(first posted 3/5/2013) “One-Adam-12, One-Adam-12…A 211 in progress. One-Adam-12 handle code three…”
Thus began one of the best police dramas of the 1960s and 70s. Adam-12. Starring Martin Milner, Kent McCord. and a host of Curbside Classics.
Produced by Jack Webb and R. A. Cinader, the series ran from 1968 – 1975. Webb was a stickler for correct police procedure, as he was in his earlier show “Dragnet.” Adam-12 has been recognized as one of the most accurate police dramas made.
In the 7 years that Adam-12 was on the air, Officers Malloy and Reed went through the entire city of Los Angeles in 5 vehicles. They are:
Pilot episode: Shop ID #80789 – 1967 Plymouth Belvedere.
Season One: Shop ID #80817 – 1968 Plymouth Belvedere.
Seasons Two and Three: Shop ID #80817 – 1969 Plymouth Belvedere (Note: The 1968 and 1969 Belvederes were so close in appearance, the producers figured they could get away with re-using the same shop number. Sharp-eyed viewers caught the differences immediately, however.
Season Four: Shop ID #83012 – 1971 Plymouth Satellite.
Seasons Five through Seven: Shop ID# 85012 – 1972 AMC Matador. The Matador was equipped with a 401-cid V8, and was probably the most widely recognized vehicle in the LAPD during run of the show.
According to anecdotal information from former officers, the Matador’s high power-to-weight ratio made them an almost ideal “pursuit” unit. They did, however, require more servicing than other makes in the fleet. According to current fan polling, it is still the favored car.
I enjoy watching this series. It’s what made me subscribe to Netflix. Having grown up in Los Angeles, it’s fun to see if I can spot any locations I remember from those early days, and also compare the city with what it has become today.
It’s interesting when I see them start a pursuit in Long Beach, and then jump to running through the streets of Burbank, a good 45 minutes away. Not too much continuity checking went on, apparently. It’s also fun when I can spot a scene shot on a studio backlot.
The fun didn’t stop with the police cars, however. Here are some screenshots from Adam-12 episodes.
My all time favorite car watching show is Hawaii Five-O, they really stocked that show with Ford product from the 1970s (of course by sponsorship) and many other cars of the era since it was filmed on location in Hawaii.
Adam-12 shows just how dominate Chrysler and AMC was in police work before the 1980s.
If you watch Adam-12 just for the cars, you will see the same ones over and over again throughout the series. Especially this tan Mustang that Malloy drove as his personal car in the first couple seasons — it’s parked in scenes throughout the subsequent seasons.
I remember in later episodes Malloy had one of those Matador coupes for a while. One thing that I always enjoyed about all of Jack Webb’s shows (Dragnet, Adam-12, Emergency, others…) was his attention to detail. I think part of the reason for the repeats was that Mark VII owned most of the vehicles they operated as props, where as many shows relied on sponsored vehicles (like Hawaii Five-O).
The episode where Robert Mitchum’s brother runs a chop shop and females hitchhike and then steal muscle cars and drop them off at the shop. Cuda and others
Love the shots of the LA Airport Theme Building, the giant Jetsons like spider that watches over LAX in all its mid century awesomeness.
+1. Cars from the same esthetic mindset as that building were scrapped in 10 years, but it stands forever like a bizarro Mayan temple.
I’ve only had one connection in LAX long enough to actually take the time to go out to the building, there really is no easy way to get to it, you have to cross the arrivals traffic and bob and weave through cabs, this was back in 2007, around the same time they were digging up that 57 Plymouth in Tulsa.
And it was closed for remodeling, there is supposed to be a bar in there……
Don’t know if it’s still true but at one time there was a restaurant there. I remember flying to Hawaii with my parents in November ’66. We had a couple or three hour connection at LAX, and Mom’s aunt and uncle (who we would stay with for a week on the return trip) drove up from Santa Ana to meet us for lunch and took us to the restaurant in the theme building. Now mind you we just had lunch from Philadelphia to LAX, and would have another meal to Hawaii, but I was a hungry (and somewhat chubby) kid, so I was up for it. IIRC, it was a pretty nice restaurant.
Living in California in 75-77, I distingtly remember my father on several occations telling me there were a restaurant up there. I’ve wondered for years if the building is still there though. Guess it is. Why is it called the theme building? Wikipedia came up short….
Also love the shots of LAX in its prime. I’ve passed through that airport on LA-to-Melbourne/Sydney flights at least a half-dozen times in the last few years, and sadly, it’s felt like a dump lately. Always makes me think about what it would look like refurbished in period finery.
For those who are fans of Tarmac-side Classics, Youtube user RyanBomar has an excellent collection of vintage LAX jetliner footage here: https://www.youtube.com/user/RyanBomar?feature=watch
I grew up watching Adam 12 episodes. My best friend’s dad had a 1968 Satellite just like the one in the shows. It was such a rust-bucket chunks fell off!
Never got this in the UK as far as I know but old TV shows are great for spotting old cars.As a Ford/Mercury fan I can recommend the Invaders.
What’s so stark is how bizarre turn of the decade cars looked compared to cars from the late 1960s. Contrasting that 1959 Buick (Electra 225?) to just about everything else save that 1960 Impala convertible makes it look like an alien from mars.
American car styling, when put into that context, only spent about 5 years being ridiculously flamboyant.
Not only that, but when styles changed, they really changed, that Buick is only like a 9 year old car, and it looks way out of date, now imagine a 20 year old car, a 1948-1949 car would have been ancient, today a 2004 car really wouldn’t look out of place in modern traffic.
Considering a 2013 Corolla looks so much like a 1998 Corolla….. there’s a few more examples out there, but that pops into my mind.
It makes me analyze how I look at classic car styling, and what I attribute to mid 50’s flamboyance really has more to do with color schemes available (and repainted onto more dull colored cars in restoration efforts) and the amount of chrome. The really over the top “Dream phase” really only lasted from 1957 through 1961-62.
Man, how positively dull this world has become….
Yeah, the “ZAP POW!” phase of automotive styling is from about 1957 to 1963 at most, counting the last weird Imperials, peaking about 1959-1960.
The ’61 Imperials had about the biggest, wildest fins of any car. They rivaled even the ’59 Cads.
Strange because everyone else including Dodge, Plym., and Chrysler was toning them down gradually.
I am going to stir the pot here, but I think that has become an unintended (or intended?) consequence of the advance of the Japanese in the market place. Who knows, given safety regulation, fuel economy, and cost control cars might have gotten dull on their own. But I can only imagine with the rise of the Japanese sedans, which never at any point were particularly daring in style, has subdued the market. I can’t think of a single Japanese car in the last 40 years that was anything to look at, except for maybe the original Fairlady Z cars.
American car buyers have always been facinated about the personality of a car, it told something to people about who you are and what you liked. Today, some people buy cars for prestige, but almost certainly not because of the looks.
I don’t know, maybe today’s mainstream buyer (under the age of 50) doesn’t really care. To them it is just about transportation, utility, who gives them the best deal on a monthly payment, how much the gas costs, and if their wife/spouse can drive it. Even early European cars got into the act. VW sold a lot of cars before the 1980s not just because they sipped gas because, as someone pointed out in another post, people bought into the schtick. I don’t know if VW even has a schtick anymore, except for maybe the GTI, although VW is not only making them in 4 doors… A great aunt of mine who lived in Rhode Island once had a Peugeot 505 back in the early 1980s, it was a diesel 4 door model. Purchased not because the car was particularly attractive, although the famous Peugeot front scowl was the first thing you noticed about the car, but because back then the Peugeot exuded a sort of refined European Ivy League mindset. As though taste was in the mind not in the eye of the beholder.
Some of the 50s and early 60s designs were flamboyant due to the color schemes but also reflected the mindset of the times. 1957 was the year of Sputnik, space race, sci fi movies and comic books, and the age of the jet plane. By the 60s, buttoned up conservatism was the rage of the day both in car design and in fashion. Ties got skinny and men dressed like the cars they drove. From the 1930s to the early 1970s, styling drove car design. Prior to the 1930s, cars were still crude because they were still figuring out basic technology. In the 1970s, cost controls, safety and fuel regulations began to affect the design elements and designers no longer had as free a reign as they once did. Cars were still generally unique up until the mid late 1980s and things really started to move towards what I call the “modified jelly bean look.” Designer take a clay mold of a jelly bean and shape the rest of the car from it. In a way, the oft maligned AMC Pacer presaged the designs that we live with today. Then it was goofy, bubbly, and did not perform as intended due to circumstances (like the Wankel unavailability) but introduced the idea of a wide cab forward design type of car.
I think we are starting to see some light at the end of the tunnel, though. Especially on the domestic side as many of the GM, Ford, Chrysler offerings have escewed rounded lines for smooth crisp lines. At Chrysler, there is no better example as this having gone from the cars that made cab forward famous, Dodge Intrepid/Chrysler Concorde, to Chrysler 300s which, IMO opinion, are very beautiful cars. The 2013 Taurus is a damn good looking car, especially compared to the butter bean look from ten years prior. So we’ll see, we may never reach the point in design when a Cadillac is instantly identifiable as a Cadillac but at least there will be some variety.
There is still stong interest in styling, look at the return of the ponycars.
I would have to agree, there are lookers today. Externally I love the current Taurus, but like the 300/Charger I hate the sitting in a bunker sensation. But beyond those 3 (big traditional sedans) there isn’t much in the way of really distinctive, yet still attractive mass market cars.
Most Japanese cars cribbed from a school of what I consider “Generic Italian” that they didn’t leave until 15 years ago. Whatever a mainstream Fiat looked like, a Honda or Mazda 5 years down the road would look like (with no electrical problems). Whatever didn’t look like that was another Euro copy (the original LS400) or something we never got (often either a freak show or something that looked like a discarded Ford Fairlane proposal).
But there’s been a few Japanese beauties that don’t really owe to cribbed design, most of them from Mazda in my mind (The Cosmos, the 1993 MX-6). You have to give some credit to the Lexus SC coupes as being pretty unique and beautiful too.
Then there’s the 1962 Prince Gloria. I guess this is what a Japanese 1961 Oldsmobile F-85 looks like….
What about the MR2, RX7&8, SVX, 280/300Z, NSX, Maita,or Xb?
The Japanese have offered plenty of interesting sports cars.
Their mainstream Camcordaru offerings are bland as that’s what people want. All cars also have a much longer service life compared to the 50s or 60s. Most people can get a Civic or Corolla to 200k without too much effort.
People face more expenses today than they did in the 1950s and 1960s – cable television, cellphone bills, health insurance premiums and higher mortgage payments (relative to their income), for starters.
Then, if you have children, add the fees for various “camps” and activities that middle-class and upper-middle class parents must pay, or risk having their child branded as a loser doomed to a life of asking, “Would you like fries with that?”.
That leaves less money to spend on cars. Today people expect their cars to last at least 125,000 miles without any major repairs, and not look hopelessly outdated after 3-5 years. The Japanese didn’t cause this – they just offered a product that responded better to the changing needs of the American middle-class in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.
I would also submit that the decline of annual styling changes has led to basic designs being around much longer, five or six model years is common now, so styling changes at a much slower rate. I miss the days when there was something new to look forward to every year or two.
The annual model change was killed by model proliferation as much as anything else. Even mighty GM, at the height of its power, couldn’t afford to restyle every single one of its vehicles every year.
Today, the big manufacturers make noise about one model that is being changed for the year. Ford, for example, will trumpet the all-new Focus one year, followed by a new Fusion the next year, and then a new Escape the year after that.
Ahh Matador, my AMC heart beats for you.
Although I’d never have another since:
-Been there done that from the age of 5-24
-Owning one now would be a parts chasing nightmare
This is was shown on an Australian rerun channel (7Mate I think) the cars are totally the main attraction but it was the lack of parked cars that i noticed (as well as the typical park outside ‘don’t have to look for a space’ thing they do ) – they now show the new adam 12 which has no nostalgia kink yet .. give it 10 years though……
Claim to fame (for me anyway) was the usage of a 64, or so Imperial in one of the first episodes of Dragnet. It was used by a crook for a getaway car, complete with him trying to get away with the Imperials owner hid in its massive trunk!
You must be referring to one of the first color episodes from ’67-70. The B&W episodes ran from 51-59 (I think). The B&W episodes are interesting as they serve as a time capsule, as well as have decent plots. The later color episodes sometimes seem silly and dorky, but still fun to watch. BTW, I’ve read that Jack Webb set up teleprompters on the sets so that the actors could their lines and get the takes right the first time.
Last summer, a cable channel on my system showed 2 episodes back to back every evening around dinnertime. The green 59 Buick is from (I believe) the opening episode. It takes off and there is a chase that ends up in the concrete LA river basin. The Buick hits a dead end and is destroyed with a header into a concrete ditch.
For we Mopar fans, you could always hear the “Hamtramck Hummingbird” Mopar starters when the cars would be fired up. Mack the sargent would occasionally show up in a black and white Belvedere wagon. Like the rest of you, it is a treat to watch an automotive world I remember so well, but that is long gone.
Seeing that Buick meet its fate really made me cringe.
That’s the difficult part of these old shows – watching then-worthless beaters meet a sorry end for dramatic effect every few minutes.
I think I recall episodes where Reed drove a mustang off-duty and Malloy was shown behind the wheel of a1972 AMC Javelin.
This is one of the earliest shows I remember watching, and I loved it for the cars. I have very vivid memories of watching this, but perhaps I was watching reruns in syndication, since I seem to remember it being on at 7:30pm, which was just before prime time. I think the only cop shows I liked better were Hawaii 5-0 and Columbo, mostly for his Peugeot, plus the bad guys always had fancy cars.
Just a tid-bit of onfo – The license plates on the cars in Adam-12 were made special for the studio, they weren’t real State issue plates.
I thought Adam-12 was more real than Hawaii 5-0 and others.
It really had an amazing gritty stark realizm that seemed to tell it like it is.
Seemed like you could really get a feel for how LA was at the time.
The plots were taken from actual police files after all (right?).
People always gave All In The Family all the credit for tackling tough issues, but Adam-12 pre-dates All in hte Family by about 6 years.
Hard core issuses like racizm, rape, spousle abuse, and child abuse were regular topics on the show.
I think it was the very last episode of the very last season were Reid leaves his partner Malloy and joins up with the Bunko Squad to become an undercover narc.
To see the very clean-cut Reid un-shaven and dirty looking going to the real seedy parts of town to deal with the drug underworld as the the early ’70s turned into the very jaded and sleazy mid-’70s was wicked hard core for TV at the time!
Of course the cars were the best part by far!!!
I haven’t heard the term bunco in years. I think the police are mostly calling it Vice now. I am not sure why it fell out of favor, it was not particularly offensive, but probably vice is a more generic broader term for all the various illegal hustles.
One of the reasons Adam-12 was considered ‘gritty’ was becuase I believe all of the situations were based off of real incidents from the LA police files, just like Dragnet. Webb’s original Dragnet in the 50s and the radio show was pretty hard core almost to the point of being dry but they slowly added personality to the characters so by the time Emergency! came out in the 70s, it was almost comedic.
I always thought the watch commander had an AMC Matador wagon.
I think possibly the reason bunco fell out of favor is maybe because the term “what a load of bunk” just becomes a generic term for swindling or decieving. Maybe it was origonally though. (???) Just thinking out loud.
Dragnet had similar themed episodes too, no doubt, in part to both shows involving Jack Webb.
My biggest gripe with AITF was the lack of cars. Plenty of missed opportunities there; imagine Archie walking home from work after his broken-down old Plymouth didn’t start only to find George Jefferson just bought a new Cadillac, or Mike and Gloria trading their old VW for…what else? a Cutlass Supreme!
Yeah, there were never any cars in All in the Family, so as a kid it never interested me as much as say…CHiP’s which was a cargazm in my young mind.
I could imagine Archie in like a well worn 64 full size Chevrolet.
You don’t know how close you are. In the 1970 movie Joe — described by star Peter Boyle as “Archie Bunker with bullets” — the title character drives a well-worn ’62 full-size Chev!
SPOILER ALERT! This is the final five minutes of the movie, which I’m linking to as it gives the best view of Joe’s car in the movie — but which also (obviously) GIVES AWAY THE ENDING. It’s also quite violent and NSFW:
I’ve heard of this movie, but never seen it before.
“I think it was the very last episode of the very last season were Reid leaves his partner Malloy and joins up with the Bunko Squad to become an undercover narc.
To see the very clean-cut Reid un-shaven and dirty looking going to the real seedy parts of town to deal with the drug underworld as the the early ’70s turned into the very jaded and sleazy mid-’70s was wicked hard core for TV at the time!”
I thought that too. Very well put!
In fact, I thought the final two-part story was so good that I was shocked this was where the series ended. Instead of Adam-12 petering out, it delivered a story so great it showed the series had heaps of life left in it. Adam-12 could have gone on right into the late seventies disco era with some funky music, eccentric characters and, of course, more cars that would soon become classics.
Richard Wayman…grown up in Los Angeles…any relation to KMPC newsman Tom Wayman?
None. But I do have friends who are trying to find Tom for a new book about radio personalities being written. Any information would sure be welcome.
The 1967-70 version of Dragnet (a Mark VII Limited production, as was Adam-12) occasionally featured some interesting cars, particularly when Friday and Gannon were assigned to cases in the more upscale areas of Los Angeles.
One particular favorite of mine is 1967’s “The Kidnapping” (which can be watched at http://www.hulu.com/watch/826), in which the female victim is a business owner who also owns an Imperial and a Mercedes (I think a W108 or W109, can’t tell which), both of which are featured in the storyline. In addition, at the end of the episode there is a scene where Friday walks among a line of some beautiful cars, including a gorgeous black Coupe DeVille.
By the way, Jack Webb was said to be a bit of a car nut, and supposedly named his production company “Mark VII” out of fondness for his beloved Jaguar.
Jack Webb was an interesting cat, only civilian to be given full LAPD honors funeral including 21 gun salute, when he died in 1982.
The other police TV drama I remember from that period was “The Streets of San Francisco”. I think it had vehicles provided by Ford.
Growing up in California, Ive always been a Mopar cop car fan. While the CHP demanded big 122″+wb cars, such as the Dodge Polara, for urban departments, intermediates were more maneuverable. As I recall, the LA County Sheriff bought Furys and Satellites different years.
On the topic of the 122″ wheel base, my MoPar cop car book says that the CHP demanded a 122″ wheelbase even when MoPar shorted it a little to 120″ or there abouts, CHP was such a big customer of MoPar squad cars that Chryco upped the wheelbase back up to 122″ just for their cop cars!
For the local squads a lesser wheelbase was adequate for the Cornets and Belvedere B bodys.
1 Adam-12…over.
They actually created a special Dodge model, the 880, that was really a cheaper Chrysler, due to the downsized B-body Polara, essentially for the CHP.
There is a fella that has an 880 that comes to car shows around here semi regularly. The 880 story is interesting in that Dodge shrunk their already unpopular 61 models for 62 on a rumor that GM was going to do the same. When it didn’t happen they were caught with their pants down. So they took the cheapest Chrysler body and warmed over some 61 parts and created sort of a hybrid car to sell for people looking for full size. Eventually the regular Dodge’s were rectified and the 880 hung around for a few years then died. As for the CHP, who knows might have been part of the mix although I think Chrysler (Corp) could have serviced the bids with other models.
Then you’re probably familiar with the ill-fated “S Series” platform that never was. It’s the earlier part of the story.
It’s the car that was to be the new full-size line-up instead of the mid-size B bodys which were prsented as full-size.
S Series full size that never was…
I never cared much for Chrysler product styling during those years – it was though the took the shape of a bullet and fashioned a car around it. Exner was a heck of a designer, but like with anyone that pushes the envelope, some are really good and some are really bad. A 56 Imperial is beautiful especially a coupe. Even the 57 is classic but 58-63 up and down. When Engel started to flex his pen by 64 things toned down a lot and Chrysler developed its huge box reputation. 64-66 Imperials are classic and of course no coincidence they bear strong resemblance to the 61-69 Lincoln Continentals for obvious reasons… I probably would not have been a Dodge buyer in the early 60s with all that Peugeot like styling…
CraigInNC: “Peugeot like styling”?!? Them’s fighting words….
Seriously, you’re comparing the classic 1960 Pinifarina-designed 404 with that joke-mobile, the 1960 Dodge? Both came out the same year; so what exactly is “Peugeot-like”? The both have a chrome accent strip running down the middle? Shall I do a comparison of their front ends? It’s even more extreme. I must; in the next comment. I will make you eat your words! 🙂
1960 Dodge and Peugeot 404 front views:
Absurd is the word. Love the 3/4 leanth fins. And just as nutty, backwards fins in ’61!
Farina did the early ’60s Rambler American. Even those didn’t look very Pougeot-y.
I was referring to the canted headlights of the prototype model that seemed to have been in vogue in some circles around that time. It reminded me of my aunt’s (in RI) early 80s Peugeot that had the appearance of canted front quad headlights on her 505. Buick did the same thing in 59. I never cared for the ‘eye brow’ look if you want to call it that. A 56 Imperial is one of my all time favorite designs, it is often a curse with creative geniuses like Virgil Exner he can have big hits and big uglies. I personally have always mostly enjoyed cars designed with classic design cues with straight lines and sharp angles. So it is no surprised that I have enjoyed most of what Elwood Engel and Bill Mitchell have put out. I also see that design philosophy is making something of a comeback now especially with Cadillac – Wayne Cherry has done wonders with the car line.
Re: “Streets of San Francisco”
Of course, Fords were all over it. The show was “a Quinn Martin Production.”
umm.. OFFICER REED?
NUMMMMY!
“TV Tommy” Ivo made an appearence on Adam-12 as an owner of an antique store I believe.
It was fun watching for other interesting cameos and appearences of long-gone charactor actors from old TV Westerns like Gunsmoke and Bonanza and many other different TV shows.
Long-gone character actors? All 3 shows ran concurrently.
I mean that many of the old time charactor actors you’d see in the shows I meantion could be found in tons of show earlier than those, and often type-casted as the very same role, like the token “old guy” for instance.
Burt Mustin was the most famous “old guy” from the Jack Webb era. He played in a handful of episodes of his shows and many hundreds more.
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burt_Mustin#section_2
Irene Tedrow was a popular “old lady” back in the day as well.
It seems to occur less now, but in the past, you often would see once A-list actors appearing in secondary parts in movies as their careers waned or they got older. The movie Airplane! had all sorts of well known and no so well known has-beens. Occasionally you will find recognizable faces early in their careers before they went on to their most famous works.
Back then, when producers had more control, using such actors was more common because pay wasn’t off the charts as it is now and it was a way to capture a little cache for little cost.
Burt Mustin !!! That’s exactly the “old guy” I was thinking of. Could’nt think of his name.
And Irene Tedrow – I know exactly who you’re talking about there too.
I can’t watch any of Webb’s series without thinking of Virginia Gregg. She was probably on more episodes of Dragnet, Adam-12 and Emergency than any other non-recurring player, and seemed to be the “default” actress whenever the shows needed a middle-aged woman to play a character. She was also on quite a number of episodes of the radio version of Dragnet, and here’s an interesting tidbit: She was one of the voices of “Mrs. Bates” in Psycho, and the two sequels.
Generally Webb was faithful to what the actual LAPD was driving, this was true of the Satellites, and the Matador, at least for the first season . They decided to keep the ’72 Matador until the end of the show for some reason. Where he really dropped the ball was the 1970 season, where they kept the ’69 Satellite for another year. Reid & Malloy should have been in a 1970 Montego!
Richard: Good luck with that. LARadio.com, which has the best “where are they now” imaginable, has him as “whereabouts unknown”. Your friends’ best bets would be to track down Mike Botula and/or Alex Paen. I think they might be the last surviving KMPC news guys. Alex has a TV production company in L.A. Google should do the trick. They might know where Tom is. Failing that, Wink Martindale is very approachable online.
I’ve been a contributor to LARadio.com since 1999. In fact it’s Don Barrett who can’t find Tom Wayman. On the Where Are They Now page it says “current whereabouts unknown.” Thought I could dig up something for Don on this, as I heard rumors he was going to update his LARadio book.
Richard: Alex Paen’s company is Telco Productions in L.A. Mike Botula owns Mike Botula Communications in Sacramento.
THOUGHT I recognized the name, Michael.
I worked at KSLY from 1982-1984. Right in the middle of the KSLY-KUNA AM-FM switch and the move to the new studios.
Richard: We missed each other by about 10 years, then…I was there in ’74…and they’d only been in the old place three or four years at the time.
Anyway, try Alex Paen first. Tell him I said hi. If he doesn’t know about Wayman, Botula’s your next call.
Yes, there have been restaurants in the 360 degree glass area since the building opened in 1961. The current one (since 1997) is called Encounter.
The Theme Building is called that because its purpose was to be the focal point of the 1960 “L
I think it had an open air top deck too, obviously now closed in our “unsafe” world.
os Angeles Jet Age Terminal Project”, which was essentially an all-new airport from the passenger’s point of view.
52 years ago, with 2 or 3 low-rise terminals, it was dramatic. Today, surrounded by 7 or 8 multilevel terminals, a lot of the impact is lost, and the Theme Building is now a last reminder of the Jet Age LAX.
It actually opened with six terminals in 1961. Very impressive to an eight year old son of an aircraft engineer. Alas, the jetways were for the DC-8s and 707s. We were traveling short haul on a DC-6, still using the airstairs.
Which suggests Ms. Gregg was a Universal contract player. That studio was the last to drop such arrangements, common in the 30s and 40s. Universal had them well into the 1970s and may have even done it into the early 80s.
Susan Saint James and Gretchen Corbett got their semi-starring roles from years of bit parts as Uni contract players.
I think Sharon Gless was the last contract player ever going and she cut loose sometime in the early 80s when she signed to play one half of Cagney and Lacey.
I am sure there were pros and cons to contracts. For lesser actors they were valuable because they provided a steady paycheck and regular work exposure. Once an actor became famous, though, they could not control their exposure the same as a free agent. I have never really looked into the acting profession but the little bit that I have it is a curious arrangement. SAG.
Best cop show in my mind was “Barney Miller.” Much as I love old iron, I don’t know whether that would have brought the show any more cache.
I loved Barney Miller but that was more of a comedy. My current favorite is L&O SVU those storylines are creepy as h*ll…
The original Dragnet in the 50s was as straight up a cop show as it gets. Dry too. At least in the 60’S version they tried to liven it up a bit especially with Harry Morgan’s character.
You know, I should avoid discussions like this. I can’t get that “Adam-12” theme song out of my mind. I have things to do.
“Adam-12” was Must-See TV for me back when on NBC’s prime time.
One of my favorite shows growing up! The episode that scared the crap out of me (granted, I was 7 years old at the time) was ‘The Search’. Malloy goes off in pursuit after the perps who heisted a grocery store while Reed is left at the store to do interviews, etc. The chase end up in Griffith Park. Malloy overcorrects on a sharp turn, loses control, and wrecks-going down an embankment. The rest of the episode concentrates on the search for Malloy.Good episode. The only problem (as I viewed it with a car guy’s set of eyeballs) is continuity rearing it’s ugly head-Malloy starts the pursuit in the 1971 Satellite, after he loses it in Griffith Park a 1969 Belvedere is now going down the embankment. When we get to Malloy after he hits bottom, he is now trapped in a 1970 Mercury Montego (check out the dashboard & door panels in the scene). Oh well…(beats the heck out of ‘ChiPS’-they’d start a pursuit in a 1977 Monaco-it’d turn into a 1975 Monaco halfway through the chase, and when it woult invariably end up in a wreck-it is now a 1972 Polara)
Have you ever seen Hawaii Five-O’s continuity err….”issues”?
McGarrett leaving the Iolani Palace in his 74 Mercury, driving to the scene in his 68 Mercury and then arriving at the crime scene back in his 74.
Sometimes the ’67 from the pilot shows up too.
One of my favorite original ‘Five-O’ continuity goofs is when Danno drives out to interview a suspect-he starts off in a green 1970 LTD, it turns into a black 1966 Galaxie hardtop (with his hair turning back into the first season-style buzzcut), and he arrives in a black 1970 Custom 500.
I think the cars featured in those cop shows of that era depended on who was producing the show. Quinn Martin (The FBI, Cannon) used Fords. Jack Webb’s Mark VII tended towards Mopars.
The shortcuts you could take before people could record and pause….
Adam-12 is one of my all-time favorite police shows!
Just save me that light purple, ’65-ish, MG Midget.
It’s about half the width of the ’62 Olds 98 that’s in front of it.
And to think, that these were the cars on an everyday street.
The show “Highway Patrol” with Broderick Crawford
from the 50’s had a lot of neat cars. So many 4 door hardtops!
That Season 4 parking lot/top of a parking garage shot has a Triumph GT6+ behind the squad car pulling into a spot. That was and is a pretty rare beast.
My favorite show when I was a kid. I still like to watch on MeTV. My grandfather had a 1973 Matador, I used to sit in the driveway and play Adam-12 with my brother. I was always Malloy, so I could “drive”.
The two biggest automotive problems with that show is that they never, ever handed off the driving duties (presumably for continuity reasons) and when they removed the windshield from the interior-camera car to cut glare they let the wipers park well up the dashboard instead of fixing them more or less where the glass would be.
I too loved Adam-12 but rarely got the chance to see it until the mid 1970’s when I ‘d watch TV at others houses, all my age peers hated it and any other cop show .
Anyone who’s ever driven or ridden in an AMC 401 V8 will remember ~ one of the few cars better than Dodges .
Sadly they had oiling problems so cherry used cars & Jeeps with rod knocks was the norm throughout the 1980’s .
THANK YOU ALL for the comments ! I came to So. Cal. in 1970’s and remember when it was still a really nice laid back town with cheap rents .
-Nate
Night shift in the mid eighties had me watching Adam-12 in daytime repeats. I can’t say I found it a ‘gritty’ show. I was, and remain a fan of “The Sweeny”- that’s gitty, I still enjoy “Naked City”, especially the Paul Burke era.
Yeah, Naked City had that gritty, edgy New York look to it. Good show.
Photo 10 shows a white 1957 Oldsmobile on the right side, which is the sister-ship of my COAL number two.
It’s funny how my eye is immediately drawn to any photo of an old COAL of mine, especially the really old ones. And also odd – the smaller the photo, the better.
It is a shape ingrained in my brain.