Tag: classic crime shows

The Untouchables: Before There Was Airplane!

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Before Robert Stack showed up in Airplane! as Rex Kramer, he was dead serious as Eliot Ness in The Untouchables.

The show aired on ABC from 1959 to 1963 and gave TV viewers a gritty trip back to Prohibition-era Chicago. Stack played Ness as the calm, tough, incorruptible federal agent leading his team against gangsters, bootleggers, and mob bosses.

It had tommy guns, raids, speakeasies, gangland hits, and that hard-boiled narration from Walter Winchell that made every episode feel like a crime file being opened.

And here’s a fun connection: Leslie Nielsen, who later co-starred with Stack in Airplane!, also guest-starred on The Untouchables in the episode “Three Thousand Suspects.” So before they helped make deadpan comedy history, they were both part of this very serious crime-drama world.

Looking back, The Untouchables helped shape the TV crime drama: sharp suits, mob danger, straight-faced lawmen, and the kind of dramatic seriousness that made Airplane! even funnier years later.

The FBI- And Who The Heck Was Efrem Zimbalist Jr?

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If you grew up in the late 1960s, chances are you remember The F.B.I.. It wasn’t flashy—it just felt real, and that’s what made it work. It was more or less my mom’s show; she watched it, and for me, it was the only decent thing on TV.

What made it stand out was Efrem Zimbalist Jr.. He brought a quiet authority to Inspector Lewis Erskine—calm, believable, and never over the top. While other actors leaned into drama, he leaned into restraint, and that made him unforgettable. Now here’s something a lot of people don’t realize. Zimbalist didn’t come from a typical Hollywood background. His father, Efrem Zimbalist Sr., was one of the most respected classical violinists of his time. Born in Russia, he became an international music star and later served as director of the prestigious Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. So while the son became a television icon, the father was already a legend in a completely different world.

The show aired on ABC from 1965 to 1974, starting on Sunday nights before moving around the schedule. Its realism was helped by cooperation with the real FBI, giving it a grounded, procedural feel.

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