User Reviews

****SPOILERS**** During a robbery on the NY City docks Det. James Halloran, James Franciscus, confronts the armed robber Peter Cretias, Andrew Cevado, face to face and shoots him dead before he can fire his weapon at him. Cleared of all charges in Cretias' death Det Hallornd can't get the tragic fact that he killed a man out of his mind even if it was a justifiable homicide. Wanting to clear his conscious Det. Halloran goes to see the late Peter Cretias' mother Mrs. Cretias and his wife Yancy, Eugenie Leontovich & Diane Ladd, to pay his respects to the man he gunned down. Det. Halloran was almost thrown out the apartment by an outraged Mrs. Cretias but Peter's wife Yancy showed an unusual kindness and understanding towards him.

Going on his own to find out just who was the man that he took his life Det. Halloran finds out that he was a local hood who was easy in lending out cash to his friends or total strangers but a rat towards those who cared for him like his widow Yancy. In fact it was Yancy who asked Det. Halloran to meet her at Penn Station and lend her money, $23.00, to get on a train out of town to her home back in St. Louis. Knowing her husband better then most Yancy knew that what happened to him was inevitable and didn't hold Det. Halloran responsible for it. He was headed for an early grave or life behind bars and if Det. Halloran didn't send him there someone else would have. Very probably one of his criminal friends or associates if not another policeman whom he would have shot it out with.

It took a while for Det. Halloran to get over what he did in gunning down Peter Cretias but in his talk with Peter's wife about what an unfeeling and violent person he was made that a lot easier for him to accept. Most policemen go through and entire 20 year or more career in the police department without not only shooting or killing someone but not even drawing their gun out of their holster. As we saw in this thought provoking "Naked City" episode Det. James Halloran wasn't to be one of them.

The comments here by "Johnny West" are, IMO, the result of too much cynicism and too little experience with the Old -World ethos and character of the era in which "Naked City"'s first season was produced.

When I watched the performance of Eugenie Leontovich as the grieving mother, I INSTANTLY recognized that sort of Old-World, primal, wailing, gut-wrenching sorrow that we oh-so-sophisticated Americans regard as embarrassing, distasteful, and over-the-top. But that's the way the OLD generation of ethnic European immigrants expressed themselves; sorry if it offends you, JW. I'm old enough to have seen and experienced it, and can honestly say that Madam Leontovich really nails it. Does it make me squirm a bit?...yes. But it's real (just watch and listen to those lengthy TV Care-package-type commercials with real-live suffering Jewish or Ukranian grandmas---THAT'S the reality from which Leontovich.... who probably witnessed more horror and heartbreak in Revolutionary Russia than you can imagine.... drew her characterization and performance).

Other than that, this episode is admittedly cliched, even for its day. But the performance of Diane Ladd in her final scene is excellent and, like Jay Novello's big scene in Naked City's next episode, really provides a central, honest, emotional high-point to an otherwise heavy-handed show (and, BTW, how will the grieving mother now survive living by herself in a New York apartment??). LR.

Stirling Silliphant provides a memorable screenplay that forecasts the moving, emotionally charged content that marked his "Route 66" content in this simple story examining guilt, sorrow and bitterness. It builds to an inspirational, thoughtful ending.

Show opens with our heroes in a shootout at the East River with a thief who's stolen furs. Franciscus kills him in a face to face confrontation, his first kill on the force, and quite different from his less up-close meeting with death than his experience fighting in Korea.

Guest stars Eugene Leontovich and Diane Ladd as the dead man's mother and his widow play radically different characters, but both actresses project an emotional integrity tha takes Silliphant's writing to a higher level. Instead of a police procedural, this is a real story of soul-searching and self-discovery.

Det. Halloran (James Franciscus) shoots a robber who was armed and trying to shoot him. Of course, he is heart-broken that he had to take the life of Peter Cretias (played by Andrew Gerardo). At the Grand Jury hearing as to whether or not it was a Justifiable Homicide (it was), Halloran meets the deceased criminal's mother and wife.

Eugenie Leontovich plays Katina, the mother of the thug. She goes way over the top screaming, yelling, and cursing Halloran for killing her son. She is totally nuts in that scene. The wife of the crook is played by Diane Ladd, who was only 23 years old at the time. She is much more reserved, and she looks really sad, like a real human being would be after a loved one dies.

Halloran spends the next several days whining and sulking because he is sad about killing a thug. He visits the bar where the guy used to hang out, and all the lowlifes tell Halloran what a great guy he was. So he asks his boss, John McIntire about his guilt, and gets a whole load of cliches from him. "Methinks the lady doth protest too much," is what comes to mind. Halloran is not convincing about his remorse.

Halloran ends up going to the home of the dead guy, where his mother gets to tell him how much she hates his guts one more time. Really insensitive of Halloran to expect that if he said he was sorry she would give him a big hug and forget about it. The twist is that later on Diane Ladd calls and wants to meet him. Ladd was only in a couple of scenes, but she was the best actress, and the most sincere and believable character in this episode.