S01/E01: THE KILL

The first episode of the series stars a much younger, yet nevertheless balding Gavin MacLeod in the role of the villain, George Fallon. (MacLeod is best remembered as the actor who portrayed Captain Merrill Stubing on The Love Boat from 1977 to 1986). Fallon hires two thugs to pose as police officers to kill his mob boss rival Big Al Fusary and the man’s bodyguards as seen in the pre-title sequence. By posing as cops complete in uniform, Fallon’s thugs easily manage to pull over the vehicle Fusary was in and kill everyone inside without giving them a chance to put up a fight.

With Fusary dead, Fallon takes over full control of the city’s crime syndicate. One of Fallon’s first orders of business is extorting Mother’s establishment for “protection money”. They want half of the club’s earnings! Mother tells Peter Gunn that she refused and ordered Fallon’s gangsters to leave. Mother asks Gunn for help and he assures her that he will talk to Fallon.

After the club’s singer, Edie Hart, completes a performance on stage, she meets with Gunn on the club’s outside deck overlooking the river, a quiet and dark setting. They engage in some flirtatious chitchat and sharing of a cigarette before some intimate neck kissing from Gunn. They are interrupted by Emmett the piano player, who calls out Edie’s name as notification that she’s due for her next number on stage.

Gunn visits a health spa to see Fallon as he’d promised Mother. (How gun knew to find Fallon at this place is not explained). At the spa, Gunn finds it necessary to rough up a couple of mobster bodyguards to get past them. Gunn makes his way to the overhead landing above a four-walled squash court below. He calls out to Fallon, who is playing a game of squash against an opponent, and asks him to “lay off” Mother. Fallon, looking up to Gunn high above, his voice echoing in the enclosed court below, replies that Gunn shouldn’t stick his nose where it doesn’t belong.

Later, Lt. Jacoby tells Gunn that a tailor was reported missing by his wife the morning after mob boss Big Al Fusary was killed and diagrams for police uniforms were found in the tailor’s shop. Jacobi tells Gunn that the tailor had just deposited $10,000 into his bank account. Also, that a witness heard the shots when Fusary and his bodyguards were killed and reported that he’d seen a police car fleeing the scene, but Jacoby says there were no units patrolling the area on that night.

Gunn arrives at Mother’s, now closed for the night, to pick up Edie and take her home. As the couple leave, Mother hears noises under the floor and tells the bartender Barney that she thinks there are rats down there again. Soon after, a bomb explodes through the floor injuring Barney and Emmett, who was still sitting at his piano, but they are okay. Mother, however, was seriously wounded and when Gunn and Edie run back inside to attend to everyone, Mother, who is sprawled out on the floor, says, “When we get big rats, we get BIG rats,” before falling unconscious in Gunn’s arms.

At the hospital, Lt. Jacoby, who may have been investigating the explosion, approaches Gunn and Edie in the waiting area and tells them that Mother’s got about a fifty-fifty chance. He tells Gunn that the bomb squad reported about 3 sticks of dynamite was used, meaning the sounds Mother heard were that of someone planting the bomb; it wasn't rats. Gunn insists that Jacoby pick up Fallon, but Jacoby won’t because there’s not enough proof. Gunn storms out of the hospital as if implying that he’s going to get the proof himself.

In a car outside the health spa, Gunn kidnaps one of Fallon’s hoods, Dave Green, and orders him to drive back to Mother’s. Once there, Gunn threatens Green that he will blow his head off and that he’s expecting a call from the hospital. “If Mother is dead, so are you,” he tells Green. A short time later the phone rings and Gunn answers. Edie tells Gunn that Mother is going to be alright, but Gunn hangs up on her and plays as if Mother has died. Green is now even more terrified that Gunn is going to kill him. Green begins to beg for his life and confesses to everything; that Fallon hired two thugs to pose as cops to kill Big Al Fusary (something Gunn already knew) and that it was the same two thugs that killed the tailor and tossed him into the river (this we did not know), as well as plant the bomb under Mother’s floor. Gunn sets a trap. He orders Green to call Fallon and demand $50,000 for himself or he will spill everything to police.

As expected by Gunn (and Green), Fallon sends the two police impersonators (assassins) to Mother’s and Green panics that he is going to die for trying to extort his boss. What Gunn hadn’t expected was Edie, who suddenly appears at the back doorway, arriving into what will surely become a dangerous and volatile situation in the next few moments. In that instance that Gunn is distracted by Edie's arrival, Green breaks a bottle over Gunn’s head and then runs out the front door yelling at the fake cops that he was being held hostage and was forced to call Fallon. But the thugs don’t buy it and shoot Green dead on the street. As the thugs attempt to flee in their phony police car, they are chased by Lt. Jacoby in a real police car. The thugs run into a police road block of yet another police unit and come out of their car shooting. They are shot dead by Jacoby and the other officers. The scene is so chaotic that Jacoby forgets to apply the brakes to his vehicle before getting out and it continues rolling forward (this actually appears to be an unintentional mishap during production).

Inside Mother’s still wrecked establishment, Gunn, now conscious, has a hand on his injured head and tells Edie that she picked a fine time to show up. Edie replies, “Well, I get bugged when people hang up on me.” She had also informed Lt. Jacoby that Gunn was at Mother’s, which explains how Jacoby was there with additional units. In background narration toward the end of the show, Peter Gunn tells how Jacoby was able to make the charges stick against Fallon. Also, that the tailor was found at the bottom of the river and the wife was surely enjoying the large payout. Back at Mother’s, now seen restored and back in business, busy with clientele, Mother is counting cash at the register and smiles happily at Gunn as he enters. And Edie is on stage completing a rendition of the song, “Day In, Day Out”. 

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QUOTES:

At the funeral for dead mob boss Al Fusary…

Lt. Jacoby: “What are you doing here?”

Gunn: “I get around; pig picks, fish fries, funerals.

NOTES:

Nineteen years later actor Gavin MacLeod became our favorite boat captain on TV

It should be noted that in the very first episode about a detective for hire, he is hired by…no one. Peter Gunn offers Mother his help as a favor (he is very devoted to her) and in the process ends up assisting Lt. Jacoby with tracking down all responsible for the death of Al Fusary.

Filming/Editing Goof: In the opening of the episode when the two police-imposter assassins follow and have Al Fusary’s car pull over, the assassins drive their fake police car right up to the mobster’s car’s bumper. After they shoot and kill everyone in the car, they return to their fake police car to flee the scene, only now it's parked quite a few feet back, allowing them to get in and quickly drive away. Apparently the show’s producers decided not to waste film time having them reverse the car first before driving away. 

Fallon paid a tailor $10,000 dollars to make two police uniforms, an amount that seems excessive even by today’s standards; and that was 1958! However, it’s possible that Fallon was also buying the tailor’s “silence”, something that didn’t seem to matter, since they killed the tailor anyway. This brings up the question as to why Fallon bothered to pay the $10,000 that ultimately ended up with the tailor’s wife.

The amount of “protection money” Fallon attempts to extort from Mother also seems exaggerated. It is highly unlikely that crime syndicates of the past demanded HALF of an establishment’s earnings. Complying would surely put any shop owner out of business.

Lola Albright sings “Day In, Day Out”, a 1939 song popularized by Nat King Cole (1964), Judy Garland (1959), and Frank Sinatra (on various albums over the years), among other artists.

See Lola Albright sing "Day In, Day Out"

Gangster Daniel Green was played by actor Jack Weston, who also appeared in “The Twilight Zone”, “The Flying Nun”, among many other early television shows and in film.

In the full length movie “Gunn” from 1967, released six years after the TV series ended and also starring Craig Stevens in the title role, a similar plot was used. The difference was that the villain wanting to take control of the crime syndicate hired thugs to pose as Coast Guards and a fake coast guard cutter was used to stop a boat out at sea carrying the mob boss. Everyone aboard the mob’s private boat was killed with machine guns.

DECEASED: Two police impersonators hired by George Fallon shoot Big Al Fusary, his chauffeur, and his bodyguard hood in passenger seat. According to David Green, the fake cops killed tailor who made their uniforms and dumped him in river (not shown). Same fake cops killed David Green. Both fake cops killed by Lt. Jacoby and real cop in shootout.

Total Gunn Kills: 0 - Series Total: 0 

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NEXT BLOG: S01/E02: “STREETCAR JONES”

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