Yes, Falk made the Columbo part a classic.

I suspect that many people would imagine that Bing in the role would have created some composite of his popular movie characterizations...maybe a more street-wise O'Malley who dropped out of the seminary and joined the police force.  But I wonder if Bing might have surprised everyone by showing completely new dimensions in his acting range? 

As for Falk,  I keep imagining him entering the gates of the afterlife in his rumpled Columbo character's overcoat, stopping and turning to say to the gatekeep, "...uh, just one more thing?"

Yes, I've seen Roomates. Great film. Another latter day Falk film I love is The Thing About My Folks written by and co-starring Paul Reiser. He wrote the part for Falk and he agreed.

I think Crosby made a good move turning down Columbo. It would have locked him into series tv and we wouldn't have got the wonderful music renaissance in his twilight years.

However, I think Levinson and Link missed an opportunity to ask Bing to play a guest role, given that he played a homicidal doctor so well in Ira Levin's telemovie. Of course, the doctor would not have been a small town Doctor in the New England area. A Doctor in a Columbo episode would have to be a head of the cardiology department in a major hospital. Or a specialist in a clinic who side hussles as a professor at a prestige university.

The trouble is Bing would turn up looking as shabby as the detective!

Last edited by Aaron Tickner (10/9/2026 6:17 am)

Oh, Pantelis, you must watch Columbo at some stage. It is one of my favourite TV shows. If you are familiar with the English actor/writer/comedian/presenter Stephen Fry, his summation is that Columbo was the perfect TV show.

The 1970s series is better than when the character returned in the late 1980s. The later series is still good, its just that Falk played the role too long. He was in his late 50s when he came back to the part. He should have stopped when he reached his early 60s. Columbo was in the police force. He wasn't a private detective. He would have had to have retired.

On the subject of Peter Falk. I know he appeared on Kathryn Crosby's chat show. Does anyone have a copy of that? I remember in her book My Last Years With Bing she wrote of her interview with Falk and it was there that she learnt Bing had turned the Columbo role down. 

I wonder if The Kathryn Crosby Show was stored in the Hillsborough basement? Surely they must have been.

Do we know where all the basement items ended up?

Pantelis Kavouras wrote:

I am positive that the sows survives and optimistic that the Crosby estate has a copy. I don't know what happened with the basement but I would guess that everything would be stored, afterall the estate has a lot of financial interest in preserving it's content and the children will also have sentimental reasons as well to ensure the preservation of the basements content.

I think through Kathryn's particular influence, Bing and Kathryn's children will be aware of  their mother and father's legacies, so I have every confidence they will have been going through (or at least supervising) themselves over potential boxes in their mother's homes. Maybe the tapes of Kathryn's shows rest with their production company - but I would not have the same confidence in them (or any other organisation who may have since overtaken) in protecting their archive as sensitively as the Crosby family have been seen to do so in the past.
 

Last edited by Ian Kerstein (Yesterday 1:27 pm)