Good peek at cool jazz sounds, circa 1960. Buzz and Tod get mixed up with confused wife (Francis) of jazz trumpeter (Lord). Trouble is she's the muse for his music so he's possessive as heck and she's suffocating. Guess who she latches onto. Good Malibu settings, including the creeping cliffside trolley. Francis is lovely, as usual, but doesn't mind looking disheveled, while singer Bostock does a couple Peter Gunn-type solos. The first shot is Tod taken to hospital, so there's built-in suspense as Buzz tells in flashback what happened. It's really more a Maharis showcase since Tod doesn't get many lines or screen time. And, oh yes, writer Silliphant gets to drop in some of his choice philosophical dialog, unusual for this Ozzie & Harriet period. All in all, it's an entertaining episode in the exceptional 66 mode.
4 Reviews
Kitty was a believable character
zigzag8080822 May 2012
I fell in love with Kitty in this episode of Route 66. She is a Jazz lover first and foremost. The dubbing of her voice was done very well. I thought that maybe it was really the actress ( Barbara Bostock).
Anne Francis was beautiful in this story of a Jazz trumpet player {Jack Lord)who has feelings of insecurity. Lord was pretty on the spot, Francis may of been a little over the top, but dazzling. Nice sound track with the song Lover man being played a couple of times. It reminded me of Billy Holliday, but it wasn't her. Martin Milner and George Maharas did a fine job with this episode of the show.Their Corvette wasn't the star of this episode, as it has been in a couple of other episodes. Even in Black and white, the California coast looks inviting, and almost made me take a trip down the coast about 500 miles from where I live now, in Modesto California, to see if there are any relics of where the show was shot.
Anne Francis was beautiful in this story of a Jazz trumpet player {Jack Lord)who has feelings of insecurity. Lord was pretty on the spot, Francis may of been a little over the top, but dazzling. Nice sound track with the song Lover man being played a couple of times. It reminded me of Billy Holliday, but it wasn't her. Martin Milner and George Maharas did a fine job with this episode of the show.Their Corvette wasn't the star of this episode, as it has been in a couple of other episodes. Even in Black and white, the California coast looks inviting, and almost made me take a trip down the coast about 500 miles from where I live now, in Modesto California, to see if there are any relics of where the show was shot.
1/20/61: "Play it Glissando"
schappe110 April 2015
This is one of the better episodes of this show. It has two of my favorite actors, Jack Lord and Anne Francis in a good story. Lord is a legendary trumpet player whom everybody knows of and think they know but when not blowing his horn, he's an emotional weakling. He's alternately obsessively loving and abusively angry with his wife, (Francis). She hides in the beach house the boys have rented. They think she's crazy in saying she fears her husband wants to kill her, especially when they find out her husband is this beloved figure. Eventually they are driving away with her in the 'vette when Lord shoots at them with a rifle form a ridge, (a scene that weirdly seems to anticipate the Kennedy assassination ). The bullet hits Tod, who is driving but he manages to stop the car safely. The police go looking for Lord, as do Buz and the wife. They find him on stage, playing the blues.
The theme here: that we don't know what a beloved public figure is really like certainly resonates today but was an unusual subject for a TV episode at the time. Wife abusers were generally shown as drunken, disreputable guys nobody liked.
There's no indication of or even mention of Tod recovering from a rifle bullet in any subsequent episode. A little continuity might have been nice but the producers probably reasoned that the episodes would not necessarily be shown in the same order on reruns or in syndication so why bother? Of course, that would become a problem with George Maharis' subsequent difficulties. Maharis notes that one of his disagreements with the producers was that in one episode Buz was supposed to say he doesn't know anything about music. He pointed out that in a previous episode he was supposed to be an expert on the subject. I'm betting that this was the previous episode and that "Good Night Sweet Blues" from the second season as the subsequent episode.
The theme here: that we don't know what a beloved public figure is really like certainly resonates today but was an unusual subject for a TV episode at the time. Wife abusers were generally shown as drunken, disreputable guys nobody liked.
There's no indication of or even mention of Tod recovering from a rifle bullet in any subsequent episode. A little continuity might have been nice but the producers probably reasoned that the episodes would not necessarily be shown in the same order on reruns or in syndication so why bother? Of course, that would become a problem with George Maharis' subsequent difficulties. Maharis notes that one of his disagreements with the producers was that in one episode Buz was supposed to say he doesn't know anything about music. He pointed out that in a previous episode he was supposed to be an expert on the subject. I'm betting that this was the previous episode and that "Good Night Sweet Blues" from the second season as the subsequent episode.
Classic noir story, set in picturesque Malibu
lor_6 October 2023
Anne Francis plays the femme fatale in this film noir-structured episode, with plenty of evocative Stirling Silliphant dialogue to captivate the viewer. It was directed by veteran Lewis Allen, whose many successful movies include classics like "The Uninvited" and the Sinatra-starring noir "Suddenly".
Told in flashback form (from Maharis' point-of-view) it varies from the series' usual format in that it's set in Malibu, California where M & M have a brief vacation by the ocean, with the atmosphere of West Coast jazz, rather than interacting with a local community.
Francis attaches herself to the boys after a near-accident of her bad-brakes station wagon almost hitting the Corvette. Her domestic problems with top jazz trumpeter husband Jack Lord enmeshes M & M, and the marital conflict takes center stage as Anne feels trapped by not Lord's fame but his possessiveness, though at first we're led to believe that everything is the neurotic wife's fault.
Maharis finds a kindred spirit in a jazz singer "Kitty Parker" (of course a reference to Charlie Parker's wife Chan Parker, whose daughter Kim Parker became a jazz vocalist), beautifully played by Barbara Bostock (whose acting career never really took off). But it is the clash between an otherworldly Lord, constantly trying to be transported to another sphere of reality through his playing, and the trapped wife who cannot fully accompany him or escape his clutches. Milner is the victim of this, shot and on his way to the hospital in an ambulance in the episode's opening instead of piloting his Corvette.
Silliphant's story elegantly ends the flashback and returns to the present for some strong plot twists and a resolution of the drama that underscores the series' overall theme of escaping from confinement and searching for self, in this case represented by the spirit of jazz.
Told in flashback form (from Maharis' point-of-view) it varies from the series' usual format in that it's set in Malibu, California where M & M have a brief vacation by the ocean, with the atmosphere of West Coast jazz, rather than interacting with a local community.
Francis attaches herself to the boys after a near-accident of her bad-brakes station wagon almost hitting the Corvette. Her domestic problems with top jazz trumpeter husband Jack Lord enmeshes M & M, and the marital conflict takes center stage as Anne feels trapped by not Lord's fame but his possessiveness, though at first we're led to believe that everything is the neurotic wife's fault.
Maharis finds a kindred spirit in a jazz singer "Kitty Parker" (of course a reference to Charlie Parker's wife Chan Parker, whose daughter Kim Parker became a jazz vocalist), beautifully played by Barbara Bostock (whose acting career never really took off). But it is the clash between an otherworldly Lord, constantly trying to be transported to another sphere of reality through his playing, and the trapped wife who cannot fully accompany him or escape his clutches. Milner is the victim of this, shot and on his way to the hospital in an ambulance in the episode's opening instead of piloting his Corvette.
Silliphant's story elegantly ends the flashback and returns to the present for some strong plot twists and a resolution of the drama that underscores the series' overall theme of escaping from confinement and searching for self, in this case represented by the spirit of jazz.
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