I liked the end of 'Any Old Port', when Adrian Carsini refers to his loyal,dutiful secretary as "quite the iron maiden" :)

Then there's Shirley Blaine, another secretary who becomes a blackmailer, but it's more complicated in her case. She starts out as a corporate spy, then ends up blackmailing the person she's been spying FOR.
Even though she's good in the part, Sian Barbara-Allen seems like such an odd choice. Were they deliberately casting her "against type"?

oh yeah that's a good one, I didn't even think of her and she might be the secretary that's most a part of the plot.

What is her normal type? I am not familiar with that actress. I always found her kind of spooky in the episode. Like a Manson girl type maybe.

I don\\\'t know her from a HUGE number of things, but the NEGATIVE word for her usual kind of character would be \\\"mousy.\\\" That\\\'s why the things Shirley does come as kind of a surprise if you know her from anything else.

(Not that she hasn\\\'t been in other suspense stories. In the Rosemary Murphy thread a while back, someone mentioned a weird film called \\\"You\\\'ll Like My Mother.\\\" In that one Allen actually got to come to someone else\\\'s rescue at the end, I think. I haven\\\'t seen it in a long while, but I think that\\\'s what happened)

I have to mention that Gretchen Corbett as Jessica, in the bikini, in "Exercise in Fatality"... makes for the absolute HOTTEST scene in the entire Columbo series. (Not that there are many)

She is smoking hot in this scene, without even trying, and Columbo's reaction is priceless. He's trying not to check out her smoking-hot body.

It's very sad to mention her right now, but is Gloria West in THE GREENHOUSE JUNGLE a secretary? You never hear Tony Goodland's actual profession (as opposed to that trust he keeps relying on), and when it comes to Gloria, you just hear that they're connected in some way, apart from what Cathy is so sure about. Does she work for him, and as a secretary (forgetting anything else)?

Which is another thing. You never find out for certain whether she and Tony are really completely involved, as opposed to Tony making a point of seeing her to anger Cathy. She tells Columbo that that was about it, and Columbo himself calls her "a very honest person." But later on she describes the conversation with Columbo to Jarvis, and says "Of course, I didn't tell him EVERYTHING." And of course there's the part about Tony promising her a car.

Yeah I recall Tony's wife making some sarcastic comment about Gloria's clerical skills. I never thought about his profession, he doesn't seem like a businessman type. At one point we see an autographed picture of him, so maybe he was an actor?