Lately I’ve been breakfasting with Broderick Crawford.
Until a few weeks ago I dined with Raymond Burr, but since FeTV removed “Perry Mason” from its morning schedule, I’ve been watching Brod in “Highway Patrol,” a series I remember from my childhood, when I was too young to understand it.
But now I enjoy riding along with Brod as he plays the stalwart Dan Mathews.
“Highway Patrol” was one of a number of low-budget shows produced by a company called “ZIV.” As a kid I thought the letters in “ZIV” might stand for something, like maybe “Zestfully Inexpensive Video.” Or that it was some kind of odd roman numeral.
Wrong on both counts: “ZIV” was actually Fred Ziv, who owned the company.
Aside from “Highway Patrol,” Ziv was responsible for “Bat Masterson,” “Tombstone Territory,” “Lockup” and, perhaps most famously, “Sea Hunt,” in which the bad guys seemed to cut off Lloyd Bridges’ air tank so often that the budget for duct tape alone must have given Mr. Ziv the bends.
“Highway Patrol” had all the telltale signs of a Ziv program, including lots of location shootings (with the exception of Dan’s closet-size-and-a-half office) and the same music cues week after week. (“Hey, they’re playing the ‘Going to commercial’ music! I’m gonna make a sandwich!”)
To me the locations are a large part of the program’s charm. If Dan Mathews parks in front of a diner, a church or a supermarket, you can be damn sure it really is a diner, a church or a supermarket. I keep wondering whether those buildings, or even the roads, still exist. And while you might argue that “1950s ambience” is an oxymoron, I enjoy those settings. They’re a lot more interesting than the same old sites you see in the series from Universal. (“Hey, didn’t that guy just come out of Beaver Cleaver’s house?”)
Although the budgets for the Ziv shows seemed to make Roger Corman look like Cecil B. DeMille, Mr. Ziv apparently didn’t want to cut corners (or at least too many corners) when it came to the quality of the scripts. Although none of them were likely Emmy winners, they were decent and sometimes surprisingly different.
In one “Highway Patrol” episode, Dan is convinced that an ex-con has absconded with a lot of loot. The guy’s pastor disagrees, and he turns out to be right. In another, a “human bomb” who is driving a car while keeping his hand on a trigger attached to the steering wheel picks up a young hitchhiker. He asks the kid if he likes science, and after deciding to let him go calls after him to “Study hard!” Both scripts were attributed to “Robert Wesley,” a pseudonym for an ex-cop who would do really well for himself in the years to come: Gene Roddenberry.
And then there’s Brod. Because of Dan, he has often been the butt of bad impressions. True, Brod had his demons, chiefly booze; I’ve read that the “Patrol” folks liked to get most of his stuff “in the can” in the morning because after that he might well be indulging in his favorite pastime. But the guy did win an Oscar for playing Willie Stark in “All the King’s Men.” And he did create the role of Lennie in “Of Mice and Men” on Broadway.
And I have it on good authority that he was a gent. Years ago he played the coach in a summer production of “That Championship Season” up the street from me. (No, I didn’t see it. Yes, I’m still kicking myself.) My sister Mary Murphy was an apprentice there, and someone introduced her to Brod because Brod had an aunt in Syracuse named Mabel Murphy. Turns out we’re not related to Brod, but he was polite to my sister.
So I guess there’s nothing left to say except maybe: TEN-FOUR!
(C’mon, you knew that was coming….)
