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The case

The killer

Robert Vaughn as Hayden Danzinger

The victim

Poupée Bocar as Rosanna Wells

Guest cast

Robert Vaughn, Patrick Macnee, Bernard Fox, Dean Stockwell, Jane Greer, Robert Douglas

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.

9:18

The murder

Hayden Danzinger is on a Mexican cruise with his wife Sylvia, whose money underwrites his position at the car dealership, and with Rosanna Wells, the ship's singer, who has been his mistress and is now threatening to become his ex-mistress in the most public way available.

The plan is built around a fake heart attack. Danzinger stages a collapse in the ship's gymnasium, is taken to the infirmary and sedated, and thereby acquires the most unimpeachable alibi on the vessel: he is under medical observation. He then slips out through a service route, shoots Rosanna in her cabin, and is back in the bed before the ship's doctor notices anything.

The frame is laid in advance. The gun belongs to the bandleader Lloyd Harrington, who was involved with Rosanna and who has an argument with her on the record. By the time the body is found, the obvious suspect is already assembled and waiting.

Hayden Danzinger is on a Mexican cruise with the wife whose money underwrites his position and the ship's singer who has been his mistress. Rosanna Wells has decided to make the arrangement public.

The plan is built on a fake heart attack. He collapses in the gymnasium, is taken to the infirmary and sedated — the most unimpeachable alibi available on a ship — then slips out through a service route, shoots her in her cabin and returns to the bed.

The frame is laid in advance: the gun belongs to the bandleader who was involved with her and who has an argument with her on the record.

How Columbo gets him

Columbo is on this ship as a passenger, not a policeman — a holiday he has been persuaded into by a wife who wanted a cruise and won it in a competition. The captain, faced with a homicide in international waters, borrows him, and the lieutenant conducts the entire investigation in borrowed clothes and without a single one of his usual resources.

That constraint is the episode's best idea. There is no laboratory, no records office, no colleague to send for a warrant. Everything has to be reasoned from the ship itself: who could move where, how long the corridors take, what the medical staff would have noticed.

The heart attack is the point of attack. A man genuinely sedated does not have the physiology of a man pretending, and the ship's doctor, questioned carefully enough, remembers details that fit a performance rather than a collapse.

Columbo is a passenger, not a policeman, on a holiday his wife won in a competition. The captain borrows him, and he runs the entire investigation in borrowed clothes with none of his usual resources.

That constraint is the episode's best idea. No laboratory, no records office, nobody to send for a warrant — everything has to be reasoned from the ship: who could move where, how long the corridors take, what the medical staff would have noticed.

The heart attack is the point of attack. A sedated man does not have the physiology of a man pretending, and the ship's doctor, questioned carefully, remembers details that fit a performance.

8:32

Worth knowing

• This is the closest the series ever comes to showing Mrs Columbo: she is on board throughout, the captain and the purser both meet her, and she is described by her husband as 'about this tall, black hair, worn up today, sort of in a bun'.
• Robert Vaughn plays Danzinger with an oily competence that makes the medical fakery entirely believable.
• The ship sequences were shot aboard a real liner during a working voyage, which is why the corridors and public rooms look lived in.
• This is the closest the series comes to showing Mrs Columbo: she is aboard throughout, the captain and purser both meet her, and her husband describes her as 'about this tall, black hair, worn up today, sort of in a bun'.
• Robert Vaughn plays Danzinger with an oily competence that makes the medical fakery believable.
• Filmed aboard a working liner during an actual voyage; broadcast February 1975.

Verdict

A very good episode with an unusual shape: Columbo without his tools, solving a case by talking to people in a confined space. The alibi is one of the cleverest in the run because it uses a doctor as an unwitting witness.

For anyone following the Mrs Columbo question, this is the essential hour — the one place where her existence is confirmed by somebody other than her husband.

Very good, with an unusual shape: Columbo without his tools, solving a case by talking to people in a confined space. Using a doctor as an unwitting witness is among the cleverest alibis in the run.

For anyone following the Mrs Columbo question, this is the essential hour — the one place her existence is confirmed by somebody other than her husband.

What the people who made it said

Quotes are in the speaker’s own words — from a transcript of the recording, or from the printed source. Players open at the right minute. Everything is shortened; the full version is in the source.

Familiar faces

Actors who turn up in the series more than once — sometimes in very different parts.

• Mike Lally as Waiter8 episodesalso in Requiem for a Falling Star, Double Exposure, Mind Over Mayhem, Swan Song, A Friend in Deed and 2 more
• Robert Vaughn as Hayden Danziger2 episodesalso in Last Salute to the Commodore
• Bernard Fox as Purser Watkins2 episodesalso in Dagger of the Mind
• Dean Stockwell as Lloyd Harrington2 episodesalso in The Most Crucial Game

Cast data from TMDB, including uncredited bit parts. All the familiar faces →