Ironside (TV Series) The Man Who Believed (1967) User Reviews

Laura Redux

[bkoganbing · 8/10 · 17 June 2013]

Although the death of young singer Marcia Strassman has been ruled a suicide one man is not happy with the verdict. Strassman who was a former heroin addict wrote Chief Ironside a fan letter saying that he could beat paralysis just as she beat addiction. No woman who wanted so much to live could possibly have jumped off the Golden Gate Bridge, she had to be given a push.

This episode bears more than a passing resemblance to the classic Otto Preminger film Laura as Raymond Burr has a Dana Andrews like fascination with the dead young singer. While he makes believers of his staff, Burr takes us through a glimpse of the people in Strassman's immediate world. One of them is most definitely a killer.

Though the resemblance to Laura is plain the story is definitely one of the best Ironside episodes I've seen.

I figure Sam owes me a song

[sol-kay · 7/10 · 21 June 2013]

***SPOILERS*** Very good Ironside episode with special police consultant Robert T. Ironside, Raymond Burr, showing uncharacteristic emotion here in trying to solve the death or suspected suicide of popular rock singer Samantha Dain, Marcia Strassman. It was Samantha who was found dead floating under the waters of the Golden Gate Bridge from a fall of over 200 feet. Not for a moment believing that Samantha's death was a suicide Ironside checks into her background and the last witness who saw her alive just moments before her plunge off the bridge and is sure that it was not suicide but cold blooded murder. But who murdered Samantha well that's another story or case for Ironside to solve.

Ironside soon finds out that Samantha was a former heroin addict who's still being supplied by her boyfriend pianist and pre-med student Paul Bridger, Guy Stockwel, with methadone on forged doctor's prescriptions that he writes out for her. It's a tape of Samantha's last recording session that can reveal the person who in fact murdered her but that's where the surprise is. It reveals who was the #1 suspect in having her murder but not the the person who in fact murdered her. That's where Ironside came in and by risking his life he uncovered the shocking and unbelievable truth to who in fact murdered Samantha!

***SPOILERS*** We get a double surprise ending here with what Samanha was tricked into doing, smuggling drugs into the country, and the reason for her murder that was totally unrelated to her drug smuggling. By threatening to go to the police and reveal who's been planting heroin in her bags had her suspected killer try to knock Samantha off but it was someone else who in fact got to her first. And ironically it was Samantha's killer who saved Ironside's life only to later have him uncover his crime when he at the time thought he got clean away with it!