JH died from liver cancer at the age of 45, just a month after being diagnosed with the disease (which, in metastasized form, killed my mother as well), and just a little over a year before the premier of the film which launched his then nineteen-year-old son Timothy to stardom, Ordinary People. Not a single one of his films have I seen, however! He strikes me as a charming 'leading man type' who should have had a bigger film career, but I don't believe it was really the era of the wholesome hero type anymore.Īs for television, aside from EQ I remember seeing JH as the husband in the 1973 horror film Don't Be Afraid of the Dark, which made quite an impression on me in the day, and as the older man romantically interested in perpetual problem child McKenzie Phillips on the Norman Lear sitcom One Day at a Time (an even more problematic story line considering the actress' later molestation charges against her father). JH actually starred or co-starred in quite a few films in the Sixties, including Walk Don't Run with Cary Grant and The Green Berets with John Wayne, but he ended up doing mostly television in the Seventies. He must have been 24 years old at the time, and he looks a lot like his son Timothy Hutton.

His mounting hysteria in that episode is quite impressive. Maybe they met!Īs an actor one of his early roles was in the esteemed Twilight Zone episode ' And When the Sky Was Opened,' which is one of the comparatively few Jim Hutton (as opposed to Tim Hutton) performances I have actually seen. He was about three years younger than my Dad and was in the army in Berlin for a couple of years about the same time my Dad was. I have already talked a bit about David Wayne, but Jim Hutton had an interesting, and perhaps insufficiently realized, acting career too.

(Can a 42-year-old man be precocious?) Their relationship is brought out really nicely in a couple of the final four episodes.Įllery realizing his series has been canceled?įirst, kudos once again to David Wayne and Jim Hutton, who excelled in these roles. It's a great show to watch with a father because its central relationship is between a father and son: Inspector Queen and his precocious son, Ellery.

It's appropriate because when this series premiered over 46 years ago in 1975, I watched it with my parents, at least until we moved to Mexico in 1976 and I kind of lost track of it (like a lot of other people did apparently). I watched all these Ellery Queen series episodes with my 91-year-old father (who started humming the theme song for a while afterwards).

Ellery queen caesar's last sleep