Banacek was intelligent, well-educated, cultured and suave. He had a mobile radio telephone in each of his cars at a time when these devices were uncommon and expensive. He owned and drove an antique 1941 Packard convertible. Vernon Street, (the same house used in The Thomas Crown Affair starring Steve McQueen) on Beacon Hill in Boston. Felix was the series' only character to ever call Banacek by his first name.īanacek's success as an investigator allowed him to live well.
The name "Banaczek" (as pronounced in the show) is actually quite rare in Poland.Īlso featured were Murray Matheson as rare-bookstore owner and information source Felix Mulholland and Christine Belford as Carlie Kirkland, Banacek's sometime-lover and always-rival. Another recurring gag was for other characters to mispronounce his name, often, particularly in the case of rivals, deliberately. Drury was never at a loss for a potential solution which Banacek would always manage to shoot down with his very next line. Part of the joke was that Ralph Manza as Banacek's chauffeur Jay Drury, would often ask "What does it mean, Boss?" Banacek also had a running agreement with his chauffeur for a 10% share of Banacek's 10% if he solved the crime. "Even a one thousand zloty note cannot tap dance."."No matter how warm the smile on the face of the Sun, the cat still has her kittens under the porch.".
"You can read all the books in the library my son, but the cheese will still stink after four days."."Just because the cat has her kittens in the oven doesn't make them biscuits."."When a wolf is chasing your sleigh, throw him a raisin cookie, but don't stop to bake a cake."."A truly wise man never plays leapfrog with a unicorn."."Though the hippopotamus has no sting, the wise man would prefer to be sat upon by the bee."."If you're not sure that it's potato borscht, there could be orphans working in the mines.".One of Banacek's verbal signatures was the quotation of strangely worded yet curiously cogent "Polish" proverbs such as: He then collected from the insurance companies 10% of the insured value of the recovered property. But "Banacek" remains his finest work in the television medium.Peppard played Thomas Banacek, a suave, Polish-American freelance investigator based in Boston, who solved seemingly impossible thefts (see locked room mystery).
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When that project failed to materialize, he returned to series TV in the lesser "Doctors Hospital" in 1975 but enjoyed his greatest success as the leader of "The A Team" in the 80s. Despite healthy ratings, Peppard, whose contract with Universal and NBC originally called for a weekly series, and was therefore easily broken, bowed out in the hope of producing and directing a film about Long John Silver.
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"Banacek" was introduced in a two-hour World Premiere movie which aired on NBC in the 1971-72 season, then went on to headline 16 episodes from 1972-74. Smoking fine cigars, and displaying an expertise on the more elegant things in life that would make James Bond envious, Banacek could be insufferably arrogant, and Peppard inhabited the character to perfection. Like "Columbo," this show's mysteries weren't who-done-its so much as they were how'd-they-do-it? Each episode opened with a mysterious disappearance (a football player vanishes after being tackled in one show, a priceless artifact or an airplane disappears in another) that Banacek would spend the bulk of each 90-minute episode attempting to solve.
When he wasn't seducing the leading ladies, he was correcting those who mispronounce his name ("It's Bana-CHECK"), more often than not with a smart-a** response. Thomas Banacek's appeal had much to do with his being Polish, and the sleuth (actually an insurance investigator) had enough confidence and sex appeal to counter any ethnic joke that came his way. Almost every TV cop had a gimmick in that era, be it a wheelchair ("Ironside"), a Stetson ("McCloud"), or a walking stick ("Longstreet"). After years of playing what he described to TV Guide as "tight-jawed men of action" in routine theatrical films, George Peppard made his small-screen bow as the star of "Banacek," one of three series ("Madigan" and "Cool Million" were the others) that rotated under the umbrella of The NBC Wednesday Mystery Movie when it premiered in September 1972 (following in the successful footsteps of the original Mystery Movie trio of "Columbo," "McCloud," and "McMillan and Wife" which moved to Sundays for their second season).