Bing Crosby Turned Down the Role
The co-creators had an entirely different plan when it came to the protagonist of the series. Columbo’s iconic role was originally supposed to be a smooth crooner – basically the opposite of the inelegant Peter Falk. And as it turns out, that crooner was going to be played by one of the biggest crooners of all, Bing Crosby.
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Richard Levinson and William Link’s first choice to play the low-key detective was Bing Crosby. The singer actually loved the script and the character, but he was worried that a commitment to a TV series would interfere with his true passion — golf. Perhaps it was a fated decision to turn down the role, seeing how Crosby died in 1977 while the series was still a hit on NBC.