Trivia

The morning after Leslie makes the "drop", Margaret is watching Double Indemnity (1944), a movie about a woman who kills her husband to collect on an insurance policy.

Produced as a second pilot for Columbo (1971) three years after Prescription: Murder (1968). Its success led to "Columbo" being made part of The NBC Tuesday Mystery Movie (1971) wheel of programs for most of the 1970s, which included McMillan & Wife (1971), McCloud (1970), and Banacek (1972), and several others.

This second pilot TV movie features Columbo in his more usual ramshackle sartorial style. He is more disheveled than he was in Prescription: Murder (1968), frequently wearing his signature raincoat.

Throughout the series, working relations between Peter Falk and Universal often were strained. This allegedly was caused by the studio's refusal to allow the actor to direct several installments, as was their agreement. In the end, Falk directed only one.

Although Billy Goldenberg scored the opening Columbo stories in 1971, his commercially released "Columbo Theme" recorded as such by Norrie Paramor and His Orchestra ("Law Beat" album, Contour Records 2870 369) did not become a regular feature of the show. The theme is first heard during the helicopter sequence of "Ransom for a Dead Man", but Goldenberg did not use it as a title theme and composed mainly fresh music for Murder by the Book (1971) and all his subsequent scores. The Columbo series never had any recognizable theme tune of its own.