Peter Gunn

- Season 1

(1958)

A gang attempts to extort money from Mother. When she refuses to pay, the gang dynamites her club and critically injures its owner. The police investigation stalls so Gunn goes hunting for the man he holds responsible.

Gunn is hired by a jazz club owner to prove one of his musicians has been framed for murder, but the musician's lawyer doesn't want Gunn's assistance.

When newspaper editor George Walker is viciously attacked by a German shepherd, he calls on Peter Gunn to find out why, and his suspicions center on Carl Kane, a powerful and shady businessman. Gunn's path to the truth leads through late-night strong-arm meetings, a poetry-quoting bum and Walker's overly helpful assistant.

A suavely dressed man enters a nightclub late at night, carefully takes off his scarf and strangles a woman who is sitting at a table. The only other person in the nightclub is a blind pianist who hires his friend Gunn to get the murderer.

A low-level mobster, the Frog (Stubby Kruger), is stabbed on a dock and falls into a river. The Frog was to meet Gunn, who is jumped when he goes to Frog's home. Gunn kills his attacker, setting off a police investigation into the deaths.

A young man enters his apartment and is immediately put into a sleeper hold by a huge assailant waiting inside, in the dark. The assailant hoists the victim into a hanging noose, and kicks a stool out from under him. The death is ruled a suicide. The giant is an assistant to Ahben Vanesku, a cult leader who hires Peter Gunn to find a female cult member who supposedly embezzled $ 200,000 from the cult. Gunn tracks the beautiful woman to Spain.

A young man rides an apartment building's elevator up, but another man has opened an upper floor elevator door with a knife, stopping the elevator, then jumps on the roof of the elevator, opens the escape door, and shoots the young man. After the murder Edie's friend Lynn Martel, also a nightclub singer, begins to drink uncontrollably. Edie asks Peter Gunn to help Lynn out, and Gunn discovers that Lynn's club is controlled by mobsters.

A popular young boxer on his way up, Tony Triano, is shotgunned to death on a dark city street by professional hit men. His family is devastated - who would want the generous Tony dead ? Especially hard-hit is Tony's mediocre stablemate Gino, who Tony helped get fights. Tony's family hires Peter Gunn to find who killed Tony. When the drunken Gino comes to Mother's nightclub to meet with Gunn, he's waylaid and beaten by the hit men.

A man just released from prison hurries down a dark street, sees a patrolman, then breaks into a run. He runs to a warehouse, where he's attacked by a gunman. In the struggle, the assailant is killed. The ex-con hires Peter Gunn to find his girlfriend, to help the ex-con beat the murder charge. Police Lt. Jacoby confides to Gunn that the dead man is a hired killer, and the ex-con took the rap for a payroll robbery, from which the take was never found. Gunn tracks down the girlfriend, who has no interest in helping, because she has a new lover. He's the ex-con's ...

A man with a facial scar confronts a couple necking. A fight ensues and the young man shoots the attacker. The woman urges him to leave saying she "will take care of it." Turns out he's the son of a DA prosecuting a mobster. DA calls Gunn.

The sole survivor of an armored car hold-up sends for Gunn from his death row cell. The convict tells Pete how to find the $700,000 after Pete agrees to turn over the reward to his estranged daughter without telling her where it came from.

An old man in a suit and a younger man dressed in black set a fire on the roof of a building. As the flames shoot up, a huge young man emerges and throws the man in the suit into the fire. The murdered man co-owned the business which was torched, and his young widow is suspected of contracting his murder, so she hires Peter Gunn to investigate.

A nightclub singer makes an unscheduled appearance on stage when she falls through a skylight. When the police rule her death accidental, her wealthy jockey boyfriend hires Peter Gunn to find the truth.

A car attempts to run down a young man as he walks a lonely stretch of highway. He flees into the woods and over a convent wall striking his head. Hours later he wanders home. When he is charged with a murder and has no memory of where he had been, Peter Gunn is hired to uncover the alibi.

A man on the ledge of a building asks, "What time is it?" Across the street, a sniper in a TV repairman's uniform shoots him with a rifle with silencer. The man was "The Human Fly." His widow hires Gunn to find out who killed him and why.

A heavyset man trudges down a quiet neighborhood street, into a dark house, flips on the light-switch, spurring a large group of family and co-workers to yell "Surprise !" It's his birthday, and he generously volunteers to pick up the pizza for the celebration. He's the reform leader of a stevedores' union - when he switches on his car's ignition, the car explodes. The obvious suspect is a mobster who muscles into unions, so the gangster hires Peter Gunn to find the real killer, before the docks explode too.

A couple of safe-crackers realize too late that the lookout on their jewel store burglary is no longer looking out, he's absconded with the most valuable jewels. The double-crosser bursts into Mother's nightclub to beg Peter Gunn to protect a mysterious 4th conspirator, Timothy, who turns out to be a trained seal. Why would anyone want to kill Timothy?

Peter Gunn is hired by Quimby, a meek antiques store owner to track down a consignment of rare jewelry, before the arrogant collector finds out they've been stolen. The store's missing night-watchman is the obvious suspect, until he's fished out of the river with a round bullet in him - from a 1836 Colt.

At a carnival, a magician promises the audience he'll make his gorgeous assistant disappear - instead she plummets out of the mummy's coffin onto the stage, shot dead. The show's strongman hires Peter Gunn to protect her seductive roommate (Nita Talbot, the Russian spy on Hogan's Heroes), who dances in veils. Soon, Gunn needs protection from a jealous Edie.

An assailant leaps Tarzan-style from a tree, murdering a wealthy rancher riding a horse. The victim's brother flies cross-country to hire Peter Gunn to disprove the Texas coroner's verdict of accidental death. The big city PI sticks out like a gun in a haystack compared to the suspiciously lackadaisical local sheriff, but Gunn rounds up a Texas-size line-up of prime suspects, who might turn and stampede him.

Working alone late at night, a marine salvage company owner grabs a revolver to follow gigantic footprints out of his office to a dock, where a frogman croaks him with a spear-gun. His co-owner, a huge, hulking frogman, claims he's too upset to talk to anybody - except his lawyer. A meek insurance adjuster hires Peter Gunn to solve a series of mysterious riverside robberies, so Gunn enlists a competing salvage diver, whose lily pad is a swinging tiki lair, complete with seductive hula dancers.

After Edie discovers a male corpse in her shower, her finicky landlord threatens to break her lease. Leaving Lt. Jacobi to crack wise and console Edie, Peter Gunn pursues the killers, so she can stay and won't have an excuse to move in with him.

At his posh soirée, a publisher sneaks off into the garden to conspire with a sleazy PI. Hiding in the bushes, a man in gloves plugs the publisher, tosses the revolver, then splits. The PI picks it up, just in time for the party-goers to spot him holding the gat, which turns out to be his. The PI hires Peter Gunn to clear him, but is too afraid to level with Gunn.

Late at night in an empty greasy spoon, a mug coolly kills the owner, but when the register yields only $14, he just shrugs and unscrews his silencer. The diner was Lt. Jacoby's teenage hangout, so he rabidly pursues the murderer, while struggling to prevent a mob leader from muscling in on Jacoby's side of the river. To help Jacoby, Peter Gunn pays diminutive pool shark Babby (Billy Barty) for a lead.

As she's dying, a glamorous yacht owner staggers into Mother's, seeking out Peter Gunn. Gunn and Lt. Jacoby suspect she was poisoned and her husband pushed overboard - by her captain, maid, or butler (Sam Edwards, Little House on the Prairie's Bill Anderson) - who are all related, and overacting suspiciously. Gunn cases the yacht club for clues.

A Murphy game blackmailing trio target lonely male bowlers from out-of-town, murdering an uncooperative one with a bowling ball. After his own tryst in the blackmailers' Poke Street love nest, bowling conclave organizer Woolrich (Jackie Coogan, Uncle Fester of "The Addams Family") hires Peter Gunn to nab the perps on the down-low. Gunn goes way undercover at Shelly's Manne-Hole, grooving to cool sounds by Shelly Manne & His Men. Drummer Manne's LP riffing on Henry Mancini's music from "Peter Gunn" hit the racks simultaneously with this episode. As a bow-tied hayseed ...

A phony priest totes a Bible into a prison cell and presents it to a convicted murderer. The hollow book contains a gun, which the killer uses to escape. Soon, Peter Gunn is hired by an accident victim cloaked in head bandages, to find his brother. At Mother's nightclub, while Edie chirps "Eisenhower's looks give me a thrill". Mother helps Gunn piece together that the missing "brother" is actually the escapee's robbery partner who kept the take, ducked the rap, and went to ground. The police join the hunt for the deceitful partner.

England 1945: Working late, an arrogant textile scientist assures the failing factory's owner, Gregory Spain, he'll soon perfect his long-promised miracle fabric. After the owner heads home, the scientist urges a homeless man he just hired on to sweep out his lab, to try on one of the scientist's own suits, then knocks the janitor out and blows up the factory with a bomb. After serving 14 years for insurance fraud and for murdering the scientist, the factory owner traces the scientist, who framed him, to the U.S., where Spain hires Peter Gunn to flush his quarry out ...

A knockout heiress is clubbed to death with a poker while flirting on the phone. Her uptight sister ('Katherine Bard') employs Gunn to locate her. The late extroverted heiress worked for a florist, apparently luring wealthy men, and had frequent-buyer status at a lonely hearts bureau. In a nightspot where guitarist Laurindo Almeida is playing, Gunn digs up a tip on a gigolo working the missing sister.

June Holton meets Michael Delak in his apartment. She refuses his sexual advances then a shot rings out killing Delak. The woman contacts Peter for assistance after someone tried to run her over. Gunn guesses there is more to the story and she finally admits witnessing the murder of Delak. She then admits she intended to kill Delak after his rejection of her sister led to her suicide. Gunn speaks to a number of people including Rector the newspaper man, all confirm Delak was extremely disliked and a known player of women's emotions. On Rector's suggestion Gunn goes to...

Mr. Bowers booby-traps his basement, electrocuting his wife when she turns on an overhead bulb. Next, the widower ties the knot with a mousy heiress, Maggie, whom he has seduced. While Edie warbles "when the lights start lighting the town", Maggie's quibbling older sisters, one controlling and their other daffy, along with their pince-nezed attorney James Bond, drive to Mother's in their antique Baker Electric car (c1913) to employ Gunn to investigate Bowers, whom they accurately suspect is only interested in Maggie's money. Gunn detects he's an ex-con blackmailer, ...

B E Raleigh places something into a hidden wall safe before preparing for bed. As he rides a stair elevator an ax swings across in front of him almost sending him into cardiac arrest. Gunn arrives at the house at the request of Raleigh who explains he only has months to live, then shows Gunn a threatening letter from his nephew, Martin Raleigh, who had previously stolen money from Raleigh and gone to jail. Raleigh wants Martin found and stopped from completing his threat. Raleigh also explains his nephew was an accomplished guitarist. Talking to Raleigh's nurse, Gunn ...

A hearing-impaired man stabs a Chinese shop owner to death with a dagger, while Triad muscle go after a gorgeous dancer's fan, given to her for good luck. The dancer's fiancé hires Peter Gunn ("the king of finders-out") to change her luck. Is there a connection between the fan and the murderer, who adores The Green Dragon's star dancer?

Jacoby goes for a night meeting with a tipster but it's a set-up and he is shot but lives. Gunn steps up and speaks to 2 informants but one is killed, the other scared off. The incorruptible Jacoby was up for promotion. Police involved?

Louise Reardon is a wheelchair-bound woman with no enemies but she is lured to a window as a sniper's target. The obvious suspect is Joe Scully, an ex-con who is her nurse and in her will. But Louise, barely alive, hires Gunn to clear him.

Two men barge into Mother's after hours. One positively identifies Edie and then shoots her in the shoulder saying "Tell Peter Gunn the 3 years are up." Gunn visits Edie in hospital and learns a man blames him for a 3 year prison sentence.

Gunn is hired to deliver the body of a man's dead son to him in Mexico.

Luther Russ, a famous painter wakes to find two men breaking into his house to steal artwork. He confronts them only to be shot dead. A woman visits Gunn insisting he recover one of the stolen paintings. She has a theory the theft was the beginning of a blackmail attempt. She is a married woman having an affair with Russ. Gunn contacts Walter, a local dealer who was very familiar with Russ's work. Following up on a lead he finds his way to a waterside warehouse. He meets the men who have the paintings; Gunn discovers the mysterious woman is Elsa Keys, wife of State ...