sure there are some that are missing! Bradford Dillman was on everything. The only problem with him in a mystery guest star role was that if all you were interested in was "whodunnit" and not how the series detective got to that conclusion, you could switch channels the moment you saw his name. Bradford Dillman was the bad guy. Bradford Dillman was always the bad guy, no ifs, ands or buts. Roddy McDowall and Ross Martin and Peter Mark Richman all played lots of bad guys, but often enough the script would fool you and they'd be innocent. Dillman never was.

To complete the nostalgia, "To Find a King" was directed by one of my favorites of the 1970s "rep company," Lou Antonio. (His brother, Jim Antonio, was also a member of the rep.) He's now better known as a director, but his career in the 1970s included numerous guest star appearances on various shows including The Rookies and he starred in two television series, Makin' It and Dog and Cat (with Kim Basinger) and co-starred in The Snoop Sisters in what is my favorite Antonio role, the elderly sisters' ex-con chauffeur and bodyguard, Barney.

Watching Banacek just makes me long for all those Mystery Movie shows to come back somehow, especially Faraday and Company and Snoop Sisters. If Universal would like to release them to DVD, I'll be first in line to buy them, believe me!