Affair of the Heart (20 Mar. 1977)

To fend off a nagging Assistant District Attorney, Mac invites her to his weekly poker game. Among the other participants is Mac's dentist, who consoles Mac for biting himself while his ... See full summary »

Director:

Jackie Cooper

Writers:

Leonard Stern (created by), Steven Bochco

Stars:

Rock Hudson, Martha Raye, Richard Gilliland

Cast

Episode cast overview, first billed only:
Rock Hudson	...	Police Commissioner Stewart 'Mac' McMillan
Martha Raye	...	Agatha
Richard Gilliland	...	Sgt. Steve DiMaggio
Larry Hagman	...	Dr. Wesley Corman
Barbara Babcock	...	Lydia Corman
John Kerr	...	Richard Valentine
Jed Allan	...	Alan Evans
Lloyd Nolan	...	Horace Sherwin
Stefanie Powers	...	D.A. Stephanie Bryant
Bill Quinn	...	Police Chief Paulson
William Bogert	...	Steven Sherwin
Jason Wingreen	...	Murray Minter
Ron Pinkard	...	Dr. Johnson
John de Lancie	...	Powell (as John DeLancie)
Leone James	...	Receptionist

Storyline

To fend off a nagging Assistant District Attorney, Mac invites her to his weekly poker game. Among the other participants is Mac's dentist, who consoles Mac for biting himself while his mouth was numb from recent work on a tooth. When the dentist leaves the poker game and goes home, he finds a local TV-news anchor dead on his couch, apparently from a heart attack. The dentist's wife (who was the TV news anchor's lover) and her father (the dentist's boss) are frantic, so the dentist loads the dead man into his own car and drives it to a culvert, crashing it so it looks like the news anchor had a heart attack while driving. But it wasn't a heart attack ... the man was poisoned by digitalis, which caused his heart to race out of control and conk out. Who gave him the digitalis, why ... and how?

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Genres:

Crime | Drama | Mystery

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Details

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Release Date:

20 March 1977 (USA)

Filming Locations:

Stage 44, Universal Studios - 100 Universal City Plaza, Universal City, California, USA

Company Credits

Production Co:

Talent Associates-Norton Simon, Universal TV

Technical Specs

Runtime:

73 min

Sound Mix:

Mono

Color:

Color Color (Technicolor)

Aspect Ratio:

1.33 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

Many people erroneously accuse the TV series "Columbo" of stealing the story for this episode. In fact Steven Bochco originally wrote a virtually identical episode for "Columbo" in 1973. However, Peter Falk did not feel the script was good enough and, as a result, it did not get made at the time. Bochco then used the story for this series. Years later, Falk changed his mind and made the original Bochco script into a Columbo movie in Columbo: Uneasy Lies the Crown

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Connections

Remade as Columbo: Uneasy Lies the Crown (1990)

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