Forgotten Lady story

columbo1971e5x01 · 1975-09-14

When elderly physician Henry Willis refuses to finance a return to the spotlight for his wife, aging former movie star Grace Wheeler kills him in his sleep, passing it off as a suicide. Their elderly butler believes Grace was in a private screening room the entire time, watching one of her classic films. Final clue/twist: Columbo believes that a discrepancy between the length of the movie and the time it took Grace Wheeler to watch it, including the few minutes it took her to fix the film after it ripped, proves that Grace spent some time away from the screening room. It was then, Columbo concludes, that she was out committing the murder. This is one of the only two episodes in which the perpetrator is not arrested (the other being "It's All In The Game"), as Ned Diamond, Wheeler's longtime song and dance partner who has always loved Grace, falsely confesses to save her after Columbo informs him she is suffering from a degenerative brain disease (the primary reason her husband refused to finance her return as the physical strain of acting would have killed her) and likely no longer even remembers the murder. Nonetheless, Columbo is prepared to arrest her. Diamond makes his false confession to Grace who briefly becomes hysterical. Columbo arrests Diamond, both realizing that by the time he is cleared, Grace will have died. Columbo's normal instincts thwarted, he makes several half turns – as though to enter the screening room – where Grace, lost in the past, is watching the film, having already forgotten Diamond's confession. Columbo then leaves the mansion, following Diamond. The episode features excerpts from the 1953 musical comedy Walking My Baby Back Home, which starred Leigh. It is Grace's favorite film, the one playing when she was committing the crime and the one she is watching, mesmerized, at the end of the episode. An amusing concurrent side-story concerns Columbo's penchant for not carrying his firearm and his decade-long lapse in going to the range for shooting proficiency. He has been evading Sgt. Leftkowitz whose computer records show the lapses. Finally, while Columbo is eating an ice cream cone with his dog, an Internal Affairs officer tells him he has 24 hours to appear at the range or his badge will be pulled. (Columbo lends his badge to a crony whom he asks to go to the range in his place, claiming he cannot pass the shooting proficiency test.) Directed by: Harvey Hart. Story by: William Driskill.