Peter Gunn

This was one of the most provocative series ever made for TV, inaugurating a whole new genre. In addition to having the best music (by Henry Mancini) ever written for TV, it was perhaps the first and only film noire series.

Think crime shows of the 50's and you probably think Dragnet (1951-1959). Certainly, it was the most influential, presenting the LAPD as complete police professionals. Of course, there were other lesser known cop shows like Racket Squad (1951-1953) or the Lineup (1954- 1960). However, in terms of private eye crime solvers, there were very few until the end of the decade. Most crime in that decade was of the Old West variety that sheriffs solved amidst the flood of Westerns that followed Gunsmoke (1955-1975).

This remained pretty much the case until the big movie studios decided to get into the TV business. In 1958, Warner Bros. introduced the hip detective series 77 Sunset Strip (1958- 1964). Unlike its predecessors, Strip concentrated on good-looking people, hipster Edd Kookie Byrnes, and the glamorous surroundings along Hollywood's famed Sunset Strip. In short, it suggested that being a private eye doesn't have to be a grimy business, ala Sam Spade or Philip Marlowe. The series' success was quickly followed by such clones as Bourbon Street Beat (1959-1960), and Hawaiian Eye (1959-1963), all making use of the same basic formula. In short, the rising prosperity of that post-war decade was beginning to be reflected on the living room screen.

This background is worth outlining in order to provide a flavor of just how unique Blake Edwards's Peter Gunn was to the time and to the genre. Sure, 77 SS had a snappy musical lead-in, but Henry Mancini's driving jazz score signaled a new and more daring sensibility. But more significantly the jazzy motif framed both the characters and their setting as not just hip, but cool, urban cool, like in 'sophisticated'. And Edwards followed that up by wisely casting Craig Stevens as the immaculately sleek and unemotional private eye, the very essence of urban cool. Note how emotionally restrained his private eye is in most every situation.

Also worth noting is how the series populated its urban landscape with not only unusual but sometimes grotesque characters, ones never seen on network TV in those days. Note also that Gunn is portrayed as non-judgmental toward these unconventional types. He simply accepts them as part of the human landscape.

And, of course, there's also Edie (Albright) the sultry lounge singer. It's clear that her relationship with Gunn is both intimate and indifferent to the bonds of matrimony. To my knowledge, this is the first TV series to challenge that taboo even if only in implied style. Something should also be said about Mother, the proprietress of where Pete hangs out. It's clear that Mother, whether played by Emerson or Urecal, is not exactly Donna Reed. In fact she's closer to Mike Tyson, making it clear that producer Edwards is not afraid of a little gender bending, another challenge to convention of the day. In fact, the only conventional continuing character is Lt. Jacoby (Bernardi) as Gunn's cop buddy. This allows Gunn to be separate from law enforcement but not outside it—an important gesture to convention and likely TV's Standards and Practices.

Gunn is also likely the most noirish of the shows of its day. The traditional approach was high-key lighting that cast few shadows. This was also true of the other crime shows. Most of Edwards' production, however, was filmed in low-key lighting, whether dimly lit lounges or darkened city streets. My guess is that as an independently produced series, budget was as important here as was aesthetics. Anyway, the low-key lent not only atmosphere but complemented the rest of the production as a whole.

Put all these components together and Peter Gunn added up to an occasionally brilliant series even though the stories were often unexceptional. It was that overall exotic feel in contrast to those otherwise unadventurous TV years that carried the show, even down to today. All in all, Gunn was also the first series to foreshadow the coming cosmopolitan and liberalizing years of the Kennedy era. In that sense, it proved also something of a cultural milestone, and is thus worth commenting on.

Television from the mid '50's to the mid '60's, probably due to its roots in the theater, was far more stylized than today's fare. Most of us who watched it then, certainly as kids growing up, were probably not really aware of this aspect. We just watched and enjoyed. But in retrospect, or through seeing various classic shows on disc or tape, this stylistic aspect becomes very clear. Also lacking then was today's bottomless well of technological possibility, giving most productions of the time a rather cut-and-dried feel that might seem hopelessly lacking in dimensionality to the young viewer of this time. But there were true gems lying about in this older, rougher ground. It was this era, lest we forget, that spawned the peerless, original Twilight Zone, a series that perfectly sampled the over and undercurrents of its time as no other ever has, and which owed much of its power to the stark realities of low-tech TV. Also produced in this era was the superb Have Gun Will Travel with its perfect blend of psychological and physical intensity, one of several excellent western series that aired then.

But in terms of pure style, no TV series of that time, of any genre, could match the half-hour crime drama Peter Gunn, a production so stylized and stylistically detailed, and so measured, that it almost resembled Japanese Kabuki. Every aspect of this Blake Edwards-produced series was meticulously detailed and managed, from the near-blank style of its acting to even the visuals that preceded and terminated breaks for commercials. In fact, it was the pre-commercial segue that became my favorite. In the sequence, a musical G-clef unwound itself and morphed into a Giacommeti-like human figure, all against a slowly-arpeggiated, extremely cool jazz guitar chord. This very slick sequence got past me the first time around, when the show was in its network run and I was too young to really appreciate it. But years later, when the series was in local syndication and airing at midnight, I stayed up just to watch and listen to it. It was that cool.

Most Peter Gunn episodes were cut from a similar template: the caper to be addressed transpired in a pre-credit sequence (Peter Gunn was one of the first shows to jump directly to story before rolling opening creds.) Then Craig Steven's almost impossibly urbane private eye, Peter Gunn, would step onto the case, always bending the law just enough to keep Herschel Bernardi's way dour NYPD detective, Lt. Jacobi, unsure of whom to arrest first: Gunn or the perps in question. The often-repeated sight of Jacobi arriving on the scene, snub .38 drawn, ready to arrest the suspect, only to find Gunn already there and in control, never failed to amuse. When Gunn was not effortlessly staying two steps ahead of Jacobi, he was lizarding at Mother's, a waterfront jazz club, and getting his flirt on with its sultry headlining singer, blonde neutron bombshell Edie Hart, played by Lola Albright, a type of lady that might be defined as Marilyn Monroe's far more experienced sister. The show's sense of cool was almost too much, but not quite, a fact that made it eminently watchable then, and has allowed it to live on even now in syndication.

Underpinning and significantly defining the series was Henry Mancini's superb music. Mancini passed away in the mid 90's and is just now getting his due, including a postage stamp in his memory. His Peter Gunn theme is still being covered today but it was his incidental music for the series that I loved best, especially the stuff that played as the pre-credit story opened. Mancini took the then-popular West Coast, cool jazz sound and further iced it down, doing things like blending flute and tremoloed vibraphones to sustain a menacing, ever-darkening cloud behind the plot. Mancini was a master of all moods, which he crafted with lush harmonies and gliding melodies (The ageless Days of Wine and Roses and Moon River are his; lyrics by Johnny Mercer.) Mancini was very prolific and did many great things that sort of slid by while no one was really looking, probably because he never tried to acquire the spotlight himself, as himself. He mainly let his work do the walking and talking. His soundtrack to the movie Hatari (an intermittently very entertaining action flick with John Wayne as an African big game capture expert) remains worthy and remarkable to this day. As a freshman at the University of Idaho, I watched Mancini guest-conduct the university orchestra; the Maestro forbearing graciously as his `Baby Elephant Walk', an incidental piece from the Hatari soundtrack that became an international hit, was butchered by the inept flute section. It was heart-rending. Mancini also did the music for another similar but unsuccessful TV series, Mr. Lucky, based on the Cary Grant movie character from the mid-forties. Mr. Lucky died fairly quickly, but its theme music, featuring the squishiest, most liquid Hammond organ voice ever recorded, lives on, in my memory at least.

I watched the show every week as a teenager, but never appreciated the art that went into it. Shooting at night is difficult enough, but for a limited budget TV show, the workmanship has seldom been surpassed. Crane shots, deep focus, unusual camera heights and angles. All show how much care went into production. And the action was quite limited, replaced by excellent dialog and interesting characters. It seems the show used every set on the MGM back lot. Quite a treat for me after recently reading a book on the subject. Great show!

although i didn't get to see pete do his thing when the show originally aired from 1958-61 i have thoroughly enjoyed watching the released episodes on homevideo.peter gunn has the smoothest demeanor about the cases he works,but when he gets riled,look out.he can spar with the best of them.i'm sure it helps his image to be dating the pretty night club singer at the local scene called mothers.this way,it doesn't seem like he's just a hood bustin machine,but also a loverboy on the side.henry mancini does wonders for this show with its slick "crime jazz" that sets the tone at the beginning of each episode.i recommend anyone who is into police or detective stories to get into pete if they haven't already.