June 18, 2025 • 31 mins
In this special bonus episode of The Shabby Detective, Mike White sits down with author Glenn Stewart to discuss his insightful and wildly entertaining book Columbo Explains the ’70s: A TV Cop’s Pop Culture Journey. Stewart’s book explores the cultural and historical shifts of the 1970s—from Watergate to disco, second-wave feminism to fast food—with the trench-coated sleuth as our shrewd, inquisitive guide.
Mike and Glenn dive into the origins of the project, the writing process behind channeling Columbo’s voice, and how Stewart cultural criticism and TV history into a distinctive, illuminating take on the decade. Whether you're a fan of the show or just obsessed with ’70s Americana, this episode is for you.
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-shabby-detective-yet-another-columbo-podcast--5084441/support.
Mike and Glenn dive into the origins of the project, the writing process behind channeling Columbo’s voice, and how Stewart cultural criticism and TV history into a distinctive, illuminating take on the decade. Whether you're a fan of the show or just obsessed with ’70s Americana, this episode is for you.
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-shabby-detective-yet-another-columbo-podcast--5084441/support.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:24):
Hey there, folks, this is Mike White coming at you
with a special bonus episode of The Shabby Detective. On
this episode, you're going to be hearing from Glenn Stewart.
He is the author of Colombo Explains the Seventies, a
TV Cops pop culture Journey. I am just so happy
with how much Columbo scholarship has been going on over
(00:44):
the last few years. It's really been very exciting for
a fan like me. This is another one coming out
from Bonaventure Press. Actually came out February twenty fifth and
is available on kindle as well as paperback and hard cover.
Pick it up at your local bookstore if you can
support the arts. And thank you so much for listening
(01:06):
to this special bonus interview Glenn, before I started asking
you about Columbo Explains the Seventies. What's the Glenn Stewart story.
Speaker 2 (01:15):
Well, the brief Glenn Stewart's story is that I spent
twenty five years in the radio industry across the country.
Before that, I had graduated from Brown University with BA
and political science, and so I didn't really use that
for my first twenty five years. But then I got
out of radio and I went into teaching, and I
(01:35):
was teaching history and I was working at Education Assessment,
and I had kind of, I guess, the writing bug,
but I didn't really have an outlet for it. And
then I discovered the Columbo File Blog several years ago.
I'm assuming that a lot of your listeners are familiar
with the Colmbo File blog. I mean, if they're not,
there's a lot of great content that's there, a lot
of great reviews of episodes. And I thought, well, gee,
(01:59):
maybe I can try to contribute something to the Columbo
File blog. And I gave the blogmaster CP I gave
him some material and he was kind enough to use it,
and he was using more and more of my material,
but he wasn't able to use all the material that
I was able to think of when it came to Colombo,
because I had watched Colombo when I was a kid
(02:21):
back in the seventies, and I kept coming back to it,
and I realized I had a lot of material that
wasn't going to make it to the blog, and so
I thought the best thing to do would be to
just get to it and write a book about it.
Speaker 1 (02:34):
And so here we are. You said that you watched
Colombo back when it was originally airing. I'm assuming when
did you really start to become aware of it, because
it's one thing for it to be just on television.
You're not that old of a gentleman, so I don't
know if you were necessarily choosing to watch Columbo or
for it's something that your parents were watching. When did
(02:54):
you really start to connect with the show?
Speaker 2 (02:56):
Well, I was definitely choosing to watch it. I was
fascinated by the plotting and the character and you know,
the goutches that would nab the killer. I was all
fascinated by that. But then it wasn't on streaming. There
was no such thing as DVDs in the seventies. You
watched the show once, and then once you did, you
(03:18):
weren't going to watch it again until it came on
in the summer reruns. So a show like Colombo really
does stand up to repeat viewings, which is why you
can keep coming back to the show again and again
and again. Back in the seventies, that was difficult to do.
And then I would go away to college and then
years later I would kind of rediscover Colombo and rediscover
(03:43):
all the things that I missed the first time around.
When I was watching earlier in my life and started
to realize, oh, there's a lot of stuff here, because
a lot of care was taken with Columbo in not
just the characterization, but in the guest stars, the supporting actors,
the music, the plotting, the sects, all the what I
(04:06):
call in the book, I call it the connective tissue
that made Columbo such a great show, so that even
if let's say a plot wasn't all that great, well,
you had an episode that really wasn't, you know, hitting
on all cylinders, like I'll pick an example, old fashioned murder.
You can still find elements to that episode that are
(04:28):
pretty good because of the high level of craftsmanship that
went enter that show. I love this mix of the
political science that you were learning and that you learned
that you went to school for and everything, and then
the idea of marrying that with Colombo. I mean that
the title of the book, Colombo Explains the Seventies, such
(04:48):
a great title and such a brilliant way of taking
the show apart in a different way than I've seen
anybody else do it. I'm so glad we're in this
almost like new age of Columbo scholarship and Columba explains,
the seventies is.
Speaker 1 (05:04):
Right up there. I love your approach to this material.
Speaker 2 (05:07):
Well, thank you. I appreciate that. I was watching episodes
and I realized that a lot of what was going
on was very much of the era. Because I grew
up in the seventies and I kind of lived it,
I was able to make those connections. And if you're
watching Colombo today, if you've watched Columbo for the first time,
or you're streaming it and you're kind of new to
(05:28):
Colombo of the seventies, it doesn't resonate like that. But
I think that Colombo was popular in the seventies, the
character and the show because it touched on a lot
of the values of people of the seventies and a
lot of the social issues. So those issues might be
something like, you know, gender equality, women's liberation, class issues,
(05:49):
and conflict, power and authority, technology, violence. There's all sorts
of issues that intersect with seventies Colombo, and if you
know where to look, you can find those and I
like to think that my book provides a guide to that,
and I also think that it also gives people another
reason to rewatch the show. And I'm always looking for
(06:13):
reasons to rewatch the show, and I hope that my
book also provides people with reasons to rewatch the show
and think, oh Colombo says that right there. Yeah, that
was a very seventies thing that he said right there.
Speaker 1 (06:25):
I was so glad when you started one chapter off
Tucky that quote from going to forget which episode it was,
where the woman's like that, I've tried st I've tried,
you know, I'm okay, you're okay, you know, all the
self help movements, just to really open up that idea
of like, this is a contemporary show. Those things were
terms at the time, and I really appreciated that you
(06:49):
look deeper than just being like, oh, Columbo was a
class warrior, and that it wasn't just class, that it
was really more about the power. And I've found that
to be such a refreshing take on that whole angle
of where Colombo was coming from.
Speaker 2 (07:03):
Right, thank you. I know that most people and most
writers of Colombo, all the appreciations of Colombo, they always
come back to the class element, the middle class public
servant who's going after the rich and entitled killer. That's great,
that's a part of it. And I get that that's
very satisfying when those people are brought down. But I
(07:27):
think there's more to it than that, And I think
you have to go back to look at what was
going on in the late sixties and the seventies to
really appreciate it. Because back then you had the Vietnam War,
and it was very contentious back then, and you had
a lot of people who were suspicious of what the
government was telling them, and there was what was called
the credibility gap between what the government was saying was
(07:48):
going on and what was actually happening on the ground
in Vietnam. Then you had things like the Meli massacre
being covered up by the government. You had in nineteen
seventy one the Pentagon Papers and Daniel L's and those
get printed, and those papers are telling us that the
government had certain motives and actions that they were doing
in Vietnam that we didn't know anything about. So government
(08:11):
is lying to us. Then nineteen seventy two Watergate and
Watergate just brought to a whole other level of mistrust
and it cast a shadow over the entire seventies decades.
So I come back to a catchphrase from the late
sixties and early seventies that showed up on a lot
of bumper stickers at the time, and that's question authority.
(08:33):
And to me, question authority, that phrase is the key
to Colombo, because yes, he was going after rich people,
but he was also going after powerful people, people with
power and authority. And I don't necessarily mean just you know,
political power, but powerful CEOs of industry, powerful professionals, people
(08:58):
who were authorities in their field. You know, food critics,
art critics, concert conductors, actresses for country singers, people who
are authorities in their field, who get respect from everyone,
and Colombo wanted to make sure that they lost their
power and authority because because they were killers. Now a
lot of times these people were rich, but at the
(09:21):
end of the episode, Columbo's not interested in taking away
the money of the killers.
Speaker 1 (09:25):
He's interested in.
Speaker 2 (09:26):
Taking away their power and authority. And the way I
like to describe it is that Colombo was looking for
the social injustice of people getting away with murder, not
the social inequities of people trying to get away with capitalism.
That's to me, that's the key to really getting into
the show.
Speaker 1 (09:47):
Well, the way that he does it with the disarming,
the charm, the self put downs. And I really liked
how you very specifically went through some of those examples
as far as the lady lawyer will put him in
a plane and then like have control over him or
have power over him that way, or you know, it's
(10:09):
just amazing to read all of those quotes as far
as people just a little slight put down. It's like
a person like you, mister Colombo, the mister to the
mister Colombo. This that is so crucial and I hadn't
ever really thought about that.
Speaker 2 (10:23):
You.
Speaker 1 (10:23):
Of course, you get those great speeches, you know, like oh, yeah,
you're trying this act and you know, I can see
right through you. But the other ways that he charms
and disarms, and that the way that people use their
power and put him down, I think is really that
chapter really resonated for me. Well, thank you.
Speaker 2 (10:44):
Yes, there's a dominance element to it that Colombo is
dominated by the killers, but Colombo also wants to be dominated.
He opens up that door so that the killers think
that they have an advantage on him, And I think
that's really expertly done. And I know there's a lot
of you know, there's and this is a good conversation
(11:05):
to have as far as chatter about, oh, is Columbo
authentic in what he says to killers and how he's
very humble, and is he an authentic character? And I
think that most most of the time, he is. But
I also think that he knows that he has an
advantage to exaggerating some of these character traits, so that's
(11:28):
what he'll do. He'll fumble around a little bit extra
time for that pencil that he needs, or he'll do
a little bit of extra sneezing when he's in the
company of the killer, just to kind of invade their
personal space and put them off guard. So I think
there's an authenticity to his character, but not without just
(11:48):
a little bit of exaggeration.
Speaker 1 (11:50):
The coming into their personal space, that's wonderful and I
love is marveling around their technology. You know, the term
future shock has been used for a little while. I
remember what it means, and hopefully most of our listeners
remember what it means. But he encapsulates that so well,
and you really bring that to the four As far
as the use of the technology in those episodes.
Speaker 2 (12:12):
Yeah, future Shock was. I think people underestimate now how
really important the Future Shock book was. And Alan Toffler's
theories about the shadowing stress of the consequences of too
much technology, too fast, and that was part of the decade.
Toffler was on all the talk shows, and the catchphrase
(12:35):
made it into the Colombo episode of Friend Indeed, So
that tells you right there how important it was. And
I think that that element of technology was in Colombo
from the very beginning. So going back to the creators,
Richard Levinson Wayne Link, I think that was always a
part of their plan to have that part of the
(12:56):
Colombo character. They created in nineteen sixty seven, before the
Prescription Murder movie, they created the Mannux character, but Mannix
was part of a huge detective agency in a gleaming
skyscraper with banks and banks of computers and technology to
help them fight crime. That show didn't work, so they
(13:18):
had to change up that premise. But Levinson and Link
took that concept and they just used it. And death
lends a hand with Robert Kulpa's the villain, so Levenson
and Link, I think we're on top of that from
the very beginning. And then you have an episode, the
first series episode Murdered by the Book, where Colombo is
marveling at the fact that elevator buttons can register the
(13:40):
heat that comes off your hand. I mean, no real
reason for Colombo to say that. It's not a clue
that has anything whatsoever to do with the episode, but
it shows that Colombo is going to be very tied
into technology, and he has to be because that's part
of his job. And so he walks us through the
(14:02):
viewer who might be a little scared of some of
this new technology. He walks us through how to adapt
to it because he has to adapt to it himself.
And my favorite example of this is in Exercise and Fatality,
where he gets the phone number of mister Lewis Lacey,
(14:22):
and so this is the accountant who he wants to
try to get some evidence from, and so he calls
Lewis Lacey at home. Phone picks up, says hi, I'm
Lewis Lacey. Colombo starts talking to him as if it's
a regular person.
Speaker 1 (14:37):
Then it is stunned to.
Speaker 2 (14:38):
Find out that it's an answering machine that's pitted up,
and Colombo doesn't quite know how to react, and so
Lewis Lacey leaves the message that every person in the
seventies left at the end of their answering machine message,
which was when you hear the beep, leave your message
and I'll get back in touch with you. Now that's
very quaint today, but back then nineteen seventy four, a
(15:03):
lot of people didn't have answering machines. A lot of
people didn't know how to react to answering machines, and
so Colombo. The funny part is a Colombo then talks
very slowly leave his mess and that's the funny part.
But it's also instructive, So it's it's how to interact
with technology. That's a big theme throughout throughout the seventies episodes.
Speaker 1 (15:28):
That's a little bit about class, a little bit about technology. Also,
we need to talk a little bit about some of
the social movements that were happening back then, when it
comes to women's liberation, racial equality. I mean those also
get worked into the script as well. And again i'd
love especially the what was the name of the chapter,
(15:49):
the Yes.
Speaker 2 (15:51):
Liberation and Lady Killers and the seventies for television and
dealing with the women's liberation movement, that was a that
was a balancing act, not just for Colombo but for
all the shows of the seventies because the women's liberation movement, feminism,
gender equality, those issues were gaining steam, but it was
(16:14):
very difficult for a lot of people to wrap their
arms around those issues. In Colombo. The Colombo character was
one of those people. So if you equate feminism and
liberation with him being strong as a female character, Colombo
had a lot of strong female characters, not just as killers,
(16:36):
and we can point to Lee Grant, we can point
to Vera Miles. Strong female killers were also strong supporting
characters as well, And if you look at it from
that way, Colombo was very progressive as far as having
women of strength on the show. But the other side
of it is that Columbo himself as a character has
(16:56):
a tough time grappling with these new ground rules or
how to deal with you know, how to deal with women.
So he looks at a male secretary in the Bye
Bye Sky High IQ case and he says to the
male secretary, what is this women's lib Don't ladies do
this work anymore? He says to Leslie Williams, Lee Grant,
(17:17):
and Ransom for a dead man. He says to an
associate of hers, he says, I don't know how you
do it. I don't know how you can work for
a woman, he says to the Valerie Harper character in
Most Crucial Game, He says, Oh, you'd be an ornament
in any office.
Speaker 1 (17:31):
It's like you.
Speaker 2 (17:32):
Listen to some of this now, Oh, it's very cringey,
but it was totally representative of the times and how
people would react to of how pretty a woman was,
and how.
Speaker 1 (17:44):
They would react to women who had a little bit
of power.
Speaker 2 (17:47):
Now, the good news for Colombo is that we know
that he has a kind heart. We know he's open
to change, and we know that he believes in equal justice.
So we like the thing that you know, we to
agreeing that women might need to be a little bit
more equal world. But again, this was a very this
was a very contentious.
Speaker 1 (18:08):
Issue back in the seventies. Let's suck a little bit too.
As far as racial minorities. I mean that it's very
nice to see how it's not even an issue for
him and it's never really brought to the fore in
a negative way as far as people of color and
just he treats everyone very equally, whether they again, whether
(18:31):
they be a killer or not. He will treat people
with respect. But it feels very genuine when it comes
to minorities.
Speaker 2 (18:41):
Yes, he really didn't have any one of those bones
you know, in his body for that. I do think
that overall, Colombo did a good job of representing racial
equality and advances in their characters. In a lot of
the background characters that you would see, and in a
lot of the crime scenes, you would have African American
(19:03):
detectives and fingerprinters and people milling around doing their job.
And that was roughly in the same and I did
some counting of off these episodes to know that it's
roughly the same percentage that African Americans were being represented
in society at large. Now, having said that, I think
that Colombo could have pushed the enveloplon this a little
(19:24):
bit more. I think it's very good that Levinson and
Link didn't want to have any African American killers on Colombo,
because he William Link has said this, he didn't want
African Americans represented as criminals. He didn't want to make
that stereotypical judgment. And I think that's great for the
(19:48):
first few years of the show, But once the Colombo
formula was established, I don't think it would have been
that bad to have a Sammy Davis Junior or James
Earl Jones type be a African American killer. We wouldn't
have all jumped to the conclusion that, oh, they're stereotyping
African Americans. And I think that's great that they didn't
(20:08):
want to have an association of race with being criminal.
The flip side to that, I would argue, would be
that we didn't get to see any black individuals as rich,
as powerful, as famous, or intelligent enough to craft some
(20:30):
of these you know, intricate murders that Colombo had to
deal with. And we didn't get to see an African
American character have a battle of wits with Colombo, like
say a Jack Cassidy would, And I think that was
a bit of a missed opportunity. I get the sentiment
where they're coming from, but I also think that on
what could have been pushed, I think they also probably
(20:51):
could have had a feed minute rather a African American
sergeant on board, you know, get rid of Sergeant Kramer
for an episode, and let's introduce a new sergeant to
kind of a one on one with Colombo. Colombo getting
taught to uniformed officers who are African American, but they
weren't really part of the fabric of the show.
Speaker 1 (21:09):
And you're Bob, Dishy's your Dennis Dugan, like, yeah, having
somebody along with him would have been really nice. I mean,
those those characters were few and far between. I mean,
the times of Dishy comes Back is always a pleasant,
you know time, but yeah, let's switch it up a
little bit.
Speaker 2 (21:24):
And those characters are there just basically so Colombo can
provide someone with exposition. So he's not turning to look
at the camera and say, okay, if you were here's
what I think. You know, he's talking, he's talking to
the sergeant and then we're learning about how his mind
has worked.
Speaker 1 (21:37):
We're about to record our episode, Last Salute to the Commodore,
which doesn't have mcgoen in.
Speaker 2 (21:42):
More of the camera and Mike, I'm sorry to hear that.
Speaker 1 (21:45):
Yeah, yeah, I know it's pretty universal, right, yeah, yeah,
doesn't it's got Patrick mcgoin involved, but it's behind the
camera rather than in front of the camera. You write
a lot about McGowen, and I'm curious what you see
as you know, his influence not just as an actor,
but as creative force and really working with fulk on
this well.
Speaker 2 (22:04):
Before I get into Patrick McGowen, I should say that
I love The Prisoner and I love what Magowon did
with The Prisoner. The show from it aired in Britain
in nineteen sixty seven, was in the States in sixty
eight and sixty nine, and The Prisoner was groundbreaking, exciting.
I loved watching The Prisoner and I have a high
(22:26):
regard for Patrick McGowan. Having said that, for Patrick McGowan
and Colombo, I look at it in three different elements.
There's the acting, there's the writing, there's the directing. In
the acting, he was a villain on four episodes between
the seventies and nineties, I thought he always did a
superb job, really very good job, even in the nineties episodes,
(22:50):
which I'm overall not high on. But Magoonn as an actor,
I thought it was spectacular, particularly in the seventies episode
by Don's Early Life. So I have no problem with
Magoo and the actor. Magowin the writer and the director
mixed bag. I think that as a writer he didn't
really take a lot of writing credits except for I
(23:10):
believe for a Murder was too many notes in the nineties.
But any episode that Magowan was a part of He
would always rewrite things in the script even if it
didn't show up in the opening credits, and I would
point to an episode like Identity Crisis. I know that's
not everyone's cup of tea, but I like what he
did with some of the writing scenes in Identity Crisis,
(23:33):
and I think it does a good job with that.
I think his directing on the episode Identity Crisis was
pretty good as well, But now we talk about some
of the you know, the downside and his directing and
last salute to the commodore is, in my humble opinion,
it's a dreadful because he's encouraging to push Colombo at
(23:54):
Peter Fock into areas that really I think are embarrassing
and that don't serve the character very well and don't
treat the viewer with intelligence, and in the same vein
as directing in episodes like Murder with Too Many Notes
in the nineties very I think poorly done, poorly conceived,
(24:16):
and I think that his directing and his writing had
some good elements, but unfortunately, I think it took the
series in the wrong direction. Now, Peter Fox loved him,
and I say, for better or worse, Peter Fox let
Patrick mcgoon do pretty much whatever he wanted.
Speaker 1 (24:35):
It's just the way it is. You mentioned the eighties, nineties,
and even into the two thousands episodes, And I know
this book is called Columbo explains the seventies, not those
other decades. But I'm so curious. Are there episodes that
are redemptive, redeemable? I show this, I guess it's the
word in your opinion. Are there any that carry on
(24:57):
with that classic tradition from the seventies?
Speaker 2 (24:59):
A small number. I wouldn't say that Columbo was much
better suited to the seventies. He was much more relevant
in the seventies than he was in the nineties. And
I do spend a chapter talking about that, just so
I can point up the difference between the nineties and
the seventies and how Colombo is really relevant to the seventies.
I also just don't think the show was produced very well.
(25:20):
I don't think the quality was very high, and I
think that when you look at the seventies, you've got
a number of episodes that are a grade A or
A minus. There is a lot of them, and unfortunately,
in the nineties, I don't see any episode as being
that high in grade. I see a small handful of
episodes as being a B or a B minus grade.
(25:42):
And if we're looking at what I think would be
the best episode of the nineties, I know for a
lot of people it's Colombo Goes to College. I disagree.
My favorite episode from the nineties.
Speaker 1 (25:54):
It's not perfect, but I think the best.
Speaker 2 (25:56):
One is Butterflying Shane's Gray, and that's because I like
William Shatnan. If you don't like the shat then you're
not gonna like the episodes that he's in. He pushes
the envelope on his chewing of the scenery, but he
knows that he's doing it. He does it with a
wink and a nudge, and most importantly, Peter Fought knows it.
And Peter Fought has great chemistry with William Shatner, and
(26:18):
they're scenes together and I think there are like eight
of them. They really milked it in that episode. It's
great chemistry, it's great fun. That episode was written by
Peter Fisher, who was a story editor in the seventies,
and he wrote a water of great Columbo's episodes in
the seventies, so the story elements are in place there
not a perfect episode, like all the nineties episodes, it's
(26:40):
way too long and has filler in it, But overall,
I would put that as the best episode of the
nineties for me.
Speaker 1 (26:48):
You were a teacher for a while, and I'm curious,
what do you think Colombo could teach some of these
modern detectives, who, if anybody might hold a candle to him,
or what do people need to go back and rediscuss
and really bring from the seventies back into the two thousands.
But the detectives of today, in the pressedigue shows of today,
I think they've learned a lot in the last fifty
(27:10):
years of watching television and knowing what viewers responding to.
I don't know that there's much that I.
Speaker 2 (27:16):
Could say about that, except that I would emphasize being intelligent,
and I think that's the real key to Columbo of
the seventies and it's treatment of the viewer. It treated
the viewer with intelligence. It was a smart show written
by smart people, designed for intelligent viewers, so we can
have intelligent conversations about it like we're having right now.
(27:37):
And Colombo of the seventies treated the viewers intelligently. Colombo
of the nineties I don't think learn that lesson, And
the example I would give would be the difference in
how they treated humor, and the humor of the seventies
most often came from the characters around Colombo and how
(27:57):
they were reacting to him. So the gold standard for
me is the soup kitchen scene. Yeah, the soup kitchen
scene is great in negative reaction, and people aren't laughing
at Colombo. We're laughing at the reactions of Joyce Finn
Patent to Colombo. Now you compare that to a scene
from the nineties caution murder, maybe hazardous to your health,
(28:20):
And you've got Colombo in the parking lot with the
wad Enders character played by Jeorge Hamilton, and they're doing
bumper cars and there's you know, back and forth and
the silly sound effects, and they're repeating their actions and
there's you know, painful grimaces and silly music. And Colombo
of the nineties talked down to the viewer, and I
(28:43):
think treated the viewer as less intelligent than it treated
viewers in the seventies. If prestige television to stay prestige
should be treating its viewers with intelligence, because that's what
Columbo did.
Speaker 1 (28:58):
First book out of the gate. I think he nailed it.
Is there something else? Do you have something else you
want to write about, or more Colombo or something else
that you want to tackle next?
Speaker 2 (29:09):
Yes, I do. Funny you should ask, but it's not
Colombo related. But it is television related. And right now
I'm working on a book. We'll see how it goes,
we'll see what what kind of attraction it gets. And
it's about television in nineteen sixty eight and all the
different elements of connections between not just one show, but
(29:30):
all of television in nineteen sixty eight, because that was
a very contentious year and there was a lot going on.
You had the Democratic National Convention, you had a tet
offensive in Vietnam. You had shows like Julia, like Rowan
and Martin's Laughing, like the Smothers Brothers Show. Nineteen sixty
eight has a lot of material. And so I'm tackling
(29:50):
that right now.
Speaker 1 (29:51):
That sounds fantastic. I can't wait to read that. And yeah,
I totally agree. Nineteen sixty eight, nineteen sixty nine the
next year as well, with all of the political upheaval
happening then, such a tumultuous time and such an important
time in the world, not just the US. Yeah, I
think that'll be something that would be very readable for people.
So we'll see what happens. I just have one more
(30:14):
question for you, how much did you pay for those shoes?
Speaker 2 (30:19):
Or you could ask as Peter Fogg did at the
DeMont and Roast, So I think he has dan if
his shoes were rented.
Speaker 1 (30:27):
I'm so glad you're right about that. And then also
even going into things like McGruff the crime Dog Bravo, sir, Well,
thank you.
Speaker 2 (30:35):
I thought it was important to put Colombo in context
because again, Colombo's got a lot of new viewers and
they may not be aware. They may have been told, oh,
Colombo is very popular in the seventies, they may not
be really aware of the context of how popular Columbo
was in the seventies. So I try to do that
at the beginning of the book.
Speaker 1 (30:55):
Well, mister Stewart, thank you so much for your time.
This has been great talking with you.
Speaker 2 (30:59):
Well, thank you. Appreciate the kind words, and I appreciate
your having me on the podcast.
Hey there, folks, this is Mike White coming at you
with a special bonus episode of The Shabby Detective. On
this episode, you're going to be hearing from Glenn Stewart.
He is the author of Colombo Explains the Seventies, a
TV Cops pop culture Journey. I am just so happy
with how much Columbo scholarship has been going on over
(00:44):
the last few years. It's really been very exciting for
a fan like me. This is another one coming out
from Bonaventure Press. Actually came out February twenty fifth and
is available on kindle as well as paperback and hard cover.
Pick it up at your local bookstore if you can
support the arts. And thank you so much for listening
(01:06):
to this special bonus interview Glenn, before I started asking
you about Columbo Explains the Seventies. What's the Glenn Stewart story.
Speaker 2 (01:15):
Well, the brief Glenn Stewart's story is that I spent
twenty five years in the radio industry across the country.
Before that, I had graduated from Brown University with BA
and political science, and so I didn't really use that
for my first twenty five years. But then I got
out of radio and I went into teaching, and I
(01:35):
was teaching history and I was working at Education Assessment,
and I had kind of, I guess, the writing bug,
but I didn't really have an outlet for it. And
then I discovered the Columbo File Blog several years ago.
I'm assuming that a lot of your listeners are familiar
with the Colmbo File blog. I mean, if they're not,
there's a lot of great content that's there, a lot
of great reviews of episodes. And I thought, well, gee,
(01:59):
maybe I can try to contribute something to the Columbo
File blog. And I gave the blogmaster CP I gave
him some material and he was kind enough to use it,
and he was using more and more of my material,
but he wasn't able to use all the material that
I was able to think of when it came to Colombo,
because I had watched Colombo when I was a kid
(02:21):
back in the seventies, and I kept coming back to it,
and I realized I had a lot of material that
wasn't going to make it to the blog, and so
I thought the best thing to do would be to
just get to it and write a book about it.
Speaker 1 (02:34):
And so here we are. You said that you watched
Colombo back when it was originally airing. I'm assuming when
did you really start to become aware of it, because
it's one thing for it to be just on television.
You're not that old of a gentleman, so I don't
know if you were necessarily choosing to watch Columbo or
for it's something that your parents were watching. When did
(02:54):
you really start to connect with the show?
Speaker 2 (02:56):
Well, I was definitely choosing to watch it. I was
fascinated by the plotting and the character and you know,
the goutches that would nab the killer. I was all
fascinated by that. But then it wasn't on streaming. There
was no such thing as DVDs in the seventies. You
watched the show once, and then once you did, you
(03:18):
weren't going to watch it again until it came on
in the summer reruns. So a show like Colombo really
does stand up to repeat viewings, which is why you
can keep coming back to the show again and again
and again. Back in the seventies, that was difficult to do.
And then I would go away to college and then
years later I would kind of rediscover Colombo and rediscover
(03:43):
all the things that I missed the first time around.
When I was watching earlier in my life and started
to realize, oh, there's a lot of stuff here, because
a lot of care was taken with Columbo in not
just the characterization, but in the guest stars, the supporting actors,
the music, the plotting, the sects, all the what I
(04:06):
call in the book, I call it the connective tissue
that made Columbo such a great show, so that even
if let's say a plot wasn't all that great, well,
you had an episode that really wasn't, you know, hitting
on all cylinders, like I'll pick an example, old fashioned murder.
You can still find elements to that episode that are
(04:28):
pretty good because of the high level of craftsmanship that
went enter that show. I love this mix of the
political science that you were learning and that you learned
that you went to school for and everything, and then
the idea of marrying that with Colombo. I mean that
the title of the book, Colombo Explains the Seventies, such
(04:48):
a great title and such a brilliant way of taking
the show apart in a different way than I've seen
anybody else do it. I'm so glad we're in this
almost like new age of Columbo scholarship and Columba explains,
the seventies is.
Speaker 1 (05:04):
Right up there. I love your approach to this material.
Speaker 2 (05:07):
Well, thank you. I appreciate that. I was watching episodes
and I realized that a lot of what was going
on was very much of the era. Because I grew
up in the seventies and I kind of lived it,
I was able to make those connections. And if you're
watching Colombo today, if you've watched Columbo for the first time,
or you're streaming it and you're kind of new to
(05:28):
Colombo of the seventies, it doesn't resonate like that. But
I think that Colombo was popular in the seventies, the
character and the show because it touched on a lot
of the values of people of the seventies and a
lot of the social issues. So those issues might be
something like, you know, gender equality, women's liberation, class issues,
(05:49):
and conflict, power and authority, technology, violence. There's all sorts
of issues that intersect with seventies Colombo, and if you
know where to look, you can find those and I
like to think that my book provides a guide to that,
and I also think that it also gives people another
reason to rewatch the show. And I'm always looking for
(06:13):
reasons to rewatch the show, and I hope that my
book also provides people with reasons to rewatch the show
and think, oh Colombo says that right there. Yeah, that
was a very seventies thing that he said right there.
Speaker 1 (06:25):
I was so glad when you started one chapter off
Tucky that quote from going to forget which episode it was,
where the woman's like that, I've tried st I've tried,
you know, I'm okay, you're okay, you know, all the
self help movements, just to really open up that idea
of like, this is a contemporary show. Those things were
terms at the time, and I really appreciated that you
(06:49):
look deeper than just being like, oh, Columbo was a
class warrior, and that it wasn't just class, that it
was really more about the power. And I've found that
to be such a refreshing take on that whole angle
of where Colombo was coming from.
Speaker 2 (07:03):
Right, thank you. I know that most people and most
writers of Colombo, all the appreciations of Colombo, they always
come back to the class element, the middle class public
servant who's going after the rich and entitled killer. That's great,
that's a part of it. And I get that that's
very satisfying when those people are brought down. But I
(07:27):
think there's more to it than that, And I think
you have to go back to look at what was
going on in the late sixties and the seventies to
really appreciate it. Because back then you had the Vietnam War,
and it was very contentious back then, and you had
a lot of people who were suspicious of what the
government was telling them, and there was what was called
the credibility gap between what the government was saying was
(07:48):
going on and what was actually happening on the ground
in Vietnam. Then you had things like the Meli massacre
being covered up by the government. You had in nineteen
seventy one the Pentagon Papers and Daniel L's and those
get printed, and those papers are telling us that the
government had certain motives and actions that they were doing
in Vietnam that we didn't know anything about. So government
(08:11):
is lying to us. Then nineteen seventy two Watergate and
Watergate just brought to a whole other level of mistrust
and it cast a shadow over the entire seventies decades.
So I come back to a catchphrase from the late
sixties and early seventies that showed up on a lot
of bumper stickers at the time, and that's question authority.
(08:33):
And to me, question authority, that phrase is the key
to Colombo, because yes, he was going after rich people,
but he was also going after powerful people, people with
power and authority. And I don't necessarily mean just you know,
political power, but powerful CEOs of industry, powerful professionals, people
(08:58):
who were authorities in their field. You know, food critics,
art critics, concert conductors, actresses for country singers, people who
are authorities in their field, who get respect from everyone,
and Colombo wanted to make sure that they lost their
power and authority because because they were killers. Now a
lot of times these people were rich, but at the
(09:21):
end of the episode, Columbo's not interested in taking away
the money of the killers.
Speaker 1 (09:25):
He's interested in.
Speaker 2 (09:26):
Taking away their power and authority. And the way I
like to describe it is that Colombo was looking for
the social injustice of people getting away with murder, not
the social inequities of people trying to get away with capitalism.
That's to me, that's the key to really getting into
the show.
Speaker 1 (09:47):
Well, the way that he does it with the disarming,
the charm, the self put downs. And I really liked
how you very specifically went through some of those examples
as far as the lady lawyer will put him in
a plane and then like have control over him or
have power over him that way, or you know, it's
(10:09):
just amazing to read all of those quotes as far
as people just a little slight put down. It's like
a person like you, mister Colombo, the mister to the
mister Colombo. This that is so crucial and I hadn't
ever really thought about that.
Speaker 2 (10:23):
You.
Speaker 1 (10:23):
Of course, you get those great speeches, you know, like oh, yeah,
you're trying this act and you know, I can see
right through you. But the other ways that he charms
and disarms, and that the way that people use their
power and put him down, I think is really that
chapter really resonated for me. Well, thank you.
Speaker 2 (10:44):
Yes, there's a dominance element to it that Colombo is
dominated by the killers, but Colombo also wants to be dominated.
He opens up that door so that the killers think
that they have an advantage on him, And I think
that's really expertly done. And I know there's a lot
of you know, there's and this is a good conversation
(11:05):
to have as far as chatter about, oh, is Columbo
authentic in what he says to killers and how he's
very humble, and is he an authentic character? And I
think that most most of the time, he is. But
I also think that he knows that he has an
advantage to exaggerating some of these character traits, so that's
(11:28):
what he'll do. He'll fumble around a little bit extra
time for that pencil that he needs, or he'll do
a little bit of extra sneezing when he's in the
company of the killer, just to kind of invade their
personal space and put them off guard. So I think
there's an authenticity to his character, but not without just
(11:48):
a little bit of exaggeration.
Speaker 1 (11:50):
The coming into their personal space, that's wonderful and I
love is marveling around their technology. You know, the term
future shock has been used for a little while. I
remember what it means, and hopefully most of our listeners
remember what it means. But he encapsulates that so well,
and you really bring that to the four As far
as the use of the technology in those episodes.
Speaker 2 (12:12):
Yeah, future Shock was. I think people underestimate now how
really important the Future Shock book was. And Alan Toffler's
theories about the shadowing stress of the consequences of too
much technology, too fast, and that was part of the decade.
Toffler was on all the talk shows, and the catchphrase
(12:35):
made it into the Colombo episode of Friend Indeed, So
that tells you right there how important it was. And
I think that that element of technology was in Colombo
from the very beginning. So going back to the creators,
Richard Levinson Wayne Link, I think that was always a
part of their plan to have that part of the
(12:56):
Colombo character. They created in nineteen sixty seven, before the
Prescription Murder movie, they created the Mannux character, but Mannix
was part of a huge detective agency in a gleaming
skyscraper with banks and banks of computers and technology to
help them fight crime. That show didn't work, so they
(13:18):
had to change up that premise. But Levinson and Link
took that concept and they just used it. And death
lends a hand with Robert Kulpa's the villain, so Levenson
and Link, I think we're on top of that from
the very beginning. And then you have an episode, the
first series episode Murdered by the Book, where Colombo is
marveling at the fact that elevator buttons can register the
(13:40):
heat that comes off your hand. I mean, no real
reason for Colombo to say that. It's not a clue
that has anything whatsoever to do with the episode, but
it shows that Colombo is going to be very tied
into technology, and he has to be because that's part
of his job. And so he walks us through the
(14:02):
viewer who might be a little scared of some of
this new technology. He walks us through how to adapt
to it because he has to adapt to it himself.
And my favorite example of this is in Exercise and Fatality,
where he gets the phone number of mister Lewis Lacey,
(14:22):
and so this is the accountant who he wants to
try to get some evidence from, and so he calls
Lewis Lacey at home. Phone picks up, says hi, I'm
Lewis Lacey. Colombo starts talking to him as if it's
a regular person.
Speaker 1 (14:37):
Then it is stunned to.
Speaker 2 (14:38):
Find out that it's an answering machine that's pitted up,
and Colombo doesn't quite know how to react, and so
Lewis Lacey leaves the message that every person in the
seventies left at the end of their answering machine message,
which was when you hear the beep, leave your message
and I'll get back in touch with you. Now that's
very quaint today, but back then nineteen seventy four, a
(15:03):
lot of people didn't have answering machines. A lot of
people didn't know how to react to answering machines, and
so Colombo. The funny part is a Colombo then talks
very slowly leave his mess and that's the funny part.
But it's also instructive, So it's it's how to interact
with technology. That's a big theme throughout throughout the seventies episodes.
Speaker 1 (15:28):
That's a little bit about class, a little bit about technology. Also,
we need to talk a little bit about some of
the social movements that were happening back then, when it
comes to women's liberation, racial equality. I mean those also
get worked into the script as well. And again i'd
love especially the what was the name of the chapter,
(15:49):
the Yes.
Speaker 2 (15:51):
Liberation and Lady Killers and the seventies for television and
dealing with the women's liberation movement, that was a that
was a balancing act, not just for Colombo but for
all the shows of the seventies because the women's liberation movement, feminism,
gender equality, those issues were gaining steam, but it was
(16:14):
very difficult for a lot of people to wrap their
arms around those issues. In Colombo. The Colombo character was
one of those people. So if you equate feminism and
liberation with him being strong as a female character, Colombo
had a lot of strong female characters, not just as killers,
(16:36):
and we can point to Lee Grant, we can point
to Vera Miles. Strong female killers were also strong supporting
characters as well, And if you look at it from
that way, Colombo was very progressive as far as having
women of strength on the show. But the other side
of it is that Columbo himself as a character has
(16:56):
a tough time grappling with these new ground rules or
how to deal with you know, how to deal with women.
So he looks at a male secretary in the Bye
Bye Sky High IQ case and he says to the
male secretary, what is this women's lib Don't ladies do
this work anymore? He says to Leslie Williams, Lee Grant,
(17:17):
and Ransom for a dead man. He says to an
associate of hers, he says, I don't know how you
do it. I don't know how you can work for
a woman, he says to the Valerie Harper character in
Most Crucial Game, He says, Oh, you'd be an ornament
in any office.
Speaker 1 (17:31):
It's like you.
Speaker 2 (17:32):
Listen to some of this now, Oh, it's very cringey,
but it was totally representative of the times and how
people would react to of how pretty a woman was,
and how.
Speaker 1 (17:44):
They would react to women who had a little bit
of power.
Speaker 2 (17:47):
Now, the good news for Colombo is that we know
that he has a kind heart. We know he's open
to change, and we know that he believes in equal justice.
So we like the thing that you know, we to
agreeing that women might need to be a little bit
more equal world. But again, this was a very this
was a very contentious.
Speaker 1 (18:08):
Issue back in the seventies. Let's suck a little bit too.
As far as racial minorities. I mean that it's very
nice to see how it's not even an issue for
him and it's never really brought to the fore in
a negative way as far as people of color and
just he treats everyone very equally, whether they again, whether
(18:31):
they be a killer or not. He will treat people
with respect. But it feels very genuine when it comes
to minorities.
Speaker 2 (18:41):
Yes, he really didn't have any one of those bones
you know, in his body for that. I do think
that overall, Colombo did a good job of representing racial
equality and advances in their characters. In a lot of
the background characters that you would see, and in a
lot of the crime scenes, you would have African American
(19:03):
detectives and fingerprinters and people milling around doing their job.
And that was roughly in the same and I did
some counting of off these episodes to know that it's
roughly the same percentage that African Americans were being represented
in society at large. Now, having said that, I think
that Colombo could have pushed the enveloplon this a little
(19:24):
bit more. I think it's very good that Levinson and
Link didn't want to have any African American killers on Colombo,
because he William Link has said this, he didn't want
African Americans represented as criminals. He didn't want to make
that stereotypical judgment. And I think that's great for the
(19:48):
first few years of the show, But once the Colombo
formula was established, I don't think it would have been
that bad to have a Sammy Davis Junior or James
Earl Jones type be a African American killer. We wouldn't
have all jumped to the conclusion that, oh, they're stereotyping
African Americans. And I think that's great that they didn't
(20:08):
want to have an association of race with being criminal.
The flip side to that, I would argue, would be
that we didn't get to see any black individuals as rich,
as powerful, as famous, or intelligent enough to craft some
(20:30):
of these you know, intricate murders that Colombo had to
deal with. And we didn't get to see an African
American character have a battle of wits with Colombo, like
say a Jack Cassidy would, And I think that was
a bit of a missed opportunity. I get the sentiment
where they're coming from, but I also think that on
what could have been pushed, I think they also probably
(20:51):
could have had a feed minute rather a African American
sergeant on board, you know, get rid of Sergeant Kramer
for an episode, and let's introduce a new sergeant to
kind of a one on one with Colombo. Colombo getting
taught to uniformed officers who are African American, but they
weren't really part of the fabric of the show.
Speaker 1 (21:09):
And you're Bob, Dishy's your Dennis Dugan, like, yeah, having
somebody along with him would have been really nice. I mean,
those those characters were few and far between. I mean,
the times of Dishy comes Back is always a pleasant,
you know time, but yeah, let's switch it up a
little bit.
Speaker 2 (21:24):
And those characters are there just basically so Colombo can
provide someone with exposition. So he's not turning to look
at the camera and say, okay, if you were here's
what I think. You know, he's talking, he's talking to
the sergeant and then we're learning about how his mind
has worked.
Speaker 1 (21:37):
We're about to record our episode, Last Salute to the Commodore,
which doesn't have mcgoen in.
Speaker 2 (21:42):
More of the camera and Mike, I'm sorry to hear that.
Speaker 1 (21:45):
Yeah, yeah, I know it's pretty universal, right, yeah, yeah,
doesn't it's got Patrick mcgoin involved, but it's behind the
camera rather than in front of the camera. You write
a lot about McGowen, and I'm curious what you see
as you know, his influence not just as an actor,
but as creative force and really working with fulk on
this well.
Speaker 2 (22:04):
Before I get into Patrick McGowen, I should say that
I love The Prisoner and I love what Magowon did
with The Prisoner. The show from it aired in Britain
in nineteen sixty seven, was in the States in sixty
eight and sixty nine, and The Prisoner was groundbreaking, exciting.
I loved watching The Prisoner and I have a high
(22:26):
regard for Patrick McGowan. Having said that, for Patrick McGowan
and Colombo, I look at it in three different elements.
There's the acting, there's the writing, there's the directing. In
the acting, he was a villain on four episodes between
the seventies and nineties, I thought he always did a
superb job, really very good job, even in the nineties episodes,
(22:50):
which I'm overall not high on. But Magoonn as an actor,
I thought it was spectacular, particularly in the seventies episode
by Don's Early Life. So I have no problem with
Magoo and the actor. Magowin the writer and the director
mixed bag. I think that as a writer he didn't
really take a lot of writing credits except for I
(23:10):
believe for a Murder was too many notes in the nineties.
But any episode that Magowan was a part of He
would always rewrite things in the script even if it
didn't show up in the opening credits, and I would
point to an episode like Identity Crisis. I know that's
not everyone's cup of tea, but I like what he
did with some of the writing scenes in Identity Crisis,
(23:33):
and I think it does a good job with that.
I think his directing on the episode Identity Crisis was
pretty good as well, But now we talk about some
of the you know, the downside and his directing and
last salute to the commodore is, in my humble opinion,
it's a dreadful because he's encouraging to push Colombo at
(23:54):
Peter Fock into areas that really I think are embarrassing
and that don't serve the character very well and don't
treat the viewer with intelligence, and in the same vein
as directing in episodes like Murder with Too Many Notes
in the nineties very I think poorly done, poorly conceived,
(24:16):
and I think that his directing and his writing had
some good elements, but unfortunately, I think it took the
series in the wrong direction. Now, Peter Fox loved him,
and I say, for better or worse, Peter Fox let
Patrick mcgoon do pretty much whatever he wanted.
Speaker 1 (24:35):
It's just the way it is. You mentioned the eighties, nineties,
and even into the two thousands episodes, And I know
this book is called Columbo explains the seventies, not those
other decades. But I'm so curious. Are there episodes that
are redemptive, redeemable? I show this, I guess it's the
word in your opinion. Are there any that carry on
(24:57):
with that classic tradition from the seventies?
Speaker 2 (24:59):
A small number. I wouldn't say that Columbo was much
better suited to the seventies. He was much more relevant
in the seventies than he was in the nineties. And
I do spend a chapter talking about that, just so
I can point up the difference between the nineties and
the seventies and how Colombo is really relevant to the seventies.
I also just don't think the show was produced very well.
(25:20):
I don't think the quality was very high, and I
think that when you look at the seventies, you've got
a number of episodes that are a grade A or
A minus. There is a lot of them, and unfortunately,
in the nineties, I don't see any episode as being
that high in grade. I see a small handful of
episodes as being a B or a B minus grade.
(25:42):
And if we're looking at what I think would be
the best episode of the nineties, I know for a
lot of people it's Colombo Goes to College. I disagree.
My favorite episode from the nineties.
Speaker 1 (25:54):
It's not perfect, but I think the best.
Speaker 2 (25:56):
One is Butterflying Shane's Gray, and that's because I like
William Shatnan. If you don't like the shat then you're
not gonna like the episodes that he's in. He pushes
the envelope on his chewing of the scenery, but he
knows that he's doing it. He does it with a
wink and a nudge, and most importantly, Peter Fought knows it.
And Peter Fought has great chemistry with William Shatner, and
(26:18):
they're scenes together and I think there are like eight
of them. They really milked it in that episode. It's
great chemistry, it's great fun. That episode was written by
Peter Fisher, who was a story editor in the seventies,
and he wrote a water of great Columbo's episodes in
the seventies, so the story elements are in place there
not a perfect episode, like all the nineties episodes, it's
(26:40):
way too long and has filler in it, But overall,
I would put that as the best episode of the
nineties for me.
Speaker 1 (26:48):
You were a teacher for a while, and I'm curious,
what do you think Colombo could teach some of these
modern detectives, who, if anybody might hold a candle to him,
or what do people need to go back and rediscuss
and really bring from the seventies back into the two thousands.
But the detectives of today, in the pressedigue shows of today,
I think they've learned a lot in the last fifty
(27:10):
years of watching television and knowing what viewers responding to.
I don't know that there's much that I.
Speaker 2 (27:16):
Could say about that, except that I would emphasize being intelligent,
and I think that's the real key to Columbo of
the seventies and it's treatment of the viewer. It treated
the viewer with intelligence. It was a smart show written
by smart people, designed for intelligent viewers, so we can
have intelligent conversations about it like we're having right now.
(27:37):
And Colombo of the seventies treated the viewers intelligently. Colombo
of the nineties I don't think learn that lesson, And
the example I would give would be the difference in
how they treated humor, and the humor of the seventies
most often came from the characters around Colombo and how
(27:57):
they were reacting to him. So the gold standard for
me is the soup kitchen scene. Yeah, the soup kitchen
scene is great in negative reaction, and people aren't laughing
at Colombo. We're laughing at the reactions of Joyce Finn
Patent to Colombo. Now you compare that to a scene
from the nineties caution murder, maybe hazardous to your health,
(28:20):
And you've got Colombo in the parking lot with the
wad Enders character played by Jeorge Hamilton, and they're doing
bumper cars and there's you know, back and forth and
the silly sound effects, and they're repeating their actions and
there's you know, painful grimaces and silly music. And Colombo
of the nineties talked down to the viewer, and I
(28:43):
think treated the viewer as less intelligent than it treated
viewers in the seventies. If prestige television to stay prestige
should be treating its viewers with intelligence, because that's what
Columbo did.
Speaker 1 (28:58):
First book out of the gate. I think he nailed it.
Is there something else? Do you have something else you
want to write about, or more Colombo or something else
that you want to tackle next?
Speaker 2 (29:09):
Yes, I do. Funny you should ask, but it's not
Colombo related. But it is television related. And right now
I'm working on a book. We'll see how it goes,
we'll see what what kind of attraction it gets. And
it's about television in nineteen sixty eight and all the
different elements of connections between not just one show, but
(29:30):
all of television in nineteen sixty eight, because that was
a very contentious year and there was a lot going on.
You had the Democratic National Convention, you had a tet
offensive in Vietnam. You had shows like Julia, like Rowan
and Martin's Laughing, like the Smothers Brothers Show. Nineteen sixty
eight has a lot of material. And so I'm tackling
(29:50):
that right now.
Speaker 1 (29:51):
That sounds fantastic. I can't wait to read that. And yeah,
I totally agree. Nineteen sixty eight, nineteen sixty nine the
next year as well, with all of the political upheaval
happening then, such a tumultuous time and such an important
time in the world, not just the US. Yeah, I
think that'll be something that would be very readable for people.
So we'll see what happens. I just have one more
(30:14):
question for you, how much did you pay for those shoes?
Speaker 2 (30:19):
Or you could ask as Peter Fogg did at the
DeMont and Roast, So I think he has dan if
his shoes were rented.
Speaker 1 (30:27):
I'm so glad you're right about that. And then also
even going into things like McGruff the crime Dog Bravo, sir, Well,
thank you.
Speaker 2 (30:35):
I thought it was important to put Colombo in context
because again, Colombo's got a lot of new viewers and
they may not be aware. They may have been told, oh,
Colombo is very popular in the seventies, they may not
be really aware of the context of how popular Columbo
was in the seventies. So I try to do that
at the beginning of the book.
Speaker 1 (30:55):
Well, mister Stewart, thank you so much for your time.
This has been great talking with you.
Speaker 2 (30:59):
Well, thank you. Appreciate the kind words, and I appreciate
your having me on the podcast.
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