User Reviews

I believe the previous reviewer missed the entire point of this episode, "Tombstone for a Derelict," although, granted, it's a point that's easy to miss, given how long it takes for the teleplay to get to it. The four privileged white boys who murder four random derelicts are not Nazis, neo-Nazis or right-wingers. They have a much more rarefied philosophy. I initially thought they might be Nietzschean thrill killers on the order of Leopold and Loeb, eager to prove their superiority, but they turn out to be lovers of humanity, so they say, who seek to save humanity and stop the rampant warfare and slaughter of the postwar era by using the most hated symbol they can find and targeting the most vulnerable citizens and then giving up their own lives to the death penalty to show the stupidity and evil of killing. At least I think that's what they want. It's an absurd premise, particularly when you begin to question why the other three "youths" (all played by actors in their 20s) went along with it so easily. Yes, it's true that Robert Redford, who plays the leader of the group, is handsome and charismatic and all, but is that reason enough to compel someone to stab a harmless old man to death, an act that's then repeated three times? What makes up for the absurdity is Police Lieutenant Horace McMahon's astounded reaction to Redford's statement, one no doubt shared by many of the viewers back in April 1961.

What astounded me even earlier in the episode was the utter incompetence of the central cast of police detectives investigating the murders. A key piece of evidence is removed and discarded at the very first crime scene by one of the lead detectives, all to make a point about how outraged he is by the presence of a swastika at the scene. That's one of many real head-scratchers in this episode, although that's about par for the course for "Naked City," a series which strenuously avoided using actual NYPD case files in favor of wildly fabricated criminal scenarios designed to demonstrate some fashionable social conscience. I'll take the original "Dragnet," thank you. Just the facts, Mr. Webb, just the facts.

Like so many "Naked City" episodes, this was shot on location throughout New York City, with interiors shot at the old Biograph Studios in the Bronx, a structure that was torn down sometime within the last 20 years. I worked down the block from the Biograph building around 40 years ago and even tried to get into it for a visit, but the watchman refused to open the door. Part of this episode was also shot outside a lot housing a maker of cemetery headstones, right down the block from the Tremont branch of the New York Public Library. I was a regular user of that branch for a period of about 15 years.

Before his movie stardom there, and Sundance as well as now in the proving he can be a villain as Robert Redford gets three of his "buddies" to "save" mankind by killing four innocent victims that had nothing to do with the four villains.

It is up to Paul Burke and the others to figure out why they are killing. And that they want to live in infamous and arrested on purpose there to prove over in their cause there.

The four are facing the Sing Sing Electric Chair but the cops and the DA figure that the Redford character there, is insane and the three others will follow their so called "leader".

It is implied that Redford will spend the rest of his days in a mental institution and the others at Sing Sing Prison death row. Redford before he came a super star.

There are indeed eight million stories in the Naked City and this indeed is a haunting one. Probably one of the most controversial one.

Robert Redford before he became a well known actor and activist, plays a rare bad guy. A "father figure" for three younger men under his care. But he is really misleading them.

In the four Derelicts that they end up murdering, hence the title. The cops of the show have to find them before they kill someone else. And this was before the term "serial killer" was coined.

But here if such a shocking fact, they want to get caught. Unlike of course, those that do not want to do at all.

But still is Redford's character really trying to "help" the young men in his charge or is he leading them and himself down the path of destruction and the electric chair possibly.

The parents of the four men you have to feel bad for as one cop puts it "nice people that just as bewildered as the cops themselves."

It is what was to be that of Redford as a film star.

After watching this episode and reading several other "takes" on it, I'll offer my own.

It seems that Redford and friends actually think the world is a GOOD place and worth saving, if only there was a way to illustrate--in sensational terms-- the difference between good and evil. And thus, their preposterous, misguided plan. They dress up and march around like Nazis, complete with uniforms and swastika banners, and brutally, CRUELLY murder derelicts around town. Their goal is to get arrested, tried and, probably, executed--so that their sacrifice will prove to the world that evil has failed. But, in fact, it seems likely that their insane PLAN will fail, since it looks like they're all on their way to Bellevue "for observation" and thus, obscurity

Or something like that. Am I close??

Pretty-boy Redford and his semi-performance (sorry, if it weren't for his looks, he NEVER would have made it past supporting roles) cannot possibly make a convincing case for this script, which is too weighted down with silly, implausible elements.

At least we have a chance to sample the talents of Bill Hinnant as one of Redford's junior brownshirts--several years before his Broadway success as SNOOPY in the hit musical "You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown." That's quite a leap for the young man, and I imagine he felt more comfortable relaxing on top of his doghouse, as opposed to frying in the electric chair. (Mr. Hinnant has a much bigger part in "Take and Put", the final show of Season 1).

ALSO-- what's with that deep voice of actor Del Jenkins as "Josh" (another of the young goose-steppers)? It sounded odd throughout, but in the final interrogation scene, it's clear that his voice was dubbed. I'll have to check out another of his performances sometime....or maybe not. LR

This is a tough episode to review, but I am going to attempt it anyway. The reason it is not so easy to discuss-- because the story is open to vast interpretation. This said, I don't think some of the other reviewers are looking at it in a way the writers intended it be perceived. The main purpose of this story, in my opinion, is to show how extreme politics often get in the way of a society doing what is right by its citizens. And perhaps it takes a young generation to point it out.

Here at home on our own soil, we have people at war with themselves. Why are there drunks who cannot climb out of the bottle? Or derelicts, whose lives seem meaningless, on big city street corners. Why do we have so many people homeless in America every year, why do we have people hungry and down-and-out and scraping by in the gutters? Is it because our own nationalism and fervor to show our dominance as a world power gets in the way of looking at the ills that plague our communities? I think the makers of this episode of 'Naked City' are telling us to look within, to look at the domestic issues that spiral out of control, before it is too late.