COLUMBO: SWAN SONG (TV)

Summary

One in this series of police dramas in which Los Angeles homicide detective Lt. Columbo's unassuming manner masks his keen intelligence and sharp investigative abilities.

Tommy Brown, a popular country music singer, performs in Bakersfield, California along with his band, including his wife Edna. He plans to fly a plane from there to their next stop in Los Angeles despite a report warning of inclement weather. Edna is involved with a project to construct a massive church, using profits from Tommy's tour to fund it. Tommy secretly packs a parachute into his navigation kit bag, and empties sleeping pills into a thermos filled with coffee. Edna arrives and speaks to him along with Maryann, one of his chorus girls. Tommy wants to keep some of the profits from his tour instead of directing them all into the church-building project, but Edna refuses to grant his request. She is the one responsible for getting him out of an Arkansas prison camp, and in return he married her. However, Tommy had a tryst with Maryann several years beforehand when she was underage, and Edna uses this to blackmail Tommy into compliance. Tommy instructs Luke, his road manager and Edna's brother, to personally transport his guitar on the equipment bus while he, Edna, and Maryann fly to Los Angeles.

They arrive at the Bakersfield airfield to receive their plane, and Tommy stops to chat to Jeff, one of the mechanics who works there. During the flight Tommy deactivates the cabin heat and gives Edna and Maryann the spiked coffee, causing them to fall asleep. He puts on his parachute, throws the thermos out of the plane and jumps out, sending the plane crashing into a mountainside. He lands nearby, injuring his leg, and hides the parachute in a hollow log. He then feigns unconsciousness near the flaming wreckage of the plane and is soon found by a pair of passer-bys. Later the local air safety department conducts an investigation of the crash site, and Columbo is sent by the police department to look for clues himself. He discusses the matter with Mr. Pangborn, a representative of the air safety department. The police received a complaint from Luke, who suspected that there may have been foul play, although Tommy told Pangborn in the hospital that the crash was caused by an electrical failure; Pangborn suspects that pilot error is the real cause. Columbo gathers several clues, noticing that Tommy's seatbelt was unfastened whereas the other passengers were buckled in; he also finds Tommy's navigation kit empty, without any remnants of its contents.

Columbo then visits the mortuary where Edna has been interred to speak to Luke. He questions Luke, who reveals that he handled Tommy's navigation kit until he made the drive to the airfield. He believes that Tommy is responsible for the crash and that he attempted to murder Edna, knowing that Edna had some sort of information on him but unaware of its exact nature. He requests that Columbo question Tommy immediately and also insists on accompanying him. They arrive at a big house Tommy rented from the hospital, where Tommy is throwing a party. Luke angrily confronts Tommy with his accusations and punches him in the face. Tommy, incensed, fires Luke and has him carried off the premises. Columbo calms Tommy down and speaks to him in private, calling his questions a "formality" on behalf of the police department. Tommy makes no secret of his marital problems with Edna and his prison record. When Columbo asks about the seatbelt, Tommy claims he had unbuckled it to try to retrieve a flashlight from the plane's glove compartment. He also claims that the papers in his navigation kit were lost due to suction from the open plane window. Tommy shows Columbo his custom guitar, explaining that he didn't take it on the plane with him since he worried how the altitude might affect its special construction. Columbo says that Luke grew suspicious of Tommy due to parting with his guitar before the plane took off, the first time he had ever done so.

At the Bakersfield airfield Columbo questions Jeff, who says that he handled all of Tommy's luggage except for the navigation kit. He also tells Columbo about Tommy's thermos, which Columbo believes could be a vital clue. Tommy attempts to seduce Tina, the new singer he hired to replace Maryann. Columbo arrives and asks Tommy some further questions, all the while making it seem that his headquarters is forcing him to be unusually thorough on this case. He asks about the thermos, particularly since it couldn't be found amongst the plane's wreckage. Tommy suggests that it could have been thrown from the plane just as he was, and could be hundreds of feet away from the crash site. Columbo asks about when Tommy learned to fly, and Tommy reveals that he washed out of cadet training in the air force twenty years ago, but later received a civilian pilot's license. Columbo also asks about Tommy's foreknowledge of the inclement weather between Bakersfield and Los Angeles, and Tommy claims that he would have left earlier but was waylaid by his fans in Bakersfield. Columbo also overhears a phone conversation wherein Tommy scraps Edna's church-building project, but reveals to Tommy that he already knew about it from questioning the church's architects earlier that day.

Next, Columbo questions the air force colonel whom Tommy served under. He reveals that after Tommy failed his cadet training, he was assigned to parachute rigging. He asks questions about the size, materials, and rate of descent afforded by modern parachutes, and calls the police medical examiner to request that autopsies be performed on Edna and Maryann's bodies. Columbo then visits Tommy in his recording studio, listening to a playback of a concert that Tommy played on the previous night. He notes differences between the live recording and the studio version of the same song. He tells Tommy that the autopsy revealed that Edna and Maryann both had heavy doses of sleeping pills in their systems at the time of death despite their religious beliefs forbidding the use of such things. Tommy claims that they took the pills in order to counteract airsickness. Apparently satisfied with this explanation, Columbo leaves, asking only for a copy of the recording of the previous night's concert.

He then visits the temporary headquarters of Edna's organization, where seamstresses are busy sewing the robes worn by Tommy's singers. He determines that they are made of nylon, the same material used in the making of parachutes. He and one of the seamstresses discover that several bolts of nylon are missing from the reserve supply. At the air safety department headquarters, Columbo and Pangborn try to determine if a parachute using the given amount of nylon could fit inside a standard navigation kit. It does, but a proper harness for strapping it on would not. However, Columbo guesses that Tommy's training in the air force could have given him the expertise to fashion a homemade harness able to fit inside the navigation kit. Upon further questioning they determine that a parachute of the given size would result in a faster rate of descent, possibly leading to Tommy's injured leg. Pangborn points out that destroying the parachute afterwards would have attracted too much attention, and Columbo deduces that Tommy hid the parachute near the crash site. He is also convinced that Tommy threw the thermos bottle out of the plane during the flight.

Columbo speaks to Tommy again, playing his tape of the original studio version of Tommy's song and the version performed at the recent concert back-to-back. He notes a difference in the arrangement: Tommy's manager told Columbo that the difference was to account for the loss of Maryann, a soprano, and the inclusion of Tina, a contralto. However, Columbo points out that it usually takes a week to devise a new arrangement; Tommy says that he was planning on firing Maryann and replacing her with Tina even before the crash. Columbo convinces Tommy that he thinks that someone was trying to murder him by spiking his coffee, and claims that he is calling in a number of support groups to comb the mountainside looking for the missing thermos. He does this in the hopes of planting a seed of doubt in Tommy's mind, making him believe that they are in fact looking for the parachute.

Tommy announces that he is leaving immediately for a concert tour and won't be back for months. Columbo follows Tommy to the airport under the pretense of protecting him, and watches as Tommy goes through airport security. Tommy departs on an airplane for San Francisco and for a moment it seems as though Tommy got away, but in the airport parking lot Columbo is struck with inspiration. That night, Tommy drives to the crash site to retrieve the parachute, but Columbo is there waiting for him. He tells Tommy how he figured out he would be returning: in the airport he noticed Tommy put his keys on a tray while going through a metal detector, but later realized that the keys were for a rented car, thus making it illogical that he would bring them on the plane with him. Columbo estimated the amount of time it would take for Tommy to take a plane back to Los Angeles and was there in time to intercept him. At this, Tommy surrenders himself to Columbo, although Columbo guesses that Tommy would have eventually given himself up, a supposition which Tommy agrees with. Commercials deleted.

Details

• NETWORK: NBC
• DATE: March 3, 1974 8:30 PM
• RUNNING TIME: 1:38:19
• COLOR/B&W: Color
• CATALOG ID: B:74420
• GENRE: Drama, police/detective
• SUBJECT HEADING: Drama, police/detective
• SERIES RUN: NBC - TV series, 1968-1978; ABC - 1989-2003
• COMMERCIALS: N/A

CREDITS

• Roland Kibbe … Executive Producer
• Dean Hargrove … Executive Producer
• Edward K. Dodds … Producer
• Nicholas Colasanto … Director
• Richard Levinson … Created by
• William Link … Created by
• David Rayfiel … Writer
• Stanley Ralph Ross … Writer
• Dick de Benedictis … Music by
• Henry Mancini … Theme Music by
• Peter Falk … Cast, Columbo
• Johnny Cash … Cast, Tommy Brown
• Ida Lupino … Cast, Edna Basket Brown
• John Dehner … Cast, Roland Pangborn
• Sorrell Booke … Cast, J. J. Stringer
• Bill McKinney … Cast, Luke Basket
• Vito Scotti … Cast, Mr. Grindell
• Janit Baldwin … Cast, Tina
• John Randolph … Cast, The Colonel
• Lucille Meredith … Cast, Lady
• Richard Caine … Cast, Bennett
• Donald Mantooth … Cast, Phil
• Jefferson Kibbee … Cast, Frank
• Bonnie Van Dyke … Cast, Maryann
• Doug Dirkson … Cast, Jeff
• Larry Burrell … Cast, TV Reporter
• Mike Edward Lally … Cast, TV Cameraman
• Tom McFadden … Cast, Police Pilot
• Harry Harvey Sr. … Cast, Manager