Playing the part

Weird.

I was icing my ankles (achilles tendonitis) yesterday and was promtped by boredom to turn on the box. An image of a large man singing gopsel filled the screen.

Hmph! I thought.

That guy looks like Johnny Cash.

It was Johnny Cash. Cash, it turns out, had a rather prolific and strange acting career. In this instance, playing Country and Western singer tahs kills his overpowering wife in a plane crash, while he parachutes to safety. Damn strange. But wonderful to watch. Entranced, I let the ice melt into puddles as Johnny tried to hornswaggle Peter Blake's bumbling but uncanny detective. And, he almost got away with it!

Here are a few choice lines from the episode lifted from TV Tome, where a complete listing of Cash's acting credits can be found.

Edna Brown: May God forgive me for letting a devil help me build a temple.
Tommy Brown: And what if your devil quits. What are you gonna do?

Tommy Brown: You're a sanctimonious hypocrite of a Bible-spouting blackmailer and I've given you your last chance to be fair!

(While inspecting the plane wreckage)
Roland Pangborn: You know something, Lieutenant? I could use a man like you on my team. It's really nothing but detective work.
Columbo: Oh no, thank you very much. You fellas, you have to fly.
Pangborn: Sure. We're all pilots.
Columbo: Oh no, not for me, thank you very much. I wouldn't qualify for that.
Pangborn: Why? We'd teach you.
Columbo: I appreciate it, sir. But, uh, my ears pop in an elevator. As a matter of fact, I don't even like being this tall.

Tommy Brown: And I guess this, all this looks kinda bad, huh? This big house and this party goin' on and everything?
Columbo: No sir, no sir. It's kinda refreshing. You see, in my line of work, homicide, somebody is always, well, dead. That's the only way to put it. I mean they don't even call us in unless that's what it is, somebody dead. So naturally I see a lot of grief.

Columbo: Where did you first learn how to fly?
Brown: Lieutenant, I thought you knew my whole life history by now.
Columbo: Oh no, no. Uh, you know, people think we got all kinds of records on microfilms, all we gotta do is push a button and, uh...
Brown: Well, doncha ya?
Columbo: (pause) Yes, we do. But not everything.

Columbo: I noticed that the arrangement was changed.
Brown: You got a good ear for music.
Columbo: Well, you know I'm Italian.

Brown: Now why would anybody want to kill me?
Columbo: Mr. Brown, I don't know. But you are a celebrity and there are a lot of crackpots in the world and there's just no accounting for people's reactions. I mean sometimes I even wonder about my wife. Not that she's a crackpot.