In one scene of the ep "The Doorbell Rang" while Nero, Archie and Fritz are in the basment office. Nero tells Fritz to turn the TV on, in order to drown out their voices as they talk should the FBI are bugging them. Nero tells Fritz to put the TV on anything. When he does, it is something with Robert Cummings. Does anyone know what this show or movie may have been they had on the TV in the background then? Thanks
shareFred - Bob Cummings was on television a lot from the early Fifties until he stopped acting in the Eighties. While the series is notionally set in the Fifties, Stout's novel THE DOORBELL RANG is set in 1964, the year Fred J. Cook's expose THE FBI NOBODY KNOWS was published.
That would suggest, if the television show was sticking to the book (not always a sure thing), that the television show was probably MY LIVING DOLL (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0047752/ ), with Cummings as a womanizing Air Force psychologist dealing with an experimental robot built in the form of Julie Newmar. Does that sound about right to you?
What drprod said -- but alternatively it could easily have been a syndicated rerun of The Bob Cummings Show (1955-59, https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0047752/?ref_=nm_flmg_t_29_act). Cummings was also in a number of other TV and movie productions, some of which may have turned up on TV circa 1964.