Mon, Apr 27, 1959
Mr. Bowers booby-traps his basement, electrocuting his wife when she turns on an overhead bulb. Next, the widower ties the knot with a mousy heiress, Maggie, whom he has seduced. While Edie warbles "when the lights start lighting the town", Maggie's quibbling older sisters, one controlling and their other daffy, along with their pince-nezed attorney James Bond, drive to Mother's in their antique Baker Electric car (c1913) to employ Gunn to investigate Bowers, whom they accurately suspect is only interested in Maggie's money. Gunn detects he's an ex-con blackmailer, but the new bride doesn't fret, although Bond warns her she'll be the next victim.
Mon, Mar 9, 1959
Late at night in an empty greasy spoon, a mug coolly kills the owner, but when the register yields only $14, he just shrugs and unscrews his silencer. The diner was Lt. Jacoby's teenage hangout, so he rabidly pursues the murderer, while struggling to prevent a mob leader from muscling in on Jacoby's side of the river. To help Jacoby, Peter Gunn pays diminutive pool shark Babby (Billy Barty) for a lead.
Mon, Mar 23, 1959
A Murphy game blackmailing trio target lonely male bowlers from out-of-town, murdering an uncooperative one with a bowling ball. After his own tryst in the blackmailers' Poke Street love nest, bowling conclave organizer Woolrich (Jackie Coogan, Uncle Fester of "The Addams Family") hires Peter Gunn to nab the perps on the down-low. Gunn goes way undercover at Shelly's Manne-Hole, grooving to cool sounds by Shelly Manne & His Men. Drummer Manne's LP riffing on Henry Mancini's music from "Peter Gunn" hit the racks simultaneously with this episode. As a bow-tied hayseed from Springfield, Illinois, Gunn's ripe for picking by the female blackmailer (Mara Corday, a 1958 Playmate of the Month).
Mon, Apr 6, 1959
England 1945: Working late, an arrogant textile scientist assures the failing factory's owner, Gregory Spain, he'll soon perfect his long-promised miracle fabric. After the owner heads home, the scientist urges a homeless man he just hired on to sweep out his lab, to try on one of the scientist's own suits, then knocks the janitor out and blows up the factory with a bomb. After serving 14 years for insurance fraud and for murdering the scientist, the factory owner traces the scientist, who framed him, to the U.S., where Spain hires Peter Gunn to flush his quarry out into his gun-sights.