Dante is an NBC adventure/drama television series starring Howard Duff as Willie Dante, a former gambler who operates Dante's Inferno, a San Francisco, California, nightclub. Alan Mowbray co-starred as Stewart Styles, the Maitre d'; Tom D'Andrea as Biff, the bartender and Dante's "man Friday", and Mort Mills as policeLieutenantBob Malone. Dante claims to have put his past behind him but has retained old associates Stewart and Biff. While his club is legitimate, neither the police nor the mob believe that he is truly finished with the criminal underworld. Dante's old associates in crime keep appearing at the club in efforts to lure him back to the underworld. Dick Powell had previously played Dante in eight episodes of his Four Star Playhouse, initially written by Blake Edwards, who had previously created the radio dramaRichard Diamond, Private Detective for Powell. There, Willie operates an illegal gambling operation in the back room of the "Inferno", which police soon shut down. The only regular from the Four Star Playhouse version to be cast in the series as well was Mowbray, who had first played a millionaire named Jackson who had gambled away his fortune and then worked as one of Dante's waiters. These episodes were subsequently rebroadcast under the collective title The Best in Mystery. The inspiration for the Dante character may have come from the 1942 film Casablanca and Humphrey Bogart's character of Rick Blaine. Dante has been compared to the 1959-1960 CBS adventure/drama series Mr. Lucky, starring John Vivyan, as the operator of a legitimate gambling ship, with Ross Martin as his screen associate, Andamo. Pippa Scott portrayed Lucky's girlfriend, Maggie Shank-Rutherford. Mr. Lucky, because of its Henry Mancinitheme music, has been more remembered over the years than Dante. Duff's wife, Ida Lupino, one of Powell's partners in Four Star Television, along with David Niven and Charles Boyer, directed some of the episodes. Duff and Lupino had co-starred in the 1957-1958 CBS sitcom, Mr. Adams and Eve. Dante ran at 9:30 p.m. Eastern on Monday nights from October 3, 1960, to April 10, 1961. The series proved unable to compete against CBS's The Andy Griffith Show and ABC's Adventures in Paradise, starring Gardner McKay. The TV cast were to have reunited in 1963 for an episode of the anthology series, The Dick Powell Show guest-starring Peggy Lee, but plans fell through following Powell's death in January 1963. Four Star President, David Charnay announced plans for a feature film revival in 1968 starring Howard Duff, but nothing came of it.
