Who Killed Miss U.S.A.? (Portrait of a Dead Girl)

McCloud escorts a witness from New Mexico to New York City, but loses him to kidnappers and enters a murder case involving a Puerto Rican “organization”, the authoress of a book on the subject, a sophisticated defense lawyer, and a dead beauty pageant winner.

Pilot for the series, from Coogan’s Bluff (dir. Don Siegel).

A major work by Whitmore and Link & Levinson, a major work by Colla who finds on location the city, as later Boston (Fuzz). Such views can only be compared to Flicker’s Nieuw Amsterdam (The Troublemaker), here in color (Ben Colman cinematography).

The cutting freshness of morning light may well have influenced Shaft (dir. Gordon Parks) nine months later.

Turnabout is fair play, as the big city had come to the country by way of In the Heat of the Night (dir. Norman Jewison) a year before Siegel.

Craig Stevens Whitman Peter Mark Richman Peter B. Clifford Raul Julia Father Nieves Shelly Novack James Waldron Julie Newmar Adrienne Redman Albert Popwell Guard Gregory Sierra First Deputy Bill Baldwin First Reporter

Story by Stanford Whitmore Written by Stanford Whitmore, Richard Levinson and William Link Directed by Richard A. Colla

9.17.70

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