ENDORA YOUR ENTHUSIASM (22)

By: Colin Campbell
September 18, 2025

One in a series of enthusiastic posts, contributed by 25 HILOBROW friends and regulars, on the topic of our favorite sympathetic villains. Series edited by Heather Quinlan.

RUTH LYTTON

I love Columbo. I’ve watched every episode multiple times. The majority of Columbo villains are rich and entitled. They murder in the first 10–15 minutes of the episode. Columbo annoys the hell out of them until he catches on to flimsy evidence. It’s fantastic.

If you have ever worked in customer service, you have dealt with the tone of the typical Columbo heel. But then there is Ruth Lytton. The 1976 episode, “Old-Fashioned Murder,” features a villain who committed two or possibly three murders and then attempted to blame them on her niece. Yet she is the most likable person to go head-to-head with the lieutenant.

Ruth, played by the underrated Joyce Van Patten, wants to keep her family museum open. Her brother, Edward (Tim O’Connor), intends to sell the Lytton collection, as the business is deeply in debt. Phyllis (Celeste Holm), Ruth’s sister, and the real villain of this story, also wants to sell the museum. Meanwhile, Janie (Jeannie Berlin), Phyllis’s daughter, doesn’t care one way or the other. Feeling betrayed by her family, Ruth does everything she can to save the museum, from turning off the lights when she leaves the room to murdering her brother Edward (and Milton, their ne’er-do-well security guard — played by Peter S. Fiebelman, the episode’s writer). The men are killed in what seems a robbery gone wrong. But it’s Ruth who stages the scene, then turns out the lights when she leaves the room.

The exchanges between Columbo and Ruth aren’t typical Columbo. Unlike most villains, Ruth doesn’t play an elitist wolf in sheep’s clothing. She’s a depressed spinster. Most Columbo killers just get angry and angrier, to our delight, because we love Columbo and hate the narcissist who wears gloves to drive. That’s not Ruth. But she’s also no angel.

It turns out Ruth was not a career woman for her entire life. Years earlier she was engaged to a man she deeply loved, until her sister Phyllis had an affair with him, got pregnant, then “vacationed” with him for several months before returning with baby Janie. So Ruth herself is a victim, though steps were taken to prevent the audience from completely sympathizing with her. On the one hand she’s close to her niece, on the other she framed her for the double murder. And there are substantial implications that Ruth may have killed her fiancé-turned-brother-in-law, too. What we do know is she murdered her own brother to keep the one thing in her life that has never betrayed her: the museum. Columbo, possibly appreciating that she’s no sanctimonious Leonard Nimoy, lets the possible fiancé murder slide.

Ruth belongs in prison. But of all the Columbo villains, she’s the only one whom I didn’t hate by the time the credits rolled. I didn’t want her to get away with it, but I also didn’t clap when Columbo took her away.

(And by the way, the tell was that after the murder, Ruth turned off the lights.)

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ENDORA YOUR ENTHUSIASM (22)

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