365 Days of Columbo: May 3rd

Remembering Jackie Cooper

Actor Jackie Cooper died May 3, 2011, in Santa Monica, California, at the age of 88.

Columbo fans know him as Senatorial candidate Nelson Hayward in Candidate for Crime, one of the show’s best episodes. Hayward is a wonderfully unpleasant Columbo murderer: slick enough to plan a fake assassination attempt, but not quite slick enough to notice all the little loose ends the Lieutenant keeps tugging on.

Cooper had already lived several show-business lives before he ever crossed paths with Peter Falk. He was a child star in the Our Gang shorts, became an Oscar nominee at age nine for Skippy, and later found a new generation of fans as Perry White in the Christopher Reeve Superman films. 

Columbo Makes the Detective List

On May 3, 2012, TIME included Lieutenant Columbo in its list of top television detectives. Their write-up singled out the show’s unusual “we see the murderer first” format and Columbo’s habit of letting suspects underestimate him right up until the last zinger.

That feels about right. Plenty of TV detectives are brilliant. Columbo’s genius is that he lets everyone else forget he is.