The Judge and Jake Wyler

The Judge And Jake Wyler finds Bette Davis and Doug McClure respectively in the title roles in this made for TV film that looked an awful lot like a TV pilot. In fact a year later this same film was redone with Lee Grant and Bob Cummings. It wasn't that good to warrant it.

Davis is a former judge who now runs a detective agency in which she employs former convicts and she has McClure, James McEachin, and Barbara Rhoades in her charge. As they are paroled to her she's essentially a slave master. But there certainly have been worse in that occupation.

The agency is employed in this story first by Kent Smith to get the goods on his cheating wife Lisabeth Hush and her boyfriend Gary Conway. But when Smith dies apparently by suicide daughter Joan Van Ark keeps on retaining Davis's firm.

Smith had more than domestic problems that would cause people to want to kill him. As you gather this was not suicide.

Clearly Davis was in this for her marquee value while McClure would have done the actual heavy lifting in this action series. Davis did look bored during the whole thing, possibly why the series wasn't picked up.

Bette's character was a Monk like hypochondriac who had an excessive fear of germs. And she detested cigarettes. I think the creator was having a little joke there.

Even second rate Bette Davis is better than most of the rest. But The Judge And Jake Wyler was all right, nothing more.

Thanks to this digital age in which we live, we can indulge ourselves in some things that were previously impossible. When I was very young, back in 1962, a wonderful device came into our home that was like a small home cinema: the television. And it provided us with many hours of entertainment. One of the idols I remembered from that time was Doug McClure. Obviously for his role as Trampas in The Virginian. In the early 1970s, these idols from the series of the previous decade were trying out the new format of TV Movies. A story with a duration of more than 70 minutes that went directly to the home tube. Some of them were transformed into the pilot episode of a new series. In the case of "The Judge and Jake Wyler" this transition did not occur. And it is a shame. Judge Meredith was played by that legend of classic Hollywood, Bette Davis. A role that suited her very well, since she was a retired judge who suffered from agarophobia and hypochondria and was confined to her house from where she acted as the organizational brain of a detective agency. If she did not leave her house, the work outside was done through a man who had been released on parole and who depended on the evaluation of the former judge to remain free. This man was the complaining Jake Wyler, Doug McClure, who felt as if he was being blackmailed by his boss who led him into trouble in order to solve the case of the moment and who, to top it off, could not carry weapons, since that was an inexcusable condition for someone on parole.

In this excellent detective story, there are many acquaintances. The victim, millionaire Robert Dodd, is played by Kent Smith, who I always remember as the untalented architect with powerful connections in the 1948 film Fountainhead. One of the suspects, the lover of the deceased's wife, was Frank Morrison, played by Gary Conway, the young and meticulous detective who collaborated with Gene Barry in the Burke's Law series. The victim's daughter is Alice Dodd, played by Joan Van Ark, a very popular actress in the 1970s, and even has a small role as an elevator operator, Eddie Quillan. I will always remember Eddie for his role in The Bounty Mutiny in its 1935 version.

In short, a solid detective story, but especially if you have a weakness for nostalgia, you will greatly enjoy the performances of Bette Davis and Doug McClure.

The idea for this film is very much like the TV show "Barnaby Jones". You have an elderly private investigator who employs a younger guy to do pretty much all the work! So, just like Jedidiah who did all the real investigating and regularly got his butt kicked in the TV show, in this case Jake Wade (Doug McClure) has these duties while his boss, the Judge (Bette Davis) mostly stayed at her desk making phone calls. Not a bad set-up for the boss! The only big difference is that Jake is an ex-con and you would think, even with the Judge's help, he'd never get a license to do this sort of work post-prison!

The case in this episode concerns a guy whose death has been ruled a suicide. His daughter (Joan Van Ark) employs the private detective agency to find out whether he actually might have been murdered. Considering that several people beat up Jake or threaten him, it sure looks as if something sinister is afoot.

Apart from laughing because Davis' character HATES cigarette smoke and can't be around it (she was a HUGE smoker in real life), this is a decent but not especially great made for TV detective show. Never dull but also never so good you wish they'd turned this into a TV series.