Happy Birthday, Oskar Werner
Oskar Werner was born on November 13th, 1922, in Vienna, Austria. Columbo fans know him as Harold Van Wick, the electronics enthusiast whose elaborate security system provides a rather convenient alibi in Playback (1975).
Werner gives Harold an effective mixture of arrogance and impatience. He understands every gadget in the house, but has considerably more trouble understanding why this shabby policeman won’t accept his explanation and go away. Gena Rowlands, as Harold’s wife Elizabeth, gives the episode an emotional weight that extends beyond the mechanics of his scheme.
Outside Columbo, Werner’s films included Jules and Jim, Ship of Fools, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, and Fahrenheit 451.
Happy Birthday, Don Gordon
November 13th is also the birthday of Don Gordon, born in Los Angeles in 1926. Gordon appeared as Alvin Deschler in Negative Reaction (1974), opposite Dick Van Dyke’s murderous photographer, Paul Galesko.
Deschler is the unfortunate ex-convict whom Galesko recruits as part of his scheme to murder his wife. Galesko intends to make him the fall guy—and then silence him permanently. Gordon makes Deschler a sympathetic figure, which gives the photographer’s carefully arranged crime an extra measure of cruelty.
Gordon also shared the screen with his friend Steve McQueen in Bullitt, Papillon, and The Towering Inferno. In Bullitt, he played Detective Delgetti, McQueen’s fellow investigator.
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