Columbo

A Rhetoric of Inquiry with Resistant Responders

Christyne Berzsenyi

• Publisher: Intellect Books
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9781783209859
• eBook ISBN: 9781789383201
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Film & Video

This book presents an analysis of Lieutenant Columbo's investigative method of rhetorical inquiry as seen in the television police procedural Columbo (1968-2003).  With a barrage of questions about minute details and feigned ignorance, the iconic detective enacts a persona of 'antipotency' (counter authoritativeness) to affect the villains' underestimation of his attention to inconsistencies, abductive reasoning, and rhetorical efficacy.  In a predominantly dialogue-based investigation, Columbo exhausts his suspects by asking a battery of questions concerning all minor details of the case, which evolves into an aggravating tedious provocation for the killer trying to maintain innocence. Based on the Ancient Greek ideal of Sophrosyne (temperance, restraint) and the Socratic method of questioning to discover truths, the Lieutenant models effective rhetorical inquiry with resistant responders: shy, secretive, anxious, emotionally-disconnected, angry, arrogant, jealous, and, in this case, murderous conversants. While designed to be critical and theoretical, this text strives to be accessible to interdisciplinary readers, practical in application, and amusing for Columbo buffs.

PART 1

UNDERSTANDING THE LIEUTENANT AND HIS VILLAINS

1

Introduction to Columbo and Columbo

Criminals always underestimate this bumbling detective—but he’s no dumbo, he’s Columbo!

(MeTV/Columbo)

In the hit television police drama Columbo, murderers repeatedly fall into underestimated detective Columbo’s masquerade of bumbling and inept naïveté (NBC, ABC: 1968–2003, sixty-nine 90-minute+ film-length episodes). Nevertheless, by the end of each episode, the guest-star murderers know better. Infamously played by the New York-born actor Peter Falk (1927–2011), Lieutenant Columbo is a working-class, New York-accented import to the Los Angeles Police Department. Incongruously and exclusively, the detective wears a tan summer suit with white shirt, tie, worn brown lace ups, and beige trench coat in the arid Southern California climate. From the university studies and imaginations of the successful television writer-producer team of Richard Levinson and William Link, detective Columbo possesses several incongruities and unrealistic actions that are incommensurate with a Los Angeles Police Lieutenant: smoking cheap cigars that taint the pristine, elite suspects’ mansions or work showrooms; refusing to carry a side arm out of dislike for them; recoiling from the sight of blood; driving an old Peugeot in disrepair; and sweetly partnering, on occasion, with his equally graceless but adorable Bassett Hound, “Dog.”

Figure 2: 1973 publicity photo of Peter Falk, smiling as Columbo, Columbo, 1973. NBC Television. upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f9/Peter_Falk_Colombo_1973.webp/250px-Peter_Falk_Colombo_1973.webp

Along with keen observations of irregularities in human behavior and the slightest of details, Lieutenant Columbo’s constructs of a humble, simple, deferential persona mask his primary investigative method: making indirect inquiries of the suspects. The significance of the fictional Lieutenant’s methods of inquiry is in the questions he asks, the seemingly trivial subjects about which he asks, the way he asks questions, when he asks them, and how they evolve with the stages of the investigation. Lieutenant Columbo solves murder cases by strategically conversing with the wealthy, powerful, and successful murderers as his primary investigative method. The deliberate, functional, and purpose-driven approach to asking for information and managing a relationship with each suspect can be defined as rhetorical inquiry. Borrowed from Aristotle, rhetoric is the study and practice of learning what aspects and tactics make interaction and communication most effective, achieving delineated purposes with clearly understood audience perspectives: trust and cooperation building, tension-relief with humor, persona-construction, information-sharing, information-solicitation, persuasion of a point of view, disarming a resistant persona, and the like. While the implementation of rhetoric is often done in the declarative mode of making statements, the Lieutenant relies on the interrogative mode of asking questions in a methodical inquiry to resolve homicide cases. As a special case of “resistant responders,” these characteristically arrogant villains feign cooperation to avoid discovery, resist offering self-incriminating clues, and stave off inevitable arrest. Such an example can be seen in Figure 3. Here the crafty Lieutenant tests the resistant suspect’s fortitude for maintaining a cooperative façade by laying his half-smoked, cheap cigar onto a priceless piano on which he bangs out “Chopsticks,” an act of disrespect on multiple levels.

Figure 3: Screenshot: Peter Falk as Columbo and John Cassavetes as murdering maestro Alex Benedict. Cassavetes enters the room appalled. Nicolas Colasanto (dir.), “Etude in Black,” Columbo, 1973. Universal Television.

A structural difference between Columbo and other police dramas is its inverted mystery plot format, theorized by R. Austin Freeman (1912). The majority of crime and detective stories are of the mystery type, in which facts about who commits the crimes and how are the puzzles to be solved. A minority of crime stories immediately reveal the identity of “whodunit” and how in order to shift the focus of the inverted mystery to how the detective investigates the murder and, eventually, solves the case. In the “Preface” to his collection of short stories The Singing Bone (1912), Freeman explains the subgenre:

Some years ago, I devised, as an experiment, an inverted detective story in two parts. The first part was a minute and detailed description of a crime, setting forth the antecedents, motives, and all attendant circumstances. The reader had seen the crime committed, knew all about the criminal, and was in possession of all the facts. It would have seemed that there was nothing left to tell. But I calculated that the reader would be so occupied with the crime that he would overlook the evidence. And so it turned out. The second part, which described the investigation of the crime, had to most readers the effect of new matter.

The contrast between the puzzle mystery (whodunit) and the inverted mystery (howcatch’em) is in the type of attention on the investigative method and the spectator roles: the readers/viewers of the mystery are drawn into the narrative that builds toward conclusive revelation, while the intrigue of the inverted mystery lies in the detective’s discovery of crime details, ratiocination of clues (Edgar Allan Poe’s term for the application of logical analysis and reasoning of details within criminal investigation), and suspects interrogated, culminating in the detective’s exposure of the criminal (Reilly 238–39). Contrary to the mystery, viewers are not invited to gather clues and try to solve the mystery along with the detective of the whodunit genre story. Instead, each story begins with the disclosed commission of the crime, positioning readers as informed observers of the detective’s investigation into the incrimination process (Reilly 238). By opening each episode with 15–20 minutes of the known criminal executing a murder, Levinson and Link developed a television police series unlike other police procedurals broadcast at the time. Further, their success was evident in the show’s consistent high ratings, attracting large viewership for 69 feature-film length episodes that originally broadcast over almost four decades (1968–2003), followed by their continuous syndication. Importantly, since the last original broadcast in 2003, the program has had continuous years of DVD sales and syndication in the United States and in 40 countries worldwide (Daily Mail).

In their 1983 nonfiction exposé Stay Tuned: An Inside Look at Making Prime-time Television, Levinson and Link explain the show’s history, starting with the first Columbo: “Prescription Murder” (1968), originally created as a single made-for-television film. When the film got such good ratings, NBC network approached Levinson and Link to consider developing a series built around the detective character. Rejecting the exhaustive and quality-inhibiting weekly series format, the producers and Falk agreed to a 90-minute “spoke” in the NBC Mystery Movie “wheel” concept: each week, one of four different series was shown on a rotating basis (1971–77). Columbo was interspersed with McMillan & Wife (starring Rock Hudson and Susan Saint James, 1971–77), McCloud (starring Dennis Weaver, 1970–77) and temporary entries rotating in and out of the schedule such as Hec Ramsey (Richard Boone, 1972–74), Quincy, M.E. (Jack Klugman, 1976), and others. The 90-minute program length also allowed each episode to be more intricate and substantial in production and content than the typical one-hour installment (44 minutes with commercial breaks), and intricacy was stock-in-trade for the character (Bounds). With this wheel format, the pilot Columbo: “Ransom for a Dead Man” aired in 1971.

As a composite of several influences, the Lieutenant’s popularity has continued unabated since Columbo: “Prescription Murder” (1968), bridging several generations of original and new audiences. In Frank Sanello’s 1989 Chicago Tribune lifestyle article, even Peter Falk expresses puzzlement about the global reach of the show and the character.

Another indicator of icon status includes the presence of a statue of Peter Falk as Lieutenant Columbo with his occasional sidekick Basset Hound, “Dog,” at his feet. Commemorating the actor’s speculated ethnic ties to the nineteenth-century Hungarian politician Miksa Falk, the statue stands off of this Budapest street location bearing the historical figure’s name. Besides this tenuous genealogical connection, the statue testifies to the show’s popularity with Hungarians, as further evidenced by its noteworthy syndication, dubbed or subtitled with the Magyar language (Grundhauser). Sculpted in bronze by Géza Fekete, the Columbo tribute statue’s location was determined by the public in a well-travelled part of the capital city: “When you leave the tram stop at Jászai Mari tér on Szent István körút, you will quickly meet the TV sleuth and ‘Dog.’ The sculpture is being photographed a lot (by tourists and locals alike), since almost everyone seems to like Columbo” (Weil). While there are no signs directing visitors to the sculpture, the statue has taken on semi-sacred status as a pilgrimage destination for the show’s fans: “He invested the shabby, preoccupied detective with such depth that the show became one of the most successful detective series in the world” (Grundhauser).

Figure 4: Christyne Berzsenyi with “Columbo and Dog” sculpture by Géza Fekete, Miksa Falk Street, Budapest, Hungary. 2018. Ava Berzsenyi.

Moreover, Columbo has inspired a variety of merchandise, creative works, fan club events, and collectible memorabilia that serve to extend fans’ experience of the show beyond the episodes:

•Books and articles about Columbo (including this project), Peter Falk’s autobiography, Levinson and Link’s work autobiography, Mark Dawidziak’s history of NBC Columbo episodes, and Sheldon Catz’s complete series episode analysis, and numerous coffee table anthologies about prime time detective characters and their series

•The Milton Bradley Columbo detective board game

•Columbo postage stamps

•Original artwork by Peter Falk and those created for the show

•Original stories written by William Link after his creative partner, Richard Levinson, died.

•Auctioned series costumes and props

•Costumes to imitate the detective character

•Merchandise with his image and/or quotes

•Numerous social media fan pages in multiple languages

•Fan fiction of Columbo stories

•Training manuals and articles for sales professionals

•Professionals comparing Columbo’s inquiry methods with their own interactions with clients, patients, congregational members/nonmembers, or supervisors, as if the iconic detective were a real person.

In addition, Columbo was nominated for numerous awards from various institutes: eleven Golden Globe nominations with two wins, nominated for three Edgar Allan Poe awards (1972, 1974, 1979) and won the last one, received an Online Television and Film Association award (2008), won two Bambi awards for Best Television Series International (1976 and 1993), eleven Primetime Emmy nominations for writing, direction, cinematography, and leading and supporting actors, winning five; and many other awards, including being inducted into the Emmy Hall of Fame (Emmy.com, IMDb.com). These are high distinctions for the series, its star Peter Falk, and the sixty-nine villains played by notable guest star actors. In light of Columbo’s critical success and sustained popularity, the lack of critical scholarship is peculiar.

In fact, entertainment and trade journalists continue to recognize Lieutenant Columbo as one of the “smartest” and “most memorable male” television detectives (Anderson). Directed by Steven Spielberg, “Murder by the Book” was ranked No. 16 on “TV Guide’s 100 Greatest Episodes of All-Time” and in 1999, the magazine ranked Lieutenant Columbo No. 7 on its list of “50 Greatest TV Characters of All Time.” In 2012, the program was chosen as the third-best cop or legal show on “Best in TV: The Greatest TV Shows of Our Time.” In 2013, TV Guide included it in its list of “The 60 Greatest Dramas of All Time^” and ranked it at No. 33 on its list of “The 60 Best Series.” More recently, a September 2016 issue of the iconic pop culture magazine Rolling Stone featured an article by the reputed journalist Rob Sheffield in which he rates Columbo as No. 44 out of 100 of the best shows. Even more recently, in June 2018, Rolling Stone declared Lieutenant Columbo the #1 television detective in their article “TV’s Top Detectives: Small Screen’s Masters of the Whodunit” (Sepinwall 267). While Columbo, technically, is not a whodunit but a suspense, inverted mystery, these rankings, tallied from consumer polls, television critics, and hack journalists alike, acknowledge and honor the quality of the show’s production and its embeddedness in American popular culture.

Despite Columbo’s fixed characterization by writers, producers, and his screen portrayer Peter Falk, the Lieutenant maintains popularity as the quirky detective of one of the most successful detective shows on television. Although some of Columbo’s tactics behind each encounter of rhetorical inquiry are not suitable for application in our daily lives, this project studies his investigative style as manifest in his strategically “antipotent” persona (anti-authoritativeness, anti-threatening demeanor, credibility-shrouding), duplicitous communication, provocative behaviors, and subtle “knowing” expressions. In doing so, academicians join other professionals who have already found value in applying Columbo’s investigative style in their workplace communications and relationships.

A Snapshot of Television and Film History: Pre-Columbo

Before the rise in crime rates in the later 1960s, television and film had already produced increasingly violent content despite the early internal regulating efforts of the Hays Commission of the Motion Picture Industry. In his book chapter “A History of Violence in the Media,” Christopher Ferguson discusses prohibited content described in The Hays Code, established in 1930:

Graphic depictions of violence, the techniques of murder or other crimes, smuggling and drug trafficking, the use of liquor (unless required by the plot), revenge, safecracking, train robberies, adultery (which was not to be presented as an attractive option), inter-racial relationships, sexually transmitted diseases, nudity, and even “lustful kissing” were all forbidden or strictly controlled under the Hays Commission.

(Ferguson 23)

Hays’s policies outline traditional but now outdated morality in an effort to clean up the world of gangster-ridden American cities and their professional, career criminals. Instead, the code advocates the primarily nonviolent and actionless, “armchair” or “drawing room mysteries” with detectives of singular murders that define the British “Golden Age Mystery” of the later nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. These whodunit crime stories set aristocrats in idyllic, wealthy mansions of the English countryside, where, generally, an especially intelligent individual takes on the role of amateur detective to solve a most unusual occurrence in their comfortable lives. The genre, also called “the cozy” for its use of cerebral investigation methods that lack life-threatening risk to the detective, was made famous during 1920–40 by Freeman Wills Crofts (1913–20s), Dorothy Sayers (1920s), Agatha Christie (1920–53), Ellery Queen (Frederic Dannay and Manfred Lee, 1929–45), and G.K. Chesterton (1908–35), to name a few (Haycraft). However, late twentieth-century television series cozies such as Murder, She Wrote (1984–96) portray Jessica Fletcher, the successful and prolific murder mystery writer, as coming across mysteries on a regular basis, though always as an “unusual occurrence.” The traditional cozy operates in a place that cannot be located, in pleasantly isolated, small, charming British villages that are set apart from reality, allowing readers to get away from the close proximity of World War I and imaginatively indulge in the lifestyles of the wealthy aristocrats, while solving the whodunit with surprisingly capable amateur detectives.

Overseas in the United States, the urban centers experienced the violence and coercion from the illegal bootlegging businesses of organized crime groups during the Prohibition era, 1920–33, followed by the Great Depression (McGirr). In the early 1920s, Carroll John Daly and Dashiell Hammet pioneered the retooling of the detective genre for the American social context of the time, ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Endorsement
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Figures
• Preface
• Acknowledgments and Gratitude
• Part 1 Understanding the Lieutenant and his Villains
• Part 2 Columbo’s Method of Investigation
• Part 3 Columbo’s Legacy in Popular Culture and Academia
• Works Cited
• About the Author
• Index