The Unsolved Murder of Barbara Colby: A 50 Year Old Cold Case

Surely you know that face! Barbara Colby (1939-1975) was a ubiquitous character actress in the early to mid 1970s. I am just the right age to have seen almost all of her work, and to recall it, for she was memorable. She was attractive, though the prominence of her upper teeth tended to dictate comic roles, which was fine because she was hilarious. Also, she was of a type that was very “in” at the time, dark, curly haired, with a husky voice and a New York sounding accent. She could play Latins, Italians, Jews. She did guest shots on the most popular tv shows of the day, and had just been cast as a regular on a tv series. Then it was all cut short.

Though she was born in New York, Colby was raised in New Orleans. She studied at Bard and at the Sorbonne before beginning her stage career in New York. An off-Broadway role in a 1964 production of Pirandello’s Six Characters in Search of an Author led to a part on Broadway in The Devils (1965-66) with Anne Bancroft, Jason Robards, and James Coco. She then went on to play Portia in Julius Caesar at the American Shakespeare Theatre Festival in Stratford, Connecticut in 1966. Following this, a couple of years at the American Conservatory Theatre in San Francisco. (Surely this is the time and the place where she became deeply involved in yoga, transcendental meditation, and the teachings of Swami Muktananda.) Colby continued to work in the theatre until the end of her life, taking stage roles in between screen gigs. Her last was the 1975 Broadway production of A Doll’s House with Liv Ullman and Sam Waterston.

In movies Colby had much smaller roles, but she’s in a few. She had bit parts in Petulia (1968), California Split (1974), and Rafferty and the Gold Dust Twins (1975). Television was where she really made a dent.

Her breakthrough screen role was one of the very first episodes of Columbo, written by Steven Bochco, and directed by none other than Steven Spielberg in 1971. It is beyond memorable, a truly dazzling turn. She plays a woman who has the bad luck to witness something that makes her dangerous to a cold-blooded killer played by Jack Cassidy. He wines and dines her, romances her, makes her promises. Then she gets a little too drunk and tentatively attempts blackmail. The result almost seems like foreshadowing for the end of her life. And her character arc requires the full gamut of emotions, amused, lustful, calculating, horrified, terrified. I don’t know if it was acknowledged at the time in any way. If I were all-powerful, I’d certainly have bestowed an Emmy on her for that ten minutes alone.

After this she worked constantly on the small screen, with guest starring roles on The Odd Couple,The F.B.I., McMillan and Wife, Kung Fu, Gunsmoke, and other shows. The next turning point in her came when she scored a big hit on The Mary Tyler Moore Show in the role of a prostitute (Mary meets her in the slammer when she is jailed for refusing to divulge a source for a news story to a judge). Colby’s performance scored so well, the character recurred in another episode. And then she was cast as a regular in the spin-off series Phyllis, supporting Cloris Leachman, A regular role on a major tv series is every actor’s dream. To all appearances she was on her way. Three episodes were in the can when fate intervened.

One night shortly after her 36th birthday, Colby and James Kiernan (a colleague with whom she was romantically involved) were leaving an acting class when they were deliberately gunned down by two assailants. Colby died instantly. Kiernan lived long enough to describe what happened, including the important fact that they weren’t robbed. It seemed more like a hit or a thrill kill. The perpetrators have never been caught.

There were efforts to connect this seemingly random crime to some local troublemakers who’d been on a spree at around the same time, but it didn’t pan out. On the other hand, there was another party with a plausible motive. At this time, Colby was separated from her husband Robert Levitt, Jr., who happened to be the son of Ethel Merman. (Yes, Colby was Ethel Merman’s daughter-in-law! Did I bury the lede? But I thought the murder was the lede!) Anyway, was it murder for hire? I don’t know if that was looked into. If it was, there was obviously no proof to make a case out of. But it’s frustrating that the case has never been solved. They’re completely unconnected, but the case reminds me a little of the killing of Sal Mineo the following year. Minor Hollywood actors randomly, senselessly killed out the blue.

Colby’s part on Phyllis was taken over by Liz Torres. She’ll get her own story here in a few months.