Ransom for a Dead Man

First aired on March 1, 1971, Ransom for a Dead Man was intended as a sort of "Second Pilot" episode for Columbo. Lee Grant stars as Leslie Williams, the talented "lady lawyer" who murders her law partner husband, played very briefly by Harlan Warde, only to get tripped up by her resentful step-daughter.

📺Watch it for free here: https://www.imdb.com/tv/watch/tt0066933 (Might not be available in all regions)

What to watch for

A few odds and ends about the episode...

The murder happens quickly and quietly

The murder happens just over 2 minutes into the episode. There is nearly no on camera spoken dialogue before the killing; the victim utters not quite 3 words ("Leslie, I thou...") before he's shot dead in front of his fireplace. In fact he's killed before Peter Falk's name even appears in the opening credits.

The killer, Grant, doesn't speak at all until more than 6 minutes into the episode. Her first words are "Hello Pat..." when she calls her friend to set up the phone call that she'll pretend came from the kidnappers.

The only episode I know of where the murder happens on camera (so I'm not counting Janice Caldwell in A Friend in Deed), occurs more quickly, and with less dialogue, than this one is later in season 1 in Suitable for Framing, where Dale Kingston kills Uncle Rudy just 55 seconds into the episode with no words spoken at all.

The murder is also quite clean - no blood, no gore, depicted as a montage with very little detail. That's typical of Columbo, there's rarely any blood, the murders are often not shown at all, or shown with little or no actual violence. 

Part of that was the TV sensibilities of the time. Even married couples were often shown sleeping in separate beds (like Ray and Carol in Prescription Murder) or separate rooms (like Tony and Cathy in Greenhouse Jungle) and showing a murder on TV at all wasn't done casually. Part of it was also due to Columbo creators Link and Levinson, who were adamant that despite the subject matter they didn't want Columbo to be violent or an "action" show.

Lastly the motive is a bit thin. In fact we don't really get a sense of the motive until more than 70 minutes into the episode when Margaret tells Columbo that her father had stood up to Leslie and threatened to close the law practice and throw her out of the house.

We'll be here Again

If the Williams' living room feels familiar to Columbo fans it's because we're going to see it again. Later in season 1, the same house serves as Aunt Dorie's house in Short Fuse.

The decor and paint has been changed a bit, but the distinctive door frames, fireplace, and wall details give it away.

There's a good chance that it was used again as Tony and Cathy Goodland's living room in The Greenhouse Jungle. The distinctive decor matches up, though the colors are substantially different. I'm pretty sure it's again the same room.

Deja vu all over Again

In the first pilot, Prescription Murder, killer psychiatrist Ray Fleming seems to have left the scene and forgotten a potentially damaging piece of evidence - his kerchief on the phone. The camera zooms in on that kerchief, with dramatic music, when suddenly Fleming's hand reappears to retrieve it.

That technique happens in this episode too - Leslie appears to have forgotten her husband's briefcase in the foyer, we even hear the car start outside...then suddenly...

What's her Workout Plan?

Leslie must be awfully strong. Harlan Wade is not a small fellow, and it's never quite explained how petite, 5'4", Lee Grant manages to wrestle his body out of the house, into the trunk of his car, and then out again when she pushes him off the cliff, all by herself.

Peter Delocis in the Columbo Appreciation Society suggested she must've used a plot device. :-)

Killer Effect

The opening ~6 minutes all take place at night, and thanks to the camera lenses they were using to shoot this episode there are a lot of diffraction spikes on outdoor lights - like headlights. The director chose to embrace this phenomenon by doing a fade from Leslie watching Paul's body tumble down the cliff, to a shot of her driving his car to where she mailed the ransom note. The headlights of the car align perfectly with her eyes...

Salute that Mailbox

The mail collection box Leslie drops her ransom letter into is painted red, white, and blue. On July 4th, 1955, the U.S. Postmaster announced they'd start painting mailboxes in that color scheme. Prior to that, U.S. mailboxes had been painted olive green since WW I. 

Starting in 1971, the same year this episode aired, the USPS started painting mail collection boxes the now-familiar postal service dark blue.

The Columbo we Know and Love

Columbo arrives about 12-1/2 minutes into the episode. It's unusual, but not unheard of, for Columbo to appear on-screen before the body is found or a murder is known to have happened. 

The Columbo of Ransom for a Dead Man is much more like the Columbo we know and love in the series. In Prescription Murder Falk played Columbo much smoother, better dressed, more understated. In Ransom for a Dead Man we first meet him looking for a lost pen on a dark porch, and his mannerisms are much more like the "rumpled everyman" that became his iconic persona.

A Simpler Time

The 1970s were a simpler time for TV; they didn't have to contend as much with people rewatching, freeze-framing, or zooming in on scenes so little details and continuity bits weren't quite as important. For example: the envelope she mailed herself the ransom note in.

It's not a big deal that there's no return address, and MAYBE you could have mailed a local letter like that without a zip code in the early 70s...but there's no postmark over the stamp. Which means this envelope was never really mailed. No reason for a TV show to ACTUALLY mail a prop, of course, and faking a postmark would have been a lot of work for 2 seconds on screen that they didn't know people would ever be able to screen capture and scrutinize.

By the way, as far as I can tell there is no "San Corona" street in Los Angeles.

Phone Calls

There are a few key phone calls in this episode. Pat makes the "tennis" call that Leslie uses to pretend it was the kidnappers calling. Then Leslie uses the automated system with the recorded voice (a technique Milo Janis also uses to set up the alibi in An Exercise in Fatality) to fake that Paul is still alive.

Some people have suggested that Columbo could have checked with the phone company to learn where those calls actually came from, which might have nailed Leslie. It's possible those were local calls and it's not clear to me if phone companies were logging local phone calls in the early 1970s.

Art Imitates Art

The morning after she arrives Margaret is watching TV while eating breakfast. She's watching Double Indemnity, a movie about a woman who murders her husband.

Changing the Subject

One of Columbo's oft-used techniques for putting a suspect off-center is to mention some key development or piece of evidence, then before finishing his sentence changing the subject to something else. Columbo is likely watching the reaction of the suspect, aroused by the suspense of the key fact, only to have him divert onto something else mid-sentence.

He uses that technique on Leslie:

Columbo: "There are certain things here about your husband's kidnapping...certain details that uh...does this lighter work?" Then he pauses to light his cigar, leaving her hanging to where he was going with that seemingly important line of questioning.

"Local Police"

Columbo never actually says he's from the L.A.P.D. in this episode. He repeatedly refers to it as "the local police." One wonders if the studio was nervous about referring to the L.A.P.D. by name; perhaps they didn't yet have permission (it's not clear to me that they needed it) to refer to them specifically.

I don't think he says L.A.P.D. in Prescription Murder either.

Obviously he gets over that later in the series.

I'll have the chili, Burt

This episode establishes Columbo's trademark love of chili, and introduces us to "Burt" (played by Timothy Carey) who returns a couple episodes later in Dead Weight to serve him some more chili.

Timothy Carey makes a third Columbo appearance, again in the kitchen, as Tony the deli owner William Shatner pistol-whips in season 6's Fade in to Murder.

Just before we learn about his love of chili, we see Columbo playing pool. That comes up a few more times in the series.

Deja vu, part 2

When Columbo demonstrates how the phone trick could have worked (with the special recording phone on a timer) we get a scene that feels very familiar to a scene he has with Ray Fleming late in Prescription Murder. He's let the killer in on the fact that he's onto them, and the killer replies that they see through Columbo's "shabby bumbler" act. They both even tell him that he's "likeable". Columbo flatters them with something like "You got me pegged pretty good."

The other big similarity...in both Ransom and Prescription Murder Columbo lies to the suspect in this scene and tells them that he's been taken off the case. Perhaps trying to rebuild the "false confidence" in the suspect?

By the end of the scene the killer is still being cocky, but the chase is at full stride, and the killer knows that Columbo knows.

Plot Holes

Really minor stuff, and I love Columbo anyhow but...

• The victim being shot at a 45 degree angle doesn't prove he was standing. He could have been laying down with the killer standing over him near his feet.
• Even in 1971 the coroner probably could have been able to tell that Paul was dead for a few days and thus probably wasn't alive when he supposedly called the house.
• When Margaret is tormenting Leslie in the house one thing she does is hang the flashing signal box on a string as a sign that she knows Leslie faked the kidnapping...but how did Margaret get the signal box? Wouldn't it have been in police custody? Did Columbo provide it to her to aid in the set up?
• Not sure why Leslie needed to drop the flashing light box out of the plane. Would have been just as likely the crooks would grab that, along with the money, when they made their escape. She could have just pretended to drop it. The extra pass over the scene, which could have raised suspicion, wouldn't have been necessary that way.

Just a few Little Things

• Nobody sneers "lady lawyer" quite like Patricia Mattick. Mattick, by the way, actually was about 19 years old when this was filmed. Much different than today when so many TV-teens are played by 30 year olds.
• Columbo mentions to Leslie that he has a wife; it's not the first mention though - he mentions her in Prescription Murder too.
• Margaret tries to slap Columbo (like she slapped Leslie earlier). It's a rare instance of somebody lashing out at Columbo physically.
• $1.10 for a sherry and a root beer at LAX? Today you probably couldn't get a cup of ice water for that.
• The closing credits scroll up the screen as Columbo leaves the airport bar. It's the only episode I know of with scrolling end credits.
• Also very 1970s...the planes behind Leslie and Columbo in the concluding scene are from TWA - an airline that was big in the 70s, but doesn't exist anymore.

What did you think of Columbo's "Ransom for a Dead Man"?

Let us know in the comments below!