The Silver State Chronicles

The human adventure begins

43 years ago today, NBC aired the first episode of Star Trek, The Man Trap.

Condolences, but not missed

Well, Mr. Potato Head himself made news this weekend, taking a break from merely talking with and about those people who actually make the news for a change. At the tender age of 58, Tim Russert keeled over of a heart attack at work, busy preparing for whatever he actually did on Meet The Press.

The fawning over his passing my his pals ion the media has been awful. It really just shows how insular and self absorbed the mainstream media can be.

And amidst the misplaced fawning by his peers at NBC (and all across the news dial), we had to endure the transparent jockeying for Lil’ Russ’s old job at Meet The Press. Most obnoxious was the ever-loathsome David Gregory, who seemed unable to contain himself this weekend of Lil Russ stories – no doubt in his warped mind, honoring a friend and peer takes second seat to getting that cushy desk chair at MTP.

Loathsome.

A close second is that chubby political hack, Chrissy Matthews, who still feels that tingle running up his leg when Barry Obama enters the room. His own personal demons and man-crushes notwithstanding, I have no doubt that he wet his pants when he heard that the Meet The Press job had suddenly opened up, and he could campaign for it much like Gregory has shamelessly campaigned.

Lets not forget that Lil’ Russ was a democrat political operate in the finest tradition, spending part of his early years carrying Pat Moynihan’s bag in between Pat’s (frequent) mad dashes to the tavern. Not to be outdone, Lil’ Russ actually topped himself by spending a while carrying Mario Cuomo’s bags in between Mario’s (frequent) self important exhales. Make no mistake – for all the talk of his ‘fairness,’ Lil Russ was always a good liberal footsoldier, carrying water for the cause and masquarading it as impartial commentary.

There are several examples of his favoritism, but I think Lil’ Russ’s wide eyed, slow witted dropping of the ball with New Orleans political hack Aaron Broussard is a standout. Lil’ Russ just lets the chronic excuse maker (and evidently fantasist) Aaron Broussard spin a tall tale and cry a river, blaming everyone under the sun – except himself and his pals in charge of NO.

Aaron Broussard is a wall to wall embarrassment, but the real story is that flat-footed, slow witted Tim Russert allowing Broussard to whiz clumsy pitch after clumsy pitch right by him and not calling him on any of his BS.

Condolences to Lil’ Russ’s family – a passing at a young age like 58 is a sad event, but Edward R Murrow he was not. The media overstating his passing is embarrassing. It reveals volumes about them, and less about Russert. And it’s not flattering.

This is the city

The great Badge 714 website has reproduced this short entry from Scholastic Book’s TV 70, a look at the upcoming television season sold in classrooms across the fruited plain! It’s great to see Dragnet 1970 get some good press! Enjoy!

Jack Webb’s Dragnet Tells It Like It Is
by Peggy Hudson

(from “TV 70″, published in 1970 by Scholastic Book Services)

It must be doing something right.
What other TV show has been put back on the beat?

This is the city: Los Angeles.
Population: 2,479,015—some good, some evil.
One of its natives carries a badge. His name: Joe Friday. We visited him on a Tuesday.
The time: 11:06 A.M.My partner and I had been assigned the interview detail. The Chief had briefed us. He said Dragnet had started as a radio show in 1949. Switching to television in 1952, it had become one of the medium’s all-time popular shows.

Then, eight years later, it had abruptly dropped from sight. Now, under a number of aliases—from Dragnet 1967 to Dragnet 1970—it had reappeared and resumed full-time operations. Our assignment: To learn at firsthand the program’s “MO.”

At 11:07 A.M.. we drove into the sprawling grounds of Universal City. We knew that this was Friday’s headquarters. Friday, in real life, operates under the name of Jack Webb.

As soon as we’d stepped into Webb’s reception room, we knew we were in the right place. Hanging in a big frame on one wall was a large collection of police stars, shields, and other badges from such cities as East Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and Troy, New York. Some have Jack Webb’s name inscribed upon them.

In a large museum case were other police memorabilia, including an ancient lock and handcuffs. Beside it, in another frame, was a fan letter simply addressed: “Dum-de-dum-dum”—and decorated with appropriate musical notes. The postman, undoubtedly a Dragnet fan himself, delivered the letter—possibly even humming the program’s theme music as he did so.

Led into Webb’s office, we found ourselves in a different world. This was no precinct station. It looked like a living room. Wall-to-wall carpeting. Easy chairs. Tall lamps. One wall was decorated with etchings of U. S. presidents. On a small table stood an American flag.

A man was in the room. Dressed in shirt sleeves and slacks, he was seated at the big desk, talking on the telephone. He wore big black horn-rimmed glasses.

Even behind the glasses, though, it was evident that this was our man. Realizing that the disguise was useless, he hung up the phone, whipped off the glasses, and stood up to shake hands.

Webb is a slight man with narrow shoulders but a powerful build. His natural expression is serious, but he smiles quickly. He graciously waved us to a seat.

We weren’t about to be put off. “We have a few questions we’d like to ask you,” we said. Webb nodded. The interrogation began.

The story you are about to read is real.

---

Dragnet has an air of authenticity seldom matched by rival cops-and-criminals TV shows. Other police dramas have been gunned down by the ratings, but Dragnet has survived. “Why?” we wondered aloud.Webb looked thoughtful. “We’ve tried to tell it like it is for many years,” he said in his dry, Sgt. Friday’s voice. “We work very closely with the Los Angeles Police Department. We have meetings three or four times a year with division commanders and at least one meeting a year with police officials of even higher rank.

“We try to find out what the latest police problems are, what they’d like said. It’s really their program as much as ours. “We aren’t allowed—and don’t want—to read actual case histories. We deal with stories that are accurate, but the dialogue is recreated.

“All of our hardware is authentic. There’s a policeman assigned to each show as technical adviser. Each of our scripts passes through 12 to 15 officers’ hands, from the rank of captain down to sergeant. This is done to catch us in any technical slip-ups. To my knowledge, Dragnet and our other show, Adam-12, are the only police programs done as semidocumentaries.”

Webb created Dragnet 20 years ago. A former radio announcer turned radio serial actor, he got a big break in 1948, shortly after his discharge from I the Army Air Corps. He was cast in a supporting role in the movie, He Walked By Night.

It was a bigger break than even Webb realized. During the filming of the movie, he struck up a friendship with the film’s technical adviser, an officer of the Los Angeles Police Department.

“He sparked my interest in police work, and I found myself spending nights in police prowl cars and researching the crime lab files by day when time permitted,” Webb recalled. “Through this Dragnet was born.”

The show was one of the few programs to survive the transition from radio to television. After its long TV run, Webb voluntarily took Dragnet off the air in 1959.

“I think the public grew a little weary after eight years,” Webb admitted. “We’d done 275 half-hour TV shows and over 500 radio shows.”

But in January, 1967, Dragnet did the unprecedented. It became the first TV program to come from “retirement” and make a successful comeback.

“Had Sgt. Friday gotten restless to get back on the beat?” we asked Webb.

He smiled. “There was no driving urgency on my part,” he said. “It was more or less NBC’s idea, though I thought we could make some kind of statement on law and order.”

In making that statement, Dragnet dramas present all the variety to be found in real-life police work—from homicide to housebreaking. Shows frequently deal with the problems of young people.

When dealing with teenagers on the program, Sgt. Friday and Officer Bill Gannon—played by Harry Morgan—seem tuned in to the younger generation. “Do you think such cops really exist?” we asked Webb.

“Positively, yes, “he replied. “We have only 23 1/2 minutes to tell a story which actual police officers may have spent months on. The officers in real life might have shown even more understanding than Harry and I are able to in such a short time.”

Webb is concerned about the lack of public support for police departments in some areas of the country. “It’s no secret that being called a ‘pig’ affects a man’s morale,” he said. “If we don’t do something quickly, the spirit of accomplishment will be taken away from men on the job. When that happens, low morale can spread through a department. Eventually you risk having no department at all.

“Today, being a policeman is a distasteful, almost tragic, way to make a living. The abuse he takes is ridiculous.

“If the public doesn’t begin to loudly support their policemen, I’m afraid we’re heading for a bleak period in urban history.

“We hope in some way we make the policeman’s job easier for him.”

And best of all I don’t pay property tax

Television’s house of ideas, Glen A Larson, has created so many great, enduring television shows that it’s difficult to keep track of them all. But one show stands tall even among that tough field. BJ & The Bear

You could count on Mr. Larson to consistently rip off the flavor of the month. For example, when Star Wars became a monster hit in theaters, he followed with Battlestar Galactica on tv. So when audiences responded favorably to the 1977 big screen action/comedy Smokey & The Bandit, Larson took some elements from the film and quickly created his own show.

So in the tv version, we have a rascally truck driver (BJ, rather than ‘Bandit’) and his pet chimp named ‘Bear’ (instead of a pet orangutan as in Smokey) relentlessly pursued by Sheriff Lobo (rather than Sheriff Justice). The basic dynamic from Smokey & The Bandit was intact, though the tv version would have none of the star power of the film – no Burt Reynolds, Jackie Gleason, nor Sally Field.

A pilot movie was broadcast by NBC in 1978, and it proved popular enough for the network to green light a series. BJ & The Bear lasted three seasons on NBC, for an impressive 48 episodes. It even launched a spinoff based around Claude Akins’s character, Sheriff Lobo.

Each episode usually involved BJ and Bear discovering some criminal or immoral activity, and usually a pretty woman in some sort of distress. BJ would then bend the rules a bit to solve the problem, usually with some action and comedy to please fans of all ages.

In a later season, BJ started his own trucking company out of Los Angeles, and he hired 7 beautiful lady truckers – Samantha, Cindy, Angie, Callie, twins Geri & Teri, and my personal favorite Stacks, as portrayed by the lovely Judy Landers. They would find adventures together. Sometimes Andre the Giant would show up and hang out with them, too.

In other words, this is clearly one of the greatest tv shows of all time.

So sit back and enjoy the opening credits & theme song to one of the great television concepts of all time, BJ & The Bear.

While some folks may be so cynical as to decry the credibility of the basic concept of the show, I have always maintained that the most incredible thing in the show opening is not that an adult male trucker’s best friend is a chimpanzee, but rather that somewhere out on the highways of America there is at least one young, foxy lady truck driver.

The next season introduced seven more young, foxy lady truckers, propelling the show into science fiction.

All My Favorite TV Shows Get Canceled Quickly

Way back in the mid 1980s, Writer-Director-Producer Michael Mann was riding high with his slick & polished tv series, Miami Vice. I admit I was never really a fan of the show, but it had a strong run for a while and a dedicated fan base.

Mann could pretty much write his own ticket in those days, so when it came time for him to pitch a new series, he dared to try something a bit different. NBC gave him the go-ahead for a pilot movie and series for his new project, Crime Story.

Crime Story was a police drama set in the early 1960s, one of my favorite periods. The main tension was built around Chicago cop Lt. Mike Torelli (Dennis Farina) and ambitious hood Ray Luca (Anthony John Denison). The series followed law enforcement’s attention to Luca and crew’s criminal antics in Chicago and later, in my hometown of Las Vegas.

The show only lasted two years, and in that time some pretty good actors hit the scene for some appearances, most notably Kevin Spacey and Julia Roberts. The show was as inspired and stylish as anything on tv at the time, and probably much more so.

Most people remember the series for it’s opening theme, a re-recording of Del Shannon’s hit ‘Runaway.’ Well, they managed to coax Del out of semi-retirement to record an updated, brassier version of his classic song! NBC even put together a music video featuring Del singing and scenes of the tv series in order to help drum up interest in the series.

So sit back and enjoy the complete version (not the 1 minute opening credits version) of Runaway 1986!