Naked City (TV Series) Goodbye Mama, Hello Auntie Maud (1962) User Reviews

Archie Bunker Meets Our Man Flint

[jonjax71 · 9/10 · 18 December 2008]

A most intriguing episode of the innovative and always well written series which still holds up to the test of time and remains relevant and riveting.

Carroll O'Connor and James Coburn guest star as the butler and chauffeur, respectively for a wealthy socialite who is murdered enabling her daughter, the prime suspect, to inherit the family's 100 year old home. The plot thickens as we learn Lt. Parker is a lifelong friend of the family and the butler and chauffeur conspire individually, but no worries because the butler didn't do it.

Quite intriguing the guests O'Connor and Coburn working together in 1962, a few years later James would score big as Our Man Flint and Carroll became the ground breaking TV character Archie Bunker of the early 1970s.

It's curious to note that the leading detective of the series-portrayed by Paul Burke is named Det. Flint, same as the future movie spy played by Coburn for 2 films.

Say it with flowers....

[planktonrules · 8/10 · 24 January 2014]

This episode begins with Ellen (Salome Jens) becoming very angry at her mother. It seems that Ellen is an agoraphobe and she's scared to death when she learns that her mother is planning on selling their mansion. So, she confronts her mother and there is a lot of screaming. Soon after Ellen leaves the room, the chauffeur, Harry (James Coburn), rushes into the old lady's room with lots of flowers--which he shoves under her nose. The old lady apparently has horrible allergies and she soon stops breathing and dies*. Because a couple of the servants overheard all the yelling, one called the police and the other (Carroll O'Connor) decides to blackmail Ellen. When the chauffeur learns about what the butler is doing, he is not pleased, as Ellen is now his meal ticket. To complicate the investigation, the lieutenant is a friend of the family and he can't imagine that there was a murder.

This was a pretty good mystery, as the crime seemed pretty air-tight. The story was also interesting and worth seeing. Plus it provides a really novel and effective treatment approach for agoraphobia!

*It doesn't take an awfully observant eye to notice that the old woman is STILL breathing even after Ellen announces that the woman is dead! Watch for it...you'll notice it too.

Every thing I had died here

[sol1218 · 6/10 · 24 December 2012]

***SPOILERS*** Greed murder and betrayal is the ingredients in this "Naked City" episode that has to do with this mansion that everybody in it is crazy about but in the end destroys them all. It's old Moma Annis, Dorothy Blackburn, who tries to get her spinster 30 years old daughter Ellen, Salome Jen, to go out in the real world and have a life of her own by selling the place that ends up leading to her murder. As we find out early in the episode it's the chauffeur the slick and maniacal Harry Brind, Charles Coburn, who did Moma in and it's Ellen who was framed in her mother's death. But in this case it wasn't Harry who did it: framed Ellen! It's was the house's Irish butler Owen Oliver,Carroll O'Conner, who did!

It was Owen who found the murder weapon a batch of flowers, that inflamed Moma's acute asthmatic condition, hidden in the mansions dumbwaiter and assumed it was Ellen, who wasn't getting along with Moma, who murdered her mother. The distraught Ellen not knowing what to do ends up paying off Owen with a $2,000.00 blackmail payoff even though she had nothing to do with her mother's death! But as it soon turned out it's Ellen's secret lover Harry who shut Owen up and keeping the cat, Moma's murder, in the bag by strangling Owen and then dumping his body into the East River.

***SPOILERS*** The fly in the ointment to all this is Auntie Maude,Irene Daily, who shows up unexpectedly and starts making trouble for the two lovers Ellen & Harry. Shocked that her niece would go so low as marrying a domestic as well as an employee of her's Harry Brind Auntie Maude gets the pot boiling by having it brought by the family lawyer that it's her not Ellen that's, according to Mama Annis' will, the rightful owner to the Annis Mansion! And even worse for Ellen's husband to be Harry the police found the murder weapon, the lethal flowers, that killed Moma Annis that implicates him in her murder!

In the end everything turns out all right for the pretty but very confused Ellen Annis who finally saw the light that Moma always wanted her to see. The house that she lived in was slowing killing her and the only way to avoid that was moving out of it and starting a new life on the outside world. But it took Moma Annis's tragic death and her being involved in a heart breaking love affair with the house chauffeur that finally made Ellen realize that!