At Florida’s Cape Canaveral, everyone is on hand for the test launching of a guided missile. Among them are four scientists responsible for building the missile, Dr. Wohlgang (George Voskovec), Professor Adams (John McLiam), Christian Lowenberg (Rene Paul) and Ernest Petchen (Frank Marth). The countdown starts. When it reaches one, the missile launches. At that moment Dr. Lowenberg keels over dead.
Six days later, private detective Nero Wolfe (Kurt Kasznar) is in bed with a cold. His secretary, chauffer and all-around partner, Archie Goodwin (William Shatner) is reading the events of Lowenberg’s death from the newspaper accounts. The paper notes that he died of heart failure due to the strain of working on the missile project. Wolfe is uninterested in the event until Archie brings up the household expenses and the lack of funds to pay them. An idea hits Wolfe as to how to come up with the funds needed to make the household solvent.
Wolfe then declares that Lowenberg was murdered and instructs Archie to notify the papers. Wolfe’s list of suspects includes the three other scientists that were present at the time of Lowenberg’s death as well as his widow (Eva Seregni) and Mr. Belson (Alexander Scourby), the owner of Belson Aeronautics, the company that Lowenberg worked for. In his investigation Archie finds that Lowenberg once worked for the Nazis under Hermann Goering, but after the war was lured to America to work for the US.
Keeping his cards close to his vest Wolfe assembles his suspects and with some flair and pomp, shows his hand.
“Nero Wolf” was released in 1959. It was a crime pilot for a television series that was never picked up. The pilot episode was called “Count the Man Down”. At one time the pilot was believed to be lost. Reportedly there were a couple additional episodes that were made and never aired. I haven’t come across any.
The character Nero Wolfe as well as Archie Goodwin were created by author Rex Stout. Stout did 33 novels and 41 novellas and short stories using Wolfe as his main character. None of the other characters from the Wolfe novels and stories appear in the pilot.
The pilot is for a half hour crime mystery show. As such it seems to race through the crime and detecting to a quick and OK conclusion. There is nothing in the way of character development, suspense or action. Detective shows seem to be more entertaining if they are an hour long as opposed to a half hour. That may be why the show didn’t go anywhere.
As for the acting, both Kurt Kasznar and William Shatner do a good job in their roles. They play off each other quite nicely and appear to have a subdued respect and comradely with each other. If the pilot had been an hour long, it actually might have done better, and Shatner’s first series would have been as Nero Wolfe’s sidekick instead of Captain Kirk.