WEDNESDAY WISH-CRAFT - MR. KITTERING'S PASSING SHIP

‘COLUMBO’
“LAST SALUTE TO THE COMMODORE”

LIEUTENANT COLUMBO:
Mr. Kittering, forgive me for asking you this,but where were you the night the Commodore was killed?
MR. KITTERING, ESQ.:
Oh, poor old Otis.
Where was I? I think I was in a motel.
COLUMBO:
In a motel, sir?
KITTERING:
Yes, I'm sure I was.
Nice little motel. I can recommend it.
COLUMBO:
Where was it, sir?
KITTERING:
Sounds odd, but I couldn't quite tell you.
I could find it, I think.
It's somewhere near that new restaurant they talk about,
the Captain's Quarters.
COLUMBO:
Any witnesses?
KITTERING:
There was a young lady.
COLUMBO:
Her name, sir?
KITTERING:
Shall we say we weren't formally introduced?
Ships that pass in the night.
Not that many ships pass in my nights anymore,
I regret to say.

Almost every TV character struts across the stage as Willy Shakes once said, and then disappears forever… usually.

But for Toobworld, they’re still out there in the TV Universe.  And sometimes they come back, even years later.  Take Alan Brady, for example.  Nearly thirty years after the last episode of ‘The Dick Van Dyke Show’, Carl Reiner once again played the egomaniacal showman in an episode of ‘Mad About You’.

This applies also to those TV characters who never showed up on our TV screens in the first place….  Or did they?

So in that exchange of dialogue between the characters played by Peter Falk and Wilfred Hyde-White, we have a pretty good test case: Mr. Kittering’s “passing ship” was never seen, never named. 

She was probably no street-walker, though.  Mr. Kittering was a man of class, accustomed to enjoying the finer things in life.  And that would include the women with whom he kept company.  So she could have been a high-priced call girl/”escort” who could be working independently.  Someone for whom the phrase “Lady of the Evening” was invented.

A couple of nameless call girls
('Cannon' - "The Wedding March")

But tisn’t - I mean, tain't - necessarily so*.

Kittering might have had a hankering for someone a little more down to earth, somewhat saucy.  Perhaps she could have been a bit of alright who was even outside the type of people he would have normally surrounded himself with.

At the time of the Swanson case, Mr. Kittering was at least 73 years of age, the same age as Hyde-White who played him.  I don’t think a persuasive argument could be made that he was younger, but I could be easily convinced that he was supposed to be much older.

So a woman whom he would describe as being a young lady could be forty, maybe even fifty.  So that gives us a wide range to choose from.

One last thing that went into my consideration – the guest cast for every ‘Columbo’ episode (at least in its original NBC run) was a high-caliber roster of talent.  Oscar winners, foreign movie stars, the leading lights of television.  And we’re not just talking the guest star murderers but even their victims.  Everybody in those casts was a star, highly memorable.  And I’d like to think that everybody within that corner of the TV Universe, even those we never saw like Mrs. Columbo and Kittering’s “crumpet” would have given just as indelible a performance.

That’s why I’m going to fill in this particular blankety blank with a TV character who was played by a true star and who would have been quite the dynamo in a ‘Columbo’ episode….

RITA MORENO

as

RITA CAPKOVIC

Rita Moreno appeared in three episodes as Rita Capkovic, a prostitute who was trying to turn her life around…..

‘THE ROCKFORD FILES’
“THE PAPER PALACE” (1978)
“ROSENDAHL AND GILDA STERN ARE DEAD” (1978”)
“NO FAULT AFFAIR” (1979)

During the time when neither one of them were on our TV screens, they might have seen each other plenty of times.  But by the time we saw them again, Rita had remarried and was now known as Rita Capkovic  Landale.
"THE ROCKFORD FILES:
IF IT BLEEDS... IT LEADS"

But at the time of the murder of Commodore Otis Swanson, Rita had not yet met Jim Rockford.

Rita Moreno was 45 at the time she started playing Rita Capkovic, so she would have been 42-3 when she cuddled with Kittering.  And that would be a young lady to him, worldly though she may have been.

I think I’m going to stick with that possibility……

BCnU!

* 'Columbo' fans will get that joke.