Classic scene from1967’s  “The Flim Flam Man,” starring George C. Scott, Michael Sarrazin, and the irascible Slim Pickens. Scott was only 40, and Louis Burton Lindley, Jr. was 48 when this was made.

Where do we go from here? Patton? No. Too obvious, so let’s find something Y’all haven’t heard in a while, also from 1967.

Mannix. What kinda name was that? A very cool one.

Ironsides rocked the courtroom, even before handicapped parking was invented.

The 2nd greatest TV theme song ever. Book ‘im, Danno.

Inane sitcom with a great intro.  Very loosely based upon the great movie “Stalag 17.”

1965’s “Wild Wild West” intro.  So what if it’s not from 1967. The animation, updated during the program, counts big time.  Forget Robert Conrad. The real star was Ross Martin, aka Artemus Gordon.

Best TV theme song ever? This.

Spy stories were big on television in the 1960s, thanks to James Bond. Even non-espionage shows incorporated spy-oriented stories. But there were a few where the actors cast come across as a bit unlikely. A few examples:

Hugh Beaumont, Mannix: In the second-season episode, “To The Swiftest, Death,” private eye Joe Mannix has taken up amateur auto racing. While he’s near the back of the pack, another participant appears to have run off the track and been consumed in a fiery crash. Mannix is hired to investigate but he’s getting heat from U.S. authorities, including Frank Abbott (Hugh Beaumont), who may be with a U.S. intelligence agency. This episode aired in 1968, five years after Leave It To Beaver went off the air but for some viewers, it’s hard to get the image of Ward Cleaver out of their heads.

William Windom, The FBI: Windom plays the title character in the second-season episode “The Assassin.” Windom’s character, Anton Christopher, is the most feared assassin in the employ of the Soviet Bloc. We see him make a hit in the pre-credits sequence, but his face isn’t shown. Later, Christopher meets a contact (Tom Skerritt), who is taken aback by how ordinary the assassin appears. Christopher makes a remark to the effect that successful operatives don’t look glamorous like in the movies. No specific character is mentioned, but presumably this is a Bond reference. Windom is quite good and comes across as both ruthless and weary.

Russell Johnson, The FBI: the former Professor on Gilligan’s Island appears as a Soviet agent in the fourth-season episode “Caesar’s Wife.” He even gets to beat the crap out of Harrison Ford in one scene. Johnson’s character has been operating in the U.S. for years and has befriended a retired diplomat (Michael Rennie), whose knowledge would be most useful to the U.S.S.R.

Larry Blyden, The Man From U.N.C.L.E.: In the second-season episode “The Waverly Ring Affair,” Blyden plays George Dennell, an U.N.C.L.E. employee who gets drafted by the crafty Alexander Waverly to help smoke out a traitor in the organization. Blyden usually (but not exclusively) was normally cast in comedic roles and he uses some of that here. Dennell is the episode’s “innocent.” Part of the show’s format involved an innocent character getting swept up in the adventures of agents Napoleon Solo and Illya Kuryakin. Some fans don’t care for the innocent characters (they’d rather see more of Solo and Kuryakin). Blyden’s Dennell, though, is one of the better innocent characters in the series.

Leslie Nielsen, Hawaii Five-O: The show’s pilot has Hawaii lawman Steve McGarrett trying to find the killer of an old friend who also happened to be an agent of U.S. “Intelligence.” Presumably, this means the CIA, but that’s not specified. The Big Kahuna has two suspects as possible traitors: Miller (Andrew Duggan), a veteran agent passed over for promotion, and Brent (Leslie Nielsen), the Honolulu station chief. The audience knows there’s a traitor because of the pre-credits sequence where *somebody* is working with villain Wo Fat. But the audience doesn’t see the traitor’s face, though we’re shown he smokes a pipe. And wouldn’t you know it, both Trend and Miller smoke pipes. Nielsen, who spent much of his career doing dramatic parts, is actually fine. But given all his over-the-top comedic roles, people who see the pilot episode for the first time are probably taken aback.

Wally Cox, Mission: Impossible: Cox appears in the series pilot as Terry Targo, a safecracker who is supposed to play an important part in the scheme cooked up by Dan Briggs (Steven Hill). When we see the “apartment scene” (where the audience is given hints about the plan, but not all the information), Cox’s Targo comes across as savvy. The IMF is playing a penny ante poker game and Targo catches Rollin Hand (Martin Landau) cheating. The plan calls for Targo to be inside a large case into a safe where two unclear weapons are stored. A major complication occurs later when Targo’s hands are broken. One can’t help but wonder if the creators of the George Clooney version of Ocean’s Eleven saw the episode. In any event, Cox makes an interesting (if one-time) addition to the IMF.

Het was een zinnetje in de reeks “Boston Legal” dat me eraan deed terugdenken. “Don’t pull a Mannix on me” werd door één van de personages gezegd. Als ik er goed over nadenk is het mijn oudste herinnering van een televisieprogramma.Waarschijnlijk ook wel één van de redenen waarom ik nog steeds graag naar politiereeksen kijk op televisie.

De reeks is blijven hangen omdat ik een tante-nonneke had in Sint Niklaas. “Wat heeft dat er nu mee te maken” vraagt u zich waarschijnlijk af. Dat zit zo. Toen ik klein was, reden we zo eens per maand naar ons tante nonneke en we reden dan langs Temse daar naartoe. Die brug daar in Temse, ze gaat over de Schelde en ligt vlak bij de oude Boel-werf, vertoont wat gelijkenissen met de brug die je ziet op de trailer van Mannix. Telkens we over die brug reden, was er dus wel iemand die zegde “pas op, want dat is hier de brug van Mannix, sebiet zien we hem hier lopen”. Zelfs jaren nadat de laatste aflevering op televisie was geweest.

Toen ik een keertje met de schaakclub in Temse moest gaan spelen, vertelde ik dit verhaal aan mijn 3 ploeggenoten. Jammer genoeg waren ze alle drie maar rond de 20 en moest ik eerst nog uitleggen wie Mannix was.  Voor al degenen die hem dus niet kennen, kijk dan even naar dit filmpje…

Mannix lyckas alltid fånga sin man… eller kvinna.
Men nu verkar det lite tufft för Mannix, han blir lömskt förförd mitt i ett gripande… handbojorna ser mer ut att vara en liten chic accessoar på den förhärdade kvinnan… vars creamfärgade klänningen är av senaste snitt och djärvt och behagligt bar över ena axeln…

Visst, det är en 1973 års topp kreation från Mollie Parnis Boutique. “A Smoking gun” ligger på golvet… allt verkar solklart… mannen i skorna ser inte ut att ligga och betsa skrivbordet precis…
Mannix ta dig samman…!

I think what you really want with your favourite serial killer is to see the gore in HD and to really hear the knife plunging.

Well then, thank god that Dexter: Season 1 has finally been released on Blu-ray. On shelves Tuesday, Jan. 6, the new release comes a year and a half after the regular DVD release of the first installment of the story, which chronicles the efforts of serial killer, Dexter Morgan (Michael C. Hall), to channel his bloody urges into a productive direction. Blu-ray or not, it would be worth re-watching Season 1 of Dexter, knowing what we regular watchers now know about Dexter, his traumatic origins and, especially, his father. Harry Morgan (James Remar) begins as a pillar of kindness and caring and a firm hand where Dexter — veering dangerously in flashback toward blood frenzy — needed it. Using Harry’s “code”, Dex learned to satisfy his need to kill, his father’s need for him to not get caught and society’s need for a human trash disposal engineer. But over the course of Seasons 2 and 3 we, and Dexter, learn a bit more. If this were audio, I’d do a really scary “Mooah-ah-ah!”

As for the Blu-ray release, in addition to crisper image, it will of course deliver the format’s best feature — super intense sound. I (ghoullishly) want to hear how much chillier the action sounds with that heightened audio and (geekishly) want to listen even to the scraping of the razor on Dexter’s throat in what is the best opening title sequence of any television series, ever.

Extras: The Academy of Blood – A Killer Course; Witnessed In Blood – A True Murder Investigation; Michael C. Hall podcast; First Episode of Dexter, Season 3 and — super bonus — the first two episodes of United States of Tara, which premieres later this month on The Movie Network.

Enjoy. Here are a few more new releases of TV on DVD.

Battlestar Galactica: Season 4.0
The Waltons: Seasons 1-8
Duckman: Seasons 3 and 4
Frisky Dingo: The Complete Second SEason
Mannix: The Second Season
Secret Diary of a Call Girl: The Complete First Season
Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations Collection 3
Transformers Animated: Season 2
Dexter: Season 1 (Blu-ray)
Tripping the Rift: The Complete Third Season
Red Skelton Christmas
Laredo: Season 2, Part 2
The FBI Files: Season 1
– Denise Duguay

Soir de suppression de la pub sur le service public. Why not ? Avec un financement adéquat et pas idiot, ni d’arrière-garde comme celui choisi. Mais surtout  derrière réapparait le “bon” vieux système de l’ORTF et de contrôle de l’info. Déjà qu’elle est sous surveillance, là elle sera toute du même côté : aux mains des puissances de l’argent et du nabotléon.

L’ORTF justement (démantelé sous Giscard sans que le contrôle politique ne disparaisse). C’est de là que remontent quelques moments de geekerie d’avant les geeks. C’était pas encore Dallas (heureusement) mais un peu le Pérou, de Cosmos 1999 à Mission Impossible en passant par Star Trek ou la Quatrième Dimension. Si certaines séries étaient en couleurs, la plupart des postes, le mien, étaient en noir et blanc. Il fallut attendre les rediffusions et l’évolution du parc électro-ménager familial pour s’en apercevoir.

On se fait plaisir donc avec ces génériques geeks que les moins de 20 de 30 ans ne doivent pas connaitre.

Les Mystères de l’Ouest d’abord

Mannix (la musique est de Quincy Jones)

Hawaï Police d’Etat (qui donna – fit découvrir – des envies de surf à beaucoup)

Et bien sûr, last but not least, Les Rues de San Francisco

Quoi ? Y’a pas de mal à se faire du bien et elles étaient déjà bien foutues ces séries même si elles avaient mauvaise presse alors (américaines, violentes, décérébrant les enfants – bon là d’accord)…

Pour en savoir plus, les liens Wikipédia qui vont bien : Les Mystères de l’Ouest,  Mannix, Hawaï Police d’Etat et Les rues de San Francisco.

Faites votre choix !

I am watching some old clips of the Dean Martin roasts. He said of Frank Sinatra, “He was born an unwanted child. Now he is wanted in five states.”

“He had a very lonely childhood. When he was eight, his father took him aside… and left him there.”

Boy, now those were some good-looking men back then. I think that the men I grew up watching on TV influenced the men that I think are handsome now. I grew up watching Mannix and Hawaii Five’O and I liked Robert Stack and Dean Martin and really handsome men. That is why I do not find the punks they call hunks now attractive. I would not let some of these guys that these idiot girls call “hot” near my barn. This “thug” idiocy is insane. Who the hell would idolize a criminal? Make your own money punk instead of stealing someone else’s.

Anyway, the men I find attractive are handsome, clean-cut men who don’t look like they just carjacked somebody or need a sammich. I think I am very lucky to have met and married the man I did because he is classically handsome in the old-style sense. He has a handsome face and it is a pleasure to see him, smiling or not. Some guys have to smile to make their face attractive and some guys just are. Isn’t it strange how women have to wake up and put foundation on their face, then powder, then color the eyes, lips, cheeks, eyelashes, line the lids, blow dry and curl the hair, put lip gloss on, put heels on, put a flattering outfit on and then double and triple check sometimes to make sure they look good while men just have to wake up to look good? I have found that unfair. I have to use mirrors and smoke and hydraulic equipment sometimes to look good. The hubby wakes up and boom, he’s good. Not fair.

These are some of the handsome babes from yesteryear:

Robert Stack

 Dean Martin                                                                

 Pierce Brosnan               Mike Conners

the brunette from Adam-12

Rock Hudson         

         Jack Lord                         

 Robert Wagner = “JONATHAAAAAN!!”

 Elvis was so good-looking he deserves three pictures… 

Today’s “hunks”…

Johnny Depp                     Brad Pitt    

 Keanu Reeves                               some ass   

             Wolfface Nicholson             Owen Wilson        

lil wayne                           Snoop Dogg   

  Seal married a supermodel?          

Joel and Benji Madden (was dating Paris Hilton)

                  Paula Poundstone

John Mayer (dating Jennifer Aniston)   Are they twins?

Singer for Red Hot Chili Peppers  

                         Tommy Lee of Pamela Anderson fame

(Do you get any of this?)

another ass

Ice – T                                      Ice Cube

Stay away from my house, not just my daughter, please!

Ang petsa, ika-22 ng Agosto, 2008.  Ang tagpuan, sa La Mesa Grill, SM MOA.  Ang oras, alas-otso ng gabi.  Humahangos ang karamihan dahil sa tindi ng bagal ng trapiko.  Naunang dumating sina Pinong, Jhe at Mannix.  Sumunod ay sina Ivee at Lei.  At mga ilang sandali pa ay sina Norman at Ghie naman.  Si Ota, samantala, ay di na makakasunod dahil may ibang lakad.  Si Marie naman ay baka humabol na lang daw sa kainan.

Pagkatapos mag-ikot-ikot ay nauwi sila sa La Mesa Grill.  Masaya ang mood ng lahat sa La Mesa Grill.  Maingay ang mga tao sa loob at labas ng kainan.  May banda pa na humihirit at umiindak sa labas.  Masarap ang inorder ng tropa.  Puro “healthy foods”.  Gutom na ang lahat kaya pagdating ng pagkain ay inupakan na agad ito.

Siyempre pa, masaya ang tawanan at kuwentuhan ng tropa.  Si Mannix ay may dala pang mga larawang galing pa sa baul! Hehe…  Eto yung mga panahong payatot pa ang karamihan.   Di tulad ngayong naglalakihan na ang tiyan ng lahat   Ang mga larawan nga palang ito ay i-scan ni Ivee at balang araw ay ma-po-post din sa blog na ito.

Pagkatapos, ay namigay na ng imbitasyon sina Pinong at Jhe.  Maganda ang imbitasyon.  De kaledad ang ginamit na papel.  Maganda ang haplos at kulay nito.  Puwede pang suksukan ng perang papel.  Ayos na ayos talaga!

Sa mga panahong ito ay di pa rin makontak si Marie.  Sayang at namiss niya ang kasiyahan.  Salamat din nga pala sa libreng hapunan, Pinong at Jhe!

Nagiging maingay na ang banda sa labas kaya’t napagpasyahan na ng tropa na lumipat ng lugar.  Dun sa tahimik at kung saan sila naman ang puwedeng mag-ingay.

Sa The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf nagpunta ang grupo.  Sina Norman at Jhie naman ang nanlibre ng kape.  Maraming salamat din sa inyo!  Maingay na tawanan at kuwentuhan na naman ang naganap.  Hanggang sa umabot na ng halos alas-dose.

Medyo napansin ng grupo na nilakasan na nung mga taga-Coffee Bean ang musika.  Malamang ay senyales na ito na pinaaalis na sila.  Gusto na yata nilang umuwi ngunit dahil nandun pa ang tropa ay di pa sila makauwi.  Sa puntong ito ay nagpaalamanan na ang grupo at umuwi na sa kani-kanilang tahanan.

Kita kits na lang sa kasalan!

Ako’y nagulat sa aking nakita at meron palang WordPress din si Mannix.

At mula dito ay nakita ko ang isang malupit na tula na kaniyang ginawa, at ngayon ay ihahayag ko na sa madla.

Kaya’t eto na at buong-pagmamalaki kong inihahandog sa inyo…

HINOG SA PILIT

Nais ko po sanang gumawa ng tula
Isang tulang kagigiliwan ng madla
Isang obrang hatid ay tuwa at saya
Upang ngiti’y manatili sa kanila.

Kaya lang paano ko uumpisahan?
Ito naman ay hindi ko katangian
Tanungin mo pa ang aking kaibigan
Oong malutong iyong mabubungaran.

Oo nga’t katangian sa ‘kin ay wala
Hangad namang tuwa’y hindi nawawala
Sa ibang paraan ito’y magagawa
Bigayay ng D’yos pagyayamaning kusa.

Pero sandali kaibigang mapalad
Kung ikaw man ay kumakain ng salad
Na galing sa kanto at wala pang bayad
Isantabi ang salad at makinig agad.

Habang nagbabasa wala bang napupuna
Sa mga salitang iyong nakikita?
Mula una kahit hanggang dito muna
Tulang ninanais nagawa na yata.

Ngunit giliw ko ako yata’y may kulang
Obrang ninanais ‘di pumailanlang
Kaya’t kaibigan sa iyo’y may utang
Ngiting ibig makita kaylan lulutang?

Kaya kaibigan sa iyo’y may payo
Upang hangad ko’y tunay na makumpleto
Huwag mabigla hindi ako nagbibiro
Tula ng iba ay aking iboboto.

H’wag mag-alala ‘di ako magtatampo
Kung ang nagawa ko ay hindi mo gusto
Dahil alam ko na kahit papaano
Kaunting oras pinagbigyan mo ako.

One of the more noteworthy DVDs to arrive this year is CBS/Paramount’s June release of the first season of Mannix.  Because Mannix’s first season differs considerably from the subsequent seven, these initial 24 episodes were not included in the show’s syndication package.  Unlike most of the familiar TV product that’s coming out on DVD these days, the early Mannixs are a time-capsule find that hasn’t been seen on American television for several decades.

I wish I should say that Mannix’s lost year represents a major discovery, but that’s not quite the case.  Mannix was created by the team of William Link and Richard Levinson, eventually the men behind the juggernauts of Columbo and Murder She Wrote, but in 1967 just a pair of talented freelancers with credits on the likes of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour and Burke’s Law.  With Mannix, Link and Levinson attempted a revision of the private eye genre that anticipated the postmodern pulp reformations of Robert Altman’s The Long Goodbye or Jeremy Kagan’s The Big Fix. 

Their hero, Joe Mannix, was not the familiar hard-boiled loner archetype, operating out of a dingy office, with a wise-cracking secretary out front and a battered fedora and trenchcoat on the rack in the corner.  Instead he was a cog in a wheel, one of a fleet of impeccably dressed operatives in the employ of Intertect, a corporate detective agency crammed with high-tech equipment.  (Computers the size of a minivan that shuffled around stacks of punchcards, in other words.) 

Intertect was inspired by Link and Levinson’s experiences at Universal, the first of the Hollywood studios to track its employees by computer.  The Universal of the sixties was run by former talent agents inherited from its parent company MCA, who dressed in black suits and had offices in the fearsome obsidian monolith known as “The Black Tower,” a modern glass executive building that loomed over the front gates.  Lou Wickersham, the head of Intertect, was an insider joke on Lew Wasserman, the legendarily ruthless head of Universal.  (The name Wickersham was derived from “Wasserman” and Lankershim Boulevard, the North Hollywood address of Universal’s main entrance.  Joseph Campanella, who played Wickersham, once told me that his slight resemblance to Wasserman was a factor in his casting.)  Joe Mannix, the series’ nonconformist hero, was the only Intertect operative with the inclination to buck Wickersham’s unfeeling, bottom-line approach to sleuthing.

You can see how Link and Levinson intended Mannix as a platform for venturing into some Big Ideas.  Their scenario was a genre allegory that opened the door for sideways exploration of topics like mechanization, capitalism, the dehumanizing aspects of modernity, and so on. 

But Link and Levinson were out of Mannix even before a pilot was written, and the reins were taken by Mission: Impossible honcho Bruce Geller (who executive produced) and producer Wilton Schiller.  Schiller had produced the last three seasons of Ben Casey and the final year of The Fugitive.  He was competent but uninspired, as were most of the cadre of freelance writers who had followed Schiller from one or both of the earlier shows onto Mannix: John Meredyth Lucas, Chester Krumholz, Barry Oringer, Howard Browne, Sam Ross, Walter Brough.  In their hands, the conflict between Mannix and Lou Wickersham remained a constant element of the series, but it lacked any depth or metaphorical meaning.  The two characters simply bickered like unhappy spouses, and the clash between them never varied much in content or intensity.  It is fascinating to speculate as to how Link and Levinson might have developed their idea.  Might Mannix have become a prototype for the serialized drama of the eighties, with a character conflict at its center that grew more complex and gripping as time went on?

For the second season of Mannix, Intertect disappeared without explanation and Joe Mannix worked alone out of a stylish home-office.  Now he embodied the cliche Link and Levinson sought to undermine: a hard-boiled loner type with a wise-cracking secretary.  The initial revisionist concept had devolved into a totally classical text. 

Surprisingly, this wasn’t an altogether bad thing.  Mannix’s new producers, veteran screenwriters Ivan Goff and Ben Roberts, brought in better writers and directors.  They crafted the familiar elements of the format into an appealing blend of old-fashioned mysteries and jazzy film-noir vibes.  Mike Connors, the series’ star, had a relaxed personality that fit the new Mannix better than the old one.  Connors was like that gregarious but no-nonsense uncle you knew you could count on to scare off the schoolyard bullies.

*

I first watched Mannix in 1995-1996, when the TV Land channel was rerunning it nearly every day.  I was in film school at the time, at the University of Southern California.  College was a frustrating experience, four years of searching for the intellectual stimulation I’d been promised the whole time I was growing up and finding it only on the margins of the experience – in the film archives, from exploring the city of Los Angeles,  or in long conversations with a few kindred spirits, but rarely in classes or amid the general campus population.  Often when there was a lull in the grind of studying or writing dull undergraduate papers, I’d unwind by consuming five or six Mannix segments in a row.  It was just the kind of smooth, undemanding escapism I needed.  It’s kind of a shame, but those marathons of Mannix (sometimes interspersed with Thriller, airing on the Sci-Fi Channel, or Route 66, on loan from a T.A. researching a doctoral thesis on road movies) number among my fondest college memories.

When I received my copy of the Mannix DVDs, I immediately took a look at a particular episode, “Turn Every Stone” – and not because, just by coincidence, it’s the only one credited to writer Jeri Emmett.  If Mannix is forever associated with USC in my memory, “Turn Every Stone” is the episode that reflects that memory back at me.

The climax of “Turn Every Stone” is a shootout between Mannix and the villains (Hampton Fancher and Nita Talbot) in the central courtyard of a tall, distinctive red-brick building.  That building is the Rufus B. Von KleinSmid Center, which stands on the east side of Trousdale Parkway, the main drag of the USC Campus.  (USC benefactors tended to have funny names; don’t get me started on the Topping Center, or Fagg Park.) 

Here’s a shot of Mike Connors and Fancher entering a classroom hallway:

And a better look at the tall, narrow interior columns, which convey the impression that the building all exterior and no interior:

An innovative use for the the basement level’s sunken courtyard:

The Von KleinSmid Center (or VKC, as the students call it) is one of the main classroom buildings at USC, and I probably attended a half-dozen classes in it during my four years there.  It’s one of the most commonly used locations on a campus that’s famous, at least among those who’ve done time there, as a ubiquitous backdrop in movies and TV shows.  When I was a USC freshman, I attended a screening of Copycat (1995), wherein my fellow students went wild upon catching a glimpse of VKC’s tall globe-topped spire; a few days later, I stumbled across Morgan Freeman shooting a scene for Kiss the Girls (1997) in a car being towed down Trousdale Parkway.  But the campus’s onscreen history goes back beyond tacky nineties serial killer flicks.  The Von KleinSmid Center was completed in 1965, and its then-modern architecture made it a magnet for movie companies in the sixties and seventies. 

USC’s most famous turn in the spotlight came during the same year that “Turn Every Stone” was filmed, in Mike Nichol’s The Graduate (1967).  Northern Californians and fans of the movie will be crushed to learn that, during the scene in which Dustin Hoffman pursues Katharine Ross back to Berkeley, “UC-Berkeley” is actually . . . USC.  Our first glimpse of Hoffman on campus during the scene scored to Simon & Garfunkel’s  “Scarborough Fair” comes as he’s walking down the low steps that surround VKC:

Hoffman then walks up a tree-shrouded, diagonal path through Alumni Park to the neighboring building, the thirties-era Doheny Library, the basement of which contains my favorite USC hangout, the Cinema-Television Library:

Later Hoffman and Katharine Ross walk down the same outdoor corridor that we see in Mannix:

The scene where Hoffman stands outside for the duration of Ross’s class was filmed inside VKC (you can tell from the narrow vertical windows), quite possibly in one of the same first-floor rooms where I had classes.  A subsequent shot was photographed through the same VKC window:

All of these buildings still look about the same today as they did forty years ago.

Parts of the USC campus also turn up for a split-second in Hitchcock’s Torn Curtain (1966), and in Antonioni’s Zabriskie Point (1970) – a great tracking shot that traces the route I’d take onto campus through the Jefferson Boulevard entrance, which was just across the street from my first L.A. apartment.  But since I’m a TV historian, and this a TV blog, the television appearances of the USC campus are what I’ve tracked with the most enthusiasm. 

In the original pilot for Harry O, a made-for-television movie called Such Dust as Dreams Are Made On (1973), the Von Kleinsmid Center is the backdrop for a conversation between David Janssen and S. John Launer (a fine character actor whom I interviewed during my USC years):

Outtakes from that sequence made it into the series’ opening titles. . .

. . . giving USC a weekly cameo in Harry O , under Janssen’s star billing card no less, throughout its two-year run:

Continuing its chameleonesque career of imitating other colleges, USC served as just “the University” in an “Until Proven Innocent,” a 1971 episode of Owen Marshall, Counselor at Law.  Lindsay Wagner played a judge’s daughter from wealthy Santa Barbara who was slumming at “the University” until she could transfer to George Washington University – a pretty typical USC co-ed, in other words.  Once again, the Von Kleinsmid Center is everpresent.  Wagner and Lee Majors roam both the sunken courtyard and the basement-level library (the real thing, not a set) in a lengthy scene.  Here, with Majors, Wagner, and Randolph Mantooth lined up in front of it, VKC looks as if it’s doubling as an acting school for dull Universal contract players.

Decades later, USC did a sustained impersonation of Brown University on one of my favorite shows of the past decade, The O.C., as Seth (Adam Brody) visited the Rhode Island school and his inamorata Summer (Rachel Bilson) eventually went there.  But it was another bit of USC TV-fakery that really blew my mind.

I have to indulge in a detour now and explain a bit about why college in general, and USC in particular, were so disappointing to me.  Part of it is that for years of my parents and teachers had promised that college – far more than the public education which preceded it – would be the ideal atmosphere for my adolescent nerdiness.  Their assurances did little to prepare me for the realities of the shallow, alcohol- and party-feuled student life, or the cynicism and toxic academic politics among the faculty. 

But part of it was TV’s fault, because I’d put in a lot of time watching The Paper Chase when I was a pre-teen.  The Paper Chase, one of the great, underrated dramas of the eighties, was a smart, nostalgic portrait of life among law students based on John Jay Osborn’s autobiographical novel.  For a twelve year-old, the distinction between undergraduate life and an idealized Ivory League law school was subtle, and so The Paper Chase – and, really, nothing but The Paper Chase – shaped my conception of what higher education would be.  I had set myself up for a major shock.

Flash forward to my junior year at USC, when I’m conducting a phone interview with Ralph Senensky, a talented episodic television director of the sixties and seventies.  The Paper Chase was Senensky’s last major credit, and as we’re chatting about it, Ralph drops a bombshell on me: The Paper Chase’s unnamed-East Coast-university-that’s-clearly-meant-to-be-Harvard was actually USC.  Every outdoor frame of it!

Later that year, on a holiday trip back to Raleigh, I dug out the last surviving tape of the Paper Chase recordings I’d made years before, and replayed the show’s final episode on my father’s dying Beta machine.  Sure enough, the office of Professor Kingsfield (the much-feared master teacher played to perfection by John Houseman) was located in the Bovard Administration Building, which is directly across Trousdale Parkway from the Doheny Library.  The Taper Hall of Humanities doubled as a classroom building.  I couldn’t be sure exactly where the exterior of the basement office of the Law Review (which I thought was so cool as a teenager, and which the show’s protagonist, James Stephens’ Hart, held in some esteem too) was, but it’s a redress of a side entrance to either Bovard or the neighboring Physical Education Building.

Coming near the nadir of my disillusionment with film school (I’d just completed my one grueling film production class), this seemed a particularly cruel blow.  I had gone back to revisit my cherished ideal of what college should have been and found those industrious, earnest grad students of my TV-fueled fantasy walking the same sunny SoCal campus that encircled my own dreary reality.

That moment was probably my first brush with a quality of living in Los Angeles that I later came to love.  I always get blank looks when I try to explain this to non-Angelenos (especially the ones who’ve been there and back and complain that there are no tourist attractions to visit), but one of the wonderful things about L.A. is the constant and somehow comforting awareness that you’re living out your life in the world’s biggest movie set.  The places you pass through in your daily travels are the same backdrops you see in countless movies and TV shows, and as you move through them the collective fiction of your moviegoing experience forms a sort of overlay upon your “real” life.  If you’re a film buff like me, your awareness of this duality is constant.  Los Angeles is a meta-city.  Elaine and Benjamin’s Berkeley is Hart and Ford’s Harvard is my USC, and who am I to privilege one of these meanings over another?  Some people come for the climate, some for the laid-back attitude (which is no myth, trust me) . . . but this is why I love L.A.

Thanks to David Gebhard and Robert Winter’s An Architectural Guide to Los Angeles for the crash course in campus architecture.  Updated 7/29/09 to include the Von Kleinsmid Center’s Owen Marshall, Counselor at Law episode.

Pagkatapos ng ilang beses na mga di natuloy na pagpaplano, natuloy na rin sa wakas ang matagal nang hinihintay na APEC 2008.  Matagal na ang huling APEC at sa wari’y parang di na ito mangyayari pang mulit.  Salamat na lamang at tunay na pursigido itong si Norman at sa wakas natupad na ang matagal nang pinaplano.

Ika-28 ng Hunyo ang petsa.  Mga alas-singko ng hapon ang oras.  Unang dumating sa bahay nina Norman at Ghie sina Ivee at Lei.  Namangha agad si Ivee sa malahiganteng telebisyon ni Norman.  Nasinagan niya agad ang nakatakip pang PS3 sa bandang ibaba ng Bello Entertainment Center ni Norman.  Nasipat din niya agad ang isang Blu-ray Disc ng I Am Legend.  Habang naghihintay kina Marie at Pinong ay pinanood muna ni Ivee at Lei ang alternatibong ending ng I Am Legend.  Para sa amin, ay mas ok pa rin ang ending na ipinalabas sa sinehan.

First Event: Tekken 5 Dark Resurrection Online

Nagyaya na si Norman na maglaro na sila ng PS3.  Unang sinalang ang Tekken.  Tunay na di puwedeng mawala ang Tekken sa APEC.  Sinubukang maghanap ng kalaban ni Norman sa network ngunit lagi itong nadidiskonek.  Kaya’t niyaya na lang siya ni Ivee na sila na ang maglaban.

Gamit si King, siyempre pa, dinurog ni Ivee si Norman na katulad ng ginawa ni Pacquiao na pagdurog kay Diaz.  Pagkatapos ng ilang rounds eh sumuko na itong si Norman.

Second Event: Gran Turismo 5 Prologue

Inilabas naman ngayon ni Norman ang kaniyang steering wheel with pedals pa at nakalagay pa sa isang specially-designed na patungan.  Malupit talaga itong si Norman at talagang napahanga lalo si Ivee nang makita niya itong steering wheel.

Naglaban muli ang dalawa, at sa pagkakataong ito eh nagwagi naman si Norman.  Di bale naka-second place naman si Ivee.

Mga ilang sandali pa eh dumating naman ang First Lady ng CPU na walang iba kundi si Marie.  Iba na talaga ang dating ni Marie.  Iba na ang kaniyang ngiti.  Nagbago na talaga ang lahat sa kaniya.

Sumubok din siyang magmaneho sa Gran Turismo.  Sa biglang-tingin ay akala namin siya ang nangunguna.  Kulelat pala at yung lahat ng sasakyan sa likod niya eh mga nauna nang nakaikot sa kaniya.

Third Event: High Velocity Bowling

Habang naghihintay pa rin kina Pinong at habang sineset-up ni Norman ang mga instrumentong gagamitin sa Rock Band, ay isinalang muna ni Norman ang bowling.

Aba, di na pala kailangang magpunta sa bowlingan.  Parang totoo na itong larong ito.  Una ay si Ivee, pagkatapos ay si Lei at si Marie ang huli.  Sarap igilid ang SIXAXIS controller at ang sarap i-sway na para bang titira ka ng bola.  Mahirap nga lang at baka kapag na-carried away ka eh mabitawan mo ang controller sa pag-aakalang bola ito at baka ma-strike mo yung mamahaling TV ni Norman.  Pinakamataas nga pala ang iskor ni Lei at si Marie naman muntik nang maka-turkey!

FYI: Medyo napansin ng grupo na may kamukha ang in-game character na ginagamit nila.  Hawig ang buhok.  Alisin lang ang bigote at lagyan ng salamin ay may makakamukhang kilala rin nila.  Di na lang babanggitin dito kung sino ang taong iyon upang maprotektahan ang kaniyang pagkatao.

Fourth Event: Rock Band

Pawisan at medyo pagod na ang lahat dahil sa mga naunang events nung dumating si Pinong at si Jhe.  Buti na lamang at umorder na rin ng pizza at Thai food sina Ghie.  Sayang at di na inabot nina Pinong at Jhe ang mga naunang events.

Napanganga ang lahat nang inilabas na ni Norman ang gitara, tambol at mikropono para sa Rock Band.  Mantakin mo, Fender Stratocaster pa ang tatak ng gitara!  Talagang feeling nila ay banda sila.  Iba talaga ‘tong si Norman.  Lalong napahanga ang lahat sa kaniya dahil talagang di niya tinipid ang kaniyang gaming set-up.

Unang awit na napili ng grupo ay ang Wanted Dead or Alive ni pareng Bon Jovi.  Si Ivee ang nagtangkang maging bokalista, si Norman ang gitarista at si Pinong ang tambolista.  Si Lei naman ang may hawak ng mabigat na camera ni Norman para mairecord ang pagbabalik ng A.L.G.O.R.H.Y.T.H.M. (A Local Group of Radical, Hip, Young, Talented and Handsome Musicians) pagkatapos ng ilang dekadang hiatus.

Malupit ang pagkakaawit ni Ivee ng Wanted Dead or Alive.  Malupit sa tainga ng tagapakinig.  Si Norman ay nasa tiyempo ang pag-indayog habang nag-gi-gitara na para bang yung mga naka-puwesto sa underpass.  Samantala, si Pinong naman ay punung-puno ng puwersa ang paghampas sa mga tambol na para bang tambol ng musiko sa piyesta ang hinahataw.

Pagkatapos ng ilang sandali ay matagumpay nilang nairaos ang kanta.  OK naman ang kanilang iskor.  Di nga lang nila alam kung OK pa ang tainga ng iba.

Nagpapalit-palit naman ang iba sa pag-gigitara, pagtambol at pag-atungal sa mikropono.  Si Marie talaga ay may itinatagong boses na mas mabuti pa talagang itago na lang.  Buti na lang eh malupit ang porma niya ngayong gabing ito.  Emong-emo!  Si Lei naman ay nakakuha ng mataas na puntos sa pag-gigitara at pag-awit samantalang si Jhe ay mahusay ring pumalo ng tambol tulad ni Pinong.

Dinner Muna: Rakista Man Nagugutom Din

Pagkatapos ng ilang sandali pa ay huminto muna ang grupo at umupo na upang kumain.  Dumating na rin naman ang pizza at yung Thai food.  Masarap na kumain at nag-kuwentuhan ang grupo.  Siyempre pa ay napagkuwentuhan na naman ang iba pang barkada na nasa ibang lupain.  Malakas ang tawanan at asaran.  Maya-maya pa ay malakas na rin ang ulan.  Napatunayan na naman muli na totoo ang kasabihang pag pangit ang pagkanta ay ulang malakas ang kasunod nito.

Tuloy ang Fourth Event: Rock Band Pa Rin

Pagkatapos kumain tuloy na naman ang birit, pagkamot sa gitara at palo sa tambol.  Lalong naligo ang lahat sa pawis dahil sa tindi ng init sa Pilipinas.

Sa kalagitnaan ng kantahan ay siyang dating naman si Mannix.  Huli man daw at magaling, huli pa rin.  Sayang nga lang at walang Martin Nievera sa Rock Band kaya’t di siya nakaawit.

Mga ilang sandali pa bago mag-alas diyes ng gabi ay napagod na rin ang grupo.  Nagpasalamat sila kay Norman at Ghie dahil sa pagpapahintulot nila na maging venue ng APEC 2008 ang kanilang tahanan.  Nauna nang nagpaalam si Pinong at si Jhe para maiwasan ang curfew ni Jhe   Siyangapala, may bagong CR-V si Pinong!  Pagkatapos si Marie at si Mannix naman ang lumisan sakay ng kotse ni Marie.  Sina Ivee at Lei ang huling nagpaalam.

Kaya’t diyan nagwawakas ang APEC 2008 at nawa’y masundan pa ito.  Maraming salamat ulit kina Norman at Ghie sa kanilang pagiging mapagpatuloy at walang sawang pagsuporta.

Salamat din sa lahat ng tumangkilik at magkita-kita tayo sa susunod na APEC!!!

Pahabol: Bago nga pala kami lubusang magpaalam, inyo munang panoorin ang isang rare, live performance ng A.L.G.O.R.H.Y.T.H.M. sa Rock Band na nairecord noong APEC 2008.  Bago ninyo pindutin ang Play button ay patiuna na kaming humihingi ng paumanhin at pang-unawa…

Ben Berger, Connecticut Sports Law’s resident soccer expert, shares his thoughts on Chris Mannix’s Sports Illustrated Feature entitled “Are You Like Me?  (I bet you are.)  I Bet You Hate Soccer”.

Sports Illustrated recently sent Chris Mannix, a self described “soccer hater” on a whirlwind tour of soccer.  During his trip, Mannix saw three MLS games in person, two International Friendlies in person, and a Euro 2008 match in a soccer bar.  After his mini soccer marathon, Mannix found himself enjoying the fans, detesting the sport on TV and surprised by the speed, power and violence of the game.  His ultimate conclusion?

After five days and six matches I can now say that I enjoy soccer at its best — though I continue to despise it at its worst.  And the biggest problem is that you’re as likely to see a mess as a masterpiece.

I fully enjoyed his article, and thought his analysis was neither biased nor unfair.  To some extent, his sentiments initially rang true with me.  As much as I love the sport, I certainly have been witness to some clunkers.  After further reflection , it occurred to me that the same can pretty much be said for any sport.  The 2008 NBA Finals have been great.  Does anyone remember the Heat/Knicks series of the 90s? It was brutal for the casual fan.  Ever try to watch a Reds/Pirates twin bill? 

Ultimately, it was a great assignment for Mannix and a fair take on soccer.  I have long held that watching a high level game in person is essntial for anyone taking in soccer for the first time.  Until your interest is piqued, taking in games on television is not always riveting theater.  I leave you with a link to bigsoccer.com, a leading online soccer forum where Mannix’s article is being dissected.  

Attorney Ben Berger, an avid fan of soccer and MLS, is an attorney at Updike, Kelly & Spellacy, in Hartford, Connecticut.  Ben can be reached at bberger@uks.com or 860-548-2636.

Matagal-tagal na rin ang huling lunchout ng tropa at mabuti na lang at naulit ulit.  Si Pinong ang nagsuggest na dun kumain sa dating IBM.  At dun na mineet nina Pinong at Ivee si Mannix.  Si Norman naman ay di pumwede dahil may meeting daw.

Sa Dencio’s kumain ang tropa at ang naorder ay sisig, sinigang na baboy at calamares.  Sandali lang ang chikahan dahil kailangang bumalik agad ni Mannix at may meeting din siya.  Maikli man ang kuwentuhan enjoy naman.

Finally, I’ve solved – or at least made some headway on – a minor mystery about The Fugitive that’s nagged at me ever since Jonathan Etter’s book Quinn Martin, Producer: A Behind-the-Scenes History of QM Productions and Its Founder came out in 2003. 

Citing The Fugitive’s original producer, Alan A. Armer, as his source, Etter wrote that the writer Jack Laird “moonlighted under his wife’s name for a few scripts on The Fugitive during the Armer years.”  Laird was a major talent, the author of some of the finest Ben Caseys, the primary creative force behind Night Gallery, a key contributor to Kojak, and on and on.  To confirm his uncredited creative involvement in The Fugitive would be something of a scoop, at least among classic tele-philes. 

A while ago I checked with Etter, and he had no further details.  Since then I’d been thinking now and again about the pseudonym Laird might have used.  Armer’s hint about Laird’s “wife’s name” wasn’t much help, since there were no Fugitive writers whose names related obviously to Laird’s.  Whittling the list down to just the show’s women writers, who were very much in the minority at that point in TV history, still left several possibilities.  Betty Langdon, who wrote the “When the Wind Blows” (a bland episode about a single mother and her troubled runaway boy), was an obvious candidate: she has no credits on any other American TV series, at least not according to any reference book or database I’ve come across.  Or what about Joy Dexter, the author of “Coralee,” a familiar Jonah story with Antoinette Bower as the tragic girl who thinks she’s the town jinx?  Dexter had a smattering of credits on The Virginian and a couple of other westerns, but few enough that her name could’ve been an alias someone used for a while.  But I couldn’t find any information to support my guesses about either of them.

Meanwhile, I’d always been curious about another Fugitive writer, a woman named Jeri Emmett, mostly because the four episodes on which she shared a teleplay credit during the series’ fourth year were all pretty good: “The Devil’s Disciples,” with Diana Hyland as a sultry biker chick; “Concrete Evidence,” about the paths of guilt that follow in the wake of a shoddily constructed schoolhouse’s collapse; “Dossier on a Diplomat,” with Kimble holing up on the foreign soil of an African embassy; and “The Savage Street,” a routine juvenile delinquency story.  (Well, three out of four isn’t bad.) 

Emmett’s television work seemed to stop abruptly after a brief burst of productivity between 1966 and 1968.  I’d ruled out Emmett as a candidate for the Jack Laird pseudonym, though, because she was clearly a real person, listed in the Writer’s Guild database and with credits on a handful of other TV shows from the same era (including Mannix and Iron Horse).  

But this week I did some more checking, and discovered that Jeri Emmett was married to Jack Laird in the late ’60s and had to be the woman to whom Armer was referring.  (I had jumped to a conclusion, assuming that Laird had registered his wife’s name as a pseudonym with the WGA, and that this identity would’ve died when he did in 1991.)  The minor error in Etter’s book was that Laird (if he was in fact writing under Emmett’s name) didn’t work on The Fugitive during Alan Armer’s stint as producer, but during the show’s final season, after Armer had departed to oversee another Quinn Martin series, The Invaders. 

That made perfect sense, because the producer who succeeded Armer on The Fugitive’s fourth season was a man named Wilton Schiller.  Schiller had been, until they’d split up to pursue separate careers about five years previously, Jack Laird’s old writing partner on shows like M Squad and The Millionaire.  The year after The Fugitive went off the air, Schiller moved over to produce the first year of Mannix – and that’s where Jeri Emmett has her final produced credit that I can find, on the episode “Turn Every Stone.” 

But what became of Jeri Emmett after her brief spate of ’60s writing?  Beginning in 1977, she entered into a three-decade legal battle with Aaron Spelling over the authorship of the TV series Family, which is often regarded as the only worthwhile program Spelling was ever associated with.  Emmett won a $1.69 million jury award but, through a series of complex legal setbacks, the verdict was reversed.  (The sole credited creator of Family is the distinguished screenwriter Jay Presson Allen, although in his insipid autobiography, Spelling hogs a lot of Allen’s glory for himself, too.)

The most intriguing tidbit I unearthed about Jeri Emmett was what appears to be her debut as a professional writer – this tell-all account of working as a Bunny at Hugh Hefner’s Playboy Club during its mid-’60s heyday:

(I’m guessing that’s not really Jeri on the cover – although she does write that she was a dead ringer for Connie Stevens.)

The book is a fascinating read, the story of a smart, naive farm girl from Grant’s Pass, Oregon, who drifts into working as a Bunny while at loose ends in L.A.  She’s bemused by the casual vulgarity and sex she encounters at the Club and among her fellow Bunnies.  Some passages feel genuine, and have a mildly proto-feminist point of view, while others feel ghost-written or punched up, as if an editor stuck in some sleaze before the manuscript went to press. 

At the end of the book Bunny Jeri pulls off her tail and resolves to return to Grant’s Pass.  In real life, within the same year of the book’s publication (it covers the span of about 1964-65 and came out in 1966), Emmett apparently met and married Jack Laird and achieved her first television credit.

Aha: an ex-Bunny turned prime-time television writer?  Now that’s a story!  But, the question remained: was Jeri Emmett really a television writer at all?  Did she really write those Fugitive and Mannix scripts, or was she just a front for Jack Laird, writing under the table for his old buddy Wilton Schiller?  Laird was at that time under exclusive contract to Universal, producing pilots and TV movies, so it made sense that he’d have needed to use an assumed name to do any writing on the side.  The fact that all of Emmett’s Fugitive credits were shared with other writers suggests that Schiller was using Emmett as a script doctor, an unusual situation for a fledgling writer.  I’m inclined to believe the “Laird touch” is what Schiller was seeking to punch up those scripts. 

But mightn’t the Lairds also have collaborated, if Emmett was an aspiring writer, and Laird wanted to help his new bride get started in the business?  And officially, of course, the credits are Emmett’s alone.  It seems unfair to deprive her of any credit based on one offhand remark, especially given that Emmett had a byline of her own before she ever met Jack Laird.

It occurred to me that a certain sexist assumption common to the era may have been at work here.  In other words, the idea that since Jeri Emmett was an attractive young blonde, and married to a prominent television writer, any scripts issued under her name must surely have sprung forth from the prolific brain of Jack Laird.  Perhaps that rumor might have dogged Emmett’s nascent career, and had something to do with its early demise?

That might sound far-fetched – impossibly patronizing – by today’s standards.  But this is the same era when the executive producer of a hit Fox serial kept an apartment across the street from the lot to “audition” prospective actresses, and having an affair with Gene Roddenberry was evidently a qualification for becoming a female series regular on Star Trek.  Sexism was omnipresent in the television industry.

Ultimately, there were many talented women writers who came to be taken seriously on their own merits during the ’60s.  But who’s to say that there weren’t just as many who got shut out?  If they couldn’t get a foot in the door and gave up in frustration, then they’re not around to tell their stories.  That’s the peril in my kind of research.  Screen credits and production files provide a finite pool of leads, and those leads yield only a certain kind of truth.

I thought that when I made the connection between Laird and Emmett I’d solved a mystery, but instead I’d only uncovered a much knottier conundrum.  It seemed that the only way to find out who really wrote what might be to ask Jeri Emmett Laird herself.  So last week I tracked Ms. Laird down and put to her some of the questions I’ve been ruminating about above.

Unfortunately, Jeri wouldn’t comment for the record about anything (not even whether that’s her on the cover of Point Your Tail in the Right Direction), because she’s working on writing her own memoir.  We chatted on the phone for a while and, off the record, Jeri gave me a partial answer to my basic question about the authorship of those Fugitive scripts.  For the time being, though, that part of the story will have to remain a mystery.

And in the meantime, I can’t figure out whether I’m pleased or discouraged that, with three books in print about The Fugitive (plus that Quinn Martin bio), puzzle pieces like these still remain for the historians to fit together.

O-kay, so I’m just being an ignorant asshole, of course Iowa is the home of a Music Festival.. why wouldn’t it be?! I mean people live there right?? Like almost 3million people in total… that’s gotta be like 30th in the United States or something.. AND Mid-Western Americans need to listen to music too dammitt!!!
I’m just surprised because I’ve never heard of it before.

The Mission Creek 2008 lineup was released and it looks pretty decent:

Cursive, Dan Deacon, Bon Iver, Neva Dinova, The Hood Internet, Spoon, The Walkmen, Headlights, Evangelicals, Alejandro Escovedo, Pieta Brown, Blitzen Trapper, Fleet Foxes, Oh Astro, Capgun Coup, Fourth of July, The Poison Control Center, White Rabbits, Cepia, These United States, So Many Dynamos, Cory Chisel and the Wandering Sons, Baby Teeth, Brighton MA, Death Ships, Lair of the Minotaur, Caleb Engstrom, Samuel Locke-Ward, Vandaveer, The Western Front, The Gglitch, Master/Slave, Today is the Day, Datagun, Mannix!, Porno Galatica V. Zap!Rowsdower, Wolves in the Attic, The Wheelers, Michael Morris, The Glowing Glass, Mit’n, Kelly Pardekooper, Illinois John Fever, The Blacks, The Mayflies, Sam Knutson, Dennis McMurrin, Monadnoc, Sarah Cram and The Derelicts, Highway Shelter, Foul Tip, Birth Rites, MC/VL, Henrihenrietta, Complete Failure, Mouth of the Architect.

Tickets are available here!

And get them fast because the festival takes place in Iowa City April 2nd-5th.  So for those who will need to drive long distances, get in your car now and floor-it!  And don’t stop till you hit the stage

[Part 1 of a series]

We’ve decided to do a series on T.V’s gumshoes, first up, five of our favorite 1970’s private eyes.

From a milk swilling geriatric P.I. who spirits crime scene evidence back to his office lab, to a rumpled, Peugeot driving, cigar chomping Lt. who befuddles his suspects into confessing, a wise ass beach bum who hates carrying a gun, a guy tough enough to withstand 17 gunshot wounds, and a smooth talking lollipop licking operator with a shiny dome, these were the guys we loved to watch solve T.V. crime.

The Rockford Files debuted in 1974 and lasted five seasons. Produced by Roy Huggins and written by Stephen J. Cannell, Rockford’s character lived in a trailer by the beach, preferred to B.S. his way out of a tight spot rather than fight and rarely carried a gun.

(When one surprised client asked why, Rockford replied, “Because I don’t want to shoot anybody.”)

According to Museum TV, Cannell decided to make Rockford, the “Jack Benny of private eyes”.

Rockford’s character served time in 1960’s for a wrongful conviction of armed robbery then received a pardon. His trailer house, which was on a parking lot near a Malibu beach, doubled as his office. He kept his gun, which he didn’t have a permit, in a cookie jar. He might of lived in a dilapidated trailer but he drove the requisite fast car, a Pontiac Trans-Am. Source – Wiki

Mannix premiered in 1967. Mike Connors played an Armenian detective who was knocked unconscious 55 times and suffered 17 gunshot wounds during the show’s eight seasons.

The first season had Mannix working for a “secretive” computer company called Intertech who had a computer called Intertech that doled out Mannix’s assignments. This confusing concept was dumped after the first season when Mannix was allowed to become a “standard” private eye.

Peggy Fair, played by Gail Fisher, was his black secretary. Peggy’s husband was a cop killed in the line of duty and her character was frequently kidnapped. Source – Wiki

Mannix drove “cool” cars.

A 1968 Toronado especially customized by George Barris for the popular TV series of the sixties. The back seat was removed and the extra space, covered with a leather tonneau, was used as a storage area for crime fighting gadgets. The armrest between the two front seats held a gun, a short-wave radio and a telephone. Source – Telus.net

Kojak premiered in 1973 and starred Telly Savalas as bald lollipop loving New York cop, Lt. Theo Kojak, whose favorite catch-phrase was “Who loves ya baby?”

The lollipop was introduced into the series after several years of Kojak’s character puffing on cigarettes. Bowing down to the television industries’ political correctness against smoking, Kojak’s character switched from cigarettes to lollipops to appease the Smoke Nazis.

Kevin Dobson, who went on to star in the soap series, Knots Landing, played Det. Bobby Cracker. Savalas’ brother played Det. Stravos.

Future stars who had guest stints on Kojak included Richard Gere, John Ritter, Lynn Redgrave, and James Woods. Source – Wiki

It was Savalas’ smooth style and demeanor, cynical wit and a tendency to bend the rules that enamored viewers.

Savalas died in 1994 but his “Who loves ya, baby” lives on.

Peter Falk as Lt. Columbo

The series Columbo, starring Peter Falk as the overly-polite, slow-witted shabbily dressed detective, Lt. Columbo, aired in 1971.

He chomped on cigars and drove an old Peugeot and was the only character in the series. No faithful side-kick or grizzly stressed out Commander. There were only 3 episodes where Columbo didn’t wear his old raincoat when his character had to wear a tuxedo. Patrick McGoohan was the only “guest” cast member, starring on the series more than three times as a murderer and the only one to inquire about Columbo’s first name, which was never revealed. Source – Columbo Trivia

Time and again, it was Colombo’s demeanor which lulled criminals into a false sense of security, misjudging the Lt.’s inherent ability to solve a case.

Columbo’s signature interrogation technique is to politely conclude an interview with a suspect and exit the scene…but to then stop in the doorway (or even return a moment later from outside) and ask the suspect “just one more thing”. The “one more thing” always brings to light the key inconsistency in the suspect’s alibi. Source - Wiki

Premiering in 1973, Epsen played the geriatric P.I. Barnaby Jones. Jones’ character comes out of retirement to track down his son’s killer with the help of his daughter-in-law, Betty (Merriweather).

Barnaby Jones was a “crossover” show, Barnaby and Betty had appeared on the detective show Cannon to track down Jones’ son killer with the help of the fat detective. The character, Cannon, played by William Conrad, appeared on Barnaby Jones. Source – IMDB

Barnaby also had his own CSI “crime lab” back at his office for not only was he a private eye but also an “expert in forensic chemistry, clinical psychology, forensic medicine, toxicology and criminology.”

His folksy charm fooled villains as did his age:

Once a female commented “A man of your age, Mr. Jones? You’re a new kind of private eye.” Barnaby replied: “It’s a nice way of saying I’m an old kind of private eye. Besides to me old age has always seemed to be 15 years older than I am.”

Barnaby had a thing for milk and his own quotes:

At this moment I’m not looking for the needle in the haystack,
I’m looking for a haystack.

Believing everything you see is nearly as badly as having
to see everything you believe.

Dead people don’t leave fingerprints.

That boy is as loose with his purse-strings as a nimbus cloud
is with rain. Source – TV Acres

Famous for his stint as the most brightest bulb in the bunch, Jed Clampett in the Beverly Hillbillies, Ebsen passed away at age 95 in 2003.

Next up, more of TV’s most famous quirky detectives and private eyes.

Part 2- Five 1970s TV Detectives We still Love

By LBG
Source – Youtube – Rockford Files
Source - Youtube – Kojak
Image – Rockford
Image – Mannix
Source – Youtube – Mannix
Image – Kojak
Image – Columbo
Source – Youtube – Columbo
Image – Barnaby Jones

Source – Youtube



Death by 1000 Papercuts Front Page.

Si Mannix ay lumipad ‘tungo sa Singapore at nakadalaw siya sa bahay nina Edwin at Carmela.  Heto nga pala ang larawan sa loob ng bahay nina Edwin:

At heto naman ang larawan nila Mannix, Edwin, Carmela at ng dalawang chikiting…

Amang-ama ang dating ni Mannix dito...

Bathan Family

G'wapo mga anak ni Edwin

O Mannix ‘di ka nga pala nanlibre nung umuwi ka galing Singapore

Nagkita-kita sina Edwin, Mannix, Ivee at Lei sa MOA. Tinext nila si Pinong ngunit mukhang ito ay busy pa. Si Ota naman ay di na rin makakasabay. Sinagot ni Edwin ang masarap na hapunan sa Mojito Bay. Masaya ang kuwentuhan habang papalubog ang araw sa may Look ng Maynila. Nagkaroon pa ng fireworks.

Pagkatapos ay nagkayayaan nang magkape. Habang nagkakape ay nagkakatinginan ang ibang mga tao dahil sa ingay ng kuwentuhan ng magkakaibigan. Binalikan at tinawanan muli ang mga ala-ala ng kanilang kabataan habang nasa PLM pa. Nangawit ang panga ng lahat sa sobrang tawanan at ilang sandali pa ay nagpaalamanan na.

Maraming salamat ulit Edwin dahil sa iyong busilak na puso!!! Hanggang sa muling pagniniig…

Ginanap ngayon ang pag-iisang dibdib ni G. Norman at Bb. Ghie sa MOA Church. Ito ay sinundan ng pagsasalu-salo sa Coconut Palace. Ang gumanap na Best Man ay si G. Pinong samantalang sina G. Edwin at G. Mannix naman ay tumayong mga Abay.

Dumalo ang mga kaibigan, kapamilya at kapuso ng bagong mag-asawa. Kabilang dito ay si G. Ivee at Gng. Lei. Kasama rin ni G. Pinong ang kaniyang irog na si Bb. Jhe. Tulad ng inaasahan, si G. Ota ay nahuli at humahangos na dumating sa lugar ng kainan. Sayang at di siya napabilang sa opisyal na larawan kasama ang bagong mag-asawa.

Naging matagumpay ang Kasalan. Sina G. Norman at ngayon ay Gng. Ghie ay tutungo na sa Hawaii para sa pulot-gata. Si G. Pinong at Bb. Jhe ay pumalaot na rin. Samantalang naiwan pa sina G. Edwin, G. Mannix at sina G. Ivee at Gng. Lei at sinamantalang magkuhanan ng larawan sa naturang lugar.

Inyong tunghayan ang mga larawan sa ibaba na kuha sa mahalagang okasyong ito…

Ang naiwang tanong sa lahat, si G. Pinong naman kaya ay kailan?

Ce dimanche, TF1 est devenue la première chaîne française à diffuser une publicité interdite aux moins de 16 ans.

Conçu par CLM BBDO, ce spot unique vantant les mérites du “Pack Experience” Manix, met en scène des couples faisant l’amour sur un mode addictif sur toute la planète.

L’opération est relayée au cinéma (uniquement dans les salles de cinéma UGC du 29 novembre au 26 décembre 2006) et sur Internet via le site tropdeplaisir.com.

Bel hommage de la première chaîne française à notre ami Pierre qui, peu le savent, a inspiré les ingénieurs de chez Manix dans la conception du fameux “Pack Experience”. Il est même question que Manix sponsorise Pierre pour son prochain voyage en Floride, qui deviendrait alors la première étape d’une grande tournée promotionnelle mondiale qui emmenerait l’ami Pierre aux quatre coins du monde, avec deux arrêts très attendus à Edinbourg et à Wildwood (NJ).

Salamat kay Belay sa kaniyang pag-treat sa tropa sa Fish Out of Water, Greenbelt 5.  Salamat din kay Mannix sa pag-suggest ng lugar na makakainan.  Salamat din sa iba pa sa pagpapaunlak sa imbitasyon.  Salamat din sa mga di nakarating at kabawasan din sila sa naging gastos… hehehe, d’yok lang po!

Eto nga pala ang mga larawang kuha sa naturang hapunan…