Hawaiian Eye Episode Reviews

Hawaiian Eye

Hawaiian Eye was sort of a precursor to Hawaii Five-O. It ran from October 1959 to April 1963 on the ABC network.

To quote Wikipedia: Private investigator Tracy Steele (Anthony Eisley) and his half-Hawaiian partner, Tom Lopaka (Robert Conrad), own Hawaiian Eye, a combination detective agency and private security firm, located in Honolulu, Hawaii. Their principal client is the Hawaiian Village Hotel, which in exchange for security services, provides the agency with a luxurious private compound on the hotel grounds. The partners investigate mysteries and protect clients with the sometime help of photographer Cricket Blake (Connie Stevens), who also sings at the hotel's Shell Bar, and a ukulele-playing cab driver Kim Quisado (Poncie Ponce), who has connections throughout the islands. Engineer turned detective Greg McKenzie (Grant Williams), joins the agency later on as a full partner, while hotel social director Philip Barton (Troy Donahue) lends a hand after Tracy Steele departs.

In reality, like several other shows in "exotic locations," Hawaiian Eye was shot on the Warner Bros. backlot in Burbank, Calif. with the occasional establishing shots actually filmed in Hawaii.

S01E01, "Malahini Holiday"
Original air date: October 7, 1959
Cast and Crew

"Malihini" (the correct spelling) means "a newcomer to Hawaii." In this show, it is Peter Purcell (Duncan Lamont), a British artist who arrives by ship to illustrate a children's book written by local resident Bill Garrison (Ross Elliott).

At the beginning of the show, Tracy Steele gets a call from Stuart Bailey (Efrem Zimbalist Jr.) of 77 Sunset Strip asking him to keep an eye on Purcell's wife Mavis (Patricia Driscoll) at the request of Mavis's brother because for the last six months she's had a series of "accidents" which Steele suggests back to Bailey are "not accidents."

As Purcell and his wife's ship pulls into port and they are watching people diving for money which is thrown into the water, Mavis falls into the drink after the ship's railing gives way. Local gossip later suggests that Mavis didn't fall, she was "pushed." After the Purcells get settled in, Mavis almost drowns in an undertow in the ocean just off Garrison's beachfront house. A sign advising her of the danger was covered up.

Purcell takes an interest in Lala Kealoha (Pilar Seurat), a local girl who, with her soon-to-be-husband David Kimu (Sal Ponti), welcomed them with leis when they arrived on the ship. (David was the one who jumped into the water to rescue Mavis after she fell.) David is jealous of Purcell's attentions to his fiancée. When Purcell wants Mavis to go to town to buy artist supplies so he can take advantage of the light, Lala insists on going in her place. The brake rods of the car she is driving fail, and Lala is killed. All of this stuff makes Steele very suspicious.

Later when the Garrisons and Purcells are having drinks at the Shell Bar, someone slips a Mickey Finn into Purcell's drink and he passes out. Suddenly we are aware of a connection between Mavis and a mysterious handsome guy who has been seen around before, particularly on the ship after the railing gave way.

This is Michael Thompson (Edward Kemmer), who has hot pants for Mavis and vice versa. They have been in cahoots for some time to knock off Purcell, though there are a lot of serious questions as to how Thompson could have arranged the "accidents" to happen.

Mavis and Thompson take the doped up Purcell back to the Garrisons' house. Outside the place, Thompson makes Mavis yell a bunch of dialogue to make the Garrisons' houseboy think that Purcell wants to go swimming in the ocean, which is totally stupid. The idea is that they will drown Purcell.

As Steele and David, the latter of whom seriously wants to kill Purcell (and almost tried once), arrive at Garrison's (Steele has figured out what's going on by smelling Purcell's drink at the bar), Mavis accidentally falls down the stairs to the beach and is killed. Ironically, she tripped on a fish net which someone brought in from the beach, and according to Garrison earlier, using fishnets for decoration is considered "bad luck" by Hawaiians. Thompson is busted, but I think it will be difficult to make a case against him!

This episode is OK, though the ending is kind of "cute," which I'm sure will be the norm.

MUSIC:

In the Shell Bar, Cricket sings "Let's Do It, Let's Fall in Love" (also known as "Let's Do It (Let's Fall in Love)" or simply "Let's Do It") written by Cole Porter in 1928. Outside, sitting on his cab earlier, Kim sings "You Must Have Been A Beautiful Baby," with music by Harry Warren and lyrics by Johnny Mercer, published in 1938. Some of the music from when Mavis is rescued from the undertow (and Steele seems to jump into the water fully clothed along with Garrison and Purcell -- though whether this is really them is difficult to tell) is ridiculously overdramatic. Perhaps this was taken from the Warner Brothers stock music library.

TRIVIA:

After reviewing the first episode above, I was all enthusiastic to do anal-ysis for this series, but with the second episode, I found the version I had of the show made no sense at all. It sounded like some Warner Brothers film noir like The Big Sleep with its incomprensible plot. The time of the version of the second show I had, from the GoodLife Network, was 45:50. (S01E01 was even less, 44:54, but it made sense.) So I decided to write out the whole plot of the second episode (below) ... but that did not help. It is actually based on a book, but I don't feel like shelling out a lot of $$ to satisfy my curiosity about what the story is supposed to be really about. If anyone has further information about what might be missing from what's below, please get in touch with me via link at bottom of my main page - MQ)

S01E02, "The Waikiki Widow"
Original air date October 14, 1959
Cast and Crew

As the show opens, Kim is serenading some babe on the beach with "Down Where The Trade Winds Blow" by Marty Robbins. They see a scuba diver nearby who collapses. They take him to the hospital (not seen by us).

At the hotel's Shell Bar, Cricket is chatting with Sally Tseung (Judy Dan). While Cricket is singing "Dancing on the Ceiling" (Rodgers and Hart, 1930), Sally gets a phone call. She seems very upset, and leaves. Sally goes to the Hawaiian Eye office and walks right into the place despite Moke's objections. She tells them her brother, who was skin diving, has been hurt and is in the hospital. She wants the two men to accompany her there. From here, Sally's brother will be known as "Young Tseung."

At the hospital, the three enter the brother's room. The doctor says he has the bends and is in great pain. Arrangements have been made to move him to the navy's decompression chamber. The brother cannot talk, but with his finger, he traces three Chinese characters on his bed sheet: tea, tiger and dragon. Sally doesn't know what this means. He is taken out of the room to go to the navy's facility. Sally tells Steele what happened to her brother was no accident. She asks him to go and talk to her grandfather about "the pearls."

As they leave, Steele talks to a Homicide Lieutenant from HPD (Mel Prestidge, his first appearance in this role). He is examining Young Tseung's scuba equipment to see if it was tampered with. When Steele asks him questions, the cop is evasive. As Steele is about to get into the hospital elevator, he runs into Kim, who tells about finding Young Tseung on the beach. Kim, who can speak Chinese and several other languages, doesn't know of any significance to the three Chinese characters.

At the grandfather's house, the old man doesn't know what these characters signify either, except maybe it has something to do with his grandson's "employment." Young Tseung works as a houseboy for Lady Blanche Carleton (Paula Raymond), known as "the Waikiki widow." Steele wonders about the grandson's occupation, suggesting the old man would have preferred something better, but the old man says there is nothing wrong with being a servant. Even he was once a servant, a "slave in the household of the Dowager Empress of China." Steele says that he has heard about "99 pearls" given to the old man by the Empress, a reward for him helping foil an assassination attempt on her. Steele wants to know where the pearls are now, and the old man bristles, though he knows that Steele is curious by nature because of his occupation. The old man says he knows that Steele is sincere, "a busy gentleman." The old man says he doesn't want to take up Steele's time, but Steele replies, "I wish I knew as much about you, Mr. Seung."

Steele tells the old man "this [meaning what he has come to talk about?] is a serious matter," wondering if it has any connection to the black pearls, because Sally seems to think that it does. The old man says when the Communists took over China, he arranged to transfer the pearls to a missionary friend for safekeeping, and then escaped to America. Mr. Tseung says he can't be sure that the missionary still has the pearls, suggesting that the pearls may be now "in Hawaii ... in the hands of another."

Lopaka shows up, looking glum, and the old man immediately knows that his grandson is dead. Lopaka says that Chu was over 100 feet down, and when he surfaced, he got the bends. As well, the cops determined the equipment was tampered with. The old man offers to pay Hawaiian Eye any amount to solve his grandson's murder. When Steele says the police are working on the case, the Mr. Tseung says that their jurisdiction "ends at the water's edge." The old man tells them, "The answer to this question may lie as far away as Hong Kong," and leaves the room as "Oriental"-sounding music is heard. Steele says, "On the other hand, it may be as close as the Waikiki widow."

We cut to Blanche Carlton's house, where she is arranging a contest in a fish tank between two Siamese fighting fish, taking bets between two men who are there: John Hunter (Karl Weber), a tea merchant, and Dan Gordon (Myron Healy), later described as "a playboy." A third man, Matthew Webster (Robert McQueeney), a priest, is also in the room. Steele shows up to tell Lady Blanche that Chu has had an "accident." She says she was going to the hospital later. She introduces Steele to the three men there.

Hunter tells Steele he's been meaning to get in touch with him, because he would like "protection" for a shipment of valuable Dragon Well tea (also known as Longjing tea) which has arrived at his company, described as "the most expensive tea on earth, worth $50 a pound." Webster says that he is leaving, that he is tired, but Steele wants to know if he was a missionary in China, perhaps wondering if he is the courier the grandfather mentioned. Webster knows the old man, and has been in touch with him. But Webster suggests that the business with the pearls is a "fabulous story, especially to the sentimental Chinee [sic]." He leaves. Lady Blanche lifts up a partition in the fish tank so the fish can begin fighting. The music is dramatic as the two men start cheering on their fish on which they have already placed $200 bets. Steele looks disturbed.

We cut to the Hawaiian Village Hotel. Kim brings Cricket some film from tourists to be developed. She explains about her real name, Chryseis, which came from Homer's Iliad. Kim looks like this is all too much over his head, saying "Easy, Cricket ... easy." In the office, Lopaka reports that Hunter's tea is now being guarded by one of their employees. Steele gives Kim an envelope with money from Lady Blanche, her houseboy's final wages plus a bonus, to give to the grandfather. Kim suggests that the amount of money is peanuts, that the old man is rich. Steele says he will deliver the money himself.

There is flirting between Steele and Cricket. He wants her to snoop around and see if anyone saw Young Tseung the day before. When she wants money for gas, Steele gives her a dime for the bus.

At the old man's house, Mr. Tseung tells Steele to give the cash to Kim for his help taking his grandson to the hospital. Steele asks about the pearls, saying the night before the old man suggested they had "fallen into the hands of another," but the old man only wants Steele to find out who killed his grandson, saying "I do not wish to discuss the matter of pearls."

Steele goes to Hunter's tea company. Kim, who is parked outside, says his cousin Lolita works there, and he is driving her to a party later at his Aunt Estrelita's. Steele goes inside and meets Hunter, who shows him where five women, including Lolita, are mixing blends of tea. Hunter says they do "blending to order for restaurants and hotels and many individuals" and that "there is a great demand for special blends among the Chinese and Japanese people in the islands." When Steele asks if there is a variety called "Tiger Tea," Hunter says he has never heard of it. Lolita gets Steele's attention and points to a bunch of tea which is spilled on the floor. (I totally don't understand the significance of this.)

At the Missionary Society Office, Lopaka investigates Webster, who was at a mission in China for 8 years. Webster left his post because he contracted typhus.

Later at the Hawaiian Eye office, Lolita is there with Kim, and she tells Steele that one of the 10 chests of the expensive tea was actually green tea, which was much cheaper. When she brought this up with Hunter, he told her to "forget it." There is more flirting between Cricket and Steele. She reports that Papa Haone (Michael Raffetto), who runs a souvenir stand on the pier, says he saw Young Tseung on the docks with some other man, except Cricket, who was playing detective, forgot to ask who this other person was. Haone isn't there today, but will be back tomorrow. When Lopaka shows up with his report on Webster, he says that Webster was in China for 18 years (not 8). Lopaka also checked out Gordon, who is described as a "playboy [who is] wild about Lady Carlton."

Steele goes to Blanche's place, where Gordon is drunk and she is telling him to get lost. When Gordon takes a punch at Steele, he is quickly dispatched. Inside, Blanche gets chummy with Steele, but when she wants to talk about her former houseboy, she wants to go and talk about this "somewhere else." The two of them are soon in front of a bad process shot of Hanauma Bay. Blanche starts talking about the moonlight and suggests the two of them go and sit on a nearby wall. It sounds like they were previously discussing her past. She says "My husband died and I was all alone, the prestige was his, not mine. And our friends were his friends, not mine, and they went out of their way to make that way clear." When Steele says, "And that's why you came to Honolulu." She replies, "Hong Kong is no place for a woman to be alone." She bats her eyelashes at him, saying "A woman should never be left alone."

Just then, another car pulls up right beside them, and they don't seem to be paying much attention to this. When Steele again asks Blanche what she wants to talk about, she says "Do we have to talk?" Just then, the driver of the other car gets out and starts shooting at them, and despite the fact he is only a few feet away, totally misses! After the shooter leaves, Blanche hugs Steele.

Later, there is more flirting between Steele and Cricket as they leave to see Papa Haone. Outside, Kim is sitting on his cab singing "When My Dreamboat Comes Home" by Dave Franklin and Cliff Friend; in part of this he imitates Louis Armstrong. Gordon suddenly appears, and Steele grills him, suggesting that he was the guy who tried to shoot him and Blanche the night before. Gordon denies all this, saying he was at the hotel's bar. Steele says he will check on this.

Cricket, Steele and Lopaka go to visit Papa Haone, who seemingly is a white guy with a really phony looking tan and an equally phony Hawaiian accent. Steele wonders if Papa saw Young Tseung with a "playboy type," which Lopaka translates as "kane makahi." Papa is having trouble remembering anyone, but says he recalls that the guy with Tseung was no playboy, but a priest.

Steele and Lopaka visit Webster in his hotel room. Webster, who is leaving town soon, admits to being the one who smuggled the 99 pearls out of China and he turned them over to the "Hong Kong authorities," specifically Lord Carlton, Blanche's husband. When Webster is told the Mr. Tseung never got the pearls, he is surprised. He denies specifically meeting the grandson, even though he spoke to some young man at the docks and asked for directions. When asked questions about the pearls (which are supposedly worth $1,000,000), Webster says that Lady Blanche would not have had diplomatic immunity after her husband died; she would have had to pay 30% tax on them if importing into the States. But she never got the pearls, because Lord Carlton's son inherited everything, and she is destitute. As Steele and Lopaka leave, Webster tells them in Chinese, "I am the wiser for your friendship."

When Steele goes to see the old man again, he wants to know if he hired Lady Carlton to bring the pearls to the island. The old man totally clams up until Steele starts talking about how his grandson was diving for the pearls which were in a chest of tea (?huh?). When Steele wonders if the old man had his son take the houseboy job so he could keep his eye on the pearls, the old man finally says that there were no valuable pearls, it was all made up. Despite the rumour of the pearls' existence, the old man used them as collateral in the local business community. The pearls that he had were a cheap variety. When asked about the word "tiger" which we heard earlier, the old man says this refers to Siamese fighting fish -- like the ones Lady Blanche has.

When Steele goes to Blanche's place, he finds the door unlocked, a radio inside blaring jazzy music, and Blanche beaten up and lying on the floor. Moke suddenly shows up, and tells Steele he is needed at the tea company downtown.

At the tea company, Hawaiian Eye's guard has been knocked out and Hunter himself has been killed. The police lieutenant says that they have found out that Gordon has a record for defrauding rich women in New York State. The three men head to the airport in some hilariously bad process shots of driving. Gordon and Webster are both at the airport. Lopaka points out Gordon, which is weird, because I don't think he has ever seen the guy before!

Webster goes to pull out a gun, but is shot by the lieutenant, falling right beside a United Air Lines truck. Inside Webster's bag, they find the phony pearls (but are they really phony?). The suggestion is that "Webster" really wasn't Webster after all, but someone in the next bed to the real Webster in the hospital in Hong Kong who was suffering from typhus and blabbing about all this intrigue deliriously.

When Steele and Lopaka talk to Gordon, who is nearby at the airport, he doesn't know that Blanche is in the hospital, beaten up. He says that the two of them are going to San Francisco to be married. Steele says that is weird, because she is dead broke and "an accessory to murder." Gordon leaves, disheartened.

Back at the office, Cricket wonders how Steele knew Webster was a phony. Steele says that is because when they left Webster's apartment, what the priest really said to the two of them was "The dogs bark, the fox is gone." Steele is seen slipping Kim some money, because he was obviously the one who did the translation. Kim breaks the fourth wall as he looks at the camera.

S01E03, "Second Day of Infamy"
Original air date October 21, 1959
Cast and Crew

There are some interesting parallels between this show and the unbelievably bad "To Hell With Babe Ruth," the second episode of season two of Hawaii Five-O. Hawaiian Eye was a precursor to Five-O by about 10 years -- in fact, the earlier episode was broadcast almost exactly 10 years before. The Hawaiian Eye show is written by Steven Ritch, and it seems impossible to believe that Anthony Lawrence, who wrote "Babe Ruth," was not aware of it. Thanks to Peter Bergman for bringing this to my attention many years ago.

One big difference with this earlier show is the lead in the Hawaiian Eye episode is played by a Japanese character actor -- Yuki Shimoda, who does a very good job as does Miiko Taka. In Five-O, Mark Lenard, who played Spock's father on the original Star Trek, gives an excruciatingly bad performance as the lead character Yoshio Nagata, who abducts his daughter (his wife having passed away) and threatens to blow up storage tanks.

Mitsuki Yatto (Yuki Shimoda) is a patient in the Oahu Mental Hospital. He is burning some rubbish supervised by a guy credited as "Attendant" (Mel Prestidge, who became a cop in other episodes -- this was the first show filmed). Yatto freaks out after looking at the fire in the furnace, punches out the attendant and escapes, climbing over a fence outside the hospital.

At the Hawaiian Eye office, Steele is awakened at 5:30 in the morning by Dr. Wallace Oliver, a friend of his (Edward Platt, better known as "Chief" on Get Smart). Oliver has come to request Steele's help in locating Yatto, saying that he was a Japanese officer, part of an espionage team which landed in Hawaii before Pearl Harbor. After a confrontation with the local authorities at the time, he received a head wound which resulted in amnesia. He has been confined to the hospital ever since, but was recently showing progress with his condition. Oliver wants help because he says if Yatto sees the cops after him (i.e., authority figures), he will freak out. He describes Yatto as "a military man of great honor."

Yatto doesn't know that the war is over, and when he sees the the Pacific fleet is no longer in Pearl Harbor, he says "The Americans must know [about the impending Japanese attack]," and he wants to get word back to Japan. Stealing some clothes from a hut along with a cane-cutting knife, he tries to track down a Colonel Hideki, who was likely the superior officer from the espionage team, but the house, 18 years later, at 468 Kinney Street, is occupied by a bunch of people who are having a wild party. This kid who answers the door gives Yatto a bunch of hip lingo and tells him to get lost. ("Split the scene, you've got the wrong pad, Dad.") Yatto drops the knife on the front porch, where it is later found by the cops after the kid finds it and calls them.

Yatto manages to track down his old girl friend Sumiko Natago, played by Miiko Taka, who was the love interest of Marlon Brando's character in the movie Sayonara. She was part of his "fabricated life" while he was in Hawaii to help hide his true intentions. The fact that he finds her living in the same place as she was in 1941 is interesting, since Hawaiian Eye has a lot of difficulty locating her, knowing only that Sumiko was his girl friend way back when she was a dancer at a local club. When Yatto encounters Sumiko, he is disturbed to find out she is married and has a child. Telling her, "You used me while you loved another," he threatens both her and the kid.

Steele figures out where Sumiko lives from Pearl Bailey (Lee Patrick), the boss of a nightclub where she used to dance. Pearl tells him, "I'm a sucker for a good looking man." Steele also gets the eye from some babe at the club named Frieda (Dell-Finn Poaha). Steele arrives at Sumiko's when Yatto is hiding as she talks through the partly-opened door to him, denying knowing anything about her former lover's whereabouts.

After this, Yatto leaves and conveniently finds some dynamite in a shack from the Woodstock Construction Company which he intends to use to blow up liquid fuel storage tanks. He then contacts Sumiko by a pay phone. (Where did he get the money?) He says, "Come to the place where I told you, bring clean clothes and food within the hour. Do not think of calling American intelligence or the police ... If you do not come alone, your child will never be safe." Presumably he intends for both of them to leave the island together after he sabotages the tanks. He has told Sumiko he can get her a good job dancing in some place in Tokyo.

Steele, who has been watching outside Sumiko's place, follows her. At the fuel depot, Yatto knocks out a guard and hooks up the dynamite and is almost ready to push the plunger on the blasting machine when Steele arrives. The two of them fight, including what look like martial arts moves. Lopaka and HPD cops show up very quickly, considering Steele called the office only a few minutes before. Steele punches Yatto out, and the plunger is quickly disarmed by Lopaka.

Back at the Hawaiian Eye office, Oliver reports that Yatto is on his way to recovery. The show ends in a corny way with Kim complaining that no one called him to take the doctor back to the hospital in his cab.

TRIVIA:

S04E02, "Somewhere There's Music"
Original air date October 9, 1962
Cast and Crew

Just like with Hawaii Five-O S02E02, To Hell With Babe Ruth above, there is another example of cross-pollination between that show and Hawaiian Eye.

Not only is the story of Hawaiian Eye S04E02, Somewhere There's Music, very similar to Five-O's S03E05, The Guarnerius Caper, about two white trash types who find a priceless violin in a car they have stolen, but so is the writer of both episodes, Ken Pettus. This leads into a lot of questions about "How could he get away with this?" which I am not going to get into here.

In the Hawaiian Eye show, violinist Stafford Price (character actor Wesley Addy) is giving a concert accompanied by piano in the Hawaiian Village's HV Dome, after which he intends to get to the airport quickly, because his plane to the mainland leaves in an hour. Kazuo Kim (Poncie Ponce) puts Price's violin, a Stradivarius worth an estimated $100,000, in the trunk of his taxi along with a suitcase. When some punks trying to steal a car in the parking lot nearby are surprised by security guard Moke (Five-O's Doug Mossman in an early role), they steal Kim's taxi because he left the keys in the ignition while he went back into the hotel for a few seconds to check on Price.

Philip Barton (Troy Donahue), the hotel's Director of Special Events, is distraught, because he put in a lot of effort arranging Price's appearance, suggesting that this is something you wouldn't normally see in the hotel, though the concert seemed to be very well attended. Barton figures that he won't be seen as "doing his job" if everything doesn't go smoothly with the violin being quickly recovered.

When Barton tells Hawaiian Eye's Tom Lopaka (Robert Conrad) about the theft of the violin, Lopaka has a lot of trouble tearing himself away from some babe he is chatting with in the hotel's Shell Bar. Lopaka's attitude, backed up by Barton, is like "let's leave this up to the cops to solve; the thieves didn't know the violin was in the trunk, and they probably don't know if it's worth anything anyway."

Unlike in the Five-O show where there were two psycho punks who stole a car with a violin in its trunk, in Hawaiian Eye there are three of them, somewhat less psychotic punks: Earl (Armand Alzamora), Chris (Gordon Wescourt) and 16-year-old Teo Nolan (Mark Romaunt). Teo, the last of them, doesn't seem to be as criminally serious as the other two, being kind of edgy recently. He is described as "a drag."

As the three escape, the taxi gets a flat tire, and when they open up the trunk to get the jack and the spare, they discover the violin and, like one of the characters in the Five-O episode, Earl looks like he is going to use it like a baseball bat with Chris pitching a rock to him instead of a ball. Teo grabs the violin back from Earl and when a car passes by and Chris and Earl duck for cover, Teo runs away clutching the instrument.

After Teo arrives at his home in the Coral Palms Apartments, his sister Malia (Anna Navarro) returns there. We find out that their father used to play the violin, but he was a daydreamer who never knew what he wanted out of life. When Teo tells his sister that he wants to learn the violin, she is totally against this because it reminds her of their father, a makane, which she says means "restless wind." She says she doesn't want Teo to wind up like their father "cutting cane on the docks," describing Teo as "a little pupule [crazy]."

Teo is conflicted, and goes to a place on the beach called The Popokis where his two pals are hanging out. They tell him he should take the violin to the Hong Kong Loan Company and hock it, so at least they will make some money from their enterprise. However, these two guys have a big problem, because after fixing the flat tire, they returned to downtown Honolulu where they ran into some pedestrian, who was killed.

Instead of taking the violin to a pawn shop, Teo takes it to Mr. Viotti's place. After their father died, Malia sold their father's violin to Viotti (John Wengraf), who was giving the father lessons despite the fact that he had "hands of a plumber" and he played like he was "wearing boxing gloves." When the old man, who is blind, plays the violin, he realizes that this is not some cheap fiddle.

A newspaper columnist named Terry Sherwood has learned that the missing violin was in Kim's cab. Shortly after this, the cops find the stolen taxi (minus the violin) and conclude that the car was involved in the fatal hit-and-run because of damage to its front end. When Chris sees the newspaper with a large headline mentioning both the violin and the accident, he brings this to Earl's attention, and the two of them head to Teo's place. Price gets a call from Viotti (one wonders how he knew where Price was staying), because Viotti heard news about the violin on the radio. When Price and Barton go to Viotti's place, he tells them about Teo's visit earlier.

Teo returns home, still conflicted, and finds Earl and Chris, who seemingly have waited there for several hours. They tell Teo they want him to burn the violin because it's the only thing that can tie them to the taxi and the hit-and-run, but Teo runs away from them again.

As Troy and Price arrive at Teo's place, having been tipped off to the address by Viotti, they see Teo leaving the building, pursued by the other two. Barton and the three punks end up in a warehouse, where Teo is carrying on in a very anguished way. When Barton says he wants the violin back, he is attacked by Earl and Chris, one of whom has a knife. Despite the odds, Barton manages to dispatch the two of them with Teo's help and Earl and Chris run away.

The violin is recovered, but the episode ends in a lame way, with us finding out that the Teo ended up with probation for his part in what happened; the other two "weren't so lucky." There are some laughs, because Price decided to spend some of his time while the search for the violin was going on at Gertie's Grotto, which he thought was a nightclub. Instead, it turned out to be a burlesque house.

I don't know much about the state of Hawaiian Eye at this point (the fourth was its last season), but this show overall is mediocre. Robert Conrad's performance is very indifferent. Mark Romaunt's acting as Teo is equally bad – this actor only has one other entry at IMDb for an episode of Perry Mason the following year, 1963. Addy as Price's performance on the violin is no match for Ed Flanders in the Five-O episode. And despite the fact that Connie Stevens is a nice person, her performance of George and Ira Gershwin's "Fascinatin' Rhythm," which totally disrupts the progression of the story is annoying. I'm still confused about how Ken Pettus manged to use the same story for two different series, but let's not ask questions…