'Help Me to Cry "
The scene begins with a woman facing the wall of a crumbling shack and humming tunnessly. This is from an episode of Peter Gunn , a classic detective show, entitled “Spell of Murder” and it put quite a spell on me. Created by Blake Edwards, Peter Gunn ran from 1958 to 1961, and starred Craig Stevens as the eponymous hero; Lola Albright as Edie Hart, a nightclub singer and Gunn’s girlfriend, and Herschel Bernardi as the perpetually exasperated Lt. Jacobi. The show also featured some excellent filmmaking, appearances by some of the biggest names in jazz at the time, and a slew of fine character actors, as well as appearances by such future stars as James Coburn. Mary Gregory played the woman in the shack. Over the course of her career, she appeared in such films as They Shoot Horses, Don’t They and Sleeper , as well as reoccurring roles in LA Law and Knots Landing . However, it’s her single scene in “Spell of Murder” that sticks out in my mind. She only has three minut...