Quote:
Originally Posted by rockfan4
There was a Highway Patrol marathon on Decades last weekend. Brings up two questions:
1. All the police cars on the show were two door. Was that the way things were? Four door cars existed.
2. Broderick Crawford's hat. At least in the later shows, he wore the hat all the time. Wore it indoors, didn't take it off to talk to ladies. I know nobody cares now, but wasn't that etiquette in the late 50's / early 60's?
|
Broderick Crawford was quite the drinker. If you watch the shows you'll see bumps and bruises on his head. There's one or two episodes where he's wearing tennis shoes because he messed up his ankle.
They said you had to get his scenes in before noon because after that he was done, blotto. You can see how fast he wanted to finish a scene by the pace of his dialog, that dude could talk a fast streak! The hat was probably left on to hide bandages or bumps in later episodes as his drinking (and off set injuries) progressed.
The cars were 2 door Buick Roadmasters. Sometimes you'll see trailer hitches on them since they used them to help tow trailers to location for filming.
Highway Patrol is one of the best sources of L.A historical location preservation on film. They were one of the first shows to film outside of a soundstage. They filmed a lot in Chavez Ravine, an early Latino neighborhood that was razed to build Dodger Stadium.
You'll also see some actors early in their careers who became stars. Clint Eastwood is in one where he's in a biker gang. There's also a few who moved over to Dragnet and Adam-12. Jack Webb based a lot of his production ideas on Highway Patrol