A Look Back At The TV Series

I recently bought the two DVD sets of the first season of Peter Gunn. I hadn’t seen the show since it ended in the early 1960s. It was a weird experience. For starters, each show winds up being about 24 minutes, since there are no commercials. Too bad; it would have been fun to see them, too. The opening show, called "The Kill," established the typical format, practically carbon-copied for every episode thereafter.

When the show opens, we hear a walking bass on the soundtrack, followed by growling trombones and thunderous low piano chords. Two cops pull a car over, then shoot the occupant. It's very film-noirish: dark streets, neon signs, big sedans, dour men in suits. The driver collapses on the horn, and it blares interminably as the cops pull away. Then the credits roll and the theme blasts for 15 seconds.

In the next scene, Gunn is at the victim's funeral (he was a mob boss) and runs into police detective Lt. Jacoby (Hershel Bernardi), who asks rudely, "What are you doing here?" That’s one half of the essence of their relationship - private detective getting his nose in police business - the other half being mutual respect and an understanding that they often depend on each other for information.

When the funeral is over, some gangsters threaten Gunn, and we've figured out now that they were the phony cops who rubbed out the boss, so they can take over leadership of the gang. Bluesy, unobtrusive music plays in the background, adding a sense of uneasiness. In the next scene, Gunn drops into Mother's. The combo is playing what was to become "Brief and Breezy" on the album.

Confirming Bain's story, there's Tommy Tedesco acting like he's playing the guitar. We meet Mother (Fay Emerson), the club owner, who is worldly and street smart. Up steps Edie at the mike, and we hear her sing a lightly swinging version of "Day In, Day Out," as the camera zooms in on the seductive smile she flashes at Gunn. Then one of the gangsters walks in and buys a drink.

After the song, Gunn goes up the stairs to the roof, and Edie soon follows. It will prove to be a popular hangout for them. This is where Blake Edwards shows us the nature of their love affair - he's always off working on a case, and she gets stuck alone. Their conversation is full of wisecracks, much like the banter between Cary Grant (actor Stevens is almost a dead ringer for him) and Eva Marie Saint in North By Northwest, or any movie with Bogie and Bacall. We hear a tune faintly from the club downstairs, and it later shows up on the album as "Slow and Easy." It is.

Gunn goes to visit the gangsters, accompanied by the walking bass, a snaking alto flute, and a few horns jumping in and out. A fight finally breaks out, and the music screams as the scene fades to Mother's, where Edie stands by the piano while Emmett (Bill Chadney, who later married Lola Albright) improvises a soft blues. Of course, it's really John Williams on the soundtrack. For me, the closing-time ambience of this scene is one of the best moments in the show.

Several more violent scenes follow, culminating in the obligatory gun battle, while more tense jazz fills the soundtrack. In the final scene, Edie is singing "Day In, Day Out" again as Gunn looks at her longingly. Then we fade to the theme and closing credits, this time, 40 seconds long.

I watched all 32 episodes over a period of about two weeks. The formulaic and predictable plots and resolutions are oddly comforting, if not very artful. And they were certainly filmed on the cheap. Two things make it highly entertaining, one being the well-drawn characters and underplayed acting, especially from Lola Albright, who, like Bette Davis, steals every scene she's in with just the bat of an eye. The other is Mancini's music, which gives it life. In fact, you come away with the feeling that the whole thing was created to fit the music, and that the actors are speaking their lines rhythmically, as if they were lyrics to a song.

About the weekly soundtrack sessions, Bain remembers, "The music was always good. Hank wrote so well. You never knew what you were going to run into. On some of those cues, all we had to do was play 20 or 30 seconds, but they were interesting."

In subsequent episodes, that proves true. Just when you think you've heard it all before, the composer comes up with a fresh idea, like an unusual combination of instruments, something he remained well known for his entire career. For instance, in "Pecos Pete," a show on Disc 3, a 30-second cue leading up to a murder is underscored by a twangy, insistent guitar riff, a heavy rock beat banged out on the drums, and a some menacing saxes. It's fun, and it works. And there are surprises for devoted Mancini fans. In several shows, a pianist plays a haunting tune that later became "White On White," which is on the soundtrack to Experiment In Terror.