Tue 20 Dec 2011
TV REVIEW AND HISTORY – THE FILES OF JEFFREY JONES, by Michael Shonk.
Posted by Steve under Reviews , TV mysteries[14] Comments
by Michael Shonk.
The Files of Jeffrey Jones. CBS Television Film Sales. Lindsley Parsons Productions. Syndicated, 1952. 39 episodes x 30 minutes. CAST: Don Haggerty as Jeffrey Jones, Tristran Coffin as Lt. Doyle, Gloria Henry as Michelle “Mike†Malone, Vince Barnett as Joe.
The following episode can be viewed at TV4u.com at this link. Scroll down and click on Files of Jeffrey Jones. Yes, that is a picture from Cases of Eddie Drake. Poor Jeff, when will people realize he is his own man?
“Killer Bait.†Written by Robert Raynor and Warren Douglas. Directed by Lew Landers.
We open on a title card with a painting of a city at night. The episode title is featured larger and above “from the files of JEFFREY JONES.†The copyright is 1952. Playing over this is the worst theme music in television history.
PI Jeffrey Jones arrives at his “office,†a Hollywood bistro called The Golden Bubble. Jeff, who had been studying for a law school exam, learns from the bartender (Frank Sully) everyone wants him to drop his client, a client Jeff did not know he had.
There is a shipment of counterfeit one hundred dollar bills missing that is upsetting cops and mobsters alike. Jeff is beaten up by the bad guys, yelled at by Lt Doyle, and discovers two murder victims, all before he meets his “client,†who denies hiring Jeff.
The client is framed for one of the murders. Jeff stays one step ahead of the cops as he eliminates suspect after suspect until he finds the killer in time for the final shoot out.
You could see Haggerty was having fun with the smart aleck PI Jeffrey Jones. There were two femme fatales (played by two bad actresses), a couple of goons from Kansas City, an OK mystery driven by fistfights, and a script with a sense of humor.
When the cops find Jeff in a locked closet recovering from his latest beating, Doyle asks him what he is doing there. Jeff replies, “Playing hide and seek.â€
The production values were above average for the time. Short scenes helped speed the pace of the episode, but the scenes themselves were too static, with director Lew Landers holding too long on each shot.
If you are willing to forgive the limitation of the times, this is an entertaining TV PI show.
THE FILES OF JEFFREY JONES began shooting April 17, 1952 (Broadcasting, April 14,1952). While the exact date of when Jeffrey appeared on TV is still unknown, it was no later than June 7, 1952.
The series was a hit from almost the beginning. According to a CBS Television Film Sales ad in Broadcasting (February 23, 1953), in less than eight months on the air the series was in 25 markets and in Telepulse’s Top Five ratings for syndicated film shows.
The series took place in Hollywood (not New York as many claim today). The episode “Killer Bait†was missing two cast members, Michelle “Mike†Malone, a newspaper reporter played by Gloria Henry and Jeff’s friend Joe, played by Vince Barnett. Both actors were listed as cast members in the trades’ news reports and series’ ads (Billboard and Broadcast).
Those who remember my earlier reviews of The Cases of Eddie Drake (links below), watched the episode “Shoot The Works†(link below) and read the two shows’ credits, now know Jeffrey was not produced by the same people who did Cases of Eddie Drake as is believed today.
The series have only two things in common, star Don Haggerty and CBS Television Film Sales. So why do so many reference books and sites have this wrong?
According to Broadcasting (February 25, 1952 and April 14, 1952), CBS TV Film Sales sold both series to sponsor Crawford Clothes Inc (via Al Paul Lefton Co. New York) to air on DuMont’s New York station WABD.
Eddie Drake would start March 6, 1952 and run its 13 episodes. Once Eddie was done, Jeffrey Jones took over the time slot (on June 7, 1952). Jeffrey was originally scheduled to do 26 episodes but at some point expanded to 39. The two series would continue to be linked as CBS sometimes sold them together as a package to stations (Billboard, May 21, 1955).
Sadly, Files of Jeffrey Jones and Cases of Eddie Drake will always be connected because both starred one of television’s first original stars.
In an article in Broadcasting (September 13, 1954) about residuals and early television, “But TV has created its own stars, as Mr. Haggerty can testify. In 1948, shortly after he appeared in the live NBC-TV Mr. and Mrs. North, first play televised in New York, he was starred in CBS-TV Cases of Eddie Drake, second TV series filmed. However, both Eddie Drake and the first 26 segments of Jeffrey Jones were filmed prior to the SAG agreement date and as one of TV’s newest stars, Mr. Haggerty was unable to negotiate any residual deal himself.â€
The same article had Haggerty explain why so many series stars agreed to promote the sponsor’s product during the show’s commercial break, “the star makes more money from the commercials than from the program.â€
The Files of Jeffrey Jones was still available from CBS for syndication in 1963 (Broadcasting, March 25, 1963). Why isn’t this series on DVD?
OF ADDITIONAL INTEREST:
Earlier reviews of The Cases of Eddie Drake:
https://mysteryfile.com/blog/?p=10405
https://mysteryfile.com/blog/?p=10427
https://mysteryfile.com/blog/?p=12204
The Eddie Drake episode “Shoot The Works†can be seen here.
December 21st, 2011 at 12:53 am
Gloria Henry had a fairly good career before and after Jeffrey Jones. She is still alive, and I would bet available to set any record straight.
December 21st, 2011 at 11:30 am
Barry, I agree, Gloria Henry could add a great deal of background and stories about JEFFREY JONES. If I was able to do a book featuring the TV Detectives of early television she would be on my list to interview (as would EDDIE’s Patricia Morison).
But “Killer Bait” answered all of the questions about JEFFREY’s past. I know the internet and research books say this series was located in New York, but I believe Jeffrey when he says his office is in a “Hollywood bistro.” This episode confirms he was going to law school and worked as a PI (made $50 a day plus expenses). We know the writers, directors, producers, and production companies for EDDIE and JEFFREY are not the same. The copyright on the episode says 1952 not 1954.
I really do hope everyone checks it out for themselves. EDDIE’s available episode is average, but I enjoyed JEFFREY’s “Killer Bait.”
December 21st, 2011 at 2:33 pm
Michael, I have to hand it to you: you have a real knack for tracking down some of early television’s most obscure crime shows. It is very hard to find much of anything at all about “Jeffrey Jones” in TV crime books, and “Total Television” has just two sentences, including one that refers to Jones as a “New York private eye.” Like you, I can’t think of any supportable reason NOT to believe that Jeffrey is being literal when he references his “Hollywood bistro” office, though I do wonder about that dockside view of the bridge and cityscape under the opening and closing credits. I don’t think I was impressed with this show as you were, but a couple of things I did find interesting: one, that Jones is a PI aspiring the be a lawyer, which at least seems anomalous, and two, some of the dialogue is pretty snappy, like the exchange between Jones and Sally before she meets her unfortunate end. My only other comment is that Haggerty may not have been making a fortune playing PIs during the early days of TV, but between this show and Eddie Drake, he sure got to drive some nice cars.
December 21st, 2011 at 5:20 pm
David, as I tend to care more about the script than the cast. So, snappy dialog gets me every time, even when delivered by as bad an actress as the woman who played Sally.
December 21st, 2011 at 7:41 pm
There are quite a few other older TV crime shows available on that site with the JEFFREY JONES episode. I haven’t investigated them all, but the one that starts up automatically is an episode of the relatively recent ACAPULCO H.E.A.T. (1993).
I don’t know what H.E.A.T. stands for, if anything, but I can tell you, I’d rather watch an evening of JEFFREY JONES programs than 10 to 15 minutes of ACAPULCO H.E.A.T.
Which is as long as I stayed with it. Curiosity got the better of me!
Even a boatload of girls in bikinis couldn’t get me to watch any further. The sets on the JEFFREY JONES show may have been primitive, but the actors did what they were supposed to do, and that is to know how to say their lines.
Even the girl who played Sally. Maybe it was the lines she was given to say, but I thought her part was way too short!
December 22nd, 2011 at 8:27 am
Steve, I too could live with Acapulco HEAT, but the website is an incredible find, for which I thank Michael for bringing it to my attention.
December 22nd, 2011 at 11:31 am
YUP, the website is a real winner- especially, as we cannot watch anything on hulu, for some goofy legal reasons.
Thanks for the link !
The Doc
December 22nd, 2011 at 12:01 pm
Thanks, David, but enjoy the website while you can. When the evil S.O.P.A. act becomes law, sites like these will have to hide or be removed by the government. Granted this site pushes its luck with a few series available on DVD, but most of what it has would never be seen any other way.
The site belongs to a group (most famous is YouTube) that offer the last hope of survival with the viewing public for such series as the 1961’s BOB NEWHART SHOW.
Shows with too limited appeal for a DVD to make a profit, shows with too confusing copyright issues that no one wants to risk showing it, these shows make up much of television past that is fading away, leaving us with books and databases full of misinformation and hearsay.
Thankfully, the Paley Center, Museum of Broadcasting, and UCLA Film-TV Archives are saving the past and making them available for researchers to view.
But is that enough when the public forgets and finally few if anyone cares?
And it is not just obscure black & white shows such as FILES OF JEFFREY JONES or BOB NEWHART SHOW, it is color episodes of series such as (recently reviewed) DELPHI BUREAU, and even series from the 80’s (ABC’s MURPHY’S LAW), 90’s (OVER MY DEAD BODY), and 00’s (UPN series).
There needs to be a place of easy access for the creative work of the past to survive and continue to entertain the public.
December 22nd, 2011 at 12:02 pm
Thanks Doc, glad you enjoyed the site. (Your post arrived while I was typing the epic long comment #8.)
December 22nd, 2011 at 1:26 pm
After I read this yesterday, I went home and hit my TV Guide cache.
I couldn’t come up with anything at the first run level that hasn’t already been said by others, but I do have a thing or two to mention.
– Back in 1965, Chicago got its first UHF TV station: WCIU-TV, channel 26.
This was, to put it mildly, a small-time operation. WCIU’s offices and studios were crammed into very small space in the Board of Trade Building in the south Loop, the worst possible location for a broadcast facility imaginable.
At this point, most tv sets didn’t pick up UHF; you had to buy a converter to get the new station (the way we all had to when digital came in a few years back). WCIU’s broadcast day would start around 4 pm and end around midnight (or earlier; it depended on how much they had to show that night). The operating budget was minimal, limiting ch26 to home-made talking head shows, many in either Spanish or Polish (both big selling points in Chicago), and whatever syndicated fare was available – and affordable. In the ’60s, this meant wrestling (three times a week in prime time), Poverty-Row movies (many so obscure I doubt I’d find them in IMDb), and early ’50s series that hadn’t been seen in years.
Like The Files Of Jeffrey Jones, which held down prime time slots on Ch26 well into 1966-67.
This was when my family got a UHF-equipped set – Channel 32, owned by the Chicago Sun-Times, went on the air with a far bigger bankroll in January ’66 – and we got to see the new tech for ourselves. UHF tuners were like radios back then; you had to land squarely on the frequency or you got snow. Ch26 had by far the weakest signal in the Chicagoland area, so if there was something there you wanted to see, you really had to want to see it.
In our family, this meant the three wrestling shows (all imported from other cities) and the occasional B-western/cop meller. Once in a while we’d look at the old shows, and that’s when I got a very brief look at Jeffery Jones. This was about 1966. I was in high school, with all the worldliness and sophistication that implies; I had seen the slick network shows with their studio production values, so my brother and I would point and laugh at scenes that always seemed to take place in the same room (furniture moved around to indicate a different location), and a camera that never moved so everybody was always in the shot, and fight scenes where punches that missed by at least a foot nevertheless knocked a guy across the room, and like that there.
I know I’m exaggerating here; if I saw the same show today I’d be marveling at what they were doing with almost no money.
So let’s ignore the snotty kid that was ’66 me. I looked at the Jeffrey Jones episode at the link, and here’s what I noticed:
– The closing credits had a lot of names I recognized from the Bowery Boys movies I grew up watching. 1952 was aproximately the period when Monogram was transitioning into Allied Artists, which makes me wonder: might it be possible that Monogram was thinking of getting into filmed tv? I could imagine The Bowery Boys making the switch instead of staying in the rapidly drying-up B-feature market. Remembering that the tv series of Gene Autry, Roy Rogers, Hopalong Cassidy, and The Cisco Kid were essentially continuations of movie series can’t be a coincidence.
Unless of course, I’m wrong.
– since no one else has mentioned it …
… Gloria Henry is best remembered as Dennis The Menace‘s mother in the ’60s sitcom.
Somewhere else I recalled that Hugh Beaumont (aka Beaver’s dad) played a lot of tough characters, good and bad guys both, in ’40s-’50s crime flicks. I sometimes wonder why so many movie tough guys (and gals) turned sweetly funny as they got older.
Or maybe that was the reason.
– My rusty memory also seems to recall Don Haggerty bulking up in his later years and playing older sidekicks to younger heroes.
One of the last things I remember seeing Haggerty in was a made-for-tv movie from about 1970 called The Resurrection Of Zachary Wheeler, where he was sidekick to an intrepid TV reporter played by Leslie Nielsen (completely serious here). I’ve got this one at home on a dollar-store DVD; I’ll give it a look when I get home.
– To finish:
Over the years, WCIU-ch26 went through a number of changes in station management and philosophy. At diffeerent times it ran business news during the day and all foreign-language programs at night.This was after public pressure forced them to remove the imported tapes of Mexican bullfights that had for a while been the biggest draw on the station; telenovelas were the immediate replacement. Eventually, WCIU was sold to its current management, which ultimately turned it into the cradle of MEtv ….
…. but that, as Mr. Kipling says, is another story.
December 22nd, 2011 at 2:30 pm
Mike, thanks for sharing with us your past with Jeff, I enjoyed reading it.
Your comment about Monogram studios lead me to visit IMDb and look up the man behind this series. Lindsley Parsons had been involved with the production of films since the 1930s. He would go on to produce many films for Monogram and then Allied Artists. According to IMDb, he also produced TV series THE WHISTLER and GRAY GHOST.
December 22nd, 2011 at 2:30 pm
Mike, lots of really interesting information about local Chicago TV — thanks. Regarding your analysis of “Jeffrey Jones,” I think that is what historians do — transend contemporary sensibilities to view the artifact in the context of its time, which isn’t always easy. Switching gears, The SOPA Michael refers to is the Stop Online Piracy Act, and it will be a sad day indeed if it means the end of websites like TVS’s Detectives.
May 27th, 2013 at 9:20 am
I would like to know if this series was based on a book. If so who was the author.
thanks
May 27th, 2013 at 11:24 am
#13. Mary no, the series was not based on a book.