Two of a kind: the odd couple that makes Harry O worth watching

David Janssen and Anthony Zerbe, stars of Harry O and a very mismatched couple

The following is part of The Mismatched Couples Blogathon, running this weekend at many of your favorite blogs. Be sure to check the sponsors, Cinematic Catharsis and Realweegiemidget, throughout the weekend for the latest posts. "Around the Dial" will return next Friday—same time, same channel.

Somewhere in the dusty archives housing the history of television, there must be a playbook on private detective shows that states the P.I. must always have a love-hate relationship with a foil in the police department: someone who can be counted on to grumble about how our hero is always meddling in his cases, holding out on information he's discovered, and operating just outside the law. Nevertheless, said foil can always be counted on to come through in the clutch, showing up just in time to save the detective's bacon—or, more often, to slap the cuffs on the bad guys just after our hero has single-handedly subdued them with his gun, his fists, or both. Case solved, they can go out together afterward for a beer (or two). It's a dependable formula, responsible for more than one hit action series over the years. Of these relationships, one of the most unique is that between private detective Harry Orwell and detective lieutenant K.C. Trench of the Santa Monica Police Department. By any definition, they can be considered one of television's mismatched couples. 

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David Janssen enjoyed an enviable career in television. He starred in two hit series in which he played iconic characters—Richard Diamond, Private Detective and The Fugitive—and he guested in a plethora of dramatic series and made-for-TV movies. (His movie career wasn't bad either, although he never attained the success he hoped for.) He was an intelligent and skilled actor, popular with viewers, and was capable of making a show better than it should have been simply by his presence. He died much too soon, at age 48, in 1980. But before then, he had one last memorable role up his sleeve—that of private detective Harry Orwell in the series Harry O.

Orwell was a former detective on the San Diego police department; he'd retired after having been shot in the back, and when the series premiered in September 1974, he was working out of his beachfront home as a private detective. For inside information, he relied on Lieutenant Manny Quinlan (Henry Darrow), and while Orwell could occasionally try Quinlan's patience, their relationship was based on a personal friendship, as well as respect between former colleagues who'd solved many cases together.

However, halfway through that first season, the series underwent a retooling. Harry had found himself in Santa Monica on a case, and following the case's resolution, had decided to stick around. Naturally, he needed a new foil, in the form of Lieutenant K.C. Trench, played by Anthony Zerbe. Zerbe was one of television's better-known character actors, appearing in virtually every dramatic series of the 1960s and 1970s, usually as some type of greasy heavy. Harry O was his first co-starring role in a television series, and he made the most of it, winning an Emmy in 1976 for Best Supporting Actor in a Drama Series. He shines in the role, and the relationship between Orwell and Trench will become the highlight of the remainder of the series.

Orwell runs afoul of Trench fairly early in the going, in the episode "For the Love of Money." Like most police investigators, Trench doesn't particularly appreciate interference by private detectives, especially when he thinks they're holding out on him. "You know I'm about to book you as an accessory, Orwell," Trench says in that first exchange. "Accessory to what?" Orwell replies. "Don't play dumb," Trench snaps. "I'm not playing dumb," Harry says. "That's the real me, coming through." 

But Trench takes the time to check out Orwell's background, and he knows that Harry was a good detective on the force, and is likely a good detective in private practice as well." At the end of that first case, Trench concedes this. "I like the way you operate, Orwell. Like a cop. Who knows? Maybe we'll get along. Just don't ever keep anything from me." Famous last words, right?

However, it's the second season opener, "Anatomy of a Frame," that sheds the most light on Trench and helps explain his relationship with Orwell. In this story, Trench is framed for the murder of an informer, and with nowhere else to turn, he comes to Harry for help. "The only person available to whom I can unburden my soul is a middle aged beach bum of somewhat questionable repute," he explains to Harry, who replies, "You have a problem." Orwell has no doubts as to the lieutenant's innocence: "Trench, you have tunnel vision about your work. By your own admission, you do not drink in public, you do not socialize with the other members of the department. You're a snob, you're opinionated, and what's worse, you're usually right." But Harry knows that Trench is an honest cop, not a murderer. And Trench knows that Orwell is good; furthermore, he trusts him in a case that may be the most important in the lieutenant's life.

(Orwell is able to clear Trench, of course, for which Trench is sincerely thankful. But when he extends his had to shake Harry's, Harry instead hands him a crumpled piece of paper: his bill. The bill itself doesn't bother Trench; I think he would have been offended had it been otherwise—that's not the way Trench does business. But it's just a handwritten mess, sloppy, difficult to read. "Has it occurred to you to get a typewriter?" Trench asks, stuffing the bill in Harry's coat pocket. "I expect things to be done in a businesslike manner. That's why I hired you, Orwell.")

Over time, the two become something approaching frenemies, with Harry casually strolling into Trench's office whenever he feels like it, something that drives the lieutenant crazy. ("Orwell, I do not appreciate it when people walk into my office without knocking," he tells him, at which point Harry steps back out of the office, closes the door, knocks, and walks in without waiting for an invitation.) Trench may find himself giving Orwell a new lead or a look at a file, often against his better judgment, in return for Harry's promise that he'll share with Trench whatever he finds out, a promise that Orwell may or may not keep. They frequently clash, such as when Orwell's convinced that Trench is after the wrong suspect, or Trench accuses Orwell of seeing clues that aren't really there. Their arguments can get heated at times. Seldom, however, is there a suggestion from one that the other doesn't know what he's doing. It's that mutual respect for the abilities and the integrity of each that binds the two and allows them to work together. 

Still, that doesn't stop Trench from becoming irritated at Orwell's constant presence in an apparently open-and-shut case, or Harry's frustration that Trench doesn't see the connections that Harry does, connections that point to his client's innocence. At times, it seems to the long-suffering Trench that there's no escaping Harry. "At first, I thought it was just a bad dream; Orwell wasn't really all over this building, in every room and corridor that I pass," he says after running into Orwell in the pathologist's office. "It would be too much, even for a nightmare. But then I thought, 'Trench, maybe reality is really worse than a dream, maybe this apparition is indeed a fact.'" Turning to the pathologist and nodding in Trench's direction, Harry says, "He really likes me." 

"Orwell, I do not want to see you around here   
again, do you understand?" 

And indeed, one suspects that, beyond Trench's sarcasm, his exaggerated formality and theatrical way of speaking, there is the possibility that, down deep, he actually does—like?—Harry. In the episode "The Acolyte," Trench visits Orwell after a gunshot pierced the window of Harry's beach house. "Do you have any specific notions as to who might have taken a shot at you," he asks Orwell, "or shall I just start going through the phone book?" But when it turns out that Harry might be in actual trouble, Trench rushes to the scene, telling his assistant, Sergeant Roberts (Paul Tulley), "I hope we're not too late." So he is worried about Harry! But if he ever actually let on to such an emotion, he probably would add, "If you ever tell Orwell I said that, you'll be walking a beat for the rest of your natural life."

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Harry O ran on ABC from 1974 to 1976; it was, from the start, an unconventional detective series. For starters, Orwell walks around with a bullet still lodged in his back, a remnant of the shooting that forced his retirement from the force, which serves to restrict his mobility (although as the series progresses, the network's desire for action scenes necessitated a marked improvement in Harry's physical condition). There are also very few high-speed car chases, since Harry's beater of a car spends far more time in the repair shop than it does in his driveway, with the result that he spends a good amount of time riding the bus to meet his clients. Orwell's voiceover narrations were often noir-like, more closely resembling existential interior monologues than mere plot advancers.

All this means that the climax to a typical Harry O episode is far less likely to involve Harry shooting, beating up, running down, or otherwise physically incapacitating his prey than in other detective shows (i.e. The Rockford Files). It does mean that Lieutenant Trench is often on the scene, slapping the cuffs on the suspect, witnessing that Orwell's hunches have paid off once again. And while they're not apt to head off to the bar together for that celebratory beer, there is the satisfaction of a job well done.

For this reason, Harry O was never a ratings success in the same way as other, more action-oriented P.I. shows. It was different, though, and the critics looked upon it favorably. David Janssen poured himself into the role, and felt the series contained some of his best work; Anthony Zerbe, as I mentioned, won an Emmy for his performance as Trench. But in an effort to boost the ratings, the network couldn't help but meddle. The location was changed, the narration became more conventional, more action and gunplay was added, and Harry was given a proto-girlfriend in Farrah Fawcett-Majors. Ratings did improve, and had it not been for programming chief Fred Silverman and his preference for jiggle TV, it might have continued. But, alas, Harry O was out, and Charlie's Angels, complete with Farrah, was soon in. And so it goes.

Still, Harry O is an enjoyable series to watch, often good, occasionally better than that. But even its lesser episodes have something to offer that's worth watching, and that's the relationship between our hero: cynical, rumpled, wearing a sportscoat with a tie that's often askew and rarely pulled tight, and a crooked smile that tells you he's already seen more than most people; and his upright police foil: formal, precise in his language, always dressed in a three-piece suit, and likely with a bottomless supply of aspirin in a desk drawer. Harry O and Lieutenant Trench are among the oddest and most unlikely of couples, mismatched in every way except their desire for justice. They're proof that opposites do attract, and it's why Harry O is a series worth watching. TV  

What I've been watching: summer edition

Shows I’ve Watched:	Shows I've Added:
Sam Benedict	Captains and the Kings
Harry O Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy Smiley's People Burke's Law	Twin Peaks: The Return

True story: in 1963, the family of Dallas nightclub owner Jack Ruby was looking for a lawyer to represent him. Jack, you see, had gotten himself in a bit of trouble: he'd just murdered Lee Harvey Oswald, the alleged assassin of John F. Kennedy, in front of millions of stunned viewers on television, and now he was in jail. The family had already approached high-powered Texas attorney Percy Fore­man, "The biggest, brashest, brightest criminal lawyer in America," but he'd turned down the case. 

And then a strange player became involved in the discussion. NBC—ironically, the only network to actually air the Oswald murder live—encouraged Jake Ehrlich, one of the nation's best-known defense attorneys (his clientele included Errol Flynn, Billie Holiday, Howard Hughes and poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti) to take the case. The family ultimately chose another celebrity attorney, Melvin Belli, supposedly because "they didn’t want to bring a Jewish lawyer into the case to defend this Jewish defendant" in Texas. But why did the network get involved in the first place? As it happened, NBC had a relationship with Ehrlich, going back to a weekly one-hour legal drama whose main character was based on him. That series was Sam Benedict.

I'm not quite sure what NBC had to gain from this move, considering they'd cancelled Sam Benedict earlier that year, after one season of 28 episodes. Of course, the publicity for the network would have been massive had the show still been on—"Based on the life of Jack Ruby's lawyer!"—but, unless they were hoping to bring the series back, they don't seem to have had much to gain from the whole thing. Maybe they were just trying to do a friend a favor.

If the idea was, in fact, to create interest in bringing back the series, it's too bad the ploy didn't pan out, because Sam Benedict is an excellent series, one not afraid to tackle difficult issues, and, I suspect, one that's slightly more realistic when it comes to life as a big-time lawyer than, say, Perry Mason. (Ehrlich was also rumored to be the model for Mason, but Erle Stanley Gardner always denied it.) 

The star of Sam Benedict is the excellent Edmund O'Brien, an actor with succes both in movies (he won a Best Supporting Oscar in 1954 for The Barefoot Contessa, was nominated for a second Oscar in 1964 for Seven Days in May, and starred in one of the most famous of noir movies, D.O.A. in 1950) and on television (many guest appearance, and a starring role in the 1959-60 detective series Johnny Midnight). O'Brien plays Benedict at full-throttle, tossing off one-word answers to phone messages, dictating letters, appearing in court, and defending a featured client each week. He can be brusque, gruff, impatient, and downright rude; he is also eloquent, intuitive, compassionate, and. once on board, totally dedicated to justice for his client. (One biography written about him was called Never Plead Guilty.) In other words, he's precisely the kind of lawyer you'd want representing you.

Sam's assisted in his efforts by his loyal and efficient secretary, Trudy (Joan Tompkins), and Hank Tabor (Richard Rust), a young lawyer who, in the first episode, convinces Sam to take him on as an assistant and mentor him in the art of trial law. The relationship between Sam and Hank is a natural one; Hank is a bit wet behind the ears, but he's sharp and eager to learn, and Sam sees something of himself in the young man. The arrangement works out nicely in dramatic terms as well; while the two sometimes collaborate on a single case, they usually work separately, with Sam taking on the main case while Hank is involved in the secondary story. (As the young lawyer gains experience, he occasionally becomes the featured character.) 

Sam Benedict, like most legal dramas, is occasionally given to speechifying (Ehrlich himself was known as an impassioned and eloquent speaker and writer, authoring a dozen books on the law). Nonetheless, the show more than makes up for it with solid directing and writing that is always very good and occasionally excellent. Sam's clientele is a rich mixture of the wealthy and the unfortunate, complex individuals rather than the the broad and often irritating eccentrics seen too frequently in Perry Mason, and they're well-served by an outstanding lineup of guest stars, including Claude Raines (who gave a sensitive performance as Sam's own mentor, now an old man whose life is crumbling following the death of his daughter), Joseph Schildkraut (a wise and shrewd old rabbi), Diana Hyland (an old flame of Hank's who may be trying to escape her past), Gloria Grahame (in a whimsical secondary role) and more.

I'm sorry Sam Benedict didn't get more than a one-season tryout. Like Judd, for the Defense, it's a show with a harder edge and less formulaic than the always-enjoyable Mason, and a reminder that the law can be a noble and honorable profession, and that justice, now more than ever, is an elusive quality that should be cherished rather than scorned or trodden upon. 

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When Alec Guinness took on the role of John le Carré's famous Cold War spy George Smiley in 1979's Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy and its 1982 sequel, Smiley's People, it was as if, after the success of Star Wars, he'd decided to remind everyone that the old man could still act. Sure, he'd been nominated for an Oscar for Star Wars, but he'd also referred to it as "fairy-tale rubbish," and said that he "shrivelled up" every time the movie was mentioned to him. No such concerns with le Carré, though, and Guinness's dominant performances in the two miniseries raise them far above what we usually see in the standard spy story.

You might recall George Smiley as a supporting, though consequential, character in the 1965 movie The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, obscured by the overpowering performance of Richard Burton in the title role, and he occupies similar smaller roles in several other le Carré novels. He's the central figure in several others, though, including Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, a co-production of the BBC and Paramount (one gets the idea that it might have been just a bit too good for Masterpiece Theatre, not to mention too expensive).

It's a new era for British intelligence (referred to colloquially as the Circus), and after a series of disasters, the dusty old guard has been swept out in favor of a new, more streamlined and progressive leadership. Smiley was part of that old guard, but after being retired to pasture, he's now been called back on the QT: compelling evidence has come to light that a Soviet mole has penetrated the highest ranks of the Circus. 

Smiley's assignment is to identify the mole from a quartet of suspects, code-named Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, and Spy (Sailor being deemed too smiliar in sound to Tailor). Along the way, his investigation—aided by a small number of trusted agents who owe their livelihoods to Smiley, as well as those who, like George, were seen as obsolete by the new regime—digs up skeletons both figurative and literal, on the way to finding out some uncomfortable truths about the Circus and those who run it.

Smiley's People, set a few years later, once again finds Smiley called out of retirement to investigate a case, this time involving an old Russian, one of Smiley's contacts from the past, who was murdered trying to get vital information to Smiley. Unlike Tinker, Tailor, which allowed much of its story to unfold via flashbacks not involving Smiley, Smiley's People tells a story which is more linear, with Smiley as the propellant moving the investigation forward. 

Le Carré's stories are shrouded in a bleak, ambiguous landscape of suspicion and betrayal, one that assumes a kind of moral equivalence between East and West, in tactics if not in ideology. Smiley has come to a cynical acceptance of way things are; he has every reason, considering the way he was put to pasture, to tell them all to go to hell, but despite the indifference and politicalization—and naivety—of the men running the Circus, he believes there's still a job to do, and someone has to take responsibility for doing it.

The casts for both series are uniformely good: Michael Jayston, Bernard Hepton, Ian Richardson, and Hywel Bennett in Tinker, Taylor and Hepton, Patrick Stewart, Michael Byrne, and Curd Jürgens. However, it is unquestionably Guinness, who superbly inhabits le Carré's's "breathtakingly ordinary" spymaster, moving forward despite any inner conflicts, who provides the moral center of the stories; while they tend to drag at times (especially the more obtuse Smiley's People), the screen crackles every time Guinness appears. Le Carré himself was so impressed with Guinness's work that he began to tailor his descriptions of Smiley in future books to more resemble Guinness's performance.

I've used the word cynical to describe le Carré's work, and that applies to the spy business as well. It is both ironic and disturbing, this business in which the "good" guys constantly adopt the tactics of the "bad" guys in an effort to defeat them. To what end, one is prompted to wonder.

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If George Smiley had somehow been American, an agent of the CIA rather than MI-6, one might have imagined David Janssen in the role, and you could certainly have done worse than that. Cynical, disenchanted, world-weary, but determined nonetheless to finish the job: that would have been Janssen as Smiley, just as it is Janssen as Harry Orwell, the irascible private detective of Harry O, which ran on ABC for 44 episodes between 1974 and 1976. 

The premise for Harry O provides something of a variation on the typical private eye series: Orwell, a former police detective forced to retire after taking a bullet in the back, runs a low-budget agency out of his San Diego beach house. He's a loner, forever seen working on restoring his boat, and were it not for his female next-door neighbors taking care of him, it's doubtful he'd pay much attention to anything around him. His car is often in the repair shop, with the result that he's usually found taking the bus to appointments. Much like Sam Benedict, he can be rude and abrasive even with his clients, but unless you're the target of his investigation, his bark is usually worse than his bite. 

Janssen's charisma, along with a typical PI-style voiceover that combines wryness and self-awareness in an elegant mix, works with the show's serious, often downbeat tone to provide a detective story that's refreshingly different. Ah, if only ABC had left their hands off of it. In an effort to boost ratings, the locale is changed from San Diego to Los Angeles, more action and gunplay is added, and he's given a proto-girlfriend in Farrah Fawcett-Majors. Still, these changes improved the ratings, and had it not been for Fred Silverman and his thirst for jiggle TV, it might have continued. But, alas, Harry O was out and Charlie's Angels (complete with Farrah) was in.

I prefer the earlier episodes, as I think most fans do, but after the success of his previous Richard Diamond, it's just a kick seeing Janssen in private detective-mode again. It's a comfortable Thursday-night fit in the schedule, following Hawaii Five-O, N.Y.P.D., Felony Squad, Johnny Staccato, The Lineup, and—yes—Richard Diamond. And then there's Burke's Law to round things out—but I just finished telling you about that. TV  

What I've been watching: Summer, 2020

I'm not here to tell you my problems, and I rather suspect you're not here to listen to them, so I'll only say that having gone through another period of unemployment, as well as moving to a new apartment, tends to put a damper on any new video purchases. Now, I'm back to work, at least temporarily for what it's worth, but what this all means is that our look back at the summer will focus on what I've watched, and we'll return to what I've bought whenever—well, whenever I buy something.

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N.Y.P.D. isn't a sequel to Naked City, at least not formally, but it functionally serves as one, and not because both shows were on ABC. Whereas Naked City, which aired from 1958 to 1963, portrayed a New York that might be thought of as in a state of tired, shabby chic, N.Y.P.D., (1967-69) finds the city in free fall, a place of crime and grit and decay, of vigilanties roaming the streets because they doubt the city's ability or desire to protect its citizens. While the characters propelling the stories in Naked City were often eccentric misfits, N.Y.P.D.'s streets are populated by grifters and thieves, gang members, racists, and common killers. And the city itself, still colorful and bold in the early part of the decade, is now comprised of mean streets that decent people avoid after dark. In other words, New York's descent from glory, hinted at earlier, is now undeniable—and it hasn't come close to hitting rock bottom yet.

New York's finest (L-r): Frank Converse, Jack Warden,
and Robert Hooks

One thing that hasn't changed, though, is the squadroom, a thankless place far removed from the technocenters portrayed in modern procedurals. Here, in this stark setting, are our heroes, Lt. Mike Haines (Jack Warden) and his two right-hand men, detectives Jeff Ward (Robert Hooks) and Johnny Corso (Frank Converse). They're good cops: hard working, honest, looking out for each other, frustrated at the challenges of being a policeman in New York City. (Just imagine how they'd feel now.) And while we're spared the soap opera elements that seem to saturate today's procedurals, thanks to a half-hour running time that mandates a lean, tight plot, that doesn't mean the characters are reduced to two-dimensional figures just there to keep the story moving. In one episode Ward is accused of taking kickbacks to buy a fur coat for his wife, while in another he confronts a subtle racism that never hits you over the head but exists nonetheless; Converse has to deal with second-guessing himself after killing a suspect, and in a later story faces an internal affairs investigation after being charged with assulting a woman. And Haines, who spends most of his time confronting rising crime, dealing with bureaucracy, and worrying about his men, is taken advantage of when a friend uses him to provide himself with an alibi. It's never over the top, but represents the kind of stress that cops have to deal with, a message that couldn't be more timely.

One interesting technique that, thankfully, isn't overused, is a brief voiceover allowing us to hear what's running through a character's mind at a point where it isn't feasible or practical for him to speak those thoughts out loud. It's a nice touch; sometimes it allows you to see the wheels turning in a detective's mind as he sorts out the pieces of a case, while on other occasions you get an insight into what makes him tick, what he thinks about, who he is.

The three leads are very good, which isn't surprising considering their acting credentials, and they're easy to root for—again, unlike so many of today's TV cops. The location shooting, echoing Naked City, works in tandem with the show's tense, tough soundtrack to lend the show a gritty realism that isn't surprising, considering that David Susskind (East Side/West Side) was executive producer. It's remarkable how much drama and action a show can pack into thirty minutes, actually. Today's showrunners might consider taking a page from that script.

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Speaking of half-hour crime dramas, Blake Edwards came to prominence as the creater of one such show that ran for four years on radio: Richard Diamond, Private Detective. It starred Dick Powell, who had made a brilliant transition from song-and-dance man to the star of hard-boiled detective stories, and while it was standard P.I. fare (aside from the song that Powell would invariably sing at the end of each episode as he played the piano for his girlfriend Helen), it was immensely entertaining, a natural for television. And indeed, Powell's production company, Four Star, brought Richard Diamond to the small screen in 1957, with David Janssen taking over the lead role. Unlike Powell, Janssen may not have had a song in his heart, but he often had a half-smirk on his face, part of the wisecracking persona that remained one of Diamond's trademarks, even as his Diamond resides in a tougher, less lighthearted universe than his radio counterpart. There are other differences between the two versions; the TV Diamond lacks both regular girlfriend Helen and police sidekick Walt, for example. Both radio and TV iterations have that same smoothness and charm, though; no Diamonds in the rough here.

"It's Sam, Mr. D. I have a message for you."

Diamond (his friends call him Rick, never, ever Dick) works hard for his fee; like every detective, he has his moments of brilliant insight, but just as often he comes to his conclusions (and the bad guys come to justice) through dogged determination and resourcefulness. (And occasionally dumb luck.) He also has a hard head, which comes in very handy for those times, and there are many, when he gets conked in the back of the head by some goon with a gun. Even in the first few episodes, the number of concussions that Diamond must have suffered is appalling; fortunately, thanks to that half-hour running time, the show moves at such a pace that you don't have time to consider what the long-term side effects probably were. Anyway, Diamond seldom ever lets one of these slights go unpunished; he may have a hard head, but he also has a long memory.

During the course of the series Diamond moves cross-country, from New York (the location of the radio series) to Hollywood (where the glamourous detectives hang out on the Sunset Strip), and picks up both a car phone and an answering service, manned—an inappropriate word if ever there was one—by the legs-only "Sam," played most memorably by young Mary Tyler Moore. The stories are pretty routine, with many of the early shows adapted directly from the radio version, but Janssen, in the role that made him famous and set him up for stardom in The Fugitive, is an eminently likeable hero, as quick with a smartass retort as he is with his fists, and his wry voiceover narration—which helps bridge the gaps that come with the half-hour format—immediately brings the viewer into the case. The two Richard Diamonds, Dick Powell and David Janssen, are two sides of the same coin, two different ways of portraying the same person, Either way you look at him, though, he comes up a winner.

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I've mentioned the documentaries of David L. Wolper several times, so it shouldn't be any surprise to you that we've moved on to another such series, Hollywood and the Stars, which ran on NBC for 31 episodes in the 1963-64 season. It was a good time for documentaries on television; ABC had taken season-long looks at both FDR and Winston Churchill, NBC adapted John F. Kennedy's Profiles in Courage, and CBS had taken an in-depth look at World War I, as well as its long-running 20th Century. Hollywood and the Stars has a decidedly lighter tone, though, and while it's not the in-depth look at the stuff of dreams that, say, Ken Burns might have produced, it's also a reminder of just what it is that we used to love about the movies.

That about says it all, doesn't it?

The celebrity narrator is a trademark of a Wolper doc, and Hollywood is no exception, with the distinguished actor Joseph Cotton doing the honors, and he combines an authoritative gravitas with an occasionally dry humor to serve as a able guide to the remarkable story of the film industry. (He only appears on-screen once in the entire series; it would have been nice to see him at the start of each episode, at least) Various episodes focus on the Hollywood musical, great comedians, famous swashbucklers, glamour girls, and the history of monster movies; others take us behind the scenes with "making of" looks at The Cardinal and The Night of the Iguana. Some of the best are the biographies of the screen's great heroes, from men known by one name (Bogart, Crosby, Jolson) to contemporary stars like Paul Newman, Kim Novak and Natalie Wood. It's occasionally jarring to see clips from familiar blockbuster color extravaganzas being shown in black-and-white, but then this is a black-and-white series. (If, say, TCM were to ever acquire this series, I wonder if they'd use clips from the versions in their own film library, as they did with their episodes from The Dick Cavett Show a few years ago.)

Like N.Y.P.D. and Richard Diamond, Hollywood and the Stars has never received a proper commercial DVD release, but a significant number of episodes are available thanks to YouTube, which makes up at least in part for its myriad faults. Perhaps Hollywood and the Stars isn't as hard-hitting and comprehensive as we'd expect to see today, but Hollywood itself is a fantasyland; I guess if any documentary series is entitled to give us the legend instead of the facts, it would be this one. TV  

Around the dial

If you're like the folks in the picture above—and does anyone actually dress like that to watch television?—you've found yourself all cooped up, with no place to go. Fear not: our courageous bloggers are on hand to take your minds off the present difficulties.

Let's start at Comfort TV, where David gives us a list of shows that can help us pass the time while in quarantine. His first choice, Gunsmoke, is capable of doing it alone; in case we've forgotten, there are 635 episodes to go through, and they'll all be available on DVD.

"Lie to the kid!" sounds like a strange piece of advice, but in the context of this Hogan's Heroes episode, it's a perfect example of why everything you do during this time is important. It's a good reminder from Carol at Bob Crane: Life & Legacy.

Reading is a perfect way to pass some unexpected free time (or any time, for that matter), and at The Twilight Zone Vortex, Jordan presents the first in a series of stories that will be appearing every other Wednesday, direct from the pages of the 1960s Twilight Zone comic book. (Of course, if you're looking for even more reading material, feel free to check these out!)

At Classic Film & TV Cafe, Rick brings us the 1973 CBS made-for-TV movie Birds of Prey, a chase film using helicopters, starring David Janssen as a traffic pilot in pursuit of bank robbers with a hostage. It's well above the standard fare, with Janssen terrific as the world-weary pilot,

Television's New Frontier: the 1960s takes us to 1961, and the 1961 portion of the sixth season of Alfred Hitchcock Presents. Along with an overview of the episodes, we're given an extended, and excellent, look at Hitch's philosophy, and how he managed to get away with so much on TV.

We've had two more of television's past stars pass away in the past week, and at A Shroud of Thoughts, Terence has his usual thoughtful remembrances of each: Lyle Waggoner, an underrated part of Carol Burnett's troupe (and co-star of Wonder Woman; you might have noticed him if your attention wasn't distracted); and Stuart Whitman, star of Cimarron Strip, Oscar nominee for Best Actor in The Mark, and a familiar face from many a television show. They both will be missed.

There's plenty more to look at and watch on the sidebar, so be sure and make good use of it. It won't end our involuntary confinement, but it might help the time go a little faster. TV  

This week in TV Guide: August 19, 1967

David Janssen knows exactly how The Fugitive will end. “It goes like this," he tells an observer. "Kimble, cleared of the murder, retires to a desert island to recuperate from his ordeal. At sunset he takes a swim. Just before plunging into the surf, he pauses, unscrews his wooden arm, and tosses it on the sand. Fade-out.”

Janssen was joking, of course. He liked to do than when it came to his most famous character portrayal. In an interview on Joey Bishop's show following the airing of the final episode on August 29, 1967, he admits, "I killed her, Joey. She talked too much." But there was nothing funny about the impact The Fugitive had on the culture, as Dwight Whitney relates on the eve of the show’s two-part series finale. French intellectuals, of course, wanted to look at the show’s existential connotations. The Germans, foreshadowing reality shows like The Great Race, wanted Janssen to travel through Berlin in disguise, with people competing to track him down. In Spain, viewers haven’t quite caught on to the fact it’s a recurring series, and great each episode with great anticipation, wondering whether or not this will be the week his luck runs out.

Janssen could have gotten a half-million for agreeing to a fifth season of The Fugitive, but he thinks in retrospect that “I would have fallen apart” if he’d signed on. The rigors of doing four years of a series in which he appears in almost every scene, with no regular supporting cast to help ease the burden, have taken a physical and mental toll. His smoking is up to three packs a day, and his drinking is up as well, which often leaves him depressed. His ulcer has returned, his trick knee often forces writers to incorporate the resulting limp into the script, and when he is exhausted—as he frequently is—his performance begins to develop tics and other mannerisms. His character is forever reactive, always running, and there are only so many ways in which an actor can portray a man who is not weak but cannot afford to appear too strong.

The show’s fans, and after four seasons there are still many of them, are glad Kimble’s situation will be resolved, but sad to see the series come to an end. “Of course, I knew he had to be exonerated some day,” says one viewer, but “I just wasn’t expecting it to happen—well, quite so soon, you might say.” Those fans will turn out in force to view the final two-part episode of The Fugitive, entitled “The Judgment,” and that last episode is the most-watched television show in history to that time, racking up a record 72% share of households with television sets. The other networks must have known what they’d be up against; opposite part one of “The Judgment,” CBS aired a Harry Reasoner documentary on “The Hippie Temptation,” while NBC showed a rerun of the movie The War of the Worlds.

I’ve mentioned this before, but it bears repeating that unlike other series finales, the conclusion to The Fugitive was aired in August, after the rerun season. As it was known that the fourth season of The Fugitive was to be the last, this allowed the suspense to build up throughout the summer; had that final episode aired in May or June, the reruns might have seemed ridiculous, but this way they were still relevant, still part of the chase, since Kimble was theoretically still running. Therefore, when the series ended, it really ended. It’s a brilliant idea, and I still wonder why more series don’t do it that way.

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While The Hollywood Palace is on summer break, ABC fills the Saturday night time slog with Piccadilly Palace, a London-based variety show starring the iconic British comedy duo of Eric Morecambe and Ernie Wise. We'll stop in from time to time during the summer months to see who has the best lineup..
Sullivan: In this rerun, Ed's guests are Jimmy Durante; singers Connie Francis and the Four Seasons; musical-comedy star Gwen Verdon, who does a song-and-dance routine from “Sweet Charity”; and the Festa Italiana dance group.

Piccadilly: The accent is on music as singer Millicent Martin hosts this session at the Palace. Joining her for an evening of swingin' sounds are singers Matt Monro and Bruce Forsyth.

Millicent Martin, who was a regular on Piccadilly and hosted the last few episodes instead of Ferrante and Teicher—I mean, Morecambe and Wise— was best-known as the singer on That Was the Week That Was, and hosted her own show for several seasons; our younger readers might recognize her as Gertrude Moon in Frasier. Matt Monro was a smooth-voiced singer, whom you’d probably recognize from two of his biggest hits, Born Free and From Russia With Love. Sir Bruce Forsyth (who died two years ago tomorrow) started his TV career on the BBC in 1939, and was a TV regular since the 1950s; up until 2015 hosted the successful show Strictly Come Dancing, which we here in the States might recognize by its American name: Dancing with the Stars. To this day, he holds the world's record for longest career of a TV entertainer: 76 years.

But is this going to be enough? Jimmy Durante was one of the great characters of movies and television, a man who could steal any scene, and even though by 1967 he’s already had a long and successful career, he’s still two years away from one of his most recognizable roles, that of the animated storyteller in the Rankin-Bass cartoon Frosty the Snowman. Connie Francis was lovely to look at, and not a bad singer; and Gwen Verdon was—well, just a terrific singer and dancer. Damn Yankees, Sweet Charity, and Chicago were just some of her stage credits, and if you ever saw her with that flaming red hair and those legs, you wouldn’t forget. Hands down, this week goes to Sullivan.

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These summer issues of TV Guide, as I've noted before, are always something of a mixed bag; with most of the networks in rerun mode, there isn’t always a lot to choose from, and summer replacements are often the best bet. I’ve previously mentioned Jackie Gleason’s fill-in, Away We Go (Saturday, 6:30 p.m. CT, CBS), hosted by the unlikely combination of George Carlin and Buddy Greco,* and the Smothers Brothers’ replacement, Our Place (Sunday, 8:00 p.m., CBS), hosted by Burns and Schreiber, as well as Vic Damone, Dean Martin’s summer host (Thursday, 9:00 p.m., NBC), and the appropriately named Spotlight (Tuesday, 7:30 p.m., CBS), Red Skelton’s replacement—this week featuring British comedian Benny Hill.

*Fun fact: Buddy Greco’s second wife (of five) was Dani Crayne, who later divorced him and married—David Janssen!

Tony Bennett’s terrific NBC special on Monday night (7:00 p.m.) is a rerun, notable because it’s another in the occasional series of “Singer Presents” specials, sponsored by the sewing machine company. Herb Alpert and Burt Bacharach are other performers featured in Singer showcases, but the most famous of the specials will be in December of 1968, when Singer Presents—Elvis Presley. That ’68 comeback special, as it came to be known, remains one of television’s iconic programs.

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There’s sports to be had, though, and one event is notable not only for what it is, but what it isn't. What it is, is an excursion into prime-time by the NFL, with the Baltimore Colts and St. Louis Cardinals* set to kickoff at 8:30 p.m. (late start!) on Monday night. Yes, it's the germination of Monday Night Football, something that commissioner Pete Rozelle was big on; he'd started toying with the idea as early as 1964, when a non-televised game between the Green Bay Packers and Detroit Lions drew a sellout crowd in Detroit; and this week's Monday night's game will be accompanied by a regular-season game in October between the Packers and Cardinals. By 1969, the last season before the NFL-AFL merger, both CBS and NBC will have broadcast regular-season games on Mondays.

*Or as we’d know them today, the Indianapolis Colts and Arizona Cardinals.

Coming soon to a network near you!

However, when push comes to shove and Rozelle begins negotiating with the networks for the new, post-merger television contract, both CBS and NBC show reluctance to disturb their regular Monday night lineups. (Lucille Ball was a fixture on CBS, while NBC had its popular Monday Night at the Movies.) ABC isn't crazy about it the idea either, to be perfectly honest; earlier in the 1960s, they'd snatched the Saturday college football package away from NBC after the Peacock Network had signed to broadcast the AFL, and getting back into the pro game could jeopardize their ability to hang on to college ball.* Only after Rozelle threatens to syndicate the games through the Hughes (as in Howard) Sports Network, a move which would likely cause ABC affiliates to desert the network's Monday night schedule in favor of football, does ABC come around. The rest, of course, is history. (And you thought discussing politics was complicated.)

*The paranoid NCAA still thought pro football diluted, or perhaps contaminated, the purity of the college game, and let it be known that they wanted to be top dog on any network broadcasting their games. With the value of Monday night football uncertain, signing with the NFL and possibly riling the NCAA was a real gamble for ABC.

What our Monday night game isn't is baseball, which in 1967 can still make a claim to being the national pastime, and this week the drama of the red-hot American League pennant race continues to play out on our television sets—remember, the divisional setup hasn't come to baseball yet, so whoever finishes first in the 10-team league goes straight to the World Series. The Minnesota Twins, beginning the week with a slim 1½ game lead over the Chicago White Sox, are featured on local broadcasts against the New York Yankees (Saturday and Sunday); the Detroit Tigers, who trail the Twins by only 2½ games (Tuesday and Wednesday); and the Cleveland Indians (Friday; all on WTCN). Meanwhile, on NBC's Saturday Game of the Week (1:00 p.m.), the Boston Red Sox, a mere three games behind Minnesota, face off against the California Angels, only five games back. By the end of this week’s TV Guide, the Red Sox and White Sox will have closed to within a half-game of the Twins, with the Tigers only 1½ games back. No wonder they called it The Great Race.

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Israel watches Egypt—on television. That’s the news from Robert Musel, who reports that Egyptian television—widely considered not only the best in the Middle East, but the equal of many networks in Europe—attracts a significant number of Israeli viewers every day, since Israel doesn’t yet have its own television network. It’s a message the Israelis themselves could benefit from, according to a number of experts who say the nation has been slow to realize the propaganda value of TV. Its first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, had felt that television had little to offer his people (they’d be “better off reading books”), until he saw a nature documentary while making a state visit to France. Ben-Gurion was fascinated by the show, which included film shot from inside a beehive, and said that “Israel had to have television like this.” He feared that, due to the country’s high taxes, only the rich would be able to afford sets, but as many a nation has discovered, the truth is that low-income groups love their television as much as anyone.

But though Israel may have discovered that television isn’t all bad, it still has yet to use it to their advantage. Israel won’t begin its own broadcasts until 1968—far too late, according to Musel, who says they should have been exploiting it for years, giving its neighbors a look at what the country and its people are really like. Foreign correspondent Shelby Scates of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer tells Musel that most Arabs “had no idea what the average Israeli was like” other than the “highly-colored” accounts from Arab newspapers. The Israelis are missing the boat, says Scates—“If the Arabs could see this land of milk and honey and the people in it, they wouldn’t be so afraid.” An Israeli journalist agrees, saying that “It’s time the Arabs stopped thinking we’ve got two tails.” Television as a bringer of world peace? I think it’s naïve, but maybe, back in 1967, not so much.

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Finally, a look at this week's Letters section, which features a missive from Caro S., in Rowayton, Connecticut, and this should be read in conjunction with that Hippie documentary that CBS is running opposite The Fugitive. In that show, Harry Reasoner travels to San Francisco to find out why so many teens are dropping out of the "straight" world, and what they are turning on to, namely the "bizarre life" of  Haight-Ashbury, "hippie hill" in Golden Gate Park, "universal love, 'flower power'—and drugs." The drug most often under discussion is LSD, and doctors discuss the dangers that can come from it, while hippies talk about their experiences with overdoses.

OK, now that we've established the context, let's get back to Caro's letter. I have no idea whether Caro is male or female, but I'm going to assume Caro is a she, because it seems to be written from a feminine perspective. Caro is a teen, with perhaps a different perspective from those on the Reasoner show. And her target, oddly enough, is none other than Steve Allen. "No teen-ager among my friends has ever escended to the level of taste shown by The Steve Allen Show," she writes. (And remember, as I've pointed out before, back in these days you had to feel strongly enough about something to actually write a letter and mail it, rather than just sitting at a keyboard and pressing "send".)

"A few weeks ago," she continues, "there was a parody of 'The Taming of the Shrew' in which Jayne Meadows [Mrs. Allen, for those of you keeping score at home] licked custard pie off her husband's face, with many leering gestures. This week the show had Mr. Allen blowing into his wife's ear as she shivered merrily and leered some more. (This was in a sketch about their idea of hippies, most of whom are much more polite and less vulgar than the so-called comedians.) How about recognizing the fact that we teen-agers have standards, too, and the thing that rubs us the wrong way most of all is the adult way of smirking in reference to sex."

It's hard to know whether Caro is criticizing Allen for being lewd, or being hypocritical about sex (hypocrisy being one of the main complaints young people had toward their elders in the Generation Gap era). Whatever the case, whether she's a little prudish or simply more sophisticated, it sounds like there's at least one teen out there who has standards. And in an era which is bringing us very little in the way of good news, that fact alone is almost enough to make one want to stand up and cheer. TV