User Reviews

"The Old Pro" is about as standard a Hitchcock episode as one will ever see. That said, it still has some suspense built into it and fine performances from the cast, although no one has to stretch too much to play their part. Richard Conte is the title character, and "old pro" hit-man who has retired to the countryside with his wife. But all is not well in his newfound world; he's being blackmailed by a journalist who will sell his story to the press. This publicity will ruin the life he's made for himself and, worst of all, expose his criminal past to his unsuspecting wife. She thinks he's a retired "engineer" who used to "troubleshoot" for his company. Conte decides to eliminate his blackmailer and calls up his old boss (character actor John Anderson) to set up a "hit" on the fellow. A young assassin named Mace (Robert Carlysle) is sent to do the dirty job. What Conte doesn't know is that the blackmailer has also called up Anderson with similar ideas of his own. But old pro Conte is able to rise to the occasion and ends up getting the drop on both of them; both Mace and the blackmailer end up floating face-down in a nearby lake. Unfortunately, Conte's plans to continue his retirement are put on hold when Anderson decides that since his murderous skills are still intact, he can do further work for the "company." Like Al Pacino complained in Godfather III, every time Conte tries to get out "they pull him back in." At least the money is good. "The Old Pro" was directed by veteran actor Paul Henried who does his usual fine work. Richard Conte appeared in many great movies, playing nice guys and criminals with equal enthusiasm. His "Barzini" in the original "Godfather" was one of his better late-career roles. John Anderson remained one of Hollywood's premier character actors throughout his long and distinguished career. He was another fellow who could play good and bad guys effectively in nearly any genre.

Richard Conte stars as a retired hit man named Frank Burns now living the good life with his attractive wife at a lakeshore cottage. But he has a problem. A reporter named Cullen (played by Stacy Harris, who was almost a regular on Dragnet in different roles, sometimes a criminal, sometimes not) knows about his past and has been blackmailing him. When Burns takes his little boat out on the lake for a day of fishing, he is first meeting Cullen, this time in an attempt to call off the blackmailing. Unable to convince him, he says he'll come back this evening at 5 o'clock and make his payment.

Instead, Burns calls his old crime boss, a Mr. Nicholson, played by John Anderson, to arrange for him to be supplied with a hit man to meet him at his lake at 4:30 this day. Now I thought he wanted someone else to do the job so he could be with his wife and others that evening so nobody could say he did it. But instead he meets this new guy, Mace, and walks with him to meet Cullen.

To the surprise of Burns, Mace was hired by Cullen prior to the arrangement with Burns, so he is set to kill Burns. Since other reviews posted here have revealed the finish, there's no real spoiler alert needed by me. Cullen tells Mace he will wait while Mace takes Burns back down to the lake to finish him off. But Cullen is a bit sloppy and gets overpowered and drowned by Burns, who then goes back around and gets the drop on Cullen and finishes him off as well, making everything look like a boating accident on these two men.

But now comes Nicholson who needs Burns, since he has recently lost his top killer. He "entices" Burns to come out of retirement, with his wife still thinking he is a retired engineer who traveled around fixing problems. Alfred tells the audience at the end that Burns wound up being caught in his last job, so no happy retirement for him.

I had great difficulty believing this retired hit man would want to hire a hit man unless he was setting up an alibi for himself. Since he wasn't, it just seems like it would have been a lot simpler if he handled it himself-the woods by the lake meeting spot would have made it simple for him to find a way to come up from behind the blackmailer.

So this was no more than a reasonably good show-a 7.

I wish to note the character names: Frank Burns and his wife Loretta. A decade later we MASH viewers were treated to regular characters Frank Burns and his mistress Hot Lips, who was played by Loretta Swit. I'll go you one better though: Burns' and "Loretta's" boss on MASH was Henry Blake, played by McLean Stevenson. A couple of years earlier, he had portrayed Doris Day's boss on her series, a Mr. Nicholson. I'll add to it: The actor who played Nicholson, John Anderson, was actually a guest star on an episode of MASH. If only Cullen's character had been named Pierce...

One's first question about this episode ought to be, why doesn't retired hit-man Frank Burns (Richard Conte) simply take care of his own problem with blackmailer Cullen (Stacy Harris)? That would have been the logical thing to do, but sometimes these stories dispensed with logic. In any event, Frank DOES take care of his own problem, but creates a whole new situation for himself with his former boss Nicholson (John Anderson). The ending doesn't really give you a clear sense of which way Burns will go, but it does hint pretty strongly that Burns will take on at least one more job for his former employer.

For the longest time following this series in order, I wondered if John Anderson would ever show up in an episode. If you're an old time Western fan, you know he appeared in just about every TV Western ever made. In "The Rifleman" alone, he appeared eleven times, each time as a different character! Richard Conte had a reputation as a TV and movie tough guy, and portrayed mob boss Barzini in 1972's "The Godfather".

****Spoilers**** Having retired to this gated community in rural New Jersey former mob hit man Frank Burns, Richard Conte, feels that retired life is what he needs to forget his past as a paid assassin for the Chicago syndicate. That's until newspaper reported Cullen, Stacy Harris, started blackmailing him in threatening to reveal his past in that he's not really a retired successful engineer but a ruthless mob hit-man to his both friends in the community as well as wife Loretta, Sara Shane.

Knowing that Cullen's blackmailing would never stop even if he paid him off with the $40,000.00 that he demanded to keep his mouth shut Burns gets in touch with his old boss "Nick" Nicholson, John Anderson, to put a hit on him in order to get him both out of his hair as well as life. As Burns soon found out the man who was to hit or assassinate Cullen a Mr.Mace, Richard Carlyle, was actually working for him!

***SPOILERS*** Still pretty good at his job as a hit-man Burns has no trouble dispatching, by drowning, both Mace and the man who hired him Cullen in record time only to find out that the real person behind all this was his old boss "Nick" Nicholson. It's "Nick" who wants Burns back as his #1 hit-man and would do anything, like defacing his pretty wife Sara's face with acid, to get him back. Burns does end up, against his wife's objections, to work for "Nick" only as the "Master", Alfred Hitchcock, himself explains to the audience that he was later killed in a blotched hit-job that retired him permanently.