Jim Hutton
I’ve been watching bits and pieces of Major Dundee on TCM — trying not to get too caught up, because I have to leave in a few minutes.
I always get sad when I see Jim Hutton in a movie because he died so tragically young. (Now that I look it up, he was 45. I am 45, almost 46.) His work lives on, as does his son Timothy Hutton, another fine actor.
I remember Jim Hutton from a great show from my childhood — Ellery Queen, which aired in 1975, when I was 13. It was a period murder mystery, set in the 1930s, with a gimmick. All of the clues you needed to solve the mystery were revealed — nothing was kept secret. Then, right before the last commercial break, Ellery Queen (Hutton) would break the fourth wall and deliver a little monologue asking you, the viewer, if you knew who committed the murder. David Wayne was great as Ellery’s police detective father, and John Hillerman, long before he was Higgins on “Magnum, P.I.”, played a rival detective who was always one step behind Ellery.
I thought a lot about that show a few years ago, when Timothy Hutton played Archie in “Nero Wolfe” on A&E, which he also executive produced. That was another period murder mystery, of course, and equally well done.
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