Columbo (season 4)

Columbo (season 4)
Country of origin	United States
No. of episodes	6
Release
Original network	NBC
Original release	September 15, 1974 – April 27, 1975

This is a list of episodes from the fourth season of Columbo.

Broadcast history

The season originally aired Sundays at 8:30-10:00 pm (EST) as part of The NBC Sunday Mystery Movie.

DVD release

The season was released on DVD by Universal Home Video.

Episodes

No. in series	No. in season	Title	Directed by	Written by	Runtime	Original air date
26	1	"An Exercise in Fatality"	Bernard L. Kowalski	Teleplay: Peter S. Fischer Story: Larry Cohen	94 minutes	September 15, 1974
Renowned exercise guru Milo Janus (Robert Conrad) runs a chain of successful gyms that operate under his name. But even his charm isn't enough to calm the anger of business partner and franchise owner Gene Stafford (Philip Bruns), who's found out how Janus overcharges his own corporation for equipment and supplies, depositing the profits in offshore bank accounts. When Stafford threatens to go public with what he's found, leaving Janus open to fraud and extortion investigations, Janus kills him, and makes it look like Stafford was trying to lift a weight too heavy for him. Collin Wilcox plays Ruth Stafford, Gretchen Corbett a secretary and Pat Harrington, Jr. a business associate of Milo's.
27	2	"Negative Reaction"	Alf Kjellin	Peter S. Fischer	92 minutes	October 6, 1974
After years of tolerating his domineering and bitter wife Frances (Antoinette Bower), professional photographer Paul Galesko (Dick Van Dyke) decides to kill her. He hires ex-con Alvin Deschler (Don Gordon) to rent an isolated ranch house. Galesko takes Frances there, ties her to a chair, takes photographs, then shoots her. He sets things up so that it will look like he is elsewhere when the pictures were taken. Galesko then meets Deschler at a junkyard for a staged ransom drop. After shooting Deschler with a revolver, Galesko shoots himself in the leg with the pistol used in the first murder, then plants that gun on Deschler so that it will appear he killed the "kidnapper" in self-defense. JoAnna Cameron plays Galesko's assistant, with whom he is planning a romantic getaway. Michael Strong, Larry Storch, Vito Scotti, and John Ashton also guest star.
28	3	"By Dawn's Early Light"	Harvey Hart	Howard Berk	94 minutes	October 27, 1974
Colonel Lyle C. Rumford (Patrick McGoohan), head of the Haynes Military Academy, an all-boys school, is told by Board of Trustees president William Haynes (Tom Simcox) that it must convert to a coed school as a solution to declining enrollment. Haynes, grandson of the academy's founder and once a cadet under the colonel, has furthermore decided to fire his hated former commandant. Rumford would rather not go that way. So he rigs a school cannon by blocking its discharge with a cleaning rag, then modifies the shell with a more powerful explosive so that the cannon will explode when Haynes fires it on Founder's Day. Rumford pins the "accident" on emotionally troubled cadet Roy Springer (Mark Wheeler), who had gun-cleaning duty. Rumford is trapped by Columbo due to his own fanatic sense of duty. With this episode McGoohan won the first of his two Emmy Awards for Outstanding Guest Actor in a Drama Series. His second was for Agenda for Murder. Father and son Bruce Kirby and Bruno Kirby co-star, as a sergeant and a cadet, respectively. Bruce Kirby appears in a number of Columbo episodes. Location filming took place at The Citadel, The Military College of South Carolina.
29	4	"Troubled Waters"	Ben Gazzara	Teleplay: William Driskill Story: Jackson Gillis and William Driskill	94 minutes	February 9, 1975
While aboard a Mexican cruise he takes frequently, auto executive Hayden Danziger (Robert Vaughn) has been having an affair with the ship's lounge singer Rosanna Wells (Poupée Bocar). When Wells threatens to expose their affair to Danziger's wife, Sylvia (Jane Greer), Danziger decides to get rid of her. To set up his alibi, he inhales some amyl nitrite to feign a heart attack in the swimming pool, so that he will be checked into the ship's infirmary. During a lapse in security, Danziger dons a crewman's uniform, sneaks out of his infirmary bed, and waits in Wells's cabin for her performance break. When she comes back, Danziger shoots her, plants evidence to implicate a band musician (Dean Stockwell), ditches the pistol and returns to the infirmary before the doctors can find him missing. Columbo, who happens to be enjoying the same cruise with his wife, is pressed into service by the ship's captain (Patrick Macnee). Bernard Fox and Robert Douglas also guest star.
30	5	"Playback"	Bernard L. Kowalski	David P. Lewis & Booker T. Bradshaw	73 minutes	March 2, 1975
Harold Van Wick (Oskar Werner), the gadget-obsessed president of Midas Electronics, has wired his estate-home with closed-circuit television cameras and video recorders. His costly fascination with gadgetry raises the ire of his frugal mother-in-law Margaret Midas (Martha Scott), who owns the company. She orders him to resign his post, threatening to otherwise expose Van Wick's philandering ways, but Van Wick has already set in motion a scheme to murder her. Van Wick rigs his high-tech home security system and shoots Margaret when she is in the viewing field of one camera, feeding a recording of an empty study to the guard monitoring the estate's rooms. Having already forced open a window and planted footprints outside it to make the murder look like the deed of a burglar, he then uses a timer to play back the tape of the shooting to the gatehouse guard's monitor to make it look like Margaret was shot by an intruder after Van Wick had left the house for a party. Gena Rowlands portrays Van Wick's wheelchair-bound wife Elizabeth, who proves instrumental in convicting her husband. Robert Brown played Arthur Midas, Margaret's son. Trisha Noble was also a guest star.
31	6	"A Deadly State of Mind"	Harvey Hart	Peter S. Fischer	73 minutes	April 27, 1975
Psychiatrist Dr. Mark Collier (George Hamilton) kills Carl Donner (Stephen Elliott) with a fireplace poker after a confrontation over Collier's affair with Donner's wife, Nadia (Lesley Ann Warren), who is one of Collier's patients. Collier concocts a cover story involving a home robbery gone astray. But when Columbo catches on, Collier tries to clear himself of any suspicion by hypnotizing Nadia into taking a deadly dive into a swimming pool from her fifth-story balcony. Although Columbo (unusually) admits he cannot prove Collier killed Nadia, a witness to his first murder, a blind man walking past the house as Collier was leaving, proves to be his undoing.