Sat 19 Aug 2017
A TV Series History by Michael Shonk: HOLLYWOOD OFF-BEAT (1952).
Posted by Steve under TV mysteries[10] Comments
by Michael Shonk
HOLLWOOD OFF-BEAT. Syndicated, 1952; United Television Programs. Cast: Melvyn Douglas as Steve Randall. Executive Producer: Marion Parsonnet. Produced by Theodore Lewis.
This series reminds me much of Cases of Eddie Drake as another example where DuMont gets credit when it deserves none. Eddie has been a personal crusade for me for awhile, and I have written about him here four times (here, here, here and here ) and finally at the website “Criminal Element.â€
Hollywood Off-Beat was always a syndicated series. United Television Programs (number two in TV syndication behind Ziv) had “already started a test run in some cities†before its “official opening†March 30, 1952 (Broadcasting 3/17/52). DuMont is credited with airing the series November 17, 1952 through January 30, 1953.
Besides the episode that Steve just reviewed (“The Trial”) there is another episode available to watch on YouTube:
“The Unlucky Three.” Guest Cast: Berry Kroeger, John Griggs and Marion Brash. Original screenplay by Franz Spencer. Directed by M. Milton Schwarz. *** Did the famous actress kill herself or was she murdered?
The script gives a nice peek at behind the scenes of Hollywood filmmaking, as well as a serviceable mystery. Fortunately Douglas doing narration in third person is limited to the opening, with the rest of the episode narration is the typical fourth wall breaking talk to the audience.
The only place I found the series called Steve Randall was in one article in Broadcasting (12/8/52) reporting the series would air on DuMont as Steve Randall at Friday 8-8:30pm.
The article in Broadcasting (3/17/52) named Rip Van Ronkle (Destination Moon) as writer and Marion Parsonnet (Gilda) as producer. It reported the series filmed its background shots in documentary style in Los Angeles and the rest of the series in Parsonnet Studios (according to screen credit Long Island NY).
Both Broadcasting and Billboard always called Hollywood Offbeat a syndicated series. The ARP ratings printed in Billboard had it as a “Non-Network†TV Film Drama series. Hollywood Offbeat got honorable mention in poll for popular non-network film drama series (Billboard, 9/6/52). The press listed the series as Hollywood Offbeat but the on air screen title spelled it Hollywood Off-Beat.
Now about the confusion over its time on CBS, the answer can be found in Billboard (9/13/52). The trade paper was reporting on the networks problems with “clearance†– number of local affiliates that would carry the network program.
The makers of Serutan owned the CBS Saturday at 10:30 to 11 pm slot. The series CBS carried was Battle of the Ages that only 12 CBS stations aired. CBS could not find a series that Serutan wanted. Serutan decided it wanted Hollywood Offbeat. CBS TV Films, CBS syndicated side, negotiated with UTP for a temporary deal for the series to appear on the CBS network. The series had only 13 episodes and it gave CBS time to find another series that more affiliates would carry and would make advertiser Serutan happy.
It is hard to actually know what a true DuMont series is as the network often used syndicated shows to fill its schedule. CBS TV Films’ Cases of Eddie Drake and UTP’s Hollywood Off-Beat are just two examples of series misremembered by history.
August 21st, 2017 at 9:43 pm
I love the idea of Douglas as a private eye. After all he did play Joel Glass, the Lone Wolf, and Arsene Lupin. Like the title.
August 21st, 2017 at 11:15 pm
I agree. Douglas does just fine in the two episodes I’ve seen. At first I thought he might be a little too old to be playing a PI, but when I looked him up and found out that he was only 50 years old, I changed my mind. After all Buddy Ebsen was 65 when he started playing Barnaby Jones, and that lasted for eight years.
August 22nd, 2017 at 11:46 am
Douglas certainly fit one of the more common types of TV PIs in the fifties. The older white man, alone on the mean streets. Guys like Ralph Bellamy, William Gargan, Lloyd Nolan, Lee Tracy, and Ray Milland all blend together until it is hard to tell the series apart.
August 22nd, 2017 at 2:11 pm
Who would be the first of the younger hipper PIs, Richard Diamond?
August 22nd, 2017 at 5:38 pm
It is hard to say who was the first anything in television because there was so much experimental and regional programs before the networks began in 1946. The first network TV PI is credited to Martin Kane, who didn’t get young until 1954 with Mark Stevens.
Don Haggerty (Eddie Drake) with his hip three wheel car and working for TV network first shrink debuted in syndication in 1951.
Young Richard Hart played Ellery Queen in 1950.
David Janssen as Richard Diamond in 1957 could qualify. But the hip PI that made it cool to be a “dick” was Craig Stevens as Peter Gunn in 1958.
August 22nd, 2017 at 6:11 pm
Richard Diamond may have come along the year before, but you’re right. It was Peter Gunn who broke the mold for sure.
August 22nd, 2017 at 10:29 pm
Phil Carey’s Marlowe was relatively young as was McGavin’s Mike Hammer who contributed a bit to Diamond and Gunn. The youthful eye took off with Diamond, Gunn, and a much bigger hit audience wise 77 SUNSET STRIP.
August 22nd, 2017 at 11:57 pm
The image of the PI had been established by books, films and radio. Many of early TV was adapted from radio, even at times using the same scripts. Westerns with its sheriffs and anthology series with its mystery characters such as Dick Powell’s Dante dominated the TV schedule until 1959 when the PI and cop show took over the schedule and PIs like Peter Gunn, Johnny Staccato and others changed TV with its urban adventure to a jazz beat.
By the 60s the baby boomers were becoming the main part of the mass audience and the entertainment world was turning its attention to the young. Perry Mason would talk down to us like our parents but WB had plenty of hip young PIs that we could identify with.
The type of dialog in HOLLYWOOD OFF-BEAT opening is so dated that even using it as satire has been worn out. The PI pulp influence to dialog would not last much longer. By the 60s dialog became just as unintentionally funny as Hollywood dialog tried to reach young people.
August 25th, 2017 at 1:03 pm
And all the networks were leaving odd “holes’ in their primetime feeds up through the early ’70s, hence in part the number of syndicated dramatic half-hours, particularly, in US television’s first decade+. (WAIT TILL YOUR FATHER GETS HOME, the Hanna-Barbera cartoon ripoff of ALL IN THE FAMILY, was syndicated in a sweetheart deal with NBC that slotted it at 10:30p Sunday nights ET/PT on many stations, for example.) And the same somewhat lazy distinctions made or unmade certainly fog up discussions of the programming associated with the Paramount Television Network of the early ’50s, the NTA Film Network of the latter ’50s and earliest ’60s, and certainly the public networks in the US, beginning with NET and its forced successor, PBS, as well as DuMont.
August 25th, 2017 at 3:23 pm
TV history is one of my favorite subjects. The fifties was so wild in the creation of TV stations the FCC had to put a freeze on new stations for a few years. There was more demand for content than the advertising agencies, networks, independent studios and late to the game major studios could make. Syndication exploded and even CBS (CBS TV-Film) and NBC (California National Productions) got involved producing shows for local unaffiliated stations. As Todd noted there has been attempts from the beginning to create cable networks and broadcast networks.
Todd mentioned the odd holes in the schedules. In the 1970s the FCC created the prime access rule. The networks were thought to have too much control over content so they were stripped of a half-hour of prime time. This was to give the local stations and syndicators a chance to create programs different from the networks. What happened instead the 7:30pm (Eastern) has become a ghetto of game shows, as syndicated shows such as SPACE 1999 failed. And local affiliates still pre-empted the network shows for syndicated series.
Too often the syndication programmer such as ZIV, UTP, CBS TV-Film, Official, CNP, and more are forgotten. Syndication market has been important to the history of TV. The original STAR TREK was a failure on NBC. Success for ST came in syndicated reruns. People forget that STAR TREK NEXT GENERATION was syndicated during the content boom from the new success of cable TV. The other ST series were used to promote Paramount TV outside the Big 3 networks.
Part of the problem of what is a network series and what is not during the fifties is how wild and uncharted the times were. Network series would appear in much of the country and the network schedules are easy to find. Harder to find are the local and regional programs or syndicated series that appeared in a few markets.
How crazy was early TV? There is a radio program from 1949 called THE JOHNSON FAMILY. This series was written, produced and all the parts voiced by Jimmy Scribner (an expert in the black dialects and on TV performed in blackface). The episode featured a black family named Johnsons who lived in the small southern town of Chickazola. Brother Johnson buys a TV station and expects to make lots of money from advertisers. The episode is on YouTube but I will spoiled the ending here to finally get to the point. Because he is going to get rich by buying a TV station Brother Johnson is welcomed home by his estranged wife and her brother, but when he goes to enjoy the first day of his TV station he is told there is a problem. There were no TV sets in Chickazola.