Kent McCord TV movie

Kent McCord in between filming Adam-12 took on the role of a blind man in this TV movie, Beg, Borrow ...or Steal. 

Jim Reed teams up with Joe Mannix and Pete Cochran of the Mod Squad. Look for some other familiar faces of the era too. This was a decent TV movie. It treated handicapped men with dignity. TV movies used to be good. 

Geoffrey Deuel and Malloy Attend Backlot University

Geoffrey Deuel guest stars in "Log 73: I'm Still a Cop," Season 1, Episode 20, and joins Malloy at Backlot University.

Great interview with Geoffrey Deuel on YT.

The plot: Malloy takes college classes and is targeted by police-hating students. 

This episode has Pete in and out of uniform dealing with Dirty Commie Hippies. [Insert South Park's Cartman's dealings with them here,  & here he identifies them. ]

Locations: The backlot. Dudes. No. 

Los Angeles has some beautiful campuses. When Tod last took a class, he had the gorgeous 1920s- early '30s buildings of UCLA behind him.

Problem was, the Time Travel Cops got him:

And so Dodd Hall,  Haines Hall, Kaufman Hall, the Powell Library, and Royce Hall --- all shown when he was taking that computer course --- get no screen time in Adam-12. Instead of me shouting out, "Hey, wow, Malloy was a Bruin before I was!" -- what do we get? Backlot University, the facades of Circle Drive:

Amazing resource:  

Studio Backlots Universal Studios

Great photos of Universal's backlot buildings over the years, including Adam-12 shots.

We learn Malloy is in at least his second semester, as he now seems to be dating his history professor from last term. Refreshing to see him not pursuing the under-25s I guess. 

And hey, it's Anne Helm, his girlfriend of the week in "From an Enchantress Fleeing."  She beat him at that shooting game [No fair! Her dad designed it] and really wounded his male pride by choosing the salad dressing for him, but he's clearly still interested seven years later. Wonder how he felt with her giving him a grade in class!

Note: actor Paul Carr is among his group of dirty commies, and he's playing a professor,  i.e. a cleaner commie with a pipe 😝

This is a very Pete-centric episode. Reed gets a good close-up though. Reed has gained enough confidence to tell Malloy his attitude problem stinks and Reed has to live with it 8 hours a day. 

Art Gilmore did a lot of narrator work. Check his imdb. In addition to being Captain Didion in the original Dragnet, he came back to Dragnet in Color with a variety of names. His name even changed once on Adam-12. Remember in the pilot he was Wangsgard? I guess he was Lt. and then became Captain --- and he always has this look on his face:

Jack Webb named his daughter Stacy after this actor. Mr. Harris passed at only 54. 

As I'm mainly interested in the locations, the actors, and anything I find amusing, the storyline is missing here. 

Something like this: Dirty Commie Hippies don't like Policeman Pete being on campus, plus they have other demands. Policeman Pete and Pals arrest the extras for blocking the hallway. Policeman Pete not welcome on campus by administration, students, or even Sergeant Mac. Makes Malloy want to stay all the more. He's got unfinished business with Anne Helm too.

Paul Carr had two Adam-12 episodes, and of note in my world, six episodes of Mannix and one Streets of San Francisco.

His "legend" status, however, was granted by being in the third episode of Star Trek. Having a Star Trek is like a knighthood. 

That same Dragnet episode, Community Relations: DR-10, had 

another Adam-12 star, William Elliott:

And this guy:

I love The Streets of San Francisco, total childhood favorite. 

Outstanding Streets of San Francisco website here. 

I first noticed Geoffrey Deuel as a guest star on The Streets of San Francisco. Karl Malden calls Michael Douglas "Buddy Boy" -- so imagine my surprise to hear Malloy call Deuel that on Adam-12. It's some kind of "sign" I'm sure.

We're having some meeting. You should join us. You might learn what we students are saying, you dig, man? Get it? 'Cause you're The Man. Maybe we might understand you cops better too, cliched ending.

"Yeah, yeah...  See you around, Bit Part Actors. So, Lady Professor, I'm driving a Mustang now...."

Tail O' the Pup Teamwork, Season 7, episode 3

 Los Angeles landmark the Tail O' the Pup makes a partial appearance in this one.

This type of architecture, which was very big in the 1930s and beyond, is known as mimetic, programmatic, novelty, or sometimes vernacular. There are several books and websites dedicated to this stuff. I absolutely love it, but very little survives. A few more modern ones have cropped up. In North Hollywood, the big barrel-shaped Idle Hour was revived. Probably the most famous outside of its native Los Angeles was the Brown Derby location on Wilshire. The Tail O' the Pup survives, but was removed from its original location near Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. 

You can also see the Tail O' the Pup in the Columbo where Ted Baxter's brother ("No. Ted is my brother!") murders Alternate Universe Malloy. Saving that for another post. 

The crimes for which police resources were used in this episode are so far removed from 2021 Los Angeles that it's almost a parody. Now you can walk into any business and walk out with $950 worth of merchandise and the police will not be called. You can read about the situation under Gascon elsewhere. It makes my blood boil. 

Sherman, set the Wayback for 1974.

But in this episode, Reed and Malloy will come to your house for a safety check. 

It's like another planet. And we're driving all over town!

Then you can show off your early 70s set decor living room. 

One of the guest actors is child actor Eric Shea. Sorry, but in my MST3K type mind, he's "Poseidon Adventure kid" -- and that's not a bad thing. [Mystery Science Theater 3000 kept referring to another actor as the "liver-faced Paper Chase guy" -- episode 501, Warrior of the Lost World.]

Of COURSE the little brother had a tour of the ship and could tell Gene Hackman one part was "shaft alley!" Of all the things I remember from the Poseidon Adventure (I've even seen it on the Big Screen twice -- who else hears Crow T. Robot saying "oh Gene Hackman, he's good in anything"?), one of the most prominent things I always think of is this kid saying "shaft alley."

There were/are other Bob's locations with the same "Bob's" signature logo, but this one was on the corner of Moorpark and Kraft in Studio City. Pete is driving west.

From Laurel Canyon, not Moorpark Street, but just two nice modern pics of the streetlamp style I'm talking about. Many of these remain around Sherman Oaks, Studio City, and Toluca Lake.

So many of the driving scenes are pieced together from a bit here, a bit there -- naturally they throw in a shot down Riverside Drive in Toluca Lake! They really like this clip as well:

Personal story: My dear Burbank friend [I envy her having always lived in Burbank -- it's still a nice place, even now] and I were in this Trader Joe's together once. Although many vegetarians shop there, it is not a vegetarian store. We were griping about that and got some serious hostility from one particular female shopper. That was probably 20 years ago, but it's my one memory of that Trader Joe's location. I wonder what business it was when the Adam-12 car raced by?

Wait, what? When do the Adam-12 boys ever patrol West Hollywood? Maybe patrolling other districts is part of this "teamwork"!  To get you oriented, if you kept going north (now), you'd come to the Pacific Design Center (the big blue whale building) on Melrose. If you kept going north in 1974, you'd find the Pacific Design Center under construction (completed in 1975).

How many more fine cars must die for this show! It kills me to see them sacrifice beautiful cars.

You get to see a bit more of one '20s home than you can see now:

Not in the episode, but nearby:

Two actors from the West Hollywood [unincorporated LA County at that time] scene of the accident:

Tail O' the Pup was walking distance (for normal people, not Angelinos) south of the accident scene, so the location of one inspired use of the other, clearly. 

IMDB tells me he was the uncredited voice on the "My Friend, Mr. Nobody" episode of Lost in Space. If only Bill(y) Mumy had done an Adam-12. Well, Adam-12 got 3 out of 7 from the Jupiter 2, plus this voice actor. Then Milner got handed over to Irwin Allen as a non-space Robinson. Please remove my temptation to view that short-lived show again after all these years. That one needs to stay back in the 70s, even the Leslie Nielsen episodes. [But "Pete" got to grow his hair out!]

Then Tail O' the Pup Part Two, where you can see two interesting things in the background:

The oddest spelling ever of "Llewellyn" (not so odd in Welsh!): Lewelleyn

I learned from Malloy that you had to be 5'8" to be a policeman in 1974. Made sense. 

Poseidon Adventure kid wants to know if he'll be arrested for a 311. 311 is indecent exposure, but it's also the number you call for non-emergency services, like if the crime has already happened. 311 La Cienega was also the original address of Tail O' the Pup. Ha!  Speaking again of Tail O' the Pup's location, Beverly Park and Kiddieland was very close by -- oh why oh why didn't you film there! It closed in 1974, and Adam-12 could have been the last production to film there. So close... But they did get that glimpse of the Ferris wheel, I'm quite sure.