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Imagine Cary Grant with
a cigaret and a handgun
By CHUCK McFADDEN
of TheColumnists.com
Back in the days of skinny neckties and wide sidewalls, when television came in two colors--black and white--there was a detective series on Monday nights that was the absolute epitome of what all we callow striplings wanted to be when we grew up.
We wanted to be like "Peter Gunn." He was cool, in an age when to be cool was just about all that mattered.
Craig Stevens was Peter Gunn, and he was perfect in the role. Stevens-Gunn never had a hair out of place. The phrase “impeccably tailored” was made for him. He almost always wore a business suit and tie. Cufflinks. Once in a while it was a sports jacket, but, by God, it was an expensive one.
And he always had his jacket buttoned. I mean, there was a sequence once where Gunn --walking along a deserted country road in his suit and tie, natch--was attacked by a vicious dog. Gunn quickly wrapped his trenchcoat around his arm and was dealing with the dog until help arrived. When he got up, his tie was in place and his jacket remained buttoned. I mean, c’mon, was that cool, or what?
He was imperturbable. A baddie held a gun on him? No sweat. Literally. They must have had an assistant on the set who was specially hired to wipe Stevens’ brow between takes, because he never broke a sweat on camera.
Lola Albright played Gunn’s blonde girlfriend, Edie. Albright had it all. She was drop-dead gorgeous, intelligent, had a nice singing voice and could act. To watch her was to fall in love with her. She played the singer at Mother’s, the nightclub where Gunn hung out. She was hopelessly in love with Gunn, who returned her affection good naturedly when he was not otherwise engaged in foiling bad guys. It wasn’t that Gunn was cold. He was just not going to be distracted by a charming, beautiful, willing woman. He was, well, cool.
Stevens was your basic second-tier Cary Grant type who had bumped along in Hollywood making a living, but not making it big. He appeared, for instance, in “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington” as a reporter.
So both Stevens and Albright were journeyman actors when they were hired for the series by its creator, Blake Edwards. Edwards was later to achieve even greater fame and success as the producer and director of the “Pink Panther” movies starring the distinctly uncool Peter Sellers.
When “Peter Gunn" was over, Stevens did appear in some big-screen movies, including "Gunn," Blake Edwards' unsuccessful 1967 attempt to launch a "Peter Gunn" movie franchise. (The movie, which left out Lola Albright, was co-authored by author William Peter Blatty of "The Exorcist" fame.) Stevens also did a lot of stage work, touring with his wife. (He was in the 1981 Edwards movie “S.O.B.,” now chiefly remembered because Julie Andrews, Edwards’ wife, bared her breasts.)
Albright was a highly successful television performer, doing guest appearances in almost every television series there ever was after “Peter Gunn” ended. But neither reached the heights they had during their three years of “Peter Gunn.”
In the world of Peter Gunn, everyone smoked. All the time. The per-episode consumption of cigarettes on that show must have been stupendous. Remember, this was before the surgeon general’s 1964 warning about tobacco and lung cancer. Many of the scenes were photographed through what seemed to be clouds and clouds of cigarette smoke. Hey, it was glamorous, right?
“Peter Gunn” became a groundbreaking series by creating its own music. In fact, what most people remember about the series today, if they remember it at all, was the pulsating, pounding, wonderful theme music written by Henry Mancini. Remember? Dum-da-dum-da-DUM-da-dum? Producers before then had for the most part relied on stock libraries of canned music for their shows. Mancini’s brilliance put “Gunn” a step ahead.
The show started on NBC in 1958, ran there only until 1960, and then had a final year on ABC, ending its three-year run in 1961. Today, the show is somewhat dated, although fun to watch. Its attitude toward the world was late 50’s, early 60’s, when Americans entering the Kennedy era fancied themselves sophisticated and worldly.
In a way, “Peter Gunn” is a testimonial to acting and actors. On the surface, Craig Stevens did not have the kind of personal background that would have made him a natural Peter Gunn. He was born in Liberty, Missouri in 1918 and his real name was Gail (cq) Shikles, Jr. And far from being the lone wolf man-about-town bachelor he portrayed on “Gunn,” he had married the actress Alexis Smith in 1944 and was happily married to her for 49 years, until she died of cancer in 1993. Stevens himself died in May of 2000 at age 81. (Despite all his cigarettes.) Lola Albright was born in 1925 in Akron, Ohio and at last report was living in retirement in Southern California.
The series is available on DVD. Get it. If you’re a male, you’ll fall in love with Albright. It’s fun to watch “Gunn” as a memoir of a far different time in America, with a much different view of what kind of people we wanted to be. And Mancini’s music is still wonderful.
©2005 by Charles M. McFadden. The McFadden caricature is ©2001 by Jim Hummel. The illustration is from the first DVD collection of "Peter Gunn." This column first posted on Jan. 17, 2005.
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