Sun 14 Apr 2013
A TV Series Review by Michael Shonk: PARIS 7000 (1970).
Posted by Steve under Reviews , TV Drama[14] Comments
PARIS 7000. ABC, 1970; Universal Television. Created by Richard J. Michaels and Gene L. Coon. Executive Producer: Richard Caffey. Cast: George Hamilton as Jack Brennan and Jacques Aubuchon as Lt. Jules Maurois. Theme by Michel Colombier.
The story of PARIS 7000 began with Lana Turner and Harold Robbins. In September 1969 ABC premiered a PEYTON PLACE wannabe called THE SURVIVORS on Monday at 9pm. Based on an idea by Harold Robbins and starring Lana Turner, Kevin McCartney and George Hamilton, the series had a budget of $250,000 episode. ABC had given Universal TV a commitment for 26 episodes.
The series was a failure on every level. After its premiere the ratings were bad. The reviews were negative. There were production problems including personality clashes with star Lana Turner that reportedly got three producers fired.
The November 10, 1969 issue of “Broadcasting†reported ABC’s midseason plans. THE SURVIVORS would move to Thursday at 10pm.
A week later “Broadcasting†added, “ABC, committed to full season of THE SURVIVORS from Universal TV despite weak ratings and disastrous reviews, is expected to announce drastic change in format for series starting at midseason. Reportedly key ingredient to be held over would be series co-star George Hamilton. Lana Turner and Kevin McCarthy will be dropped.â€
On December 8, 1969, “Broadcasting†reported that the producers and Hamilton would move from THE SURVIVORS to a completely new program.
That new program was PARIS 7000. George Hamilton played Jack Brennan, a diplomat working at the American embassy in Paris. Any American in trouble would call the embassy’s phone number Paris 7000 and Brennan would come to their aid. The series was called an action drama but the episode I have seen (“Call Me Ellenâ€) was a mystery sadly burdened by its soap opera melodrama beginnings.
PARIS 7000 first aired January 22, 1970 on ABC opposite CBS THURSDAY NIGHT AT THE MOVIES and NBC’s DEAN MARTIN SHOW. Ratings were better than its parent THE SURVIVORS, but the show was cancelled at the end of the season.
“Call Me Ellen†was the tenth episode and was a return to an earlier episode, “Call Me Lee†(episode three that aired February 5, 1970).
TV Guide‘s Cleveland Amory review of PARIS 7000 mentioned the episode “Call Me Leeâ€:
http://www.chezgrae.com/ShowInfo/Paris7000.html
The original episode had Jack fall in love with Leona (Lee), a blonde stewardess played by Barbara Anderson. Leona would die and her role in a smuggling ring would be revealed. Brennan would identify her body.
Seven episodes later and the series final episode, “Call Me Ellen†would feature a surprising twist to Leona’s story. Considering the series soap opera past I wonder if Jack’s mourning over the death of Leona had been a running subplot. Even if not this was a creative twist on the BONANZA curse, the death of a female love interest of the week so the regular character could continue to fall in love in future episodes.
“Call Me Ellen.†March 26,1970. Written by Richard Bluel; directed by Jeannot Szwarc. Produced by Harry Tatelman. Guest Cast: Barbara Anderson, Paul Henreid and Brenda Benet. *** While making his monthly visit to San Remo and the grave of the woman he still loves, Jack sees her double getting into a taxi.
Despite Jack seeing the brunette version of blonde Leona leaving a graveyard, Barbara Anderson looked too good to be a zombie, so who was she?
The acting makes one think of zombies, and to push the edge of bad acting even further there were endless flashbacks and characters silently staring off to nowhere as they were supposedly lost in memories and/or deep in thought.
But the most unforgivable flaw of PARIS 7000 was the over the top melodrama left over from its THE SURVIVORS roots. Jack stared at Leona’s headstone silently lost in his memories and/or deep in thought, a huge Christian cross loomed behind him, as we listened to Barbara Anderson voice over, “Now I lay me down to sleep. I pray the Lord my Jack to keep. If I should die before I wake. Remember me. Remember me.â€
Jack confronted the brunette who says she knows nothing about Leona. Her name was Ellen. She ran a local hotel and was a single mother of a young handicapped boy who after many expensive operations would soon be able to walk. Jack, who still hadn’t accepted Leona’s death, now had his hopes or confusion rise (it was hard to tell which). He checked into the hotel and began to seduce the beautiful widow and mom.
Meanwhile, a bad guy, who had been following Jack all the way from Paris, called his Boss and told him that Jack had found her. The Boss tells his henchman to kill the woman.
Who this woman was and what her secrets were would have made an interesting TV mystery, but the flawed script made it difficult to tell the difference between a clue (the son) and a plot hole (why was she at the graveyard). In addition, the melodrama of the romance overwhelmed the story in typical bad TV fashion. Jack and Ellen fell in love. She became upset because he was in love with Leona not her, Ellen. But of course she couldn’t resist the romantic powers of George Hamilton and sacrificed it all for him in the end.
PARIS 7000 never had much of a chance of surviving. Most likely it was considered the simplest alternative to fill the twenty-six episodes order of THE SURVIVORS (which lasted fifteen episodes). The lack of time to develop a series remains a common cause of bad TV. This May next fall’s TV series will be announced, that gives the producers around four months (plus the time spent on the pilot) to find out what works and what doesn’t. There was less than two months from when ABC’s decided not to change THE SURVIVORS but to instead create a new series with new characters and when the first episode PARIS 7000 aired. It is a wonder this wasn’t worse.
If the series had toned down the soap opera melodrama a notch to romantic suspense this series might have been watchable. But considering its past, the results are understandable.
April 15th, 2013 at 8:42 am
I had a tangential involvement with The Survivors in that Louis Hayward, well after the start of production, was cast. This presented a fine opportunity to restart his career. That didn’t happen due to conflict in the production office, star tantrums, which may very well have been justified, and a serious misconception in trying to be all things to all people. And, being not much to anyone. I don’t know anything about Paris 7000 but I thought Lew Ayres was in it as a regular.
April 15th, 2013 at 9:43 am
Suppose I’ve confused Paris with Lime Street regarding Ayres.
April 15th, 2013 at 10:08 am
Barry, IMdb has little about the regular cast on PARIS 7000, but TVGuide.com and the Brooks and Marsh book have Gene Raymond as Hamilton’s aide, the only other regular. He wasn’t in “Call Me Ellen” so I left him off the cast list. It is possible Lew Ayres was involved.
I can understand the star tantrums. It was common in the 60s and 70s, from Steve McQueen and Richard Boone to Peter Falk and Jack Klugman. Lana Turner was hoping to kickstart a declining career and the numbers from almost the beginning were a disaster. Then everyone else was most likely panicking. ABC had committed $6.5 million to 26 episodes so you can imagine how they were behaving. At the time Universal had a large group of studio writers/producers so I suspect they kept trying to find one that could turn THE SURVIVORS around.
I remain curious about the behind the scene stuff, especially since the series featured a couple of writer/producers I follow (Gene L. Coon (STAR TREK) and (reportedly) Michael Gleason (PEYTON PLACE, REMINGTON STEELE).
April 15th, 2013 at 10:16 am
#2. LIME STREET, now there is a series with a tragic behind the scenes story.
For those you don’t know the story behind LIME STREET. It starred Robert Wagner, early into the series teen actor Samantha Smith was killed in a small plane crash. The series died with her.
April 16th, 2013 at 11:05 am
I’m no Cleveland Armory fan, but the review Michael references above is pretty witty. It appeared in the March 28, 1970, issue of TV Guide, and judging by a comment Armory makes ABC had already decided by then to cancel the series.
Here is an excerpt from the review: “The idea of Paris 7000 … was to find something for George to do. He went down, you’ll recall, on the Titanic — or rather The Survivors — and ABC apparently had to keep paying him. So they decided to shoot this show around him. Our feeling is they should have done the reverse. Alfred Hitchcock once said that a good actor is a man who does nothing well. The trouble with George is that he makes a Federal case out of everything.”
Speaking of Hitchcock, “Call Me Ellen” certainly seems to me evocative of Psycho.
As Michael suggests, Gene L. Coon is the real interesting story here, if you ask me. His TV-writing credits went back to Medic in 1956, and he produced some 30-plus episodes of the original Star Trek, some under the alias Lee Cronin, since he had already moved on to Universal by then and wasn’t supposed to be writing shows for Paramount. Coon is credited with creating the Klingons, the character Khan, and the Prime Directive.
There are other interesting names here too: Gleason didn’t just write/produce for Remington Steele but actually created it. Richard Bluel, whom Michael cites above as the writer of “Call Me Ellen,” had produced “The Gallant Men” and is listed as a producer on Mike Nichols’s film version of “Catch-22,” and Jeannot Szwarc, the episode’s director, is still apparently working today, on shows like Fringe, Bones, and Grey’s Anatomy.
April 16th, 2013 at 11:06 am
Woops, I meant evocative of Vertigo, not Psycho. Bates Motel on the brain, I guess.
April 16th, 2013 at 12:22 pm
This is one that my family didn’t watch, for the same reason that most of America didn’t, i.e., Dean Martin.
That said, I seem to recall that maybe we saw this one, because of the participation of Barbara Anderson, who was in the midst of her run on Ironside at the time.
Universal TV kept their contract players going almost 24/7 back then; if your regular show was dark that week, just trot over to the other side of the lot and pick up some extra credit.
Actually, all I remember is my brother saying “She’s in trouble, and Chief Ironass can’t help!” He thought this was clever.
The thing I noticed in the write-up here was the producer credit for Harry Tatelman, whom I’ve mentioned in earlier posts of mine as Universal TV’s “recycler” of short-lived series into faux-movies for later syndication.
Given that there were two Anderson episodes, I half-suspect that I might have seen a Tatelman re-edit of both shows into a “movie” in a late-afternoon slot on a local channel.
Then again, I wouldn’t rule out Tatelman’s involvement at any stage of Paris 7000‘s production, given the haste with which it was put together. UTV never let anything go to waste, and Tatelman’s ersatz movies apparently generated enough income to give him a say of sorts over the material.
At the time, I seem to recall that Paris 7000 was a “pay-or-play” for George Hamilton, just to burn off whatever was left of his Survivors deal. This would mean that UTV had little faith in the show, but who knows? If it hits, OK; if not, Harry Tatelman can mix’n’match the parts and make some dough out of it later.
Most of the above is speculation; the real story of what I once dubbed “Tatelman’s Bargain Basement Bonanzas!” has yet to be written up anywhere.
Might make a helluva movie …
April 16th, 2013 at 12:45 pm
#5. Michael Gleason co-created STEELE with Robert Butler, but Gleason was the show’s showrunner. STEELE was the closest I ever came to selling a script to a network TV series (NEWHART was second). Gleason was famous for using STEELE to breed future showrunners. The list of STEELE producer/writers who moved on to run their own show is amazing.
I mentioned STEELE here because of Gleason’s love of old movies and those movie stars, something highlighted often in casting and Remington’s passion for movies. I am sure he was not one of the producers fired over upsetting Lana Turner.
IMdb lists two other Universal regulars as writers for the series, Paul Playdon (SWITCH, BANACEK,etc) and John Wilder (PAYTON PLACE, STREETS OF SAN FRANCISCO, SPENSER FOR HIRE, etc).
Has anyone ever written a book about the Universal Studio staff of writers?
April 16th, 2013 at 12:50 pm
#7. Mike, I knew Tatelman name was familiar for some less than special reason. Thanks for reminding me. I suspect he was not the series original producer.
This was one of those shows where what was happening behind the camera was more entertaining than what was happening on camera.
April 16th, 2013 at 3:24 pm
Michael, I for one would love to hear what happened with respect to Remington Steele and Newhart if you are inclined to say.
April 16th, 2013 at 4:17 pm
#10. The Newhart story is simple one. I had the world worst agent. He turned in my script and never checked back. I doubt it was even read. But in the 80s it was nearly impossible to get anyone to read an unsolicited script. TV producers would insist you go through an agent and no agent would touch you unless you had sold a script. The fact I got an agent was good news/bad news. I had to wait on my agent, but I did get the script through the closed door.
I have discussed my Steele past here before (I think in the comments for my review of season one). I did the series writer’s guide for the chance to submit scripts to be rejected. I dealt with Gleason’s assistant for the most part, but I did have a script meeting with head writer Elliott Lewis who suggested I try books (if only I had remembered then he was writing the Bennett PI book series at the time). My stories were fine but my failure was because I never could write in the voice of the characters. A common thread in my rejection letters.
After the series was gone I was working as a security guard for Sunset Gower Studios and one of STEELE producers now doing his own show (I don’t remember which one) told me how much they enjoyed and used my guide. My last draft of Book of Steele was a hundred pages long.
April 16th, 2013 at 4:55 pm
A belated note for David Bushman:
Ever hear the story of the morning that the producer of the Today show came in late and saw the words “Cleveland Armory” on the lineup sheet, went into a panic, and roused the NBC affiliate in Cleveland to get a camera crew to the Armory for a remote pickup.
Then he looked at the sheet again and saw that it was “Cleveland Amory” (pronounced with a long ‘a’), the author/critic, who was at the New York studio, ready to go on.
That producer was a while living that down.
But really, was it that long ago?
In his day, Cleveland Amory was all over TV, talking about society, television, and later on animal rights. Nowadays it seems that he’s been almost totally forgotten (being dead will do that to you sometimes …)
And while we’re on the subject, michael:
When you were talking to Elliott Lewis, were you aware that he was what Leonard Maltin once called “the Renaissance Man of radio”?
That he had produced and directed the Suspense radio show for a number of years?
That he’d starred with his former wife Cathy Lewis in dramas, comedies, and mysteries on radio?
That he’d played Phil Harris’s carousing sidekick Frankie Remley on Jack Benny’s show, and later on Harris’s own show?
OK, I’m showing off here (nearly all these shows were before I was even born).
But it seems to me that most people who are younger than you and I seem to lack a sense of history – and not just about entertainment.
Of course, it’s the past – but you don’t get a present without a past.
Or a future either, for that matter.
That may be why people like us seem to want to hang on to the past – not to prolong or revive it, but to acknowledge its part in the present and future.
That seems to be why we’re all here, on blogs like this one: to try and put it all together.
(Was that last part pretentious enough for us all?) 😀
April 16th, 2013 at 6:11 pm
12 Mike. I screwed up big time in that interview. It was 1983 or 84, pre-internet, but I was aware how important it is to know all about the person behind the desk. It was why I had a detailed file of TV credits from the last seven years I had been learning how to write for TV. I had been listening to old radio since my high school days. But then I didn’t realize how huge Elliott Lewis was in old radio. He and his wife were major stars. He even worked on my favorite radio show, “Adventures of Sam Spade.” He was associate producer for the first James Bond, “Casino Royale” on CLIMAX.
He taught me more about writing for television in that meeting than I had learned from all the books I had studied before. I learned my scripts had too much detail, too descriptive of location. I misunderstood what he meant about the voice of the characters and took him to mean my dialogue was terrible. It took me years before I finally understood what he had meant. When he said I should try books all I could think of was I spent seven years to get here and I didn’t want to start all over learning how to write books.
I was young and I was an idiot. But I also had an opportunity few wannabe writers ever get.
Timing was always against me. When I was going to LSU, the creative writing professor didn’t know what a screenplay was, today they have a film department. Imagine, a quick google search and I could have gotten my copy of Bennett’s World autographed and heard stories about old radio and TV. Did I mention I was an idiot?
April 17th, 2013 at 9:10 am
Someone back in time said something along these lines:
We’re all ignorant, just about different things.
I don’t believe there’s a one of us, here or at any other site anywhere, who hasn’t tripped ourselves up over something we thought we knew, or was sure we’d read/heard somewhere, or wanted to believe about someone or something.
That still happens to me – all the time.
As I get older, I like to think I’m more diligent.
The truth is, I’m only as good as my sources – and the more sources I have, the more frequently they contradict each other.
That leaves me with my own abilities to reason, to deduce, to draw proper inferences, to not let agendas sway any of these …
… and after all that, I can get caught up in the old Burmese tiger snare as often as anybody else.
You actually got to meet Elliott Lewis.
That puts you one up on me – for all time.
Now, what’s next?