Magnum Mania!

Murder by Night

Episode ID: 141
Episode Number: 7.14
Air Date: 1/14/1987
Writer: Robert Hamilton
Director: Russ Mayberry
Producer: Rick Weaver
Exec Producer: Donald P. Bellisario

Guest Stars

Anne Twomey (Alicia), Jennifer Runyon (Christine), Phyllis Davis (Tiffy), Jeff MacKay (The Coroner), Henry Jones (The Butler)

Plot Outline

Everything old is new again when Magnum takes on a 1940s mystery in this film noir trip to the past.

Rating

8.5 (6 votes) MM Episode Forum Thread & Poll

Notes

1 Set in San Francisco 1941, this is the third episode to feature extended fantasy dream sequences, following "Flashback" (3.7) and "A.A.P.I." (7.5). This episode is styled after "classic period" American film noir (1940s-1950s), but also uses several Agatha Christie-style plot devices, including the twist ending with all of the suspects in one room as the "detective" unravels the murder mystery.

2 The original broadcast version of this episode was in black-and-white, except for the very beginning and end. The syndicated and DVD version is mostly in color.

3 Based on the final scene, the events of Magnum's dream are based on a story he recently wrote called Murder by Night, his first attempt at fiction writing.

4 The opening and closing credits are shot in black-and-white and are made to look like a 1940s-era movie, including dramatic music [audio] and "old Hollywood" lettering. The opening scene (and a short segment at the end) is also presented in black-and-white and features an "opening text crawl" which says the following:

"In the winder of 1901, a young boy named Willy Marcowicz arrived in San Francisco with his ailing mother. He sold newspapers on street corners to keep food on their table... By 1941, he had become William Tyler Maxfield; newspaper publishing baron, and one of the richest, most powerful men in America."

5 Unusual for the show, there is no opening preview for this episode.

6 The Cast of Players in "Murder by Night":

Tom Selleck................Thomas Magnum
John Hillerman.............Sam Caldwell
Roger E. Mosley...........Inspector Wolf
Larry Manetti................Rev. Bentley
Anne Twomey..............Alicia
Jennifer Runyon...........Christine
Phyllis Davis................Tiffy
Jeff MacKay.................The Coroner
Henry Jones.................The Butler

7 The scene with Rev. Bentley at Magnum's office is a clever recreation (almost verbatim) of Sam Spade's first meeting with Joel Cairo in The Maltese Falcon. (Noted by Shermy)

8 Jeff MacKay, who normally plays the recurring character "Mac", here plays The Coroner. Phyllis Davis (Cleo Mitchell) plays Magnum's secretary Tiffy.

9 Similiar to "The Elmo Ziller Story" (2.21), we get to hear John Hillerman speak with his normal Texan accent!

10 A new room is seen at the estate's main house. It's an upstairs room with a balcony that overlooks the ocean.

11 Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, Earl Stanley Gardner, Agatha Christie and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle are "name-checked" by Higgins (in Magnum's dream).

12 After the events of the main story, the very last scene shows Magnum reading an issue of the detective pulp magazine Headquarters Detective, a real magazine from the 1940s. He coughs after taking a drag from his cigarette, looks at the camera, then puts it out. This is no doubt a self-referencing joke, as 1940s Thomas Magnum is seen smoking in pretty much every scene, and Tom Selleck doesn't smoke cigarettes!

Quotes

1
Magnum: Well, that leaves us with only one way to look at this thing. Someone in this room murdered William Tyler Maxfield.

2
Magnum: Book 'em all Inspector, murder one and accessory after the fact.
Inspector Wolf: Wait a minute Magnum. If they are all going to jail, who is going to get Maxwell's money?
(The Butler starts laughing)

Flubs

1 At the beginning of the episode, Christine talks about "a dog show taking place in Austria next month". The episode is set in 1941. During this time there was no official Austria, since it was occupied by Germany from 1938 to 1945 as part of the Third Reich. (Noted by Günther Grohmann)

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