Filmed July 1964
When the 1964-65 season started, I was booked to return to MGM to direct my fourth DR. KILDARE (MAYBE LOVE WILL SAVE MY APARTMENT HOUSE), and then an episode of a new half hour series starring Dennis Weaver, KENTUCKY JONES. While I was prepping the DR. KILDARE one of my agents called to tell me they had an offer from QM Productions for me to direct an episode of THE FUGITIVE, the smash hit of the previous season. I was reluctant to accept because there was a conflict. In that same time period I was already committed to KENTUCKY JONES and I had reservations about walking away from that commitment, which was being produced by director Buzz Kulik, whom I knew from the first year of DR. KILDARE when I was the assistant producer. The agent persisted. He felt the introduction into the Quinn Martin company was very important to me. And he was so right. I agreed to have them get me out of the KENTUCKY JONES and accept the assignment on THE FUGITIVE.
Quinn Martin Productions was based at the Samuel Goldwyn Studio on Santa Monica Boulevard in Hollywood, which is where THE FUGITIVE was filmed. Goldwyn had been one of the triumvirate involved in the creation of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in 1924, but he soon left that company (leaving his name behind) to go into independent production at space rented at the Pickford-Fairbanks Studio, which was this same Santa Monica Boulevard studio, but then known as the United Artists Studio. In 1940 Goldwyn renamed the studio the Samuel Goldwyn Studio, although at that time he only owned the facilities; Mary Pickford still owned the land on which the studio stood. It wasn’t until 1955 that Goldwyn was able to claim ownership of the land.
The studio was small, a fraction of the size of MGM or Universal. As a result the sound stages were conveniently close to the production offices; and there was no back lot to speak of, which meant the exterior scenes would be filmed on locations away from the studio The normal schedule for an episode of THE FUGITIVE was four days filming on location, three days filming interiors at the studio. Normally location work would be scheduled first, but since there was going to be night work at the old apartment house, the railroad yard was scheduled for Friday, the fourth day, after which we then moved to the apartment house for day and night filming. Our first day of filming was the interior of the boxcar. You know, I can’t remember what I had for dinner last night, but I remember that forty-seven years ago my writer friend, Max Hodge, brought his two very young visiting nephews to the set the day we did the boxcar interiors. Years later Max told me the boys, now grown men, still talked about that visit and their excitement when the boxcar shook, simulating movement of the train.
One of the bonuses in viewing television from half a century ago is the visual presentation of the mores of the period. How many people ride the rails today? A whole way of life that was part of the fabric of living that has disappeared.
I think THE FUGITIVE is one of the most classic of those early television shows now referred to as “classic television”. It was an exciting concept to turn Victor Hugo’s Jean Valjean of Les Miserables into a modern day doctor on the run from the law. I liked the anthology aspect of the series; each episode was a separate, individual story. The location could be any part of the country. Kimble was chameleon-like; his name and identity changed weekly according to the needs of the script. Each week he would become involved with people in trouble, his basic humanity preventing his turning away. And this involvement would then jeopardize his own safety with the threat of exposing his true identity as a convicted wife killer on the lam.
This was my first collaboration with Diana Hyland, a beautiful and talented actress. I’ve already written about my unsuccessful attempt to cast her the following year in the SUSPENSE THEATRE production, THE EASTER BREACH. It would be almost a decade before we worked together again, first on an episode of DAN AUGUST, then on THE FBI and finally on BANYON. In 1977 I was signed to direct an episode of EIGHT IS ENOUGH. Diana was playing the wife of Dick Van Patten and the mother of the eight kids. I didn’t know until I arrived at the studio that Diana would not be involved in the filming; she was ill with cancer. To keep the character alive, they had the mother away, but each episode she would telephone home. The studio was sending a sound crew to Diana’s home each week to record her end of the conversation. I spoke to Diana once by telephone during my prep period. I didn’t know that would be our last conversation; she died a few days later, just before I commenced photography. She was forty-one years old.
The role of Richard Kimble was extremely demanding. There were no other running characters to lighten the load for David, except those few episodes when Barry Morse was in pursuit. There were sixty pages of script for this episode; David was involved in scenes on forty-seven of those pages. And the usually scheduled four days per episode of location work were physically demanding, many times requiring difficult physical activity on rough terrain. I personally feel that although the series had very fine writing and was one of the most elaborately produced series on the air, David was the main reason for its popularity. I found him to be an aloof man, but he was very attractive and on screen he was enormously charismatic. I suspected that, like Mickey Rooney, he had a photographic mind.
Rock-a-bye baby on the treetop
When the wind blows, the cradle will rock
When the bough breaks, the cradle will fall
Down will come baby, cradle and all.
WHEN THE BOUGH BREAKS was the first THE FUGITIVE I would direct. The following season my fourth and final assignment for the series would be WHEN THE WIND BLOWS.
This was the first time I would be confronted with the problems when filming with a baby. The rules were very strict. Not only limited time on the set, but there were strict limitations on how long a baby could be in front of the camera. Because of the size of the baby’s role the baby was played by a set of twins.
Although I said there was no backlot to speak of, there was a small exterior business street set in the studio that could be used for scenes of limited scope.
Because Richard Kimble’s flight took him to all parts of the country, Southern California was an ideal place to film THE FUGITIVE. Within reach from the studio were locations that could stand in for any coast, the dessert, the plains of the midwest and the mountains. Some television series of this era had the freedom of the anthology, even though they were not anthologies. I wrote of the diversity of style in the stories I did on NAKED CITY. That was also true of the four shows I would direct on THE FUGITIVE. This episode was film noirish, a style I particularly liked, but one I too seldom got to do. And film noir stories took place at night. One of Quinn Martin’s rules was that exterior night scenes had to be filmed at night, not the cost-conscious method of so many who shot day-for-night.
I was concerned with placing the baby on the floor in that dirty environment. I had to remind myself that it was a set and was not as filthy as it appeared. I also remembered the legendary story of Samuel Goldwyn who on that very lot came down to inspect the new set for his feature film, DEAD END. He started picking up trash that littered the set and angrily gave instructions to the crew to clean it all up before they began filming. What he was picking up was the set dressing necessary for the river front locale that the set depicted.
I also was concerned about the scenes with the baby and the cat.
John Conwell, an actor turned casting director, who had cast PRINTER’S DEVIL, the TWILIGHT ZONE I directed, was the casting director for Quinn Martin Productions. He was as big a movie fan as I was with the same respect and fascination with the players of the past, both big stars and lesser ones. I was delighted that he cast June Vincent to play Carol’s mother. June had starred in many feature films in the forties and many more television shows in the fifties and sixties.
Eddie Guardino, Harry Guardino’s kid brother, had appeared in my Equity Library Theatre West production of Clifford Odets’ GOLDEN BOY. Later he was in the cast of THE BULL ROARER on BREAKING POINT, working under the name of Danny Gardino. Soon after his appearance in this episode he seemed to disappear. Why? He was personable, bright, a distinct personality. What was there about Hollywood that it chewed up talent and spit it out!
Kimble’s involvement each week when he attempted to help some person always threatened his own safety. The more he was threatened and the more dangerous his predicament became, the more exciting that episode would be. The problem then was to find a way to extricate him so that he could face the same dilemma next week.
Quinn Martin productions were usually scheduled to be filmed in seven days. I don’t know why, but this episode was scheduled to film in six. Probably because the location work was not as extensive as usual. But it took seven days to finish. I contacted my agent after completing the show and told him I was due an added day’s salary for the overtime. He said he would check. He called back to say, yes I had the added day’s pay coming but he suggested I not pursue the matter. I said, why not; I worked for it. I guess he thought asking for the $250.00 (and that’s all it amounted to) would jeopardize my chances to work again at QM Productions. This time he was wrong. I was booked immediately to return to direct another episode of THE FUGITIVE.
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