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Old Fashioned Murder
Russian title: Убийство в старом стиле · Russian version
The spinster owner of a family museum shoots her brother and a hired burglar in the same evening, and arranges them as a robbery that went both ways. A domestic, old-fashioned murder in a house full of dust.
Editor’s rating — 7.5 out of 10.
- Number
- 39 of 69
- Aired
- November 28, 1976
- Running time
- 72 min
- Director
- Robert Douglas
- Music
- Dick DeBenedictis
The case
- The killer
- Joyce Van Patten as Ruth Lytton
- The victim
- Peter Feibleman as Milton Schaeffer and Tim O'Connor as Edward Lytton
- Guest cast
- Joyce Van Patten, Jeannie Berlin, Tim O'Connor, Celeste Holm, Peter S. Feibleman, Jon Miller
Columbo is an inverted mystery: the murder opens the film and the killer is known from the first minutes. What you are watching for is how he proves it — see how the character works.
The murder
Ruth Lytton runs the Lytton Museum, a decaying private collection kept alive by an endowment and by her own refusal to let go of it. Her brother Edward intends to sell the building and the collection, which for Ruth is the end of the only thing she has.
She hires a small-time thief, Milton Schaeffer, to stage a break-in — and then shoots them both, arranging the bodies so that it appears the burglar and the owner killed each other during the robbery. Two problems removed with one scene.
The plan is the most domestic in the series. There is no technology, no elaborate alibi, no clever timing: just a woman who knows the building, a gun, and the assumption that the police will accept the obvious.
The Lytton Museum is a private collection kept alive by an endowment and by Ruth's refusal to admit it is finished. Nobody visits, the exhibits are dusty, and the building is worth considerably more than what is in it.
Her brother Edward intends to sell, which for Ruth is not a business decision but an eviction from the only role she has. She has been the museum's keeper for thirty years and has nothing else.
She hires Milton Schaeffer to fake a break-in, then shoots them both and arranges the bodies as a burglary in which owner and thief killed each other. The plan requires no technology and no alibi — only that the police accept what is in front of them.
How Columbo gets him
Columbo's suspicion is aesthetic before it is forensic. The tableau is arranged, and arranged by someone with a curator's eye: the objects around the bodies are placed rather than scattered.
The ballistics do the rest. If two men shot each other, the geometry has to work, and here it does not — the angles put a third person in the room.
The film's texture is what makes it memorable: the airless museum, the niece who wants out, the housekeeper, and a murderer who has been rehearsing resentment for thirty years and finally acted on it.
Columbo's suspicion is aesthetic before it is forensic: the objects around the bodies are placed rather than scattered, arranged by somebody with a curator's habits.
The ballistics settle it. Two men shooting each other produces a geometry, and this one requires a third position — one that neither corpse could have occupied.
The film's texture is its strength: the airless rooms, the niece desperate to leave, the housekeeper who has watched the family curdle. Ruth is not a formidable opponent, and the episode does not pretend she is.
Worth knowing
- Joyce Van Patten plays Ruth as tired rather than wicked, which gives the ending an unusual flatness — she seems almost relieved.
- The museum interiors were built as a set, and the production dressed them with genuine period pieces.
- One of the few Columbo murders committed with no attempt at a technical alibi at all.
- Joyce Van Patten plays Ruth as exhausted rather than wicked; her final scene is almost relieved.
- The museum interiors were a built set dressed with genuine period pieces borrowed for the production.
- Broadcast in November 1976, the sixth season.
Verdict
Modest and rather bleak. There is no duel here in the usual sense, because Ruth has no charm to deploy and does not try.
It works as a portrait of what happens when a person's entire identity is attached to an institution nobody else values — which is, in a quieter register, the same subject as By Dawn's Early Light.
Bleak, small and better than its reputation. There is no duel of wits because Ruth has no charm to deploy and no interest in deploying any.
It belongs with By Dawn's Early Light as a study of somebody whose entire identity is attached to an institution nobody else values — and of what they will do when it is taken away.
Familiar faces
Actors who turn up in the series more than once — sometimes in very different parts.
- Joyce Van Patten as Ruth Lytton 2 episodes also in Negative Reaction
- Tim O'Connor as Michael Hatheway 2 episodes also in Double Shock
- Morris Buchanan as Detective #2 2 episodes also in A Deadly State of Mind
Cast data from TMDB, including uncredited bit parts. All the familiar faces →