Kraft Mystery Theater (TV Series) Shadow of a Man (1963) User Reviews

What's Bobby Lee up to?!

[planktonrules · 9/10 · 16 October 2015]

This episode of "Kraft Mystery Theatre" is about an investigation into a nice guy, Bobby Lee (Ed Begley). Folks with his company are worried because Bobby Lee Longstreet has been secretly liquidating his assets. The most suspicious is Keyes (Broderick Crawford)--the boss of an undercover agent, Sam (Jack Kelly). Although Sam has already investigated the matter and thinks Bobby Lee is a decent and honest man (as does everyone in town), the boss insists he dig deeper as his suspicious nature thinks there's more to the story than Bobby Lee just losing the money gambling (the story he gave Sam).

This is a very good episode--which isn't surprising considering it has Crawford (an Oscar winning actor), Kelly (who was terrific on "Maverick" and in all his appearances on the Kraft shows) and Begley (a wonderful character actor--one of the best of the 50s and 60s). The acting is just great and the story, fortunately, does not disappoint.

By the way this show also features Pat Priest. You might not recognize her (as she wore a blonde wig) but she was one of the Marilyns from "The Munsters". She retired just a year after she made "Shadow of a Man" in order to raise a family.

He did it all for Littly Bobby

[kapelusznik18 · 5/10 · 15 April 2015]

****SPOILERS**** Insurance investigator Walter Neff, Jack Kelly, checks out the financial history of the towns most respected citizen all around good guy, he loves children animals and gives money at the office for the poor and underprivileged, Bobby Lee Longstreet, Ed Begley. It's Longstreet who over the last few weeks has gotten into debt by cleaning out his bank account as well as secretly taking out loans of some $75,000.00 that he can't account for. With the help of his boss the bloodhound-like in sniffing out insurance fraud Keys, Broderick Crawford, Neff as well as with the help of Longstreet's sexy daughter Anita, Beverley Owen, whom he tricks into believing that he's a rich playboy looking for action soon finds out that citizen of the year Longstreet has been paying blackmail money to someone who works for him. Not just in his office but in using the cash he gives him to gamble at a local riverboat casino. That's in to him being a professional gambler doubling Longstreet's money and keeping 20% of the profits all to himself.

As it turned out the man known as the guy with the sweaty palms Raynor, Robert Cornthwaite, on a losing streak lost all the money that Longstreet gave him to gamble and is now himself in deep debt to the gangsters who run the riverboat casino and is in danger of getting his legs broken if he doesn't come up with the cash! Of course Longstreet only wanted to get his son Little Bobby, Michael Burns, the football player enough money to pay for his education since he was short of cash, collage cost a lot thee days, and because of his bad ticker-heart-he could't get enough insurance, in dropping dead of a heart attack, to pay for it.

****SPOILERS**** Raynor started to put the squeeze on Longstreet in wanting another 50 grand to keep his mouth shut, as well as pay off his debt to the mob, about what a not so nice guy he is and spoil his glittering reputation in town. It's then that a nothing I have to lose but my life Longstreet decided not to pay him off and if necessary kill him to keep him quite. Confronting Raynor at a pre arraigned deserted spot off the main highway and telling him he's through paying him off Longstreet ends up getting shot by him who later kills Raynor, by shooting him back, in self defense. Giving Keys a call or death bed confession from a nearby phone booth, yes they had them back then in 1963,telling him what happened Longstreet while bleeding to death jumps into his car and drives it off a cliff killing himself in making it look like an accident! Keys as well as his partner Neff keep the circumstances of Longstreet's tragic death from the press as well as wrote out a new insurance policy for him making sure that Little Bobby, who also thinks that his dad died in a tragic car crash, gets the money to pay for his education that his dad could't provide for him while he was still alive.

How to bore an audience

[lor_ · 16 September 2023]

Quite bland and uneventful this mystery starring Jack Kelly doesn't try hard enough to grab the audience. The non-adventure of Kelly, working as an insurance investigator with avuncular Broderick Crawford, unfolds minus the expected dramatics, as they try to figure out what gives with colleague Ed Begley after spotting iffy financial transactions involving him.

Kelly falls for his lovely daughter Beverly Owen and everything remains placid until the plot thickens: Kelly reveals his true identity to Beverly and papa Ed claims it's just an issue of gambling debts. But Kelly keeps digging.

Once all the cards are on the table we have an uninteresting story about uninteresting people facing a dull problem, all leading up to that funeral where the audience began.

Kelly is okay in a one-dimensional role, but Crawford is severely typecast -looking and acting like he just walked off the set of "Highway Patrol".