Fri 7 Aug 2015
A Sci-Fi Series Pilot Review: GEMINI MAN (1976).
Posted by Steve under Reviews , TV Science Fiction & Fantasy[27] Comments
GEMINI MAN. Made-for-TV movie. NBC, 2 hours, 10 May 1976. Pilot for the series which began the following fall. Ben Murphy, Katherine Crawford, Richard Dysart, Dana Elcar, Paul Shenar. Based on the novel The Invisible Man, by H. G. Wells. Director: Alan J. Levi.
I must not have been paying attention to the opening credits, otherwise I would have known a lot more about what to expect of this pilot film when I started watching — or perhaps H. G. Wells wasn’t mentioned. I haven’t gone back to look, but I will. (Later: The reason I didn’t remember the credits is that they are at the end of the film, and even more, no, H. G. Wells is not mentioned.)
The phenomenon of invisibility has been around in fiction for a log time, including both TV and the movies, whether it’s physically possible or not, and Gemini Man is yet another attempt.
Ben Murphy plays Sam Casey in both the pilot and the series that came afterward. Casey is an easy-going secret agent who’s caught in an underwater explosion while he’s examining a secret Russian satellite that has come down from orbit and landed in the Pacific. It is in the aftermath of the explosion that he discovers he has new powers.
The only drawback? He can stay invisible only 15 minutes a day, added up cumulatively over the 24-hour period. This is a necessary plot device, since otherwise, of course, he’s Superman without the Kryponite.
It was difficult to watch this and see Dana Elcar as the villain, working secretly for the Russian government, but so he is. Nor am I revealing anything to you you won’t know with he first 10 or 15 minutes of the movie. Unfortunately this is about all there is to know about the plot. The rest consists of jokey references to Sam’s new ability, cars driving here and there, and a serious attempt at misadventure aboard an airplane in the sky.
I haven’t checked to see what shows that Gemini Man, the series, was up against in the fall, but of the eleven episodes filmed, only five of them were ever aired. Neither Ben Murphy nor Katherine Crawford (as scientist Dr. Abby Lawrence, also Sam’s mentor) have enough charisma to overcome what I imagine were some rather ordinary stories.
All of the shows filmed do exist, and are available on collector-to-collector DVDs, but all in all, I don’t think I’ll pony up the $25 asking price for a set I discovered online in pristine picture quality.
August 7th, 2015 at 11:22 pm
Here is the pilot Steve suffered through:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TEnMsWpkz1U
Here is a sample episode:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-SHHvpnHuN4
Here is MST3K episode featuring a GEMINI MAN movie (studio took two episodes and put them together and released them to drive-in and bad theatres)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xseO3uX9Sv0
August 7th, 2015 at 11:29 pm
Michael
Thanks for the links. I may try the sample episode, but not now. I’m not ready yet. Hope you don’t mind. I’ll skip the MST3K thingie. Can’t stand those guys.
August 7th, 2015 at 11:27 pm
I remember this series and it’s hard to believe that it’s been almost 40 years. Even back then it was dated and now it must be a real ordeal to view the episodes.
August 7th, 2015 at 11:50 pm
Steve, you have suffered enough. I posted those links to show others how much you sacrifice for us.
August 8th, 2015 at 1:08 am
Murphy was the main drawback for me, a leading man who defined bland and colorless. Like Oakland there was no there there.
As for the pilot, like many series of the era it seemed to mostly consist of people driving around either LA or in the country, and if Universal produced it, the same damn roads.
Elcar was lucky, villain was probably the only decent part in the script.
This was one of those series that was all concept and no execution whatsoever.
August 8th, 2015 at 1:59 am
Gemini Man aired on NBC Thursday at 8:00/7:00 central.
On CBS: The Waltons.
On ABC: Welcome Back, Kotter and Barney Miller.
Not much more to say, is there?
August 8th, 2015 at 3:30 am
I remember it as being a replacement for the David McCallum INVISIBLE MAN, which I rather enjoyed. As you say, Murphy was a rather bland leading man and he was saddled with a lot of bland stories. When McCallum removed his mask and became invisible, you could still believe that someone was there. When Murphy pressed the button on his watch there was only a bunch of special effects. The fact that this had taken over from the previous series was especially galling because I had developed a bit of a crush on Melinda Fee, who played McCallum’s wife in the previous show.
August 8th, 2015 at 4:38 am
Katherine Crawford was producer Roy Huggins’daughter, given a ridiculously optimistic star’s name.
August 8th, 2015 at 7:39 pm
Katherine Crawford’s screen name came from her paternal grandmother, who wasn’t a star, exactly …
You guys have got to stop watching MST3K.
August 8th, 2015 at 10:07 pm
Regardless, Kathe(a)rine (Hepburn) (Joan) Crawford is not going to get you taken seriously as a screen moniker. No matter the source.
August 8th, 2015 at 11:16 pm
Be that as it may, Crawford had a lengthy TV career, starting in 1963, but when GEMINI MAN was cancelled, she seems to have retired for good. There may or may not have been a connection.
As for this pilot, it wasn’t that I found it so bad — I’ve tried to watch a lot worse — it’s just that it wasn’t very good.
August 8th, 2015 at 11:47 pm
10. Why not? One of the ways to break into showbiz has been to take the last name of a successful star. Doors would open just in the rare case you might be connected to the star.
August 9th, 2015 at 3:28 am
Being Huggins’daughter provided more entry than what seems to be foolish star hybrid billing. If you want to use Crawford, make the first name Linda or something less iconic. I remember laughing at her name when she showed up in Daddy’s Run for Your Life.
August 9th, 2015 at 9:17 am
Here’s a long quote about Katherine Crawford from a blog about old TV shows and in particular TV GUIDE’s over the years:
From the December 28, 1963 issue —
http://www.itsabouttv.com/2013/12/this-week-in-tv-guide-december-28-1963.html
“Here’s another article on an actress named Katherine Crawford. Only 19, her television career has just started, with appearances on programs such as Kraft Suspense Theatre and Alfred Hitchcock Presents. She’s cute enough, and apparently has talent, but her major advantage may be that she’s was the daughter of Roy Huggins, creator of The Fugitive, The Invaders, and other TV hits. In the title of the article (also anonymously authored), Crawford proclaims, ‘I’ll be acting till I’m 70.’ As you can see from her IMDB profile, her last credit was in the series Gemini Man in 1976. Well, she made it to 32, anyway. Maybe she meant that she’d be acting until she was in the 70s. And by the way, I don’t mean for that comment to be snarky – she had a long resume of work up until then – she’s accomplished a lot more than I have, that’s for sure – and she could well have gone on to a life more productive and more fulfilling than most of us. It’s just that it never ceases to be fascinating how short the lifespan of ‘the next big thing’ can sometimes be.”
August 9th, 2015 at 10:40 am
Huggins never had anything to do The Invaders, other than indirectly, it being QM’s Fugitive replacement on the network, same time and night.
August 9th, 2015 at 11:55 am
Bill
You’ve caught TV GUIDE in a rare (?) error. I know of no connection between THE INVADERS and Roy Huggins either. I have a paperback novelization of the series, but I don’t remember ever watching one, even though it lasted two seasons. We’re way off the subject now, but I wonder how well it holds up today.
August 9th, 2015 at 1:49 pm
Katherine Crawford was born Katherine Huggins. By 15 she was one of the top three junior photographic fashion models in Los Angeles. She wanted to continue to be a model but her father Roy Huggins pushed her towards acting. After a rewarding experience as an actress Katherine change her mind and decided to become an actress.
Katherine was accepted into the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art where she would graduate. She and her father had agreed in the beginning never to work together. She had experienced some success as a guest star when Roy Huggins changed his mind.
He wanted her for the role in KRAFT SUSPENSE THEATRE episode “The End of the World Baby.†A role Tuesday Weld was fighting for. The shooting was a disaster but Hollywood people such as producer Ross Hunter thought highly of her performance.
Successful producer Frank Price casted her for both of his shows, she would later marry Frank Price. Price would go on to a successful career as a studio head that included Universal TV and Columbia Pictures. Katherine remains married to Frank Price.
Source: Katherine Crawford helped supply information to Paul Green’s excellent biography of her father, ROY HUGGINS, CREATOR OF MAVERICK, 77 SUNSET STRIP, THE FUGITIVE AND THE ROCKFORD FILES.
August 9th, 2015 at 3:34 pm
Little more on The Invaders – QM moved The Fugitive’s producer for its first three seasons, Alan Armer to that show. Resulted in The Invaders having the kind of complex stories The Fugitve had but lost in ts last, fourth season. Quality was there but the American public unwilling to buy scifi then.
August 9th, 2015 at 4:41 pm
18. Bill, you are right, TV viewers were ignoring STAR TREK at the same time. The timing was wrong for THE INVADERS in another way. It was 1967 the average American believed in its government and authority figures.
Within a decade or so, failures in Vietnam, Watergate and STAR WARS would have the audience more accepting to SF and conspiracies theories.
August 9th, 2015 at 6:45 pm
Steve, Bill (no last name), Michael, and one and all:
The Invaders “mistake” was not TV Guide‘s but Mitchell Hadley’s – he’s the proprietor of the It’s About TV blog.
Mitch, whom I don’t know personally, is usually receptive to corrections, if they’re posed in a civil manner. As proof, scroll down in the linked post and read how one of his readers set him straight about Katherine Crawford’s marital and career status (do it right now – I’ll wait).
Bill (nln):
If I didn’t make it clear enough the first time, the name Crawford came from Katherine Huggins’s grandmother, the former Maybelle Therina Crawford, who was apparently no relation to the former Lucille LeSueur.
(This from the Roy Huggins biography cited above by Michael.)
Many actors, past and present, have reached into their extended families for name changes when called upon to do so.
Katherine Crawford’s career was phased out by her successful marriage to Frank Price, by her own choice. Check her credits, and you’ll see that her work was not limited to a Universal/Huggins nexus; at one time or another, she worked for just about everybody.
Pardon all the logic above, but sometimes I have to get it out of my system.
Happy Sunday from my cramped condo on South Pulaski Road – which many older Chicagoans still call Crawford Avenue.
*Coincidence? You decide …*
August 9th, 2015 at 7:32 pm
Mike
I got the idea that Mitchell Hadley was taking his information straight from TV GUIDE — this is about the INVADERS error re Huggins. Doesn’t matter a whole lot, but I’d be curious to read that issue of TVG myself.
I wish I’d read further down that same page. I see you there in the comments now. I’m afraid I got bored with the discussion of football, and didn’t even get to Guy Lombardo.
August 9th, 2015 at 7:36 pm
Michael, Comment #17
Which I didn’t even see until now. WordPress has decided not to stop sending me email notices of incoming comments. At the moment I have to go online looking for them.
But thanks for all that detailed information about Katherine Crawford. The overall story is about what I expected. but the details are nice to know.
August 9th, 2015 at 8:39 pm
Mike – your origin of her last name came thu clearly. That’s why i said REGARDLESS OF THE SOURCE which no one would know, it comes across as a joke name – desperate star wannabe. There was an actress in a horror film “Ingrid Garbo” and a would-be actor in a Carl Reiner play names himself “Spencer Gable”. How would you like if some pretentious critic called himself “Mickey Doran”?
August 9th, 2015 at 9:12 pm
Bill, you are the only one that finds anything funny or wrong about the name Katherine Crawford. It is a common name. There was a silent film actress with the same name.
The examples you noted are unusual names. It is a comedic tradition to use absurd unlikely names for characters.
August 9th, 2015 at 9:22 pm
The name would be fine if it wasn’t pre-fab to leech off two actresses who were still performing – and didn’t have a parent in the biz. Call it professional courtesy if nothing else. The intent is clear here, guys.
August 9th, 2015 at 9:30 pm
Michael is right. There’s nothing wrong with the name Katherine Crawford. Bill, if there was a point to be made here, I didn’t see it the first time you brought it up. Let’s end it here.
August 10th, 2015 at 12:43 am
Steve:
My apologies, but I can’t let “Bill” have even a semblance of the last word here. My honor is at stake.
The following is a True Story.
I’ve written it up elsewhere, but its applicability here will, I hope, soon be evident.
Back in the early ’60s, a man named Eugene Weingand went to a Los Angeles court to legally change his name to ‘Peter Lorie‘.
His reason: He bore a resemblance to the real – and still active – Peter Lorre, and wanted to use his altered name to jump-start a possible acting career.
But on the day of the hearing, another party showed up in court to give sworn testimony:
“State your name for the record, please.”
“My name is Peter Lorre – I hope you believe me.”
The hearing ended with ‘Peter Lorie’ remaining Eugene Weingand.
And so the story ended –
– until 1964, when the real Peter Lorre died –
– and Eugene Weingand suddenly became ‘Peter Lorre Jr.’, complete with a fake “biography” claiming to be Lorre’s son by an early German marriage.
Weingand actually got away with this for a while, but the facts caught up with him, and after another name change, he faded away (I believe he is since deceased).
By the way –
– one of Peter Lorre’s last acting appearances was in “The End Of The World, Baby!”, which was the TV debut of Katherine Crawford (see how this all ties together?).
I suppose when “Bill” reads the Weingand story, he’ll take it as a vindication of his own dubious reasoning.
Uh … no.
The lady’s first name, on her birth certificate, is Katherine.
Her grandmother’s maiden name, before she married Roy Huggins’s father, was Crawford.
And that should be that.
One more thing:
When I was still working for a living, some of my co-workers would call me “Mickey-D”; this was about the time that McDonald’s started using that as a trademark.
Make of that what you will …
Again, Steve, my apologies, but I do have principles (of a sort) …