COLUMBO - Secrets from the Set

THE RUMPLED BUT BRILLIANT LOS ANGELES DETECTIVE WAS A BELOVED TV STAPLE FOR NEARLY 35 YEARS

- Fortune BenatarBest

In the mid-1960s, a young actor named Peter Falk got caught in a rainstorm in New York City. He ducked into a shop and purchased a tan raincoat for $15. Years later, that tatty raincoat would become the defining feature of Lt. Columbo, the beloved detective Peter would play on television on and off from 1968 to 2003.

Few TV series of the period have aged as well as Columbo, which initially appeared as part of a rotation of mystery movies on NBC. “It broke every rule in primetime,” explains Mark Dawidziak, author of The Columbo Phile: A Casebook. “You had a leading man that was not classically handsome, there was no violence, he never fired a gun or threw a punch. It was all talk.”