Johnny Staccato: The Complete Series

First of all, I have to compliment Timeless Media on the quality of the recordings in their complete Johnny Staccato Box Set. I'm pretty well used to the somewhat poorly aged prints that dominate TV reruns and public domain video. Somebody put a lot of work into making Johnny Staccato a great release. The video and sound are great even on my old analog set. It was a pleasure to see and listen to. While some would complain about the lack of extras, I can't really expect many extras when we're dealing with a 51 year old show that was cancelled mid-season and where the star has been dead for 20 years. I'm thankful they got the show out and in such a beautiful form. It can be tempting to write Johnny Staccato off as merely a ripoff of Peter Gunn. After all, both Staccato and Gunn are New York P.I.'s that hang around the jazz scene. The big difference with Staccato is that jazz isn't just something he hangs around for information, but he's truly a part of it as a musician. The scenes of Staccato on the piano are priceless. The music of the lates 50s pulses through Johnny Staccato. In addition, every episode of Peter Gunn seems to end with at least two, and usually four dead bodies. Staccato often ended the show with no dead bodies. Cassavettes influence made Johnny Stacatto much more a Detective Drama than it did Peter Gunn's shooting gallery. Also, another big difference between Peter Gunn and Johnny Staccato is that while "Mother" in Peter Gunn seemed to exist in the story primarily as a plot device and the owner of Peter Gunn's favorite hangout, Waldo (Eduardo Ciannelli) who owns Johnny's favorite spot is a far more fleshed out and there's an almost father-son dynamic of their relationship. As a Private Detective, while Craig Stevens who played Peter Gunn looked and sounded like he was out of central casting for a detective hero, Cassavettes didn't have the look of a great detective hero. Perhaps, it was because I first saw him playing the murderer in the Columbo movie, "Etude in Black", but it took me a while to buy him as a hero. However, Staccato after a while Staccato's looks became a plus. Staccato was a Korean War Veteran who rarely became involved in cases for the money. He rushed off to help his friends and solve cases with little concern for fees. He was the proverbial knight in tarnished armor. According to the first episode, Johnny abandonned full-time piano playing for the life of a private eye when he realized he didn't have the talent to make it big. In the first episode, Johnny states he had turned in his musician's union card years before, but still seemed to play part-time at Waldo's. Staccato's cases occassionally fell under the category of "typical PI fare" such as in, "House of the Four Winds," where Johnny deals with trouble in Chinatown and "Night of Jeopardy," where Johnny shoots a counterfeiter and now the mob is after him for the plates. In "Act of Terror," Johnny is hired by a hypnotist to find his missing wife but Johnny becomes suspicious that the man (and his dummy) may know more than they're letting on. In these sort of rough and tumble situations, Staccato handled himself as well as any detective on television. Other episodes had far deeper dramatic and even moral meaning. In "Evil," Johnny takes on a huckster who is using a mission to scam people out oof money. This episode took a few clever turns. In, "Tempted," Johnny has a chance to take a beautiful woman and $200,000 necklace. In the, "Return," Johnny has to stop a Korean War Veteran who escaped from a mental hospital from killing his wife. In, "Solomon," Johnny is asked to commit perjury by the city's greatest defemse attorney in order to acquit a client the lawyer believes to be innocent. Of the first 23 episodes, I'd say 22 are are among the best half hour detective shows of the era (the exception to this being, "Double Feature" which added nothing to the silly "everyone has a double" plots that many shows just have to try.) It was towards the end of the run that the show began to fade. Cassavettes wanted out, and it began to show on the screen starting with, "An Angry Young Man" in which the story was weak and had Johnny unbelievably moving rhythmically to the polka. The show bounced back a bit with "The Mask of Jason" which featured a young Mary Tyler Moore as a beauty queen scared of an ugly man, but by the end of the episode, the audience has to wonder where the real ugliness lay. The last two episodes were straight downhill. In "A Nice Little Town," the writers go literally out of their way to make a political point, sending Johnny out of New York to a small town where a former U.S. soldier who had defected to the North Korean side had been murdered by two men in absurd masks. We then get to watch unlikable townfolks attack Johnny for not having an American name and for being either a commie or stupid. The episode concludes without Johnny capturing the killers, so that Johnny can make a speech to the strawman anti-communist town. Whether Cassavettes was concerned with making a political point, trying to impress avante garde activist types, or pushing the storyline in hopes that it would help the show get cancelled due to public outcry and get him out of his contract, or some combination of the three, we don't know. However, no record exists suggests that the episode played any part in Staccato's exit. The last episode of Johnny Staccato was, "Swinging Long Hair." The episode had some great music, but was one of the shabbiest shows of the series in terms of its writing. It ends with Stacatto remarking that one of the bad guys still needed to be killed but as someone else would have to do it as, "I've had it." Thus star and character bid farewell together. While the show's quick decline was sad to watch, the quality and greatness of the first 23 episodes make this set well worth owning and I'm glad that I do. Johnny Stacatto was a great show and there may have been more episodes if John Cassavettes had agreed.

We enjoyed watching this series, we like the old detective TV shows.

This show was too good for the early 60's televiwer. it tackles themes in a frank manner, that were heavier than normal for the time. addiction, and other criminal activity are presented in a manner that wouldn't cause a ripple now, but were ground breaking. halfway through the shows run the opening and theme were changed to the lead character justbeing a detective and less of a jazzman. great actual jazz musicians are featured, including John Williams who went on to Oscar winning fame, highly reccomended if you are "cool" enough

Just received this set this evening and am watching it for the first time. Being a long time fan of the classic Noir show "Peter Gunn" this is extremely close to Peter Gun since both solve crimes and spend a lot of time in a Jazz Bar. This show is great and surprisingly never heard of it before. Lots of cameos from familiar actors, cool jazz background songs, and lots of action and plot twists.

There are interesting elements to this series of 27 episodes, but it rarely comes together. Cassavetes is a good actor, more interesting than Craig Stevens, but "Peter Gunn" makes far better use of its half hour. The soundtrack is jazz, but Johnny Staccato as the "jazz detective" is merely an affectation. He's a sometimes pianist and hangs out at a club owned by his buddy Waldo (Eduardo Ciannelli), but the show's creators don't seem to know what to do with the music or Mr. Ciannelli, who was apparently a gifted opera singer - though one wouldn't know it from watching the show. There's also a disturbing lack of Black characters - none of the jazz musicians are Black until the middle of the series. Episode 25 is interesting, featuring young Mary Tyler Moore as a bad person. The final episode is also interesting, showing the nexus of classical music and jazz - it also shows us what the show might have been.

It's great to have this underrated TV series available on DVD at last! John Cassavetes prowls through late 1950s NYC's rain-slick streets & darkened alleys, grinning in hard-edged bemusement at the petty criminals, the beatniks, the dangerous dames that populate his neon-lit world. And there's jazz, always jazz, playing in the background, sometimes played by our hero himself, between jobs as a private eye -- or is that the other way around? The half-hour drama is a lost form these days, but this single season shows just how much could be done with it. Dark, often violent stories of the human condition unfold compactly, with dialogue that's a heady mixture of hipster lingo, jazz slang, noir one-liners & semi-Freudian literary prose from Greenwich Village theater. Johnny Staccato lives in a sort of Limbo made of cigarette smoke, dirty secrets, subterranean stairs & tunnels & bare-bulbed little rooms -- but there's the occasional gleam of honest love & human decency as well -- there's even the remote possibility of actual justice from time to time. It's a pity there aren't any extras on this set, but the episodes themselves are a pleasure, and the price is quite reasonable. Frankly, I'll take it over most contemporary TV shows without hesitation -- if you want to make the scene, it's highly recommended, baby!

Worthless discs that stop and start. Discs keep getting stuck in the middle of episodes. Waste of time and money.

So glad I found this as the local library doesn't have it. The show is really dated, but I like the music and it's fun spotting actors and musicians who were in this series before they were stars. Great music - the piano man is John Williams.

Oh they really don't make 'em like this anymore-this has got to be the coolest detective show i have ever seen-never heard of it b4-it was shown on NBC & ABC in 1959 & 1960-not sure if it was ever shown in the UK-filmed in New York City it stars John Cassavetes as jazz pianist Staccato who is also a PI. Each episode is like a mini film noir,a lot of the action takes place in the jazz club 'Waldos'in Greenwich Village-27 episodes full of violence,guns,cheap broads,booze,jazz,smoking-what more do u want to relax to? -great quality prints.

AWESOME

Very good, just ensure DVD compatibility as this product was aimed at the US market

Classic Cassavetes with the best ever score in a TV private dick show.

I used to be a great fan of John Cassavetes, but now that I'm older I find his acting a bit mannered, although he's still very watchable, and, oh, the guy was cool! These episodes were enjoyable enough at first, but the whole thing eventually became rather set bound, with less and less action on the streets. The stories also became more predictable, very much like other US TV series of the late Fifties and early Sixties. That said, the jazz music is great, as is the moody offbeat atmosphere at the club where Staccato plays the piano. Cassavetes' Chandleresque narration is also sharp and cynically witty. Watching out for guests stars is fun though, which is why I buy these things. My favourite was the episode where Cassavetes meets a lovely, intelligent blonde on a plane, played by his real-life wife, Gena Rowlands. Great prints, no subtitles. If the current prices hold, (check out the various buying options), it's terrific value for 27 twenty-five minute episodes, and a pleasant trip down memory lane.