|
FIRST
SEASON
1982--1983
1. License to Steele
John Francis (Leo Neff) Joseph Hacker (Gordon Hunter) Phil Casnoff (Ben Pearson) Robert Darnell (Raymond Kessler)
Private eye Laura Holt sees her fictional boss Remington Steele suddenly come to life as she is trying to protect a $2 million jewel shipment from assorted thieves.
NOTE: Movies Cites: "Someday, when you speak of this, be kind." Tea and Sympathy, Deborah Kerr, John Kerr, MGM 1956.
|
|
2. Tempered Steele
Diana Douglas (Mrs. Dillon) David Hayward (Roger Dillon) Brenda King (Nadine) Curt Lowens (Claude) Arlen Dean Snyder (Jim Meecham) Lou Antonio (Wallace)
Laura tackles a case of industrial espionage in a family-owned business while Steele enlists an old pal to help him install a burglar alarm.
NOTE: Movies: Casablanca, Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman, Warner Brothers, 1942. The Thin Man, William Powell
Notes: A moderately good mystery. We have a few minutes to piece together the crime ourselves before Laura solves it, though the clinching evidence (the final autopsy report) is hidden from us. Murphy is left-handed. This was the series pilot, so it's fun to try to spot the differences between this episode and the rest of them. (It also explains why the episode has so much character exposition.)
* The opening voice-over is different. (Same words, but read differently.) The music from the opening is more subdued.
* Steele's office is tiled rather than carpeted.
* The furniture in Steele's office is different.
* The hallways and office are much busier than we're used to seeing. (They had more money to hire extras, I guess.)
* Laura lives in an apartment rather than a house.
* The closing credits list the characters' names as well as the actors' names.
|
|
3. Steele Waters Run Deep
Peter Scolari (Albee Fervitz) Betty Kennedy (Cynthia Denard) George D. Wallace (Emery Arnok) Roxanne Hart (Sheila Fervitz) Rae Allen (Miss Letrell) Blake Clark (Fred) Jose Flores (Manuel) Randy Rocca (Izzy Webster)
A video game genius disappears just before a merger, with $5 million and the plans for his company's latest video game.
NOTE: Notes: According to George Kaplan's appointment calendar, the episode took place on 21 and 22 October 1982.
In the movie North by Northwest, George Kaplan is the CIA agent Cary Grant is mistaken for. The inside joke continues when Steele sets sail '' two miles offshore, north by northwest'' in search of Kaplan.
t
|
|
4. Signed, Steeled and Delivered
Phillip Sterling (John Seward) Thom Bray (Sheldon Quarry) Alexandra Johnson (Lucille Seward) Marta Kristen (Blonde) Christopher Loftin (Eugene Price)
Laura and Steele spend the weekend trying to keep a CIA researcher alive and on time for his wedding.
|
|
5. Thou Shalt Not Steele
Beverly Garland (Abigail Holt) Cassandra Harris (Katherine Simone/Felicia) James Blendick (Guttman) Peter MacLean (Edward Coxworth) Kurt Christian (Ahmed Kalil) Benjamin H. Slack (Sherman)
A woman from Steele's past asks him to help her steal a valuable painting that Laura has already agreed to protect.
NOTE: Cassandra Harris was Pierce Brosnan's wife.
Felicia misremembers Laura's name as 'Miss Bolt', which reappears in the episode Dreams of Steele.
|
|
6. Steele Belted
Andrew Bloch (Buddy Shapiro) Ilene Graff (Ivy Shapiro) Barry Van Dyke (Creighton Phillips) Raymond Singer (Waldo Church) Lora Staley (Miss Taplinger) Ernest Emling (James Rubio)
A loser asks the agency to help him, but his alibi witness is found dead in Steele's apartment and his lawyer seems more interested in Laura than in the case.
NOTE: Movies: D. O. A., Edmond O'Brien, Andrew Britten, United Artists 1949.
|
|
7. Etched in Steele
Lyman Ward (Russell Forsyth) Shannon Wilcox (Charlotte Knight) Richard Cox (Tony Dinaldo) Joel Colodner (Mitchell Knight) George Morfogen (Dennis Baker)
Laura and Steele investigate the murder of an author whose steamy novels badly mirror her own married life.
NOTE: Movies: The Shining, Jack Nicholson.
|
|
8. Your Steele the One For Me
Keye Luke (Tenaka) Reid Shelton (Winslow Craddock) Marc Hayashi (Mike Ito) Sab Shimono (Kenji Ito)
A lesson in detective work for Steele escalates a jaywalking accident into an encounter with Japanese gangsters.
NOTE: Movies:
Enter the Dragon, Bruce Lee.
The Yakuza, Robert Mitchum, Brian Keith, Warner Brothers 1975.
Kokusai (the movie showing at the theater)
The Third Man, Orson Welles, Joseph Cotten.
|
|
9. In the Steele of the Night
Jeff Pomerantz (Alan Grievey) Philip Charles MacKenzie (Carl) Charlene Watkins (Sandy Maxwell) Arthur Rosenberg (Donald)
Steele investigates a murder when Laura's former colleagues gather for a reunion and old grievances begin to re-emerge.
NOTE: Movies:
Witness for the Prosecution, Charles Laughton.
In 1983, the episode won an Edgar Allan Poe award, given by the Mystery Writers of America for the best presentation of a mystery.
|
|
10. Steele Trap
Brandis Kemp (Madeline Vickers) Lynne Randall (Randi Russell) Paul Hecht (Ashley Feldman) Bruce Kirby (Michael Dominick) Diane Stilwell (Cindy Sikes) Robert Phalen (Ambrose Blinn)
A client commits suicide in the office so Steele and Laura attend a house party on an island owned by a wealthy publisher in his place in an attempt to find out why.
NOTE: Movies:
Citizen Kane
And Then There Were None, Barry Fitzgerald, Walter Huston, Louis Hayward, June Depree.
|
|
11. Steeling the Show
Bibi Osterwald (Veronica Kirk) Frances Lee McCain (Jennifer Kirk) Peter Jurasik (Phil Haver) Duncan Ross (Mickey Prentiss) Richard Backus (Eddie Howell) Than Wyenn (Dr. Dudworth) Michael Cornelison (Hospital resident)
Steele comes to the aid of an aging B-movie queen whose daughter is trying to commit her and who someone is apparently trying to kill.
NOTE: Movies:
Psycho
|
|
12. Steele Flying High
Blake Clark (Fred) Francine Lembi (Grace Stanton) Michael Goodwin (Congressman Oren Bishop) Michael McGuire (Harry Swan) Martine Bartlett (Millicent) Walter Beery (Clerk) Paul Brennan (Friendly Fritz)
Steele gets involved with the murder of a naturalist when he serves on a committee to save the bald eagle.
NOTE: Movies:
Murder Most Foul, Margaret Rutherford, MGM 1964.
The Maltese Falcon
The Big Sleep, Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, Warner Brothers 1946.
Chinatown
|
|
13. A Good Night's Steele
Paul Reiser (Ivan Turbell) Nancy Parsons (Nurse Blackwell) William Larsen (Nestor Bickerman) David Haskell (Dr. Philip Lindstrom) John Mansfield (Dr. Terry Wicker) Marly Sims (Rona) Nancy Linari (Dr. Sheila Marcus)
Laura and Steele go undercover at a sleep-disorders clinic to investigate the disappearance of morphine and a doctor.
NOTE: Movies:
The Big Sleep
Coma, Genevieve Bujold.
Notes:
Murphy and Bernice are nowhere to be seen in the entire episode.
|
|
14. Hearts of Steele
Caren Kaye (Megan O'Toole) Mary Joan Negro (Beth) Mark Hutter (Malcolm Marcall) Susan Kellerman (Janet Kimmell) Linda Carlson (Angela) Alexandra Borrie (Loretta Marcall) Guy Boyd (Client) Blake Clark (Fred)
Steele and Laura pose as a battling couple while they investigate murder attempts against an aggressive divorce lawyer.
NOTE: Movies:
Casablanca ('' Of all the gin joints, in all the towns, in all the world'')
Notorious, Claude Rains.
Murder on the Orient Express, Albert Finney, Richard Widmark, Lauren Bacall, Vanessa Redgrave, Michael York, Ingrid Bergman, Jacqueline Bissett, Anthony Perkins, Paramount 1974.
|
|
15. To Stop a Steele
Cliff Norton (Morrie Singer) Michael C. Gwynne (Considine) Donald Bishop (Albert Harrod) Arnold Turner (Frank) Charles Lanyer (Louie) Douglas Warhit (Desk Clerk)
Laura and Steele wind up working for opposite sides of a jewelry theft when the frightened thief looks for help when someone else beats him to the jewel.
NOTE: Movies:
To Catch a Thief, Cary Grant, Grace Kelly, Paramount, 1955.
The Thomas Crown Affair, Steve McQueen, Faye Dunaway, United Artists, 1968.
|
|
16. Steele Crazy After All These Years
Allyce Beasley (Lynette Mercer) Annie Potts (Annie Carpenter) Sharon Stone (Homecoming Queen) Todd Susman (Nat Shavers) Tony Plana (Hector Sanchez) John C. Becher (Dean Percy Winfield) Mark King (Tom Donovan) Kander Berkeley (Charlie) Sharon Stone (Homecoming Queen) Roger Hampton (Dan Kowalski)
Murphy's college homecoming is marred by a murder that awakens memories of a bombing on campus ten years before.
NOTE: Movies:
The Uninvited, Ray Milland, Gail Russell, Paramount 1944.
The Third Man, Orson Welles, London Films, 1949.
Notes:
Bernice does not appear.
|
|
17. Steele Among the Living
Phil Rubenstein (Leo Blitzman) Marilyn Jones (Marion Travis) Reid Smith (Teddy Bennett) Hansford Rowe (Nicholas Spriggs) Peter Vogt (Noah Devereaux) Judith Anna Roberts (Rina Casellis) David Byrd (Giovanni) Israel Jurabe (Darryl) Blake Clark (Fred)
Laura searches for a vanished artist whose works have suddenly appreciated in value, for both her husband and the owner of an art gallery.
NOTE: Movies:
Laura, Dana Andrews, Gene Tierney, Twentieth Century Fox, 1944.
It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, United Artists, 1963. Spencer Tracy and a cadre of comics
|
|
18. Steele in the News
Jenny O'Hara (Amy Fogelson) Maggie Roswell (Margaret "Hoop" Tracy) J.D. Cannon (Elliot Walsh) Tracy Scoggins (Chrissie Carstairs) Richard Moll () Ron Frazier (Ed Greene) John Reilly (Russell Stewart)
Laura and Steele investigate the increasingly dangerous pranks someone is pulling on the news team of a local television station.
|
|
19. Vintage Steele
Beverlee McKinsey (Alexis Vandermeer) James Widdoes (Claude Vandermeer) David Huffman (Wilson Jeffries) Michael Currie (Werner Schumann) William Hootkins (Chester Harcourt) Michael O'Guinne (Brother Bartholomew)
Laura's former flame asks her help when he discovers a corpse in the trunk of his car, a corpse that keeps returning as they check out a winery he's involved with.
NOTE: Movies:
The Trouble with Harry, Paramount 1955.
Rasputin and the Empress, MGM 1932. John, Lionel and Ethel Barrymore.
|
|
20. Steele's Gold
James Callahan (Emmett) Barbara Stock (Kitty Curtain) Lois De Banzie (Sylvia) William Russ (Chance McCormick) Ellis Ren (Felix)
A prospector's journal stolen during a party leads Laura and Steele on a wild gold hunt through the desert.
|
|
21. Sting of Steele
Peter Bromilow (Major) John Orchard (Albert Hoskins) Efrem Zimbalist Jr. (Chalmers) Beverly Garland (Abigail) Robert Denison (Airplane Salesman) Derek Partridge (Leon)
Steele's mentor, Daniel Chalmers, comes to California to ask for Steele's help in dealing with a vindictive crook.
NOTE: Movies:
Thirty Seconds over Tokyo
The episode is based on The Sting.
|
|
22. Steele in Circulation
Patsy Pease (Sherry Webster) John Doolittle (Alfred R. Hollis) Gina Gallego (Angelica de Gama) Richard Kuss (Horace Erskine) Amanda McBroom (Boutique Owner)
Steele stops a distraught young man from killing himself then must find a missing girl and a "borrowed" $50,000 to keep him from trying again.
NOTE: Movies:
Gaslight, Charles Boyer, Ingrid Bergman, MGM, 1944.
A Star is Born, Frederick March
Anna Karenina, Greta Garbo
The Music Lovers, Richard Chamberlain
Pennies from Heaven
|