Adam-12 Patrol Studio City with a Vengeance in Season 2, Episode 19 "Log 94: Vengeance," which first aired March 7, 1970. At this time, NBC had moved Adam-12 to 8:30 pm on Saturdays.
San Fernando Valley nostalgia time once again. Vintage Studio City features in this one.
This episode could have been sponsored by the Studio City Chamber of Commerce. If you were there at the time, wow, the memories. If you missed it, see what you missed! There is also a storyline going on, but this is all about Adam-12 Studio City locations of early 1970. Toward the end of the episode, Reed and Malloy patrol Ventura Blvd near the Radford Lot ( i.e. CBS). They spend a lot of time at Moorpark and Tujunga. Plus they bounce back and forth between their own stock footage and the Universal backlot. Drive on, Malloy!
I believe they are on Tujunga heading south, passing under the 170, with that intersection that confuses me in the background. You think you're on Riverside, but then Riverside changes directions, and what you thought was Riverside is Tujunga going north, or Camarillo if you're heading east. Too much is happening at once there. Then as you head south on Tujunga, there's a little curved stretch to the immediate west of the 170, and then it goes Sarah, to Landale, to Moorpark, in a nice straight line again. At Sarah and Tujunga, there is yet another Monster Box Tragedy.
Why do I include these things that aren't directly linked to an Adam-12 episode? I'm putting San Fernando Valley nostalgia in context. People grieve for things they've lost. The Valley has lost much of its signature look in these past ten years. There are several more examples of Monster Boxing on Tujunga-- things to add to my other blog, Monsters Ate LA.
Then comes some Adam-12 stock footage. When they need to pad their driving, they often use the clip down Lankershim, past the Pontiac dealer, past the collection of businesses known as "the Trans-Pacific Showroom," and on a clear day, headed toward the General Tire.
Then when it actually shows them in the car talking, and not just an exterior shot driving, they're somewhere totally removed from the stock footage area. In this case, they're back on Moorpark and Tujunga.
They say if you stand on the southeast corner of Moorpark and Tujunga on a moonlit night, and say "One-Adam-Twelve, One-Adam-Twelve, One-Adam-Twelve," you can see the patrol car drive by. Or not. More likely to get hipsters asking if the Cactus Taqueria is Henry's Tacos.
Both this Dairy Queen location and the neighboring Dave Berg's Liquor seem to have been gone by 1973. Perhaps both properties were sold by the same owner? So many questions that needed to be asked decades ago.
If you only knew the late 60s San Fernando Valley from Adam-12, you'd be right to think it was all liquor and carpet stores! Those "rows of houses that are all the same" were actually quite nice tracts though. Probably all carpeted and well-stocked with booze.
Sadly, the time to track the Adam-12 crew down has largely passed. Sincere gratitude to those who did and shared information with the masses. If anyone gets a few minutes with Kent McCord, please ask about THIS CAR:
I highly doubt some vintage (even then) customized car just happened to turn the corner. Did they find it on the Universal lot and get inspired? This is the sort of thing that slipped by in the pre-VHS or pre-DVD era. You watched the show and it was gone. There was no, "Hey, wait, go back!"
Are we EVER going to Patrol Studio City with a Vengeance?
Despite the Dairy Queen ad listing this as their North Hollywood location, some would argue this IS Studio City. If you have real estate to sell or lease, that's what you'll claim!
You don't realize how much they sometimes pack into one episode until you break it down like this. I'm skipping portions to keep the focus (mostly) on Studio City locations.
Back to THEIR cross streets: Moorpark and Tujunga!
This attempt to escape the gravitational pull of Moorpark and Tujunga results in a flat tire back at Universal.
They interact with Backlot Cop and some of those lucky people who got paid just to walk through scenes on the backlot, and then they're right back on Moorpark. There is no escape.
Then they randomly inserted footage from "Log 143: The Cave"!!! I worked in Sylmar for 16 years. You don't randomly insert footage of Sylmar and tell me it's Studio City! 13800 too. Adam-12 don't patrol numbers that high. They stay well below the 7000s [Valley numbers begin in the south around the 3000s and climb northward to 14000-ish. Watch out for diagonal streets and things that happen up by the 118 and 210 area in the northeast. That's far away from regular Adam-12 territory.]
Then they have an adventure in an area I don't recognize right off. That's a project for another time. And they end up back at the station where Pete does his Mego action figure hand poses. This story was actually about a boxer. I cut a lot of the guest actors. They don't give me the same sense of Valley nostalgia.
Then BAM! We're on Ventura Blvd. in Studio City.
When they intercut the rear of the Cadillac, it's still on Tujunga!
I wish Adam-12 had shown us more long shots like this one! Really invaluable help for reconstructing the Valley of 50+ years ago. Had people known what destructive major changes were coming the next century, maybe more would have invested in the cost of film and developing to photograph what seemed like unchanging streets. Digital photography got here after most of the cool stuff was gone.
What are those large buildings behind the gas stations? That is a TV studio lot. Currently it is CBS. Originally it was Mack Sennett's new location in the late 1920s. Later it became Republic and churned out a lot of westerns. Read more about Studio City actually being a studio city here.
I hope this post has been of value not just to Adam-12 fans but to anyone who enjoys the history of the San Fernando Valley, history of Studio City, history of vintage 1960s and 1970s American businesses, or just wonders what used to be there along Ventura Boulevard.
