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Requiem for a Falling Star is the fifth episode of the second season of Columbo and the fourteenth episode overall. It first aired on January 21, 1973 and was directed by Richard Quine. In addition to Peter Falk as Columbo, the episode stars Anne Baxter, Pippa Scott and Mel Ferrer.

Summary[]

Jean Davis (Pippa Scott), personal assistant to aging movie star Nora Chandler (Anne Baxter), is marrying gossip reporter Jerry Parks (Mel Ferrer), and she has secret information about Chandler. One night Nora deflates the tire of Jean's car so that the engaged couple will have to switch vehicles. Chandler starts a gasoline fire just as Parks's car (being driven by Davis) pulls into his garage. It initially appears that the murderer's intended victim was Parks, but actually Jean was the target. Columbo solves the case after connecting it to the mysterious disappearance of Chandler's husband a decade earlier. Kevin McCarthy appears as a physician and friend of Chandler.

Clue[]

Final clue/twist: While Columbo is struggling to find a motive for the murder, he watches one of Nora's old movies in which she played a murderer disguised as a man. When he remembers some facts about the disappearance of her husband and that the fountain in her backyard isn't working, Columbo concludes the fountain may have been placed atop the secret grave of Chandler's husband. He concludes further that Jean knew it, which was the reason she was killed. Using a borrowed Freemason's ring (her husband was a Freemason) said to have come from the possession of Parks, Columbo tricks Chandler into rushing home to check the state of the grave. When Columbo confronts her and says he will search for a body in the garden, she confesses everything.

Trivia[]

Oscar-winning costume designer Edith Head made a cameo appearance as herself. Characther actor John Colicos has a non speaking cameo in this movie-that his picture as Nora's "disappeared" [Deceased] husband hanging in the wall of her house!

Columbo (season 2)
1."Étude in Black" 2."The Greenhouse Jungle" 3."The Most Crucial Game" 4."Dagger of the Mind" 5."Requiem for a Falling Star" 6."A Stitch in Crime" 7."The Most Dangerous Match" 8."Double Shock"
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