'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 minutes on screen, but she uses them brilliantly.

In the episode Gunn is hired to investigate the attempted murder of a wealthy businessman.

One of his former partners, whom the businessman left to die in a mining accident, has been sending him threatening letters, thus making himself a top suspect.

When Gunn arrives at the shack, his widow, portrayed by Mary Gregory, demonstrates how her husband used a wall-mounted walking bar.

“He still has very good hands,” she says. “I helped him to put these together.”

She then demonstrates how her husband used the walking bar, dragging herself around the room and until she reaches a wheelchair, which she kicks aside and angrily declares “never this!”

“Five years and I knew it wouldn’t do any good,” she said. “And then last night he knew.”

She tells Gunn her husband died, but she can’t cry.

'An Innocent Pawn'

“I love him, and I can't cry,” she says, looking plaintively at Gunn. “Please could you help me to cry?"

The scene is absolutely riveting and Mary Gregory’s work is so good, it’s almost out of place in this convoluted and extremely improbable episode. Talk about no small parts!

Peter Gunn was never long on plot—it’s more about the atmosphere—but this story is particularly far-fetched.

We have botched shooting, a hypnotized victim and a misplaced bomb. I've seen the episode a couple of time and I still don’t know why the villain just didn’t push the old guy down a flight of stairs and be done with it.

And we get another fine performance later in the episode, this time by an actor named Charles Calvert, as an oppressed bartender who bellyaches to Gunn about being “an innocent pawn in the wheels of capitalism.”

Again, the scene comes from nowhere and adds very little to the plot. But the acting is top notch and Calvert's character is so quirky and funny, it serves as comic relief from the grieving widow's quiet agony.

The climax of “Spell of Murder” is terrific, as Gunn brawls with the murderer on a fire escape in the middle of a brutal thunderstorm.

The killer is fatally injured in a fall but insists on confessing his crimes—while vainly attempting to sew up several plot holes—before finally kicking the bucket.

I kept thinking that the guy probably would’ve lived if he’d just let Gunn go get a doctor.

Mary Gregory died in 2018, but she left quite an impressive resume. And one performance that I’ll never forget.