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ABOUT THE PETER GUNN TV SERIES

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With much of the music provided by legendary composer Henry Mancini, any lover of the old jazz age will surely enjoy the Peter Gunn television series which aired from 1958 until 1961 for a total of three seasons and 114 episodes. The black and white series is greatly intertwined with jazz musicians and jazz music of the time. The show’s protagonist, hero private detective Peter Gunn, pretty much makes his office at any given table in a jazz nightclub called Mother’s for the first two seasons, and at Edie’s Supper Club—a jazz combo always on stage—for the third season, with no explanation ever given as to why Mother’s was either shut down or simply disregarded during that final season. A payphone on the wall at Mother’s throughout the first two seasons was where Gunn made and got his phone calls!  The series was created by Blake Edwards, who also wrote and directed many of the episodes. It starred Craig Stevens in the title role as the suave and debonair private detective with a taste f
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S01/E34: BULLET FOR A BADGE

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O utside the police station, a car pulls up alongside the curb near a payphone booth. A hood working for mob boss Vincent Donniger gets out of the passenger seat to make a call to Lt. Jacoby in his office. The hood tells Lt. Jacoby something (there is no audible dialogue heard in pre-title opening). Jacoby quickly puts on his hat and leaves his office. The hood that made the call gets back in the car. Jaboby is then seen exiting the police station and headed along the sidewalk. The car with hoodlum that made the call then pulls up beside Jacoby and a hail of bullets from a machine gun erupts from the side window. Jacoby drops onto the sidewalk in agony. Peter Gunn is at the hospital and a doctor approaches him in the hall. The doctor tells Gunn that Jacoby will survive, but he’s in bad shape. Gunn asks if he can see Jacoby and the doctor says it’s okay, but he’s “loaded with drugs” and Jacoby “may not make much sense.” Gunn jokes about how it wouldn't be the first time in his life
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S01E33: LADY WINDBELL’S FAN

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A hunchback deaf-mute vagabond known as Silent Sy, who makes a living peddling pencils on the street, enters Wong’s curios shop in Chinatown (a shop selling artistic artifacts and souvenirs). Wong motions with fingers to Sy to give him something (there is no dialogue at all in the episode’s opener; wouldn’t need to be anyway, as Sy can’t hear or speak). Sy removes a small slip (or ticket) from his pocket and hands it to Wong, who doesn’t even look at it; he just puts it in his pocket. (This first appears as if Silent Sy had hocked something with Wong, like at a pawn shop, and is claiming his property.) Wong pulls down a folding handheld fan on display on a shelf and shows it to Sy, pointing at its designs and motioning excellent craftsmanship. (This is all very confusing. Firstly, if it’s a hocked item, why is it on display? Secondly, why is Wong going over details of an item that Sy should already be familiar with? At this point it appears Wong is trying to sell the fan. Then what was
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S01E32: THE FAMILY AFFAIR

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An elderly and somewhat eccentric tycoon, B.E. Raleigh, surrounded in his home by a vast amount of antique weapons and artifacts of medieval period wars, places papers in a wall safe in the den before heading to his room on a higher floor to retire for the night. Raleigh sits on a motorized stair lift beside the staircase (not able to walk up stairs in his condition). As the lift is rising slowly, suddenly, about midway up the stairs, an antique halberd (a weapon that is basically a large axe blade on a 6-foot pole) comes swinging down from the wall directly above where it was hanging, with the blade going right across the front of Raleigh’s face. The near miss and scare seems to cause Raleigh to suffer cardiac arrest. (Who wouldn’t? Incidentally, the halberd’s blade bounced off the staircase’s side wall beside Raleigh, yet didn’t produce a mark on the wall. Are walls in that house made of a very hard material?) Peter Gunn arrives at Raleigh’s posh mansion and is greeted at the door by
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