On December 15th, 1991, Columbo started Season 11 with Death Hits the Jackpot, a story about a $30 million lottery ticket, a very bad uncle, a very bad (almost ex-)wife, and one surprisingly useful chimpanzee.
Rip Torn stars as Leon Lamarr, a jeweler whose expensive
lifestyle is about to collapse. Gary Kroeger plays Leon’s nephew Freddy Brower,
a broke photographer in the middle of a divorce from Nancy, played by Jamie
Rose. Freddy’s luck changes when all six of his lottery numbers come up.
Unfortunately, he decides the safest person to trust with the winning ticket is
Uncle Leon.
The episode was directed by longtime Columbo hand Vincent
McEveety and written by Jeffrey Bloom.
A $30 million problem
The opening gives Freddy what looks like the answer to every
one of his problems. He is broke, behind on his rent, and trying to get out of
a marriage that has already gone sour. Then, while he is at Nancy’s place, the
lottery numbers appear on television and Freddy realizes he has won $30
million.
There is only one catch: the divorce is not final.
Freddy is convinced that if he claims the ticket
immediately, Nancy will be entitled to a share. So he goes to the one relative
he trusts, Leon Lamarr, and asks him to claim the prize in his own name. Once
Freddy’s divorce is finished, Leon can quietly hand the money over.
Or is it?
There's one rather big plot hole in this episode - under California law if a couple are no longer living together as man and wife then any new earnings or assets are not community property. As Nancy and Freddy were separated, living apart, and just one signature away from divorce, she probably was NOT legally entitled to half the lottery winnings.
We can excuse that for plot purposes by believing that Freddy wouldn't be aware of that nuance, and maybe he didn't think to consult his lawyer about it.
Leon needs the money
The timing could not be better for Leon — or worse for
Freddy. Leon has just learned that his jewelry business is in serious financial
trouble. He has the appearance of wealth, but not the cash to support it.
Then his nephew walks in carrying a ticket worth $30
million.
Rip Torn is excellent here because Leon never feels like a
cold, polished mastermind. He is emotional, theatrical, funny, vain, and
dangerous.
The Halloween murder
Leon’s murder plan depends on a Halloween party at his home.
Dressed as King George III, complete with wig and period costume, he slips away
from the party preparations and drives to Freddy’s apartment, ostensibly to deliver the lottery money.
The costume makes the scene even stranger. Columbo has had murderers in tuxedos, uniforms, expensive suits and surgical gowns, but few killers look quite as ridiculous — or as sinister — as Rip Torn drowning a man while dressed like an eighteenth-century monarch.
And then Nancy walks in
The scene has one more twist. Nancy arrives at Freddy’s
apartment while Leon is still there.
For a moment, it looks as though Leon may have created
another problem for himself. Instead, Nancy embraces him. She and Leon are
lovers, and she has been part of the scheme.
It is not a complicated reveal, but it changes the shape of
the episode. It's no longer just Uncle Leon improvising, now it's a conspiracy between multiple people who know Freddy well.
Columbo arrives late — very late
Columbo does not appear until over 30 minutes into the episode. By the
time he arrives at Freddy’s apartment, the murder, the staged accident, the
return to Leon’s party, and Nancy’s part in the deception have all been
established.
That is a risky choice in a Columbo episode, especially in
the revival era, where the longer running times could sometimes make an opening
feel stretched. Here it works largely because Torn is so watchable.
When Columbo finally does arrive, he immediately begins
noticing the things that do not fit. Freddy was supposedly broke, yet he had
recently ordered an extremely expensive sports car. There is also costly
champagne in the apartment.
Individually, none of those things proves murder. Together,
they suggest that Freddy’s financial life changed suddenly — and maybe somebody
else knew it.
But not his posse
Columbo subtly discovers from the various neighbors that they all thought he was still broke and that the notion of him buying champagne and Ferrari's was absurd.
Speaking of the neighbors...
The neighbors are a curious menagerie - an Italian man and his mom, an Irishman with a chimp who looks like he stepped out of a children's show, and a set of women who are curiously attractive. It's like a rundown building full of models.
And they're pretty bold, the way they just make themselves at home at Freddy's place.
To be honest, I found them a bit off-putting and could have done with a little less of them. At 98 minutes this is one of the longer episodes and I can't help but think the neighbor scenes ran a bit long as filler.
In defense of Trish
I've heard some people express distaste for how Trish comes on to Columbo at the crime scene, after all he's a married man. But in fairness Columbo doesn't wear a wedding ring and didn't mention his wife to her so she may not realize he's married.
The numbers on the camera
The key breakthrough comes from Freddy’s camera. The winning lottery numbers are the F-stop numbers that every photographer would be familiar with.
Columbo notices them while handling the camera and
realizes that the supposedly penniless photographer may have been the real
lottery winner.
It is a good clue because it does not solve the murder by
itself. It changes the motive. Once Columbo understands that Freddy was about to have access to millions, the expensive car and champagne stop looking like
fantasies and start looking like evidence.
Leon, of course, has an answer ready. He claims that he is
the winner and that Freddy merely knew the numbers because they shared an
interest in photography and spent time together.
The explanation is just plausible enough to keep the game
going.
A tougher Columbo
One of the nicest things about Death Hits the Jackpot is
Falk’s performance. The revived Columbo could sometimes lean very hard into
mugging, comic business, and exaggerated befuddlement. There is some of that
here — especially around the chimp and later at the auction — but for much of
the investigation Falk plays Columbo with a straighter edge.
He does not seem fooled by Leon’s grief, and he is not
especially impressed by Nancy’s performance either. He keeps checking the
divorce papers, Freddy’s spending, the phone calls, the timing, and the
physical evidence.
There is also a satisfying scene at the luxury car
dealership, where an arrogant salesman is less than eager to help this rumpled customer.
Columbo calmly establishes who he is and why he is there. It is a small
reminder that underneath the raincoat is a homicide lieutenant who can pull
rank when he needs to.
Rip Torn steals the show
The episode belongs to Rip Torn.
Torn had a gift for making a character seem dangerous and
funny at exactly the same time. Leon can be charming, wounded, explosive,
self-pitying and smug within a few minutes.
That helps enormously because Leon spends so much of the
story carrying scenes before and after Columbo enters. A less energetic guest
murderer might have made the long opening drag.
Torn also understands one of the basic pleasures of Columbo:
the murderer has to be interesting enough that we enjoy watching him lose. Leon
is awful, but he is never dull.
Jamie Rose and Gary Kroeger
Gary Kroeger gives Freddy a nervous, overeager quality that
makes his bad decisions believable. Freddy is not especially sophisticated, and
that is the point. He sees the lottery as instant liberation and is so excited
by the future that he does not stop to consider what the money might do to the
people around him.
Jamie Rose has the less sympathetic assignment as Nancy. The
character is written broadly: she is angry about the divorce, greedy about the
money, and secretly involved with Leon. Still, Rose gets a few effective
moments when Nancy’s confidence begins to crack and the partnership with Leon
turns less romantic and more transactional.
Betsy Palmer also appears as Leon’s wife Martha. Columbo
fans may know Palmer from a much more famous murder-related role: Pamela
Voorhees in Friday the 13th. Here she is on the other side of the equation,
largely unaware of what her husband is really doing.
Joey the chimp
Yes, there is a chimpanzee.
Freddy is looking after Joey, and the animal is present at
the apartment around the time of the murder. The chimp initially feels like one
of those revival-era touches added for comic color. Columbo cuddles him, talks
to him, and generally gives the episode a burst of animal business.
But Joey is not just decoration. He becomes part of the
final evidence.
Leon’s King George costume includes a medallion. At Freddy’s
apartment, Joey touches it. That means the chimp’s prints can place the
medallion — and therefore Leon in costume — at the murder scene. The costume is key, it was a one-time thing and not a routine piece of jewelry that Leon might have worn to Freddy's at some other time.
It is a deliberately odd variation on a classic Columbo
idea: the decisive fingerprint is not the murderer’s.
The auction-house gotcha
The finale takes place at a jewelry auction, filmed at the
Biltmore Hotel in downtown Los Angeles. Columbo wanders into the proceedings
and, in one of the episode’s broader comic bits, accidentally gets involved in
the bidding.
The comedy gives way to the trap. Columbo lays out the case
against Leon and reveals that the crucial print on the medallion belongs to
Joey.
That is enough to destroy Leon’s alibi. If the medallion
worn with his King George costume was handled by the chimp at Freddy’s
apartment, Leon was not safely at home throughout the period he claimed.
Then Columbo turns the financial screw. Freddy was the real
lottery winner.
Leon’s reaction tells Nancy exactly how much loyalty remains
between them.
The final collapse of Nancy and Leon's partnership, cleverly engineered by Columbo, is a nice way to end. In fact, I sort of wish they had ended on the two of them being led out of the room...rather than add on the minute or so of filler chit chat between Columbo and the detective as they walk out.
A Los Angeles episode
Death Hits the Jackpot uses several identifiable Los Angeles
locations.
·
The Biltmore Hotel at 506 S. Grand Avenue
appears as the jewelry auction location.
·
Lamarr Fine Jewelry was filmed at 3100 Wilshire
Boulevard.
·
Freddy Brower’s apartment was filmed at the Nate
Starkman & Son Building, 544 Mateo Street.
·
The car-dealership scenes were filmed at 15800
Ventura Boulevard in Encino.
The Nate Starkman building is especially interesting because
it became a heavily used filming site around this period. Columbo returns to this building a couple of years later for Undercover.
Just a couple more things...
- Vincent McEveety directed the episode. He was one of Columbo’s most prolific directors and worked on the series in both the NBC and ABC eras.
- George Koblasa’s cinematography on Death Hits the Jackpot received an American Society of Cinematographers award nomination.
- Did you notice that when Columbo arrives at Leon's party they put in some car backfiring noises. Trying to play up the "shabby detective in an old car" angle in contrast to the very wealthy environment he was rolling into. They do that again when he pulls into the fancy car dealership.
- Columbo tells Nancy that he and his wife are approaching their 25th wedding anniversary, but the year before in Rest in Peace, Mrs. Columbo he told Vivian Dmitri that they were celebrating either 28 or 29.
- Warren Berlinger appears as Detective Jack Stroller, one of the officers working around Columbo on the case. I found his performance a bit inconsistent. He's good at times, and maybe overacting a bit in other stretches.
One more plot hole
It's never really explained how uncle Leon would explain to his wife why he just gave nearly the entirety of their lottery winnings to his nephew. Obviously he never intended to really do it, but interesting that it never occurred to Freddy that it could be a sticking point in their money laundering plan.
Final thoughts
Death Hits the Jackpot is not a bad episode.
It still has some of the habits of the revival era: broad
secondary characters, comic business that goes on a little too long, and a
story that occasionally feels more interested in eccentricity than restraint.
But the central case is solid, Freddy’s murder has real weight, and the
investigation gives Columbo a series of small, logical inconsistencies to work
through.
Most importantly, Rip Torn is terrific as uncle Leon and gives Peter Falk someone worth playing against.
The chimp clue may be a little cute. The King George costume
is definitely ridiculous. The lottery scheme depends on several people making
very bad decisions.
And somehow it mostly works.
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