Watching Peter Gunn on Prime Video

[blue]

I have a strange history with Peter Gunn. First found out about it pre-internet in a Frank Zappa interview. He talked about a guitar track having a "Peter Gunn" tone. "What's a Peter Gunn?" thought a young Blue. Well eventually I found it on late night TV and fell in love with it.

If you are wondering where the "Noir" went, Peter Gunn took it all! I'm really enjoying seeing it in order. Kind of like Star Trek back in the days before the internet and boxed set DVDs, it never occured to me that TV shows had an order, let alone each episode having a title. It wasn't "Let That Be your Last Battlefield", it was the episode where Frank Gorshin was black on the right side/white on the left and Lou Antonio was black on the left side/white on the right...

If you like gritty Noir, you will enjoy Peter Gunn.

[dhodgeh]

Thanks for the heads up.... Way cool.

I was a bit too young when it first aired, and have not really thought about the series until you just brought it up.

Going though it now....

D

[tigobah]

I was probably in my early teens when Peter Gunn first aired. Loved the theme song so I went and bought the LP when it came out. Great jazz score. There was also an early police detective series with Lee Marvin called M Squad. The music for that series was done by Count Basie.

[FrankHudson]

I went through a period when I watched a bunch of the Peter Gunn series episodes and enjoyed most of them a few years back. The best episodes really hold up for me. A jazz music club is a central set used most episodes, so extra attraction there.

Another half-hour series with an even more direct music setting was Johnny Staccato with John Cassavetes as the title character, a musician/detective.

And speaking of Jazz scores to black&white noir, Miles Davis' soundtrack to Ascenseur pour l'échafaud (usually translated as Elevator to the Gallows) is spare and evocative.

I just checked, and my favorite Peter Gunn episode is "Sing a Song of Murder." Beautifully shot and played by an integrated cast (rare at the time). 25 minutes of jazz/noir perfection.

[jseth]

Good grief! I haven't watched an episode of "Peter Gunn" in over 5 decades, I don't think... but I was totally captivated by the show when I was a kid, back in the days of "too much TV will rot your brain", ad nauseaum...

There were SO many terrific 1/2 hour shows on in the late 50's/early 60's, and Peter Gunn spawned a slew of great "film noir"-esque programs... I DO remember Johnny Staccato, as well as "Mr. Lucky"... and "Man With A Camera" (Charles Bronson's only TV series!). A bunch of great Westerns at that time, as well...

A time when Mancini reigned supreme, certainly... The theme from "Peter Gunn" was one of the very first "guitar solos" I taught myself... I mean, you HAD to learn that one!

Now I'm gonna have to go back and watch a few of those...

[Nymuso]

Was a huge Peter Gunn fan when I was a kid. I recently learned that Craig Stevens' portrayal of the character formed at least some of the inspiration to the way James Bond was portrayed in the films. If you read the Bond books, you may recall his having a slightly rougher edge than the film Bond. It seems that whole suave thing came, at least in part, from Peter Gunn.

[Wade Hampton]

I can remember watching a few episodes of “Peter Gunn” with my father as a four year old boy. If I remember correctly, Peter Gunn’s gimmick was that he carried his snub nose revolver in a holster in the small of his back, where it was covered by his suit coat.

In the episodes I saw it seemed as though he’d always get frisked by one of the henchmen of the chief bad guy Gunn was dealing with that week. The henchman would pat him down along his sides, check for an ankle holster, then tell the criminal mastermind: “He’s clean, boss.”

Then later, of course - SURPRISE!! - Gunn would pull out the pistol and take control of the situation.

After I had seen this in three or four episodes, the next time it happened I asked my father: “Daddy, why don’t the bad guys ever check his back? That’s where he always keeps his gun.”

“Well, criminals are pretty stupid, most of them, at least on this TV show.”

“Are real bad guys that stupid?”

My father, who was a part-time deputy sheriff at the time, laughed long and hard, then said:

“No, unfortunately, not all of them! It would be nice if they were...”

Anyway, the reason I remember the conversation so clearly is that my father, seeing that I could think things through like that, started talking to me about the movies and TV shows we saw in a more analytical, thoughtful sort of way. He wouldn’t allow me to ask a question during the show itself, but he’d wired up a lamp switch to a cord that muted the commercials, and we could talk then.

At movies we’d talk about the film on the drive home, not while it was showing.

Anyway, the “Peter Gunn” show actually helped me start to develop critical thinking skills, even though they were naturally quite rudimentary at the start.


Wade Hampton Miller

[Bikewer]

I watched this as a kid in the 50s... Seemed like Gunn got shot in the same shoulder every other episode or so, and he’d produce a nice handkerchief from his suit and hold it to the wound.
His orthopedic surgeon must have loved him.....

Another favorite was “Highway Patrol” with Broderick Crawford... The hard-as-nails copper.

[CoolerKing]

I wasn't before, but I am now!

[LyleGorch]

Gunn and Jacobi with a few wisecracks, Edie sings, Gunn gets beat up, either Gunn or Jacobi shoots bad guy, a couple more wisecracks-Peter Gunn.

[jseth]

In the late 50's, when the show came out, Peter Gunn was the FIRST prime example of "Cool"... at least to a middle-class white kid growing up in Orange County, Ca.

Now, I know there were plenty of real-life examples of "cool" prior to this show... and honestly, I don't know that the word was in even in my lexicon of vocabulary at the time, but somehow, the concept filtered in!

"Peter Gunn" gave me the realization that there were so many other folks whom I watched, listened to and read, who really were Cool...

[Tahitijack]

When a list of most recognizable opening riffs is compiled the Peter Gunn theme has to be included. My band use to play it from time to time and always go a positive reaction. It led us to carve out a TV Theme section of one of our sets, Hawaii Five O, Batman, Peter Gunn, Secret Agent Man.