Clifton James was an actor I hadn’t thought about in some while, but when he passed away this last Saturday, April 15, at age 96, the memories suddenly came flooding back.
The Hollywood Reporter notes that, although he hailed originally from Spokane, Washington, and lived during most of his career in New York, James “often played a convincing Southerner … One of his first significant roles playing a Southerner was as a cigar-chomping, prison floor-walker in the 1967 classic Cool Hand Luke.” Still more memorably, perhaps, the portly James appeared as “a redneck sheriff in two 007 films …,” recalls The Spy Command. “James embodied a 1970s shift in James Bond films to a lighter, more comedic tone. He played Sheriff J.W. Pepper, a Louisiana lawman who was comic relief in 1973’s Live and Let Die and 1974’s The Man with the Golden Gun.” Wikipedia adds that James was seen as “a very similar character in both Silver Streak (1976)
and Superman II (1980), and had a more serious role in The Reivers (1969). In that last movie, opposite Steve McQueen, James played a mean,corrupt, bungling country sheriff.”
All of this reminds of the first time I really noticed James on screen, in the short-lived 1976 NBC-TV drama City of Angels. That show featured ex-M*A*S*H co-star Wayne Rogers as not-too-tough and poorly recompensed 1930s Los Angeles private eye Jake Axminster. James held a recurring role as Murray Quint, a thoroughly repellent, again cigar-chomping, police lieutenant who thrived on graft and greed, and found particular delight in making Axminster’s life hell, whenever their paths crossed. Clifton James’ résumé is long and quite impressive, with parts played in TV shows from Naked City and Mannix to Gunsmoke, Hart to Hart, Quincy, M.E., The Fall Guy, and The A-Team. But it’s as Quint that he’s likely to stick in my memory. Below is a scene from “The November Plan,” the three-part introductory episode of City of Angels, in which Quint sends some of his cops out to roust Axminster from bed for a late-night grilling.
Showing posts with label City of Angels. Show all posts
Showing posts with label City of Angels. Show all posts
Monday, April 17, 2017
Monday, April 07, 2008
That’s a Lot of Candles to Blow Out
We have a couple of birthdays to celebrate today, both from the TV crime-drama category.
The first and most significant, of course, is the 80th birthday of Rockford Files star James Garner, an actor who may never have given a bad performance. I’ve not only been watching the DVDs of Rockford lately, but have managed to acquire an almost complete collection of Bret Maverick, the NBC series (and revival of the 1950s TV western Maverick) that he went on to do after leaving Rockford. What a treat.
Since I wrote about Garner at length last year, on the occasion of his 79th birthday, I shan’t try to outdo myself this time. I’ll simply wish him the best on this most momentous of occasions.
Today also happens to be the 75th birthday of Birmingham, Alabama-born actor Wayne Rogers, who left the hit show M*A*S*H after only three seasons to star as 1930s Los Angeles private eye Jake Axminter in NBC’s City of Angels. A Roy Huggins-Stephen J. Cannell series, Angels debuted with a bang-up three-part opener in February 1976, but by May it was off the air, with just 13 episodes in the can. Although it was
clearly designed to take advantage of the popularity of Jack Nicholson’s Chinatown, which had hit movie screens in 1974, City of Angels had much to commend it, including Rogers’ performances as a down-at-heel gumshoe always on the edge of either exploding or committing homicide; Elaine Joyce’s role as his cute but near-ditzy secretary, Marsha Finch, who runs a switchboard for hookers; and stories that really brought forth the social and political conditions of that bygone era, whether it be Depression-caused tramping or the rise of Nazism. Rogers later lamented having left M*A*S*H to do this series, but in an interview I conducted several years ago with prolific novelist Max Allan Collins (creator of another early 20th-century P.I., Nate Heller), he stated that “City of Angels is the best private eye series ever, and is probably the biggest single influence on Nate Heller. The show did several historically based stories, that prefigure what I did, and Wayne Rogers was a great wiseguy private eye, very much a nontraditional, selfish, sometimes cowardly, sometimes reckless hero in the Roy Huggins Maverick/Rockford Files vein.”
Since City of Angels, Rogers has appeared in a number of films and TV series, including five guest shots on Murder, She Wrote, playing (as Wikipedia notes) Charlie Garrett, “a disreputable private investigator who usually gets into trouble and needs Jessica [Fletcher]’s help.” (What would the resourceful Jake Axminster have said about that?) He also reprised Larry Hagman’s original role as Major Tony Nelson in the 1985 teleflick I Dream of Jeannie: 15 Years Later--but we’ll just forget about that dud, OK?
More recently, Rogers has become a successful entrepreneur as well as a very visible stock trader and financial commentator, appearing with some regularity on Fox News’ Cashin’ In. In 2005, he was honored with a star on Hollywood’s Walk of Fame. He also promotes himself as a public speaker. But if it’s jake with you, I’ll remember him best as Axminster.
The first and most significant, of course, is the 80th birthday of Rockford Files star James Garner, an actor who may never have given a bad performance. I’ve not only been watching the DVDs of Rockford lately, but have managed to acquire an almost complete collection of Bret Maverick, the NBC series (and revival of the 1950s TV western Maverick) that he went on to do after leaving Rockford. What a treat.
Since I wrote about Garner at length last year, on the occasion of his 79th birthday, I shan’t try to outdo myself this time. I’ll simply wish him the best on this most momentous of occasions.
Today also happens to be the 75th birthday of Birmingham, Alabama-born actor Wayne Rogers, who left the hit show M*A*S*H after only three seasons to star as 1930s Los Angeles private eye Jake Axminter in NBC’s City of Angels. A Roy Huggins-Stephen J. Cannell series, Angels debuted with a bang-up three-part opener in February 1976, but by May it was off the air, with just 13 episodes in the can. Although it was
clearly designed to take advantage of the popularity of Jack Nicholson’s Chinatown, which had hit movie screens in 1974, City of Angels had much to commend it, including Rogers’ performances as a down-at-heel gumshoe always on the edge of either exploding or committing homicide; Elaine Joyce’s role as his cute but near-ditzy secretary, Marsha Finch, who runs a switchboard for hookers; and stories that really brought forth the social and political conditions of that bygone era, whether it be Depression-caused tramping or the rise of Nazism. Rogers later lamented having left M*A*S*H to do this series, but in an interview I conducted several years ago with prolific novelist Max Allan Collins (creator of another early 20th-century P.I., Nate Heller), he stated that “City of Angels is the best private eye series ever, and is probably the biggest single influence on Nate Heller. The show did several historically based stories, that prefigure what I did, and Wayne Rogers was a great wiseguy private eye, very much a nontraditional, selfish, sometimes cowardly, sometimes reckless hero in the Roy Huggins Maverick/Rockford Files vein.”Since City of Angels, Rogers has appeared in a number of films and TV series, including five guest shots on Murder, She Wrote, playing (as Wikipedia notes) Charlie Garrett, “a disreputable private investigator who usually gets into trouble and needs Jessica [Fletcher]’s help.” (What would the resourceful Jake Axminster have said about that?) He also reprised Larry Hagman’s original role as Major Tony Nelson in the 1985 teleflick I Dream of Jeannie: 15 Years Later--but we’ll just forget about that dud, OK?
More recently, Rogers has become a successful entrepreneur as well as a very visible stock trader and financial commentator, appearing with some regularity on Fox News’ Cashin’ In. In 2005, he was honored with a star on Hollywood’s Walk of Fame. He also promotes himself as a public speaker. But if it’s jake with you, I’ll remember him best as Axminster.
Sunday, February 25, 2007
Huggins’ Writing Workshop
Now, here’s something that’s just downright cool.
Apparently, author-blogger Lee Goldberg had a chance to talk with screenwriter-producer Roy Huggins--the prolific creator of such TV series as Maverick, The Fugitive, 77 Sunset Strip, The Outsider, The Rockford Files, and City of Angels--in 1998, less than four years
before his death. That six-hour interview, conducted and taped on behalf of the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences’ Archive of American Television, is now available on YouTube.
Their 10-part exchange covers everything from Huggins’ growing-up years and his idolization of his older brother, to the birth of 77 Sunset Strip and his blacklisting as a “former communist,” to his creation of Maverick and the “Movies of the Week” concept, his habit of driving out into the California desert and dictating seasons’ worth of TV episodes into a tape recorder, and his respect for fellow TV writer Juanita Bartlett. I haven’t yet finished watching all six hours (hey, I do have other things to do, even on a weekend), but already I’m utterly charmed. Huggins was a TV-writing master, and Goldberg does an exceptional job of ... well, not drawing him out exactly, since Huggins pretty much runs away with the interview, but inviting his subject to relive some of the seminal and little-understood experiences from his 87-year-life.
Go here to read Goldberg’s recollections of how this interview came about; and the first installment of the Huggins interview can be viewed here. Any fan of Roy Huggins’ work over the years would be a fool to miss this. Fantastic stuff!
READ MORE: “R.I.P., Adele Mara,” by Ivan G. Shreve Jr.
(Thrilling Days of Yesteryear); “Black List, White Wash,” by Stephen Bowie (The Classic TV History Blog).
Apparently, author-blogger Lee Goldberg had a chance to talk with screenwriter-producer Roy Huggins--the prolific creator of such TV series as Maverick, The Fugitive, 77 Sunset Strip, The Outsider, The Rockford Files, and City of Angels--in 1998, less than four years
before his death. That six-hour interview, conducted and taped on behalf of the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences’ Archive of American Television, is now available on YouTube.Their 10-part exchange covers everything from Huggins’ growing-up years and his idolization of his older brother, to the birth of 77 Sunset Strip and his blacklisting as a “former communist,” to his creation of Maverick and the “Movies of the Week” concept, his habit of driving out into the California desert and dictating seasons’ worth of TV episodes into a tape recorder, and his respect for fellow TV writer Juanita Bartlett. I haven’t yet finished watching all six hours (hey, I do have other things to do, even on a weekend), but already I’m utterly charmed. Huggins was a TV-writing master, and Goldberg does an exceptional job of ... well, not drawing him out exactly, since Huggins pretty much runs away with the interview, but inviting his subject to relive some of the seminal and little-understood experiences from his 87-year-life.
Go here to read Goldberg’s recollections of how this interview came about; and the first installment of the Huggins interview can be viewed here. Any fan of Roy Huggins’ work over the years would be a fool to miss this. Fantastic stuff!
READ MORE: “R.I.P., Adele Mara,” by Ivan G. Shreve Jr.
(Thrilling Days of Yesteryear); “Black List, White Wash,” by Stephen Bowie (The Classic TV History Blog).
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
