Unleashing the Bulldog Underdog

Back in January, I wrote a post here about the 1968-1969 NBC-TV series The Outsider, which starred Darren McGavin as David Ross, an ex-con turned Los Angeles private investigator. I’d just happened across two short video clips on YouTube from an episode of that show called “Periwinkle Blue,” and wanted to share them with readers of The Rap Sheet. The Outsider is a show I’ve heard a great deal about (it was, after all, created by Roy Huggins and is considered a precursor to his much-better-known 1970s series, The Rockford Files) but have never actually seen. Since it isn’t yet available in DVD format, I have been on the lookout for affordable bootleg versions of The Outsider, and in the meantime have kept my eyes open for more Web clips.

Finally, this last Monday, author-screenwriter Lee Goldberg posted the show’s main title sequence, which I have taken the liberty of also embedding above. Backed up by composer Pete Rugolo’s jazzy theme music, that opening does a decent job of portraying Ross as a manifestly low-rent gumshoe in a city and society where he feels very much a stranger. But it doesn’t tell a great deal about the show. Better is this write-up from Richard Meyers’ eminently useful, 1981 book, TV Detectives, which reminds readers that McGavin had previously starred in Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer (1958-1960):

[The Outsider] proved to be the flip side of Mike Hammer. Hammer was an outcast from society because he was a hard man who stood for what he believed in. David Ross was an “outsider” because he was a pathetic little schmuck who got trampled on by life. Darren McGavin played both roles on television with equal ability.

Hammer just got angrier as time went on. Ross got bitter and resigned. Orphaned as a kid, a high school dropout, and framed for a crime he had not committed, Ross happily withdrew into his own haphazard world of poverty and depression. He was an interesting creation, but hardly the stuff of hit shows. NBC hoped the public would root for his bulldog underdog and wrote their press releases to point out his individuality.

“He’s a go-it-alone private eye who knows the underworld from the inside,” they said. “Rejected by society--and rejecting society--he lives in an off-beat world: often dangerous .. always fascinating.” It was fascinating, all right, and raised some interesting questions like, how does an ex-con get a private investigator’s license? And why does he keep his phone in the refrigerator of his run-down, ramshackle office-cum-apartment?

When he was not trying to evoke pity in the audience, he would go out on cases that were structured to beat out what little life was left in him. If he was not losing his girlfriend in a fatal accident, he was getting beaten up by hoods, suspects, and sometimes even clients. One thing can be said for The Outsider: he could really take a punch--lots of them. What could not be said about The Outsider was that he lasted more than a season.

Clearly, by the time producer Huggins got around to creating The Rockford Files, he recognized that any new ex-con P.I. couldn’t be as dour and cynical as Dave Ross.

Despite critic Meyers’ hesitations about The Outsider, I still look forward to seeing more of that series someday soon. If you remember McGavin’s show, and have any opinions about it to share, please do so in the Comments section of this post.

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For others like me, who are curious about The Outsider, check out Michael Shonk’s review of the show’s 1967 pilot, as well as his plot synopses of its 26 episodes.

READ MORE: “TV & Violence in 1968: The Outsider” (Television Obscurities); “Overlooked TV: The Outsider,” by Randy Johnson (Not the Baseball Pitcher); “One of the Great P.I. Series: The Outsider with Darren McGavin” (Ed Gorman’s Blog).

Ross to the Rescue

Although I have read Lou Cameron’s 1969 paperback novel, The Outsider, I’ve never actually seen the 1968-1969 NBC-TV series on which that book was based. Yes, I understand: This almost disqualifies me from membership in the Ceaseless Defenders of Old TV Crime Dramas Club--especially given The Outsider’s estimable pedigree (it was novelist-producer Roy Huggins’ precursor to The Rockford Files). But that’s something I am going to have live with, at least for now.

While McGavin’s equally short-lived Kolchak: The Night Stalker has become a cult favorite, with prominent DVD releases, no official set of The Outsider has been brought to market. And though I know that some of the 26 episodes of The Outsider--which starred Darren McGavin as “low-rent ex-con turned resigned, wistful private eye David Ross”--are available in bootleg versions on the Web, I haven’t yet brought myself to plunk down the money for their acquisition.

So I was surprised over the weekend to discover two video clips from The Outsider on YouTube. They take in the beginning and end of a late-series episode titled “Periwinkle Blue” (originally shown on April 2, 1969). They were posted by someone who signs him- or herself “Shmoytz,” and operates a YouTube page devoted to the late American actress Lois Nettleton, who guest-starred in “Periwinkle Blue.”

The early minutes of this episode (which find Ross telephoning to complain about an inadequate takeout serving of fried chicken) definitely remind me of what Huggins--who is credited here under the pseudonym “John Thomas James”--was able to accomplish with The Rockford Files. But it’s impossible to make more thorough comparisons without actually seeing the episode in toto.

Maybe I shall have that chance someday. For now, I’ll have to be satisfied with these two small tastes of The Outsider.





UPDATE: As of July 29, 2014, the entirety of “Periwinkle Blue” can be enjoyed on YouTube. Click here to watch.

READ MORE: “A TV Movie Review by Michael Shonk: The Outsider (1967)” (Mystery*File); “A TV Series Review by Michael Shonk: The Outsider (1968-69)” (Mystery*File); “FFB: The Outsider--Lou Cameron,” by Randy Johnson (Not the Baseball Pitcher).

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 online.

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); “What’s a Turn-On?” by David Thomson (Salon); “Black List, White Wash,” by Stephen Bowie (The Classic TV History Blog).