Naked City (TV Series) Howard Running Bear Is a Turtle (1963) User Reviews

Howard's slowed by Ancient Traditions

[Dfree52 · 9/10 · 21 January 2021]

First off...I'm discovering this series. This episode was first aired the day after my 11th birthday! What I like about The Naked City was it emphasis on showing NYC America's true melting pot, featuring many stories of the city's ethnic diversity.

Here, it's native Americans whose tribal roots are in upstate New York and follows a construction worker's death from a 47 story fall. His fellow workers claim they didn't see it. They leave the police (series stars Paul Burke and Harry Bellaver) scratching their heads. Was it an accident or murder?

To complicate matters, the dead man (Paul Richards as Joseph Highmark) was involved in a fight with Howard Running Bear (Perry Lewis) who's in love with the unloved wife of the deceased (Mary, played by Piper Laurie). The fight led to his fall.

Everyone stays mum cause to admit to the dead man's drunken state ; it wouldn't bode well for his spirit. Howard and Mary have been in love since childhood but of different tribes. They have to convince an elder (Juano Hernandez) that love and therefore life is for the present.

Watch for Cicely Tyson in a bit part and Piper Laurie breaking her grieving, staid bonds with a sexy table top dance in the last quarter.

This episode is a perfect example

[david_weinstock · 9/10 · 7 December 2023]

Naked City had their pick of some of the best writers, directors and actors in the country and this episode could be the archetype, with the exception that they could not seem to find any indigenous, First Nations people to play Indians . Without giving out the plot, the one of the 8,000,000 stories they tell here has no winners or lovers, good guys or villain, very much like most events in all our mundane lives. In this one we see Otsego Indians who have adopted the ways of modern civilization, and tried to balance that with their traditional ways. Like all the other cultures that blend in the melting pot of 50s new york, there are distinct complications. Excellent writing and acting and scenes from the Big Steel. Total New York!

You must protect the spirit of the dead man from disgrace!

[sol-kay · 6/10 · 1 July 2013]

***SPOILERS**** We the audience and the NYPD get a lesson in American Indian lore & customs here in the tragic and accidental death of Indian construction worker Joe Highmark, Paul Richards. It was Joe who fell to his death, some 47 stories below, dead drunk while getting into a tangle with fellow Indian construction worker Howie Running Bear, Perry Lopez. It's Howie who was in love with Hightower's old lady or squaw Mary, Piper Lourie, who belonged to another tribe that her lover Howie didn't belong to.

Still the two madly in love but at arms length, there's was no Hanky Panky going on between the two, American Indians would make passes throw kisses and wink at each other that made Mary's husband Joe mad with blind and white hot rage. This all culminated at the work site where they, Joe & Howie, were on that lead to a drunken brawl on Joe's part with him ended up a dead man on the street below. Now on the run Howie Running Bear is obligated through Amercan Indian customs to protect the spirit of the man he killed, accidentally of course, Joe Highmark. That by him not revealing that Joe was both drunk and a dud in and out of bed with his old lady, who was not in love with him, Mary.

***SPOILERS*** It's the wise old man of the New york City Indian community Oscar "Looney Tunes" Loon, Juano Hernandez, who at first advised the very conflicted, either to or not to turn himself into the police, Howie running Bear to stop running and face the music, in a white man's court, for what he did. At first wanting Howie to skip out of town and go into hiding Loon soon realized that it would make things for him go from bad to worse instead. As for the dead Joe Highmark's immortal soul and spirit it will forgive Howie for what he did in it knowing in his long distance affair with his, Highmark's, wife Mary was that he was made of flesh an blood and only human and just couldn't quite help himself.

Like the saying goes "Love conquers all" and in this case in conquered Howie's sense of both judgment and reality. And the best thing to do now is for Howie, after he turns himself over to the police, to bury the hatchet and go on living and most of all try to forget the whole matter altogether!