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luluthebeast wrote:

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TomWeaver999 wrote:

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Looking up that episode on IMDb, I see that it features Angela Clarke, who played Paul Picerni's mother in HOUSE OF WAX (and played Houdini's mother in HOUDINI). After Picerni's passing, she was the last (credited) player alive from HOUSE OF WAX but, again according to IMDb, now she's gone too. Died last year at 100-plus.

It just goes to show that not even a karate master can screw with Ness.

It's like on the original HAWAII 5-O never, ever get in a shoot-out with Detective Steve McGarrett, you'll always die. 


  

Python wrote:

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The episodes Search for a Dead Man and Elegy fetaured Barbara Stanwyck as Agatha Stewart from the department of missing persons(?). Yes, those were considered pilot episodes for a series starring Stanwyck.

Overall, the fourth season is pretty weak when compared to the others. There are some pretty outrageous plotlines that veer waaaaay off the usual course. What saves many episodes is the always superb casting. Even when an episode might be something of a dog, the performers are worth the time.

To answer Bela's question, yes, the violence was toned down a bit. The biggest controversy was raised by the Italian-American community over the use of the "ethnic" surnames for all of the hoods and gangsters. If you take note of the charcater names in the subsequent seasons, there is a wider array of non-Italian surnames! I think the violence reached its peak in The Purple Gang, Not only a great epsiode but some really brutal violence doled out by Fletcher and his gang. The highlight is at the conclusion when Desilu broke all the conventions of TV gunfire. In all the shows from the fifties and sixties, if a guy was shot, there was nothing shown but him grasping at the place he was hit and then falling over. In The Purple Gang, Ness hits Fletcher square across the chest with a Tommy gun and the viewer is shown the bullet hits dancing off his chest. It's a real show stopper.