Not long ago I was discussing a similar plot device in Etude that appears in an old Humphrey Bogart/Sidney Greenstreet mystery entitled Conflict. Bogie is nabbed for the murder of his wife because he says he remembers the last time he saw her she was wearing a rose. Greenstreet knows Bogie is guilty because he gave her the rose from his own rosebush shortly before her death. Not to get too far afield from Columbo subjects, I wonder if others have seen some similar plot devices in films that pre-date Columbo.

"Dial M For Murder" has a Columbo type payoff-clue in that the matter of the latch-key returned to the stair carpet and Ray Milland realizing he'd taken the wrong key off of the hired assassin's body was what finally incriminated himself, as Inspector Hubbard (a future Columbo victim in John Williams) reasoned would happen.

Williams played a variation of that character so many times that it makes me really regret that he and Falk's Columbo, (who is the American counterpart to that kind of detective) had no scenes together in "Dagger Of The Mind."

Just to kind of build on the foreshadowing of Columbo in "Dial M For Murder" one could say that Ray Milland incriminates himself the same way Dick Van **** ultimately does. "How could you have known the key was under the stair carpet unless you were in on the whole thing?" just like "How could you have known it was that camera unless you used it yourself?"

Dick Van ****
Dick Van ****
Dick Van ****

Dick VanDyke

Ah yes, I'd forgotten all about our strange built-in censor! :)

Try typing in the name of the character Honor Blackman played in "Goldfinger". ;)

I don't think we would get away with it!!

Hmm.. lets try some other bond girls then..

Tiffany Case?
May Day?
Honey Ryder?
Labia Vivacious?

and my favourite... Chu Mi!