Johnny Cash the Actor

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I saw with absolute delight that the episode of Columbo that featured Johnny Cash as a murderous evangelist circuit singer was going to air on one of the "oldies" TV stations. Hold my calls for two hours! Cash, like a number of musicians, tried his hand at acting. And, unlike some others, he was good. Sure, he played himself to some extent (he sang "Sunday Morning Coming Down" -- aside, using Kris Kristofferson's original line of "I watched a small kid cussing at a can that he was kicking" instead of the "kicking at a can" in his recorded version -- and "I Saw the Light" in the episode), but he also had to portray a cold-hearted womanizer who resorted to killing his wife and her daughter when they threatened to go public with his shenanigans. I'm not much on TV shows (and, honestly, I never have been: I can count on one hand all of the TV series I watched religiously in my youth [if you're interested: the CBS Saturday night line-up of M*A*S*H, Mary Tyler Moore, Bob Newhart, and Carol Burnett in the early 70s, Lou Grant in the late 70s, and gee, that's about it!]), but the notion that Johnny Cash was going to be on a TV show in an era where it was getting increasingly difficult to find country music on TV (thanks to CBS's "rural purge" that eliminated shows like Petticoat Junction, The Beverly Hillbillies, and Hee Haw) just made me tune in to the NBC Sunday Mystery Movie (where Columbo alternating with McMillan & Wife and McCloud). And what a terrific episode it was! Cash played Tommy Brown, a singer on a gospel tour, who was being manipulated by his evangelist wife who had "dirt" on him (as an ex-con, it would probably have cost him his career or sent him back to prison). He spiked their coffee as they flew in a private plane with him as the pilot, then as they were unconscious in the back seat of the plane, then jumped as the plane began to spiral downward. And, if you've ever seen Columbo, you know how he finds little clues along the way with his homey style. It was quite a treat to get to see this episode again! Oh, cool, the entire episode is (currently) on You Tube. Here's Cash singing "I Saw the Light" from that episode: