You all have me to thank for this, as I finally got off the dime and made the effort to buy all the formerly released DVDs just this past year.
They did a couple of child molester radio shows on Dragnet, but I wasn't aware of a tv counterpart.Hollywoodaholic said:So I'm slowly going through this set - the complete series would probably take me years, and I get to the episode "The One Marked Hot Gives Cold" with Robert Duvall and... Holy Crap... it's a child molester story. Duvall is perfectly cast, and he's played some Boo weirdos in his careers, but yikes, the subtext of this episode, and the scene where he meets the father who gave him up to an orphanage (the father literally crawls across the floor toward him sniveling like a worm), it was just bizarre. Unbelievable how something like this was airing at the same period as Father Knows Best or Donna Reed.
The year is 1962, and you quickly realize that around the same time, Duvall played quite the heroin junkie going cold turkey on sister show Route 66, and also played the 'affected' museum creep obsessed with a museum dollhouse in The Twilight Zone episode "The Miniature." But here I'm watching this episode wondering why this grown man is wandering around the zoo and the park with this 12 year-old girl and thinking... really... does this mean... are they really going to go there... yep. No wonder the sniveling dad heads for the hills in the end.
Many of these episodes have been so-so. The Best-of set seems to be more about the guest star than the quality of the episode, but there is some awesomely provocative stuff in here. The episode just prior to this in the set was Stirling Silliphant's very eclectic and disturbing meditation on the death penalty "Prime of Life" as Burke has to witness a murderer he caught die in the electric chair. Two extremely disturbing but riveting dramatic episodes in a row. Just had to comment.
I think your characterization of the Robert Duvall episode of Naked City as a "child molester story" is a bit of an unfair simplification. If I recall the episode correctly, the woman in Duvall's building suggests that he was misbehaving with the girl, but it seems to me that she only says that because she was spurned by Duvall, and don't the police ultimately decide that she was lying? Granted, it does seem strange that a guy Duvall's age is friends with this girl, but to assume he is mistreating her, I think, is a mistake and not what the makers of the program intended.Hollywoodaholic said:So I'm slowly going through this set - the complete series would probably take me years, and I get to the episode "The One Marked Hot Gives Cold" with Robert Duvall and... Holy Crap... it's a child molester story. Duvall is perfectly cast, and he's played some Boo weirdos in his careers, but yikes, the subtext of this episode, and the scene where he meets the father who gave him up to an orphanage (the father literally crawls across the floor toward him sniveling like a worm), it was just bizarre. Unbelievable how something like this was airing at the same period as Father Knows Best or Donna Reed.
The year is 1962, and you quickly realize that around the same time, Duvall played quite the heroin junkie going cold turkey on sister show Route 66, and also played the 'affected' museum creep obsessed with a museum dollhouse in The Twilight Zone episode "The Miniature." But here I'm watching this episode wondering why this grown man is wandering around the zoo and the park with this 12 year-old girl and thinking... really... does this mean... are they really going to go there... yep. No wonder the sniveling dad heads for the hills in the end.
That was my first take, but it's very clear they are taking him away for the crime at the end of the episode (and they weren't going to back out of it or give the audience an 'out'), and it's also very clear that the son's (Duvall's) confession to the father was real in the sense that he is basically telling his coward father, "You see what you're abandoning me did to me; it made me a monster."I think the intention of the writer is extremely clear, but they obviously couldn't play up any scenes with Duvall and the girl that were untoward. The fact that the jilted woman outed him doesn't mean it wasn't true, even if she didn't really know. She just knew it was an entirely wrong relationship to begin with. The writer was also careful to show the type of parenting that could lead to a girl being vulnerable to the inappropriate attentions of an older man when you see her father and mother completely ignoring her at home in their own vain pursuits. These were all signposts of what drama at the time could get away with in depicting a touchy story. The fact they made the character somewhat sympathetic is why I said the Duvall casting was perfect. I can see why you'd root for him to be innocent - he's Boo Radley for goshsakes, but that's not what the elements of the story were hinting at. One of the great assets of this show was that it didn't need to hit viewers over the head like so many shows do and continue to do to get their point across.John DeAngelis said:I think your characterization of the Robert Duvall episode of Naked City as a "child molester story" is a bit of an unfair simplification. If I recall the episode correctly, the woman in Duvall's building suggests that he was misbehaving with the girl, but it seems to me that she only says that because she was spurned by Duvall, and don't the police ultimately decide that she was lying? Granted, it does seem strange that a guy Duvall's age is friends with this girl, but to assume he is mistreating her, I think, is a mistake and not what the makers of the program intended.
You're not the first one to notice this crazy detail! http://www.dialbforblog.com/archives/531/ (and other places online)Hollywoodaholic said:So I'm watching the next episode in the 10-disc set called "Hold for Gloria Christmas" and I just have to point out that in the first five minutes there's a scene that takes place at a curbside newsstand, and hanging directly in camera frame so close you can reach out and grab it... is a copy of Amazing Fantasy #15. For you comic aficionados, that is the first appearance of Spiderman in Marvel Comics.
Shatner had a toupee? Was it eligible for an Emmy?Hollywoodaholic said:Where were the acting police when William Shatner played a psychopathic artist in "Portrait of a Painter"?Theodore Bikel cleaned the floorboards up with him. The only impressive thing about Shatner's really misconceived performance in this episode... awesome toupee (except when he's laying in bed at one point and it moves a bit up and down on his forehead).