9/20/1963 Burke's Law is in force

September 20, 1963.  There have been some TV shows with bizarre concepts.  My Mother the Car leaps to mind for some reason.

This day saw the premiere of Burke's Law, a show about Amos Burke, the chief of detectives of Los Angeles, who happens to be insanely rich and arrives at murder scenes in a chauffeur-driven Rolls Royce.

Two years later when The Man From Uncle became hugely popular the show changed concepts and became Amos Burke, Secret Agent.  Why not?

9/16/1966 T.H.E. Cat prowls

September 16, 1966.  T.H.E. Cat premiered on this date on NBC.  Am I the only one who remembers it?  Robert Loggia starred as Thomas Hewitt Edward Cat (and yes, I did remember those names without checking.  Don't ask me what I had for breakfast yesterday.) 

What was the show about?  Well, here was the intro:

"Out of the night comes a man who saves lives at the risk of his own. Once a circus performer, an aerialist who refused the net. Once a cat burglar, a master among jewel thieves. Now a professional bodyguard. Primitive... savage... in love with danger. The Cat!"

9/3/1960 Maigret is uncovered in Holland

September 3, 1966.  On this date a statue of Inspector Maigret was revealed in  Delfzijl, Holland.  It was commissioned to honor the great detective's visit as reported in Georges Simenon's novel Maigret in Holland.  You can find pictures of the statue and more information about it here.

8/19/1967 The Fugitive's final TV Guide cover

August 19, 1967.  This week's TV Guide celebrated the end of the line for one of the most popular escaped criminals in television history.  If I am counting correctly, this is the fifth time David Janssen made the cover of the media's main magazine in four years of The Fugitive.

This was probably the first series in TV history to be given the dignity of an actual ending, as opposed to merely vanishing forever between summer and fall. After 120 episodes of chasing and being chased Richard Kimball finally catches the guy who killed his wife.  And TV Guide was there to celebrate.  

8/2/1967 In the Heat of the Night

August 2, 1967.  This date saw the premiere of In the Heat of the Night.  The story of a Black city cop trying to solve a murder in the rural south won five Oscars including Best Picture.  It was based on John Ball's first novel.

7/23/1965 Ed Gorman causes a riot.

July 23, 1965.  On this day there was a near riot in Black River Falls, Iowa, resulting in the town's only appearance on the news with Walter Cronkite.  It seems that Cliffie Sykes, the dumb-as-dirt chief of police decided to arrest every teenage boy with long hair.

That is the fictional beginning of Ticket To Ride, Ed Gorman's eighth novel about Sam McCain, lawyer and private eye, coping with life in the fifites and sixties in a small town in the midwest.  Before long there will be violence at a peace rally, and Sam will be defending a man he loathes at the request of the man's girlfriend - who used to be Sam's.

Publisher's Weekly said: "Besides getting the pop culture of the period right, Gorman captures the baffled frustration of provincial folk who don't want to believe that things are more complicated than they look, that it's sometimes a mistake to trust people in authority"

6/23/1964 A Shot in the Dark is fired

June 23, 1964.  This date saw the release of A Shot in the Dark.  It is the second Inspector Clouseau movie, and the only one without Pink Panther in the title.  It was based on a French play which is why it involves murder instead of theft and has an actual mystery in it.  But most important it has Peter Sellers.

4/9/1965 87th Precinct meets a doll

April 9, 1965.  On this date the action begins in Doll, Ed McBain's twentieth novel about the 87th Precinct.  A beautiful young woman is brutally murdered while her daughter is in the next room playing with a doll. Before the story closes Detective Steve Carella and his colleague Bert Kling will go through different kinds of hell

Kirkus Reviews  found it "bordering on the edge of credibility" bu "sure to satisfy his confirmed readership."

3/13/1963 Miranda arrest

March 13, 1963.  On this date Ernesto Miranda was arrested by the Phoenix, Arizona police.  He signed a confession of kidnapping and rape, saying he had "full knowledge of his legal rights," but no one had told him he was entitled to a lawyer, nor to remain silent.

Eventually the Supreme Court ruled that was unconstitutional, leading to the Miranda Warning, famous in many court cases and thousands of crime novels.

3/7/1963 Such A Killing Crime

March 7, 1963.  On this date the action begins in the novel Such A Killing Crime, set in Greenwich Village during the Great Folk Music Scare.  Joe Talley runs a coffee house in New York.  When one of his favorite singers is killed on his stage he hunts for the man's missing demo tape, which may lead him to a killer...

2/24/1964 A Right to Die is claimed

February 24, 1964.  Rex Stout's A Right to Die begins on this date when an African-American anthropologist named Paul Whipple asks Nero Wolfe to prove his son did not commit a murder.  Obviously it was Stout's opportunity to comment on the civil rights movement, but some fans think it is one of his less successful books because of a tactical error the author made.

You see, Paul Whipple appeared in Too Many Cooks as a college student.  Decades later, here he is with a grown son, and Wolfe and Archie haven't aged a day.  Whipple should have demanded to search their attic for mysterious paintings.

1/29/1966 A doxy dies

January 29, 1966.  On this date Orrie Cather sends Archie Goodwin to do a little investigative burglary and Archie finds a corpse.  So begins Death of a Doxy, written by Rex Stout at the age of 80.  He wrote a few more Nero Wolfe novels after this one, skillful to the end.

Weird cover, huh?

1/28/1967 Dare I Weep? Dare I Mourn?

January 28, 1967.  Master spy novelist John LeCarre has written less than a handful of short stories, but one appeared in the Saturday Evening Post issue with this date.  "Dare I Weep?  Dare I  Mourn" is the tale of a West German grocer named Koorp who has the odd job of getting his father's corpse over the border from East Berlin.  It turns out to be a lot more complicated than it appears...

1/21/1967 TV Guide is Avenged

January 21, 1967.  The issue of TV Guide with this date featured a very professional British spy and a very talented amateur on the cover.

Decades later someone asked Patrick Macnee  what it was like being the star of the hottest show on British TV when Swinging London was the place everyone in the world wanted to be?

He replied, approximately: "Don't ask me.  We asked fourteen hour days, went home, and collapsed."  But didn't they look cool?

1/13/1964 The Chill settles in

January 13, 1964.  Ross Macdonald's eleventh novel about private eye Lew Archer was released on this day.  The Chill was about a disappearing bride and a half-remembered crime.". Like an oilslick on a fast travelled throughway," said Kirkus Reviews,  "this is shiny, treacherous stuff."

4/28/1962 The Defenders courts controversy

April 28, 1962.  Perhaps I should not be including this here, because the producers of the The Defenders proudly proclaimed that this was the first TV law show that was not a mystery.  They meant that it was not a whodunit.  Instead the question was usually: was it really a crime, or did the person deserve to go to jail?  And the father-and-son law partners (E.G. Marshall and Rex Reed) argued with each other as much as they did with the prosecutors.  In short, The Defenders was the first modern lawyer series.

And it was not afraid of controversy.  The episode that appeared on this night was "The Benefactor," and it was about a physician who admitted performing 1,500 illegal abortions (while turning down 8,000 women whose reasons he considered insufficient).

Not surprisingly, sponsors ran away from this subject.  But Speidel Watches jumped in where Kimberley-Clark, Lever Brothers, and Brown & Williamson fled, and the show went on, to an audience of 28 million.

Fortunately the Supreme Court settled the abortion issue in 1973 and we have never had to worry about it again. 

2/23/1966 Harper hits the screen

February 23, 1966.  One of the best-loved private eye movies opened today.  Harper was written by William Goldman, based on Ross Macdonald's The Moving Target.  His series character Lew Archer became Lew Harper, either because Paul Newman had had two hit movies with names beginning with H, or - more likely - because the producers didn't buy the rights to the whole series of novels.  Jack Smight directed.

It was a big hit - in spite of that terrible poster - and won the Edgar for Best Motion Picture.

2/16/1965 Baker Street on Broadway

February 16, 1965.  On this date Sherlock Holmes arrived on Broadway in the form of Baker Street,  a musical.  It was written by Jerome Coopersmith, with most songs by Marian Grudeff and Raymond Jessell, and ran for over 300 performances.

Fritz Weaver played you-know-who.  Tommy Tune and Christopher Walken made their Broadway debuts.

1/31/1963 Bette Davis plays Perry Mason?

January 31, 1963.  So if you turned on The Adventures of Perry Mason in the 1950s or 1960s, what actor would you see playing a brilliant defense attorney?

If you said Raymond Burr you would usually be correct.  But not on this night.  Burr had to go in for minor surgery and so different actors playing different lawyers stood in for him for a month.  And the first was none other than Bette Davis, as Constant Doyle.  The  other stand-ins, by the way, were Michael Rennie, Hugh O’Brian, and Walter Pidgeon.

1/15/1965 A big fish comes to the brownstone

January 15, 1965.  On this day Nero Wolfe wrapped up one of his greatest and most controversial cases, in The Doorbell Rang.  Fans of Rex Stout knows that the book ends with a certain "big fish" coming for a visit.

The book, in which the fat private eye battles the FBI, made Stout more popular than ever, but not with everyone.  John Wayne read it and sent him a note: "Goodbye."