User Reviews

Something is REALLY wrong in this episode, despite the fact that it's basically a solid, "big-heist" crime drama.

One of the guest stars in this episode, Timmy Everett, was a highly successful young actor and dancer in New York at the time. He had won two consecutive Theater World awards, one for his performance in Inge's "Dark at the Top of the Stairs, with a top-notch cast directed by Elia Kazan. Everett was also a member of the Actor's Studio, who would go on to play the role of Tommy Djilas in the big-budgeted film version of "The Music Man" in 1962. The kid was really good--one of those "restless young man" types that were in vogue at the time.

So Everett gets hired for the role of Burt Roan, who is extremely upset over his parent's impending divorce---so upset, in fact, that he goes ABSOLUTELY CRAZY, a violent, force-of-nature that TRASHES the precinct office, pummeling 3 or 4 stunt doubles, before being subdued by 6 or 7 officers. It is a shocking, even traumatic way to begin Act 1 of the show.

The remainder of the episode plays out in fine series fashion, including a scene with young Mr. Everett strapped into a strait-jacket, convulsing in a hospital bed, before finally expiring. OK---so it's a grim, serious story, and the level of dramatic intensity JUSTIFIES the extreme, brutal fate of Timmy Everett's character......or so we think.

The final scene of the show, however, takes----how shall I say this?--- a distinctly different tone, as actor Sorrell Booke, using his best caricatured, cartoon-y, overblown "Oi, Veh" Jewish merchant shtick---experiences his OWN meltdown which, without becoming an IMDB "spoiler", explains the episode's title.

So the episode is "bookended", if you will, by TWO emotional breakdown scenes: the explosive, hysterical assault by the psychotic son played by Tim Everett --which ends tragically, and the silly, slapstick-style tantrum of pint-sized Sorrell Booke at the end, which basically tells us, the viewers, that the whole thing was just a big joke.

So why the extreme level of shock and violence in the earlier scene?? If it turns out that the show is actually a comedy, why put everyone (characters and viewers) through the trauma? Maybe one of Timmy Everett's stage roles featured a similar berserk breakdown scene that Naked City's producers just HAD to include in their script to showcase the actor's talents.

Whatever the reason, the final scene really cheapens the emotional effect of Everett's earlier scene and also, in a way, betrays us, the viewer.

Bad judgement on the part of Herbert B. Leonard and crew. LR

***SPOILERS*** The fur is really flying in this "Naked City" episode where furrier Maxwell Ronan, Keenan Wynn, gets it from all sides in trying to have and extra marital affair with hot to top model Estelle Reeves,Abbe Lane, while trying to implicate in his crime on his fellow furrier known only as Uncle George, Sorrell Brooke. That in a hair brain scheme he hatched up with Uncle George's nitwit nephew Sidney,Tarry Green, in pulling off "the Crime of the Century" in the fur industry. Complications arise when Roan's hyper sensitive son Burt, Timmy Everett, caught him smooching with Estelle in his office that caused, besides getting a back eye, his entire grand plan to go to pot.

Feeling guilty in back stabbing his both wife Betty , Perry Wilson, and with now his totally crazed son Burt being heavily medicated and in a straight-jacket, after going berserk at the 65th police precinct, Roan has second thoughts in what he's been doing but by now there's no turning back for him. The the fur robbery that takes place during a fur show at the Governor Clinton Hotel goes off without a hitch with 100 valuable fur coat's stolen under everyone's, the furriers there, noses . But just as Roan feels he's home free he gets the shocking news from his grieving wife Betty that his son Burt, who wanted to kill him, died of a busted artery in his brain!

***SPOILERS***Having hidden the stolen Furs at Uncal George's fur store leads to the almost unbelievable ending of furs, worth over $1,000,000.00, being thrown out of the window by a deranged Uncel George who doesn't want to have anything to do with the robbery that Roan and his nephew Sidney pulled off! It was Roan's greed and selfishness that brought the whole world down on his head and destroy his business marriage as well as, what's left of it, life. All he had to do was stay honest in his business and marriage and all this wouldn't have happened. Something that was too deep and at the same too time simple , in his dishonest and scheming skull, for him to realize!

Staring at beautiful Abbe Lane is the only value in this awful episode of Naked City, which fails utterly as a crime show, and is embarrassing as TV-level (censorship enforced) Exploitation Movie.

Keenan Wynn is miscast as central character in this ridiculous tale of a fur robbery set in Manhattan's Garment District, portrayed as a sort of lothario, infatuated with model Abbe and her partner in crime, much to the dismay of his wife and psychotic son. Our star cops are more like extras in this scenario, though an early scene wear the son freaks out and physically attacks both Bellaver and Burke while trying to wreck their squad room is well-directed by David Lowell Rich.

The actual robbery is shown in flashback as part of Burke's chalkboard re-creation for the assembled suspects, lacking any excitement or drama -just dull. And various subplots are poorly written.

It all leads to a comical climax describing the segment's title, as an angry Sorrell Booke throws the stolen fur coats out the window onto the sidewalk to a shocked crowd outside -memorably stupid ending. If "jump the shark" had been demonstrated this early in TV history, this episode would surely qualify.