Take a Ride on the Mystery “Wheels”

(Above) An early TV industry ad for The Name of the Game.

If there’s one thing I have learned over my decades as a reporter and author, it’s that some stories we write primarily for money. Some stories we write primarily for love. My contribution today to CrimeReads falls solidly in the latter category.

The subject is TV “wheel series.” You know, those rotating weekly dramas—usually crime dramas—that used to offer multiple shows or alternating protagonists under a single, umbrella title. The Name of the Game. The Bold Ones. The NBC Mystery Movie. Those are certainly the best-remembered of the bunch, though they are far from the only examples. I initially happened across this category of entertainment as a boy, when one of the original Big Three TV networks broadcast Saturday-afternoon repeats of The Name of the Game, a stylish (and, I have learned since, quite expensive for its time) program about magazine journalists seeking to unearth truths in a world too comfortable with deceit. Later, I became a huge fan of the Mystery Movies (two batches of them, on Sunday and Wednesday nights), even though my childhood bedtime required that I clandestinely listen to at least part of those shows—Columbo, McMillan & Wife, Banacek, The Snoop Sisters, etc.—on my father’s TV-band radio.

Over the last couple of decades, I’ve managed to feed my nostalgia for those and other “wheels” by purchasing DVD sets of the classic series, though many still remain frustratingly unobtainable. (Will I ever be able to see Assignment: Vienna or Tenafly again?) I have also taken opportunities to revisit the shows here in The Rap Sheet. But not until recently did I devote myself to investigating and recording the rather complicated history of those rotating dramas.

The results of that research are found today in CrimeReads.

I know I’m not alone in my enduring fondness for wheel series. The Rap Sheet’s YouTube page featuring the NBC Mystery Movie opening is, for instance, filled with wistful recollections of folks who once enjoyed its offerings. (“I can remember sitting on my grandfather’s lap watching this show. It was his favorite. Sadly both are now gone,” one viewer recalls.) I hope that others who were once charmed by these small-screen rotations, as well as others who missed out on this programming format altogether, will take a few moments to revisit the heyday of those shows today. Click here to travel back in time.

And Long May His Story Be Told

“Hugh O’Brian, who rose to fame on television as the quick-drawing Wyatt Earp in the 1950s—but who later devoted extensive time to a foundation he created that trains young people to be leaders—died on Monday at his home in Beverly Hills, California,” reports The New York Times. O’Brian was 91 years old and, according to the Los Angeles Times, suffered from “several health issues.”

He was born Hugh Charles Krampe in Rochester, New York, on April 19, 1025, “but when he became an actor,” recalls the New York newspaper, “he took the name O’Brian—from his mother’s side of the family, he said—because he found it less vulnerable than Krampe to unfortunate misspellings.” As Variety recalls, O’Brian “spent a semester at the University of Cincinnati but during World War II he dropped out to enlist in the Marine Corps—where his father had been an officer. … After the war, O’Brian moved to Los Angeles to study at UCLA. He had started doing stage work, and was discovered by Ida Lupino, who signed him to appear as the second male lead in the polio drama Never Fear [1949], which she had co-scripted and was directing; for O’Brian that film led to a contract with Universal Pictures.”

O’Brian is most widely remembered for his lead role in the 1955-1961 ABC-TV Western, The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp. But he also starred in the 1972-1973 NBC-TV series Search, playing resourceful Hugh Lockwood, one of three field operatives assigned to solve crimes around the world for a high-tech private investigations enterprise. (Tony Franciosa and Doug McClure portrayed the other two ops.) In addition, O’Brian appeared over the years on such crime dramas as Perry Mason, Charlie’s Angels, Police Story, Matt Houston, L.A. Law, and Murder, She Wrote. In 1994 he reprised the small-screen role that brought him his first big fame, in Wyatt Earp: Return to Tombstone. His many theatrical film credits include parts in There’s No Business Like Show Business (1954), Come Fly with Me (1963), a 1965 picture based on Agatha Christie’s Ten Little Indians (aka And Then There Were None), and Twins (1988). “One of his more memorable roles (though it was also one of his smallest) was in John Wayne’s final movie, The Shootist (1976),” notes The New York Times. “Mr. O’Brian played a professional gambler who, in the film’s closing moments, became the last character ever killed onscreen by Wayne.”

But, says the L.A. Times, “O’Brian's most enduring legacy is off-screen. More than 375,000 high school sophomores selected by their schools have gone through his Hugh O’Brian Youth Leadership organization, which was founded ‘to inspire and develop our global community of youth and volunteers to a life dedicated to leadership, service, and innovation.’ The non-profit organization grew out of an invitation to O’Brian from Dr. Albert Schweitzer to visit the medical missionary, a 1952 Nobel Peace Prize recipient, at his famed hospital in Africa. O’Brian spent nine days working as a volunteer at the hospital on the banks of the Ogooue River in Gabon during the summer of 1958. For O’Brian, it was a life-changing experience.”

It’s interesting as well to mention that O’Brian, once thought of as one of the most eligible men in Hollywood, spent most of his life as a bachelor. He didn’t marry until he was 81 years old, in 2006, taking as his bride longtime companion Virginia Barber, 54. “This is my first, and most definitely, my last trip down the aisle,” O’Brian was quoted as saying at the time. Barber is among his survivors.

READ MORE: “Hugh O’Brian Passes On,” by Terence Towles Canote (A Shroud of Thoughts).

Dashing Around the Web

• Today marks 75 years since the release of Raymond Chandler’s first Philip Marlowe novel, The Big Sleep. To celebrate, I’ve collected decades’ worth of jacket art from various editions of that book and installed them in my Killer Covers blog.

• I first read about this in the Television Obscurities blog, but now The HMSS Weblog confirms it: Warner Archive, Warner Bros.’ “manufactured on demand” division, has released a complete six-disc, 23-episode set of Search, the 1972-1973 NBC-TV high-tech spy/detective drama starring Hugh O’Brian, Doug McClure, and Tony Franciosa. The cost is $49.95. Look for the box art here.

• Evan Lewis, proprietor of the long-titled blog Davy Crockett’s Almanack of Mystery, Adventure and the Wild West (whew, let me catch my breath!) has spent this week looking back at Norbert Davis’ Doan and Carstairs private-eye series of the 1940s. You should be able to pull up all of the installments by clicking here. Tomorrow he promises to post “Cry Murder!,” “a complete--and never reprinted--Doan & Carstairs novelette …” Watch this space!

• Dorothy Salisbury Davis is back! Open Road Integrated Media has just released 21 of Davis’ novels and one short-story collection in e-book format. The now 97-year-old crime-fictionist debuted in 1949 with a standalone titled The Judas Cat. She went on to produce three series of tales--one featuring Julie Hayes, an actress turned gossip columnist; another starring Scottish housekeeper and amateur sleuth Mrs. Norris; and the last built around Lieutenant Marks, a New York City detective. In 1985 she was presented with the Mystery Writers of America’s Grand Master award. I have read very little of Davis’ work (something that I shall change in short order now), but critic Sarah Weinman--who included one of Davis’ short yarns in her recent anthology, Troubled Daughters, Twisted Wives--recommends starting an exploration of her fiction with A Gentle Murderer (1951), “her third novel and her most successful.” In a Facebook note, she added that “I’m also very fond of The Little Brothers [1974], from mid-career, and the Julie Hayes mysteries (four in the series, starting with A Death in the Life [1976]), which closed out her novel-writing days.”

• This sounds like a good opportunity for aspiring authors planning to attend ThrillerFest 2014 in New York City, July 8-12. A news release posted here explains that

To celebrate our first year of Master CraftFest, a one-day intensive retreat on Tuesday, July 8, 2014, we are running a special event called the Best First Sentence Contest. All you need to do is send your VERY best first sentence (for a novel) along with your name, e-mail address, and phone number to bestfirstsentence@gmail.com for a chance to win a critique of 10 pages of your work.

Entries must be submitted “before midnight EST on May 31, 2014.”

• And just when I was positive that mystery novelist Donna Moore (Old Dogs) had given up completely on her once-lively blog, Big Beat from Badsville, she has suddenly returned. “I will be re-commencing posting news and reviews of Scottish crime fiction authors and events,” the author promises. “No doubt I will also be posting stuff and nonsense as it occurs to me (so I will apologise in advance for that--some things never change). If there is anything you would like to see on this blog (including requests to disappear back into the ether), then please let me know.” Welcome back, Donnna!

In Search of ... “Search”

Several years ago, I wrote a post on this page about the 1972-1973 NBC-TV series Search, which followed “a trio of field operatives working for a high-tech private investigations company.” If you ever saw that show, you’ll remember that Hugh O’Brian, Doug McClure, and Tony Franciosa alternated as the series protagonist, while Burgess Meredith kept track of them all in a high-tech control room.

(Right) September 9, 1972, TV Guide preview of Search

Then, just two years back, Warner Archive finally released a DVD version of the Search pilot film, titled Probe, which gave me hope that all 23 of the program’s weekly episodes might soon become commercially available.

Well, no luck so far on that score. But Mystery*File’s Michael Shonk did post a good piece last week that looks back at the eight installments in which O’Brian starred as field agent Hugh Lockwood. He even includes full video of “The Gold Machine,” the December 20, 1972, episode in which a concussion-deafened Lockwood heads to San Francisco in pursuit of a lost gold mine, assisted by kittenish medical expert Gloria Harding (Angel Tompkins). Blending drama with humor, that episode is a fine example of what the show had to offer.

This morning I see that Shonk has followed up his earlier post with one recalling the Tony Franciosa episodes of Search. He’s promised one additional piece, about Doug McClure’s involvement in the show. I look forward to reading them both.

“Search” Me

It’s altogether possible that the majority of people reading this post have no memory at all of Search, the 1972-1973 NBC-TV series that featured a trio of field operatives working for a high-tech private investigations company. And that’s not really surprising.

The Leslie Stevens-created show (with theme music by Dominic Frontiere) seemed well positioned to succeed. It followed the then new NBC Wednesday Mystery Movie at 10 p.m. and starred a rotating roster of some of the era’s most recognizable TV actors: Hugh O’Brian (formerly of The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp), Tony Franciosa (onetime co-star of The Name of the Game, later to play the lead in Matt Helm), and ever-boyish Doug McClure (once of Checkmate, later of Barbary Coast). Though all three of their characters were supposed to be skilled and resourceful operatives, they also had plenty of backup in the form of a NASA-like control room, the Probe Division of World Securities Corp., where technicians kept track of their movements and health via miniature telemetry units and cameras that the globe-trotting sleuths wore alternately on rings and as medallions around their necks. (Hey, this was the ’70s, remember?) Directing Probe was V.C.R. Cameron, played by Burgess Meredith, another Hollywood star with plenty of admirers (even though many of the younger ones knew him only as one of Batman’s more notorious nemeses, the Penguin). Oh, and in case viewers needed additional distractions in the control room, beyond the perpetually anxious Meredith and multiple millions of blinking computer lights, a curvaceous young blond actress named Angel Tompkins served as Gloria Harding, Probe’s medical expert (at least in the early episodes).

So what went wrong? According to an article published recently at the Web site TV Obscurities (a must-watch site for boob-tube nostalgics), part of the problem was too much “way-out stuff like two-way radio implants in the noggin.” New showrunners were brought in to peel some of the science-fiction elements away from Search and change the “heroes from Supermen to more believable human beings.” Another article, this one written by Don Harden and appearing at the site TVParty!, recalls that “The new producers apparently decided to compete with Cannon [the William Conrad private-eye series, which ran opposite it on CBS] by becoming more similar, instead of offering a contrast. Search became less fun, more dramatic, focusing on grittier crime stories being solved by the agent himself with less reliance on Probe Control. The ultimate effect of this made the later episodes dull by comparison to the earlier episodes.”

Viewers and the network were unsatisfied with the results. Search’s final new episode (of 23 total, not counting the pilot film, titled Probe) was shown on Wednesday, April 11, 1973.

Despite its short run, Search has since become something of a cult favorite. And though it hasn’t yet made the transfer to DVD format (or even been broadcast in the United States for many years), you can sometimes pick up sets of the series’ episodes from online sales sites such as iOffer and Sell.com Classifieds.

I’m afraid that the whole concept might seem a bit cheesy in our era of cell phones and Twitter. But I’m willing to give it a shot, if only some company will release Search in a DVD set. Heck, if other unlikely one-season wonders such as Planet of the Apes and Kolchak: The Night Stalker can find audiences on disc, then why not Search?

(UPDATE: Warner Bros. Home Video finally released a DVD version of Probe, the 1972 pilot film for Search, in May 2011.)

* * *

While we’re on the subject of long-forgotten TV programs, how about the 1979-1980 Robert Conrad secret agent series A Man Called Sloane? Christopher Mills has taken on the challenge of recapping its full run of episodes in his excellent new blog, Spy-Fi Channel.

READ MORE: “The Latest in 1972 High-Tech,” by Tim Rose
(Friday @ 8/7 Central); “1972--The TV Guide Fall Preview,” by Brent McKee (I Am a Child of Television); and Michael Shonk of Mystery*File wrote three posts about Search, one looking back at the pilot film and the others about the specific episodes in which this series’ three stars appeared--Hugh O’Brian, Tony Franciosa, and Doug McClure.

It’s Never Too Late to Tie the Knot

Although U.S. actor Hugh O’Brian is certainly better known for his starring role in the 1955-1961 TV series The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp, a highly romanticized read on one of the American West’s most memorable characters, he was also among the rotating leads in a 1972 high-tech thriller series called Search. In that single-season show, O’Brian played Hugh Lockwood, one of three special agents working for Probe, an international private investigations firm (Tony Franciosa and Doug McClure shared the limelight in alternating episodes).

The series was heavy on jet-setting adventures and “cool” turtlenecks and callipygous lovelies blessedly short on inhibitions. Lockwood, like his fellows, wore a camera cleverly hidden in a medallion; and between that and an earpiece that allowed him access to a huge central database of information, he stayed in contact with Probe headquarters, while his supervisors kept a watch on his sometimes off-the-reservation antics.

I bring all of this up, only because TV Squad is reporting that the now 81-year-old O’Brian just got married--for the very first time. The bride was his longtime girlfriend, 54-year-old Virginia Barber. With the theme “A Wedding to Die For,” the ceremony was not your everyday affair. Writes TV Squad’s Joel Keller:

Adhering to the morbid theme, it was held in a cemetery. Among the 300 attendees were look-alikes of deceased notables Elvis Presley and Pope John Paul II. Debbie Reynolds (not a look-alike; she's still with us) sang, and the ceremony was conducted by the Rev. Robert Schuller, pastor of the Crystal Cathedral. Wow. I know people sometimes say that after you get married, a little part of you dies, but this is ridiculous.

What would ol’ Wyatt have thought?

READ MORE: “TV’s ‘Wyatt Earp’ Marries for First Time” (AP).