On this day in television history - M Squad (1959):

M Squad

Season 3. Episode 1.
Episode entitled: Ten Minutes to Doomsday.
Released September 18, 1959.
Directed by Don Medford.
Written by Stuart Jerome.
Music by Benny Carter.

Cast:

Lee Marvin, Paul Newlan, James Bell, Ross Elliott, Ann Morrison, Francis De Sales, Jeanne Bates, Lois De Banzie.

On this day in television history - Johnny Staccato (1959):

Johnny Staccato

Season 1. Episode 2.
Episode entitled: Murder for Credit.
Released September 17, 1959.
Directed by John Cassavetes.
Written by Richard Carr, Laurence E. Mascott.
Music by Elmer Bernstein.

Cast: 

John Cassavetes, Eduardo Ciannelli, Charles McGraw, Martin Landau, Marilyn Clark, Mel Berger, Bara/Bobbi Byrnes, Jimmy Joyce, Pete Candoli, Red Mitchell, Robert/Bob Bain, John/Johnny Williams, Mel Lewis.

On this day in television history – Johnny Staccato (TV show & book):

Johnny Staccato

Season 1. Episode 1.

Episode entitled: The Naked Truth.

Released September 10, 1959.

Directed by Joseph Pevney.

Written by Richard Berg.

Music by Elmer Bernstein.

Cast: John Cassavetes, Eduardo Ciannelli, Chick Chandler, Michael Landon, Stacy Harris, Nick Cravat, Ruta Lee, Robert H. Harris, Frank Sully, Shelly Manne, Pete Candoli, Red Norvo, Red Mitchell, John / Johnny Williams, Barney Kessel, Monica Lewis, Joe Ploski.

Recommended reading:

Johnny Staccato

By Frank Boyd.

Published by Gold Medal Books.

Published 1960.

ASIN: B0DSZXQGML

Description:

A smooth man on the ivories, hot on the trigger, and cool in a jam – he’s the toughest private eye to hit America in a decade.

On this day in movie history - The Great St. Louis Bank Robbery (1959):

The Great St. Louis Bank Robbery

aka The St. Louis Bank Robbery,

directed by Charles Guggenheim and John Stix,

written by Richard Heffron,

was released in the United States on September 10, 1959.
Music by Bernardo Segáll.

Cast:

Steve McQueen, Crahan Denton, David Clarke, James Dukas, Molly McCarthy, Martha Gable, Larry Gerst, Boyd Williams, Frank Novotny, Nell Roberts, Bob Holt, May Kohn, Jay Elliot, Robert Klauss, Barney Barnett, Nancy Lyon.

Born on this day – Merritt R. Butrick:

Merritt R. Butrick

Actor

September 3, 1959 – March 17, 1989

Credits:

Beauty and the Beast (1987); Blood & Orchids (1986); Chain Letter (1989); CHiPs (1981); Death Spa (1988); Fame (1984); Fright Night Part 2 (1988); From the Dead of Night (1989); Head Office (1985); Hill Street Blues (1981); Hooperman (1988); Jake and the Fatman (1988); Ohara (1987); Promises to Keep (1985); Shy People (1987); Splendor in the Grass (1981); Square Pegs (1982–1983); Stagecoach (1986); Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982); Star Trek III: The Search for Spock (1984); Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991); Star Trek: The Next Generation (1988 / 1989); Sweet Revenge (1984); The Law and Harry McGraw (1987); The Paper Chase (1985); Vietnam War Story (1987); When the Bough Breaks (1986); When Your Lover Leaves (1983); Why on Earth? (1988); Wired to Kill (1986); You're So Cool, Brewster! The Story of Fright Night (2016); Zapped! (1982).

Recommended reading - The Galton Case (1959):

The Galton Case

By Ross Macdonald.

Published by Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group.

Vintage Crime / Black Lizard

Published 1959.

Paperback.

ISBN-10: 0679768645

ISBN-13: 978-0679768647

Description:

Almost twenty years have passed since Anthony Galton disappeared, along with a suspiciously streetwise bride and several thousand dollars of his family's fortune. Now Anthony's mother wants him back and has hired Lew Archer to find him. What turns up is a headless skeleton, a boy who claims to be Galton's son, and a con game whose stakes are so high that someone is still willing to kill for them. Devious and poetic, tersely poetic, The Galton Case displays MacDonald at the pinnacle of his form.

If any writer can be said to have inherited the mantle of Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler, it was Ross Macdonald. Between the late 1940s and his death in 1983, he gave the American crime novel a psychological depth and moral complexity that his predecessors had only hinted at. And in the character of Lew Archer, Macdonald redefined the private eye as a roving conscience who walks the treacherous frontier between criminal guilt and human sin.

Ross Macdonald’s Lew Archer mysteries rewrote the conventions of the detective novel with their credible, humane hero, and with Macdonald’s insight and moral complexity won new literary respectability for the hardboiled genre previously pioneered by Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler.

“Exciting and beautifully plotted.” – The New York Times Book Review.

“A model of intelligently engineered excitement.” – The New Yorker.

“One of his best … The Macdonald depth of understanding and dispassionate charity come out well, and the story … is richly plotted.” – San Francisco Chronicle.