Streetcar Jones

This second entry in the ground-breaking series helps set the pace. The cool jazz sounds echo throughout, along with Pete's unflappable demeanor. That plus a noirish atmosphere announce the arrival of urban hip. A few random comments follow.

Catch that glaring eye mock-up on the nightclub front; it's big enough to unsettle viewers of any decade. Also, catch that neat camera work that projects a lengthening shadow of a man exiting a room instead of just letting him exit. It's that sort of visual imagination that distinguished the series. Then there's poor, beautiful Edie, hanging on to her man, as he goes inexorably about his business. Come on Pete, first things first. Speaking of business, the plot revolves around a murdered jazzman, and is fairly standard except for the recurring jazz motif. Mustn't forget the jailed Streetcar making cool sounds on his cell bars. After years of bruised ears listening to cons banging on bars, this is a definite departure. Note too the brief discussion of the aesthetics of jazz music-- you don't "understand" the sounds, instead you sort of roll with them. In short, it's an experience, not a concept. All in all, this provocative early entry belongs in the front rank of the series and helps set the pace.

(In passing—it's an interesting cast. As shown here, Black man Leigh Whipper was an actor of compelling talents. In the classic western The Ox-Bow Incident (1943), it's his street-wise preacher that lends the movie its peculiar sense of soul. So if you haven't seen it, please do. Then there's Carlo Fiore, Marlon Brando's long-time buddy and hanger-on (IMDB). Here he does a good job banging on both the xylophone and the prison bars. And finally there's the unknown Patricia Powell who projects a vivid sense of superiority that shows talent. Too bad she has only 8 film credits in an unexplained abbreviated career.)

I love the Peter Gunn series, essentially a film noir TV series. All that's missing is Humphrey Bogart! However, this episode revealed the one flaw in the series: 26 minutes per story is far too short.

Episode 1 somehow managed to pack everything in within that time but Episode 2 suffers with some major pacing problems. This develop in leisurely fashion and then suddently, bam!, we have a resolution and it's over.

As the final scene was playing out I kept thinking "This can't be the ending, can it? But it was.

It's still interesting enough but the ultimate feeling is one of deflation, rather than one of having been entertained.

During a performance at a jazz club as the headliner introes a fellow musician, that person is revealed to have a knife in his back as he keels over! So Pete has to solve his murder but, as one would expect, he gets lots of resistance. I'll stop there and just say this was a fine second ep of this now-classic series. Some of the reviewers have complained these eps are perhaps too short with the less than 30-minute running time. Part of me seems to agree with that though enough material seems to have happened to make it mostly entertaining enough to watch from beginning to end. Anyway, "Streetcar Jones" is highly recommended.

This episode is full of jive talk of the late '50s. The ironic thing is, many of the words are still being used today frequently, like "like" where it shouldn't be and "cool," which never seems to go out of style.

Crazy.

No, "crazy" means "cool," too, but is one of the expressions not used in years. Anyway, this story involves jazz musicians so you get a lot of the hip lingo. "Streetcar Jones" sounds a lot like "Maynard G. Krebs," if you're old enough to remember him, too.

"Streetcar" is the prime suspect of a murder of a fellow jazz artist. The victim was not well-liked by any of his peers, though, so the killer could be anyone. However, since he didn't up a struggle, the guess is that he's a fellow musician, someone he wouldn't turn his back on. I don't want to ruin it by saying how it exactly was, or even if it was a musician.

Leigh Whipper was fun to watch as the goateed jazzman "Lodi," This was his last acting role. The man was 82 years old when he played this part!! He came close to living 100 years.

Carlo Fiore, who played "Streetcar," had a limited career and had drug problems for decades. This role was perfect for him. For a guy with such a short acting career, he has a long and interesting biography here on IMDb.

Suffice to say this a fun episode to both hear and see. Ya "dig?"

A jazz musician is found dead as he is about to perform. Another jazz performer Streetcar Jones has been arrested.

Peter Gunn is hired to investigate. You dig.

It seems that the dead man did not have a jazz soul, he stole riffs. Gunn also finds that for a musician on a payroll he had a healthy bank balance.

Given the setting in jazz clubs such as The Big Eye which has a sign of a big eye. Something straight out of a Hitchcock movie. There is a lot of hip jazz talk and lots of jazz music featured here.

It is the second episode and I am not sold on the script. It is hackneyed. Gunn seems to be doing the job that the crime squad should be doing.

Could the police not figure out who has been paying the dead man such large sums of money?