I was only five years old in 1959, so I missed out on some firsthand experience when it comes to the very early days of dramatic television. My repertoire of TV included Howdy Doody, The Merry Mailman, and Romper Room. My mom would let me watch The Loretta Young Show with her on occasions where my bedtime could be fudged, but for the most part, I was dreaming little girl dreams during prime-time when history was being forged on the small screen. Writers and directors were just beginning to feel their way into stories of crime and melodrama tailored for the compact world of television’s time slots, advertisers, and wide-ranging audiences.
One such gem of 1950s TV was just released on DVD, and although I had never heard of it or seen any episodes, I bought it on Amazon for $21.99 faster than a New York minute. It’s called Johnny Staccato, and it’s a half-hour jazz musician/detective series starring John Cassavetes, one of my true celluloid heroes. Its 27 episodes aired in 1959, and I am happy to say they all now reside in my 2010, soon to be 2011, house. I know without a doubt that Johnny, his musician buddies, the Elmer Bernstein theme song, and all the oh-my-God-I-know-who-that-is guest stars that stroll through his murder cases will thrill me through this long, dark, cold winter.
Cassavetes plays Staccato just the way you’d want him to; part loner, part soft-hearted cynic, part beatnik in a suit and tie, and always straight up cool. His headquarters is Waldo’s jazz club in Greenwich Village, and each episode opens in the smoky atmosphere of that subterranean joint, inhabited by jazz musicians and club-goers nodding their heads to the beat, cigarettes dangling from their mouths. Waldo holds onto Johnny’s gun for him behind the bar so he’s ready to take off when the blonde bombshell staggers in wailing that someone just shot her guy. Staccato narrates in voiceover, very Raymond Chandler-esque, how the gal leads him across the city to Tokyo Town “going west to east from Waldo’s, with each sound in the air telling me to turn back.”
Along the way through each noir-scented adventure, he runs into Michael Landon, Elizabeth Montgomery, Martin Landau, and other famous faces playing victims or villains, and all looking about twenty-five years old. Mostly because they were. Thirty-year-old Cassavetes was just on the cusp of his own legendary career as a cinema verite indie filmmaker, with Shadows, Faces, Husbands, and A Woman Under the Influence yet to come. Encouraging improvisation among his actors, Cassavetes worked mostly with a stock group he could count on including his wife, Gena Rowlands, and friends Ben Gazzara and Peter Falk. So far I’ve watched six of the 27 episodes, so I can’t say yet if any of them are part of Johnny Staccato’s uber cool landscape, but as the winter drags on, one can only hope.
For some modern day noir, check out Turf Dancing in the Rain on the streets of Oakland, CA