Here’s another gallery of guest stars from The Fugitive, this time from season 3. Once again these folks either became better known later on or in one or two cases were better known earlier on. I’m certain that most of you will recognize at least some of them.

Answers at the bottom of this post.

The original pilot for The Fugitive included Richard Kimble’s backstory, how his wife Helen suffered through the loss of their baby during childbirth and was unable to get pregnant after that, how that led to arguments over whether to adopt a child (he was for it, she was against it), how he left the house after a particularly bitter argument only to return to see a one-armed man fleeing from the house, and how he discovered Helen’s dead body. This led to his trial where Lt. Gerard testified that he found no evidence of a one-armed man and the jury convicted Kimble, and eventually Kimble escaped on the way to his execution.

The trouble was that the pilot ran over an hour without commercials, so something had to go.

It was decided that the show’s opening prolog would suffice to give viewers the backstory, so all the footage of the backstory was excised and  the first episode took place entirely several months after his escape.

Still, the producers wanted to show the viewers the backstory, as test screenings indicated there was interest in it. So the third episode contained flashbacks where Kimble recalled all those events, and the appropriate footage from the pilot was inserted.

Alas, when the producers showed the episode to the network executives in charge of scheduling, the executives weren’t able to follow the story because of the flashbacks. As I’ve pointed out previously, in corporate America there is an inverse relationship between one’s position in the corporate hierarchy and one’s IQ. So instead of scheduling the episode in the order it was made, they didn’t show it until December 24—you know, Christmas Eve, when practically nobody was watching.

They were, of course, wrong about the episode. In succeeding years when the show gained new audiences, that episode proved to be one of the most popular, precisely because of the flashbacks that filled in all the backstory.

That was not the only idiotic decision made by network executives. Based upon some surveys they took, they felt that not enough young people were watching the show, so the way to correct that was to give Kimble a son to tote around during the fourth season. They even announced the big change. Fortunately, they eventually realized that with Lt. Gerard hot on his tail, burdening Dr. Kimble with a son was an idiotic idea, so they retracted their announcement. I think they said it was inoperative, or perhaps I have that mixed up with something else.

The year 1966 was when ABC was going all out to make all of its programs in color, and so the fourth season of The Fugitive was shot in color. This was a real shame, as the show was a close cousin to film noir and black and white suited it much better than color. Moreover, for some reason, perhaps it was the network, the producers ended up shooting it in a highly saturated brightly lighted color, which definitely did not do the show any favors.

Take this scene, for example, which is supposed to be inside a cave:

Even worse, producer Alan Armer left the show and the initial scripts for the new season were well below par, until Executive Producer Quinn Martin stepped in and convinced George Eckstein, one of the early writers for the program, to return.

By the way, I’m more convinced than ever that I must have been only an occasional viewer of the series. I looked up what was on opposite the show during seasons two and three, and NBC scheduled a movie night, while CBS had a 10 o’clock news program of some sort. And during my senior year in high school, I was involved in so many things that I had less time for TV.

Answers

1) Greg Morris—perhaps best known from Mission: Impossible.

2) Harold Gould—you might remember him from playing Rhoda’s father.

3) James Doohan—“Beam us up, Scotty!” 

4) Tommy Rettig—Jeff, the original boy on the Lassie TV series. The good one, not the wishy-washy, stupid little Timmy who replaced him.

5) Dick Wilson—“Please don’t squeeze the Charmin!” 

6) Ed Asner—so I repeated an actor. So sue me. The Fugitive recycled actors all the time. Ed Asner appeared three times altogether.

7) Herschel Bernardi—a versatile actor who did lots of TV and Broadway musicals.

8) William Shatner—Captain Kirk, T.J. Hooker, and Denny Crane.

9) Telly Savalas—aka Kojak.

10) Wayne Rogers—Trapper John on MASH.

11) Steven Hill—known for the first season of Mission: Impossible and many seasons of Law & Order.

12) Ted Knight—best known as the cop guarding the prisoner in this scene: