Noirsville Bonus - Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer Noir TV (Season Two)

Requiem for a Sucker -  Directed by Earl Bellamy, written by Bill S. Ballinger. DOP was Jack MacKenzie and the music supervisor was Maury Leaf.

The episode stars Darren McGavin as Mike Hammer, Stewart Bradley (The Burglar (1957)) as Briney O'Brien, Joan Tabor as Chinchilla Jones, Evelyn Bunn as Della Seramis, Len Lesser (Shack Out on 101 (1955), Slaughter on 10th Avenue (1957), I Want to Live! (1958)) as Zig Segman, Orville Sherman  as A. J. 'Fats' Tyler, Vito Scotti (Criss Cross (1949), Shield for Murder (1954), Rio Conchos (1964), Get Shorty (1995)) as 'Very Very' a Peddler, Richard Benedict (Somewhere in the Night (1946), Race Street (1948), Shockproof (1949), Scene of the Crime (1949), Ace in the Hole (1951)) as 'Buckets' Marberg

An old Lower East Side neighborhood gal pal of Mike's Della (Bunn) calls him up from Jersey. She's a floozy at what probably is supposed to be a burlesque club the Rue D'Or in Jersey City. Supposed to be because all the girls are wearing chorus girl type outfits instead of what a 1959 burlesque stripper would wear. It's TV, what do you expect.

Briney  (Bradley) on the ivories

Della (Bunn) 

Zig (Lesser ), Birney, Buckets (Benedict)

the breaking of the fingers

Della's husband Briney (Bradley) is addicted to gambling and was way behind on the vig. His bookie Buckets and his muscle man Zig (Len Lesser) pay him a visit at the club and break the fingers of his left hand. Buckets (Benedict) ends up dead shot full of holes with Briney's revolver and Della's husband is of course tagged with the murder. Mike arrives to scope out the case.

Very Very (Scotti)

Doing his own investigation he forcefully persuades Zig to give him a spare key to Buckets' room. He detects the smell of cheap perfume near the chalk outline of where Buckets body was found. He now suspects one of the girls at the club. While still snooping around the apartment he hears a muffled gunshot and heads back to Zig and finds him with a bullet in the head.

What follows is a humorous sequence back at the club where Mike tries to get a whiff of each showgirl to see if any of their scents match the smell from Bucket's apartment.

giving her the sniff test

Noirsville

Another entertaining episode with loads of hammer-tomically correct women, plenty of action some noir-ish touches and quite a few NYC establishing shots packed into an episode. 8/10