THE RAID - October 1966 (The FBI)

THE RAID was not one of my favorite productions. As I think I’ve made conclusively evident, I liked scripts that generated their emotional heat from the relationships of the characters involved. In the case of scripts for THE FBI that meant focusing on the criminals. In THE RAID those characters were strictly cardboard; this was a production where the main focus was on the actions of the institution of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Our first and most important task was to find the location where we could stage the raid. Our needs were very complex. We had to have a building for the Lodge with a real estate office across the street. The Lodge had to have a courtyard and a rooftop where scenes in the script took place. To further complicate the situation we were going to need a rooftop close by for scenes that involved the roof top at the Lodge. Plus a site nearby where the killing you just witnessed could be committed. Now Los Angeles is a very large city -- that shouldn’t have been difficult to find. Wrong! After days of location scouting we finally found a large apartment building that would serve as our Lodge and there was a small office building across the street (it wasn’t real estate, but signs could fix that). The Victory Drive-in Theatre nearby completed our triangle and I was going to be able to visually tie the three sites together. An added advantage: the Lodge and office building were on a cul-de-sac that avoided the problem of automobile traffic.

You’ve already met one of the members of the gang -- Ralph, the Iceman. It was so nice to have a character named Ralph who wasn’t the nerd of the plot. Now let’s meet Scott Martin and Linda. Martin was Ralph Meeker, in our third and final outing together. Unfortunately the two follow-up roles came nowhere near the caliber of our first collaboration, THE BULL ROARER on BREAKING POINT. Linda was Nita Talbot, an actress I had long admired since she appeared in the production I co-directed with John Houseman of Eugene O’Neill’s THE ICEMAN COMETH.

When the characters on the page are cardboard, it sure helps to have strong, talented personalities like Meeker and Nita to portray them.

George was portrayed by Rudy Solari, an actor I had met nine years before when I was preparing and casting a production of THE IMMORALIST at the Horseshoe Stage in Hollywood (the production where I also met Rachel Ames.) I was having trouble finding an actor to play Bachir, the young Arab boy James Dean had portrayed in the Broadway production. Then Rudy came in. He solved my problem and, as it turned out, I solved his. At the time he had been working as a UPS driver, but had decided it was time to pull up stakes and leave Hollywood. THE IMMORALIST kept him in town, and once it opened to very good reviews I cast him (at the same theatre) in their next production of Robert Anderson’s ALL SUMMER LONG in the role John Kerr had played on Broadway. Rudy never left Hollywood. He had a fine career in both film and stage.

What I see now but I don’t think I saw then is that this was basically a caper film. The usual caper film followed with meticulous detail the execution of a crime. This caper film focused its attention on the side of the law, the FBI, as it pursued the task of apprehending the criminals. Caper films are not too involved with emotional relationships, which was where I tended to concentrate. And with that in mind, a lot of this script was not as deficient as I thought.

Most of the scenes you’ve seen so far (excluding the opening killing sequence) were filmed during the final four days on sets back at Warner Bros. studio: the interior of Martin’s suite at the Lodge, the interior of the real estate office, the interiors for the FBI offices. Our first three days were at the Lodge/Real Estate Office/Drive-in Theatre location. The length of the script had been pared to fifty-one pages, a low page count by usual standards. The page count for the location days was eighteen and two eighths pages, a normal expectation for a normal location filming day. But let’s look at the shooting schedule for day three.

As you can see there is only one scene in front of the real estate office of any length, and it was only six eighths of a page of dialog. Every time the scene is a different location, that means moving camera, lights, shiny boards, sound --the whole kit and caboodle. I’ll talk more about this third day a bit later. For now, let’s look at some of that location film.

Our original intention was to find a roof for the roof to roof action. The Victory Drive-in was an inspired replacement. And it also provided a more interesting place to stage the killing in the prolog.

William Kline was now the director of photography for THE FBI. Billy Spencer left the show to photograph Quinn’s first (and onlyI) foray into feature film production, THE MEPHISTO WALTZ. This was my second show with Kline and I really liked him. I had directed one production after Spencer’s departure with their first replacement and that one I didn’t like. ( I would give him a setup of an over the shoulder shot and return to find he had moved the actors into an easier to light fifty-fifty two shot.) This was my second show with Kline. It was to be my last. I never knew why, but he was replaced before my next assignment.

I had known DIck Gallegley, our production manager, from the time he was a second assistant director. In a relatively short time he had worked his way through being a first assistant director, a location manager, and now a production manager. He was a first class act. We squeaked through our first two days at the location and managed to stay on schedule. The third day was ominous. Dick was out at the location early that Friday morning, assessing the situation. The page count for the day was heavier than either of the first two days, and the action was spread over more areas of the location than on those days. Dick suggested we bring in a second camera and he further suggested I pick out those setups that did not require sound and treat them as second unit. I had scenes to shoot in front of the Lodge and at the real estate office. There was also a sequence down the street. Then there was the inner court with the wounded Shooter. That was where we decided to use the second camera. I would stage a shot with Shooter; Bill Kline, the cameraman, would light it and when it was ready, he and I would leave while Dick oversaw filming it. We would return to the front of the Lodge where we did the same thing with the sequences requiring sound, but those shots I stayed to oversee the filming. We bounced back and forth that way the entire day. I was directing two units at once, the cameraman was lighting two units. At the end of the day we moved over to the Victory Drive-in to film the sequence with Jim Rhodes behind the Victory sign. We were losing the light but that sequence could be lit, and as I remember, Kline also gave instructions to force the film in the developing. At the end of the third day we had completed everything and were right on schedule. That was when DIck Gallegley thanked me and told me that Howard Alston, the executive production manager for QM Productions, had told him that if he couldn’t bring this show in on schedule, he would no longer be a production manager. Dick had not told me that earlier in the day. He had not come to me that morning and said, “You’ve got to do this or I will lose my job.” He had not put the pressure he was under onto me. As I said earlier, DIck Gallegley was a real class act.

The scene with Rhodes and Jobie on the roof -- I’m sure that was a scene added in postproduction because it looks like a studio shot, and that scene is not in my archival script. I don’t remember directing it, but I could have because I was still with the company for another month filming another episode.

As I stated at the beginning of the posting, this was not one of my favored episodes. But I realize now, that was what made it so exciting to be a part of television at this time. I couldn’t just do those scripts that were comfortable for me. I was challenged to stretch. And THE RAID was sort of preparation for an assignment four months later -- THE TRAIN on MISSION IMPOSSIBLE, which won an Emmy.

For you Trekkies and anyone else interested, another segment of my interview for the Star Trek History website has been posted at: http://www.startrekhistory.com/interviews.html#SENENSKY

THE ESCAPE - May 1966 (The FBI)

June is a notoriously bad month to film exteriors in Southern California. Fog. Overcast days. A sun in absentia. I learned that with a vengeance in 1965 when I was booked (it seemed more like I was condemned) to direct the first episode of a new series, LONG HOT SUMMER. It was a production of 20th Century Fox, attempting to turn their blockbuster Paul Newman starrer into another PEYTON PLACE. But it was being filmed at the MGM studio, just down the road in Culver City. This was my first real association with 20th Century Fox. True the year before I had directed TWELVE O’CLOCK HIGH, which was their co-production with Quinn Martin Productions, but that show had been totally under the command of QM. LONG HOT SUMMER had a lot of exteriors, to be filmed on the MGM backlots, which I suspected may have been the main reason to choose that studio as the base for production in the first place. The edict from the Fox production office was, sun or no sun, keep shooting. Which we did. The following day when the rushes were screened, the eternal complaint was, “But it doesn’t look sunny.” Added to that were the constant phone calls to the set every twenty or thirty minutes from the Fox production office to check on the status of the shooting schedule. I was not used to that. I put enough pressure on myself to complete the day's work without Big Daddy standing over me. In addition to the present production, I was committed to direct three more episodes. I decided I really didn't want to face another nine weeks of the current situation. I called my agent and asked that he get me out of the balance of the contract. He did and mercifully my LONG HOT SUMMER was shortened.

My first assignment in May of the following season under my new The FBI contract was THE ESCAPE, a hard-boiled love story. Our first day’s location was the Santa Monica Airport. Although this was the last week of May, June weather had already settled over the area, and it was a dismal dark airport that greeted our early morning arrival at the location. We didn’t have the problem I had had the previous year on LONG HOT SUMMER. This sequence didn’t have to look sunny. But it was too exciting a sequence to end up looking drab and dreary. Billy Spencer amazed all of us the following day when we viewed the dailies. I don't know what magic he applied, but the rushes he delivered had a surprising and welcome amount of light and color that had not been evident when we shot it.

The original script for THE ESCAPE was a very disjointed one with scenes that pulled in all directions. Charles Larson did some remarkable work to pull it together, shape it and flesh out the people and the relationships. But I was amused and amazed at his reaction to Roy Thinnes’ acceptance of the role of Larry. (Roy, I think, was already under contract to QM Productions to star in THE INVADERS, which went into production the following year.) Charles said Roy had turned down two other FBI scripts; he didn’t understand what there was about this script that was better than the other two. Without seeing the other two scripts, I still felt I knew what there was about our script that appealed to him.

I first became aware of Marlyn Mason when she was fourteen years old and was playing Heidi in a children’s musical based on that classic story at the Player’s Ring Theatre in Hollywood. I was able to cast her in two of my early television directing ventures, and then we lost track of each other for awhile, which is not unusual in Hollywood. In 1964 I bought a house on Sunset Plaza Drive in the hills overlooking the Sunset Strip. Some time within the next year I received a forwarded letter with writing on the envelope. The letter had been delivered to the same house number as mine, but on Queen’s Road. The occupant at Queen’s Road had very kindly forwarded it on to me. It was Marlyn. We’ve never really lost contact since. More about her later.

Roy Thinnes had been the star the previous year of LONG HOT SUMMER. Neither he, Edmond O’Brien, nor Ruth Roman contributed to my reasons for departing that show. I was very happy with his decision to accept our offer to guest star in this production.

Now are you thinking, “Boy, they really had a big budget on this episode to be able send a car over a cliff!” Wrong! A film clip was found in stock footage of a FORD going over a cliff. Then Tom, our agency rep for Ford conveniently found a duplicate of that car for us to use in our filming.

Coming up is Bill ‘You wanna ride on my bulldozer, honey’ Bramley. And if you have been trying to figure out why he looks familiar, where you might have seen him on the big screen in theatres, Bill played Officer Krupke in the 1961 Oscar-winning WEST SIDE STORY.

The third brother was Steve Ihnat. I didn’t know Steve’s work, and I don’t remember if it was Bert Remsen or John Conwell who recommended casting him. An excellent actor, and I was especially pleased with his pairing as a brother to Roy Thinnes. I thought the two looked like they really could be brothers. I have just checked Steve out on the IMDB (Internet Movie Data Base). He was born in Czechoslovakia, arrived in Hollywood when he was twenty-four. He died in France six years after filming this episode of a heart attack at the age of thirty-eight.

And in both the clips you’ve just viewed and the ones coming up, I hope you appreciate Charles Larson’s scripting. His writing gave the actors room to fill in the crevices BETWEEN THE LINES!

This was the show that introduced me to Franklin Canyon, a beautiful wooded area with a large reservoir in the hills above Beverly Hills. I scouted it on a lovely sunny day. The sun was filtering through the trees, reflecting off the water of the reservoir, it was truly enchanting. The morning we arrived to film was a different story. The June blues had settled into the weather, and there wasn’t a ray of sunshine within miles of the Canyon. Billy Spencer saw my disappointment and concern. He told me not to worry, the soft, diffused light was very good for filming. Oh, how right he was. (I told you he was my film school.) I think the sequence gains by not having the sunlight, by having the soft light which Billy utilized to the nth degree, especially in the long close-up of Marlyn when she talks about her past.

One other thing I must mention about filming for Quinn. He insisted on process photography for his traveling car shots. No towing or using car camera mounts. He wanted the REEL thing.

There were no problems filming the scenes between the other two brothers back at the studio. So just sit back and enjoy the sight of two fine actors providing a good lesson in film acting.

To open the scene at the lakeside after the couple have made love, I decided to have Pat look at the world around her through the pink sheer kerchief she had worn on her head; for the moment life did seem to take on a warmer, rosier glow. Two years later I stole from myself and opened a scene the same way in METAMOROPHOSIS on STAR TREK. You can hear a discussion of this in my oral interview on the STAR TREK HISTORY website at: http://www.startrekhistory.com/interviews.html

The day of location work at the reservoir started with a sequence in a nearby heavily wooded area. It was very early morning, and it was very very dark. Because of the overcast skies and the large trees it seemed more night than day. And it was too large an area to light, even with our huge arcs. Again it was Billy Spencer who said “Not to worry.” He gave instructions to the lab to force the film when developing it, and I don’t know what else he did, but we got the results we needed.

It was also Billy who gave me the ‘trick’ telephone dial for the shot of Larry calling the FBI. I thought then and I think now it is an interesting shot, but I tend to stay away from gimmickry that calls attention to itself.

It is so inviting when acting a melodramatic scene to play it to the hilt. How much more effective and dangerous to avoid the ranting and raving and keep it simple.

The big location problem on this show was finding where we could film the ending. The original script had Larry and Pat going to Cliff Side, where agent Rhodes of the FBI finally tracks them down. Then Steve arrives on the scene, armed with his rifle, and a gun battle ensues. Rhodes climbs down the side of the cliff and works his way around to a position behind Steve to end the battle. Howard Alston, production manager for the series, and I drove the coast of Southern California, seeking a spot where I would be able to stage this action. We found nothing that would work. It was Howard who remembered a deserted recreation area in the San Fernando Valley, and he took me there. With the addition of a big CLIFF SIDE LODGE sign, we converted the Valley into the Coast. And I really liked the opportunities for staging that this unusual setting gave me.

Unlike the heroine she portrayed, Marlyn Mason has not found herself in any traps. Last year she wrote a very short story that she turned into a screenplay for a ten minute film. Entitled MODEL RULES it was entered in seven or eight of the top film festivals in the country and won three major awards.

Not satisfied with this success, the Madame from Medford, which is what I dubbed her once she became an Oregonian, went to work and wrote another screenplay. This too has been filmed and at the present time is being edited. Entitled THE BAG, plans are to submit it for entry into the country’s independent film festivals later this year. Since I’ve thrown a party for her each time she won an award, I am already saving my money for this coming season.

Some things DO IMPROVE with age!

ORDEAL - August 1966 (The FBI)

I have raved about art director Richard Haman before; the problem with Richard is that he is so talented, there is no such thing as over praising him. Richard and William Spencer, director of photography, after completing the first season of TWELVE O’CLOCK HIGH were switched by Quinn Martin to his new series being launched on ABC, THE FBI. ORDEAL was my fourth assignment in that series’ second season (I had directed three episodes its first season.) This was the eleventh show in which Richard and I were partnered.

Richard came to me with a plan for the opening sequence you just viewed. He had worked out the mechanics of the shooting of the guard -- the placement of the camera and the gun so that the hole created by the shattering pellet would be in line with the guard’s body. But the pellet would have gone off to the side, avoiding any injury to the actor portraying the guard. This was a true case of what would be done by an art director when his credit on the screen would read: Production designed by ... . I directed a movie for television once where the producer came to me with a request from the art director’s agent asking for the ‘Production designed by’ credit. Now on that production I had prepared to shoot the exterior of a mountain cabin for an establishing shot. As we went to the spot where the camera would be and looked at the cabin, I discovered there was no roof. I was told the art director felt it wouldn’t be needed. We didn’t do the shot that day. The roof was added, and then we filmed the establishing shot. And my reply to the request for the special credit was, “No, actually I think that credit should read ‘Production designed IN SPITE of blank blank’.”

I’m quite certain if this barn sequence were being filmed today, it would all be done on location. Quinn Martin still adhered to the old studio principles. The exterior of the barn and the entrances and exits into the barn were done on location, but the long scene in the barn itself was filmed on a sound stage where Billy Spencer could take full advantage of the opportunities afforded to work his photographic magic.

Are you as fed up and turned off as I am by the excessive violence on our screens today? Well even forty-three years ago I wanted to find other ways to deal with the many killings I had to film. Especially because there was a double standard. Network programming loved the violence, but network program practices had many restrictions. You couldn’t make death ugly by showing the massive bloody wound a bullet would create. That would offend the public. A bullet hole would rarely be a blood spot as large as a quarter, more likely closer to the size of a dime. In this case I preferred to show it by focusing on the reaction of a participant in the incident.

Which had the added advantage of adding dimension to the character of the person reacting. In this case Paul Bryar, birth name Gabriel Paul Barrere, and known and beloved by all who knew him as Gaby. I had met Gaby and his wife, Claudia (real name, Hortense, but known to many as Hort) when they auditioned for a production of the play, MY THREE ANGELS I was to direct. They both ended up appearing in that play, and the following year we joined forces to do DEATH OF A SALESMAN. They were the beginning of my west coast family beyond the extensive blood family I already had. When I came to QM Productions two years prior, I requested Paul Bryar for a role in the second FUGITIVE I was directing. John Conwell, casting director for the show, told me we would not be able to get Paul approved by Quinn. It seems several years before when Quinn was producing THE UNTOUCHABLES, Paul had been cast in an episode. Between takes on a set, there is usually casual banter between cast and crew. Quinn, visiting the set one day, saw Paul joking around and thought his behavior was frivolous, not serious enough. Paul made Quinn’s black list. So he did not appear in that episode of THE FUGITIVE. Somehow Johnny Conwell, during the first season of THE FBI, changed Quinn’s mind enough to give Gaby another chance, and he was cast in one of my episodes that season. He was now in good enough standing with Quinn to take on this even more important role in the current production. I tell this story not as a comment on Gaby’s behavior; more as a reflection on Quinn’s and as a reflection of what actors (and writers and directors) sometimes faced in their search for employment. Around this same time I learned Lou Antonio was on ‘that’ list. Lou had appeared in an episode of TWELVE O’CLOCK HIGH. He had been called back some time after completing photography for some additional scenes and he arrived at the studio with his hair definitely in need of cutting. That was enough to get him on the list. I contacted Lou and told him what I had learned. He immediately wrote a letter to Quinn explaining his long hair. He was in the cast at that time of the Elia Kazan feature film, AMERICA, AMERICA and was still on call to complete principal photography. Voila! Lou Antonio was off the list!

The FBI rounded up enough clues to send them on a search for Kingsley, a missing driver. Erskine and Rhodes go to his rooming house and interview his landlady. I thought the scene needed a little perking up, so I had the actress cast in the part play it in a more distraught manner. She was upset at the mess in the room and kept moving around, picking up articles of clothing, as she was being interviewed by Erskine and Rhodes. Quinn didn’t like it when he saw the dailies the following day. Too frivolous. I ended up reshooting with a recast landlady and everybody just stood around and talked. That’s what you’re about to see.

THE FBI episodes were touted as being based on FBI files. I’m sure a lot of them were. But I doubted then and I doubt now that ALL of them were. I felt when I was doing this episode that we owed a greater debt to the French movie, WAGES OF FEAR, than we did to any FBI file. I could have been wrong; but I also could have been right

I know that in filming a sequence like the one you’re about to see to whom my debt was owed -- to the remarkable Billy Spencer and his magic camera.

Carl made the fatal phone call and agreed to meet with Mr. Lockwood.

This was another instance where the plot got an FBI representative directly involved in the criminal part of the story, in this case young Rhodes. Stephen Brooks, who played Rhodes, only stayed with the series for two years. I had worked with Steve earlier when he had a recurring role on THE NURSES, a Herb Brodkin produced series that was filmed in New York, and he later guest starred in an episode of STAR TREK, which I will soon be writing about.

Ford Motor Co. was one of the sponsors of THE FBI on ABC. This was a major advantage for a program of this type. We used a lot of automobiles in the show. A very nice man, Tom, a representative from the agency that represented Ford, came to all of our production meetings. He would then supply whatever we needed. Rich car, poor car, beggar car, thief. Well, almost always. There was a situation the first season on a show called THE PLUNDERERS. Look at the opening sequence, and then I’ll tell you what the problem was.

The problem was that Ford did not produce an armored car, and they were not eager to use a vehicle from another automobile manufacturer. Tom’s suggestion was that we use a panel truck in lieu of the armored car. Our side very vehemently vetoed this idea, so that Tom finally relented and we got to use a legitimate armored car for our filming.

You win some, you lose some. On THE PLUNDERERS we won. We were not so lucky on the current show, ORDEAL. The final leg of the journey in our script included a fierce storm in mountainous terrain. And in our script this Ford truck carrying nitro picked this unfortunate time to have brake problems. Unfortunately the Ford truck had not conferred with Ford agency rep Tom. It seems that Fords don’t develop brake problems. To add to the problem it was also an irrefutable fact that Quinn Martin productions had exciting, when possible hair-raising Act IV’s. What’s a director to do? Just close his eyes and step on the gas!

I can hardly leave you hanging without showing you the end of the journey, not that I don’t think you haven’t already figured it out for yourself.

This was the end of more than one journey. This was Billy Spencer’s last show for the series for a time. He left to be the director of photography for Quinn Martin’s theatrical feature, THE MEPHISTO WALTZ. I directed four more episodes for the series with three different directors of photography, only one of whom I liked. Unfortunately he was not the one the producers decided to retain. As I said before, I left the series after eight episodes because of physical exhaustion. I wonder if I would have been so spent if Billy Spencer hadn’t left. I don’t think so!

THE ASSASSIN - June 1966 (The FBI)

The start of the 1966-67 season found me doing something I had never done before and would never do again. I signed with QM Productions to direct every other THE FBI for the season, a total of thirteen productions. That meant I would be starting to prep a new assignment the day after I finished filming the previous one with no time off between shows. THE FBI was no stranger to me, and this was my third season of working for QM. I had directed four episodes of THE FUGITIVE, four of TWELVE O’CLOCK HIGH, and three of THE FBI the previous year during its first season on the air. It was for me a comfortable association. But I’ll tell you right off I only lasted through eight productions. That was not a pace I could endure, nor was it a pace I wanted to maintain.

I stated when I started this blog that I would “add posts as time and memory permits.” After four months of doing it I find there is a third factor entering the equation. These excursions are like visits for me, and where I FEEL like visiting is playing a very large role in my selections. So today I’m going back to drop in on THE ASSASSIN, the fifth episode of THE FBI series that I directed and my second episode under my new contractual agreement. To get started let's drop in at the US Embassy in Manilla.

You were expecting maybe a nice little visit like at the Waltons? The Manilla street incidentally was on the backlot of Warner Bros. studio.

This scene provided another justification for me to have insisted on the right to be in the editing room. The editor in assembling the sequence of the killing used only the shot from inside the van moving away. I also wanted the second shot with the body falling in the foreground as the van is driving off. He didn’t argue the point, but he did think it was unnecessary.

The casting of Anton, the assassin, was a very interesting journey. John Conwell, who had been an actor, then a casting director for TWILIGHT ZONE (he cast PRINTER’S DEVIL), was now the executive casting director for QM Productions. John was just great. He knew actors, he knew about acting. He was the best. My first choice for the role of the assassin was slightly built, blondish David Wayne. He proved unavailable. John then suggested George C. Scott. Now this was not in line with my concept, but I had worked with George and who could say no to him. But he too proved unavailable. I then suggested Gig Young, dark-haired but at this point in his career mainly a light comedian. (It would be three years later that Gig would win an Oscar for THEY SHOOT HORSES, DON'T THEY?, definitely a non-comedic  role.)  But he also was not to be had. John along the way had suggested Fritz Weaver. I thought Weaver was a fine actor, but he was exactly the dark-haired ‘heavy’ image I was trying to avoid. I said no. I had seen an actor in one of the John Houseman produced theatre productions at UCLA (the group that eventually metastasized into the Mark Taper Forum) who filled my original vision of the role when I sought David Wayne. He was William Windom. Bill had been around for a long time, a very working actor in television starting back in the live days in New York. There were no great objections to him, but there was not great excitement either. Then John called me one day and said if we wanted Fritz Weaver, we would have to decide right now because he had another offer pending. I again said, “But I don't want Fritz Weaver, I want William Windom.” And I got William Windom.

Alex Brewis was one of the smaller agents in Hollywood. Alex would regularly drop by my office at QM, seeking work for his clients. He had some very talented people, many young ones just starting out. Alex had been touting a young Tom Skerritt to me for some time. There just hadn’t been a role that he was right for. This time there was. So we hired Tom Skerritt to play the idealistic young college student caught up in the cause.

There is a glaring director’s goof in that scene. Did you catch it? I didn’t at the time, but it has bothered me every time I have viewed it since.

Anton, when he took the dead pilot’s pulse, left his thumb print on the wrist watch. And this scene ending on the wrist watch stressed that point. But nothing came of it. My goof!

The FBI’s investigation just couldn’t match the dramatic intensity of the criminal’s side of the story. Much of the time those scenes took place in FBI offices or were telephone conversations. The following scene, greatly enhanced by the beautiful photography of Billy Spencer, was a rare exception.

Dean Jagger, whom we hired to play the pacifist Bishop John Atwood, hadn’t worked since the end of his television series, MR. NOVAK. (I vaguely remember that there might have been some illness during that period.) He was like a young colt prancing to get out of the starting gate. He showed up at the studio several days before the start of filming for the usual wardrobe fittings; but he also wanted discussions about the role. He was excited, anxious and I think a little nervous. The following scene with Erskine (Efrem Zimbalist) was the first scene we filmed and his first time in front of the camera in a couple of years. As we began rehearsing and then filming, that same actor’s nervousness was still in evidence. It was amusing that it only took a couple of takes, and Dean, confidence now restored, was making suggestions to Efrem about his role. Efrem looked at me with a knowing smile. It was great to welcome this Academy Award winner back to where he belonged -- in front of the camera.

I’ve mentioned before about the parallel story form of so many of the episodes of THE FBI -- the criminals’s story and the investigation. In this case we had three parallel stories -- the assassin's, the victim intended for assassination's and the FBI investigation's. It was nice to get Efrem out of the office and off of the telephone.

Atwood’s arrival in San Francisco was filmed after his previous scene with Erskine, although it preceded it in the story. Meeting him was Dean Sutherland in the person of Rhys Williams. Rhys earlier that year had been in an episode of THE WILD WILD WEST that I directed. And notice a very debonair Ted Knight just four years before he joined THE MARY TYLER MOORE show.

Young filmmakers come out of film schools today with a broad knowledge of the camera. Billy Spencer was my film school. I knew very little about the camera during the early years of my film directing. I knew what I wanted my picture to look like, but that was it. We didn’t have a zoom lens yet except for the small Arriflex camera, which was not encased and could not be used if sound was being recorded. So everything was filmed with flat lenses. The first TWELVE O’CLOCK HIGH that I directed had a different director of photography because Billy was away filming a pilot for QM. This cameraman asked me at the beginning of filming if I minded if he shot everything with a 30mm lens. What did I know! I said sure, go ahead.

When I started working with Billy I adapted to his methods. He would stand directly behind me, looking over my left shoulder (fortunately he was just a minuscule tad shorter than I was) as I had the actors walk through the staging. Very soon I started asking him which lens he would be using. By the time we arrived at the current production, I was telling him (with a question mark) which lens I thought he would be using. Billy would beam as he nodded that I had called it correctly. I think he was a little proud of his film student

Billy was an artist, but he painted with light. He had won an Emmy the prevous year for his black and white photography on TWELVE O’CLOCK HIGH. Now he was filming in color, and he hated it. He told me that when he watched color tv, he turned the color off and watched it in black and white. But his color photography was magnificent, because he lit it the same way he lit black and white. One of the things I had learned working with Billy was that when the camera moved into the set, that hampered what he could do with his lighting. For the following scene in Dean Sutherland’s study I told Billy to go ahead and paint. The camera was staying out of the set; the actors would be moving toward the camera.

I really liked the freedom and expanse of the location filming in Texas on ROUTE 66. New York City was an incredible place to film NAKED CITY. As long as you don’t aim directly into a building, and if you shoot with the wider lenses, there is no such thing as a bad shot. But even more exciting for me is to explore inward into the human being, especially if the inner man has, deep under his skin, hidden crevices filled with dark boiling emotions.

When series episodes went into syndication, there was a good and a bad. The good was the residual income. The bad was that further cuts were made in the shows to provide room for more commercials. The scene above was cut from those early syndicated airings. This was disturbing for me, because I felt it was one of the strongest scenes in the film.

Adrian Samish was a nice man. I had very little direct contact with him. He had been an executive at ABC, and when he joined Quinn Martin Productions in 1965 or 1966, the rumor running through the company was that he would not be around for long; that it was an accommodation between Quinn and ABC for ABC to unload him. Obviously there was no truth to the rumor, because Adrian stayed on at QM Productions for several years. What I am going to write now is not complimentary to Adrian. And I don’t like writing negative things about people. But some of the things relating to Adrian are just too juicy and humorous to ignore.

This script was one of the rare times when I was protective of the script rather than asking for changes. Charles Larson, the producer and person most responsible for this script, knew this and alarmed me one day during the prep period when he told me he had received Adrian Samish’s notes requesting changes in the script. We went through Adrian’s notes, one at a time, and Charles kept saying there was no problem; that complaint could be easily fixed without hurting the script. But then we came to the note about the previous scene. Adrian found the scene ridiculous; he felt that Anton had not convinced the young Hastings to commit the assassination. Charles thought for a moment and then said, “Adrian is a fisherman. Let’s put this stage instruction -- (hooked like a fish) -- before Hastings says, “Do you really have to ask that?” And we did. That was the only adjustment we made in this scene. There was no further complaint from Adrian.

Arthur Fellows, who rarely came down to the set, came down the day after we filmed the sequences in Anton’s room. He had just been to the screening of the rushes, and he made the trip to tell me that he was absolutely fascinated with the film he had just viewed.

Shooting on the New York street on Warner Bros. backlot always presented the possibility of seeming false. The streets were too narrow, and big city streets are usually filled with more people than our television budget could accommodate. The person in charge of directing the extras who would populate this street was the assistant director, in this case Paul Wurtzel. Paul had been the assistant on most of the QM productions that I directed for TWELVE O’CLOCK HIGH and THE FBI, and he was also my neighbor, living just a half a block from me. Paul belonged to one of the true Hollywood dynasties; his father had been Sol Wurtzel, during the early thirties the head of production for Fox Studio. Paul told the story that when he was about eight years old, his father would take him to the screening room where he would view Fox’s latest films due for release. Sol would ask the young Paul for his opinion on the films. And I got the impression that young Paul’s opinions were not taken lightly. Paul also was great to have on a set; he had a lethal sense of humor.

The format for THE FBI was a prolog, four acts and an epilog. Up untill this time the main story had ended at the end of Act IV. The epilog was just a meaningless tack-on. I wanted all the time I could get to do this story, so I suggested to Charlie that we play the following scene as the epilog, rather than squeezing it into the end of Act IV. He agreed.

John Conwell told me the day after THE ASSASSIN aired, he had many phone calls commending the show and raving over his casting of William Windom in the title role.

And I personally think Bill Windom gives an amazing performance as the assassin! I shudder to think what this same script would look like if produced under the Aaron Spelling banner.