The original “substrate” - the bottom layer - provides the plane and the body of Rex Reason, which must be joined up with the head of Nelson Brenner as he would have looked “15 years ago” (i.e. in 1960). The picture chosen to represent the facial features of the younger Brenner (though not his hair) is a 1965 portrait of the actor Patrick McGoohan, as he appeared in an episode of Danger Man (Loyalty Always Pays). Aside from the incorrect age gap, the new head is too large for its adopted body and sits uncomfortably on Rex Reason’s shoulders at an anatomically impossible angle (with barely a neck to speak of).
The contortions do not end there, however, as the youthful image of Nelson Brenner must clearly display his receding hairline – the third layer to be added to the composition. For the “enlarged” close-up that Columbo presents as “evidence” in the final “gotcha” scene, the hairline was completely redrawn with a new left-sided parting, and the entire image inexplicably rasterized. No changes were made to the face itself, its size or its angle in relation to the rest of the body.
For the fifth and final transformation, Columbo’s “photo guys” went to work on the close-up and added features from the description that their witness gave them of the mysterious “operative” (code)named Steinmetz – and young Nelson Brenner, already follicly challenged, becomes an elderly gentleman, bearded and bespectacled, who is peering at the onlooker from underneath a set of bushy white eyebrows topped by the shiny expanse of his formidable forehead. (3/4)
