*Anthony Perkins ...
He would have been great as a ‘villain’ - perhaps alittle obvious yes, but his quiet & polite demeanour would have played brilliantly with Falk. *
shareYes!
In the 1960 original, accept-no-substitutes Hitchcock classic Psycho, Anthony Perkins as Norman Bates is visited at the famous Bates Motel by a private detective named Arbogast, played by Martin Balsam.
Arbogast is looking for a missing person named Marion Crane. Norman knows that his psycho Mother has stabbed Marion to death in the shower in Cabin One. Norman is looking to cover up the crime and to avoid revealing that Marion even visited the Bates Motel.
But Arbogast -- a friendly, shambling, amiable kind of guy, rather like Columbo(if better-dressed and more business-like) -- keeps asking Norman "just one more question" and wheedles information out of Norman "just like that."
The dialogue moves from a first meeting of the two men on the porch of the Bates Motel, inside to the motel office for a LONG stretch, then back out to the porch for a final confrontation (Arbogast has forced Norman to admit that Marion DID come to the motel, and met Norman's mother.) Norman throws Arbogast out before he can meet Mother.
This "sequence" -- porch, office, back to the porch -- is like a mini-episode of Columbo and Anthony Perkins gives us a perhaps more nervous version of the usual Columbo killer, but I am sure he could have adjusted his acting a bit. Perhaps he could have played the killer played by George Hamilton (a lookalike of sorts), or the one played by Laurence Harvey, or the one played by Roddy McDowall.
I remember thinking AT THE TIME that Anthony Perkins would make a great Columbo killer. He wasn't that big a movie star in the 70's, and he was already making TV movies. I wonder if he was ever approached.
PS. Oh, one more thing: unlike Columbo, who survived a few attempts by a few Columbo killers to kill HIM, Arbogast wasn't so lucky. "Mother" (Norman) killed Arbogast on the stairs of the Bates mansion in one of the first "slasher slaughters" in movie history.
Great insights, thank you!
Psycho II, a very underrated sequel, was a great showreel for Perkins to perhaps star in the later revival of Columbo, but sadly never to be. *
Yes...he could have perhaps played the role played by the OLDER George Hamilton role in that run.
And thank you for reading!
I only recall one attempt to kill Columbo; the Rosebud episode. Unless you mean the '80s-'90s ones that didn't count anyway. But yes, the Mod Roddy one would have been a good one for Norman Bates. And Richard Levinson, the creator of Columbo, was heavily influenced by Hitch, and even did 2 screenplays for his TV show,
shareRosebud was the Nicol Williamson with the dogs, yes?
I was thinking of that one, but also of the one (in the 70's, near the end) where Louis Jourdan tried to poison Columbo with a meal or wine or something.
And yes, the 80's-90s ones don't really count. Even though Columbo was a "one man show" , that man had gotten noticably older and slower and he just wasn't the same guy. The returning killers were old, too. There were a few good new killers though -- Dabney Coleman, Rip Torn. I believe that William Shatner in the 80's version pulled a gun to kill Columbo but was pounced on by hidden cops all around him.