Mon 16 Apr 2012
A TV Series Review by Michael Shonk: CITY OF ANGELS (1976).
Posted by Steve under Reviews , TV mysteries[20] Comments
CITY OF ANGELS. NBC / Universal, 1976. Roy Huggins Public Art Production. Cast: Wayne Rogers as Jake Axminster, Elaine Joyce as Marsha Finch, Philip Sterling as Michael Brimm, Clifton James as Lt. Quint. Created by Stephen Cannell and Roy Huggins. Executive Producer: Jo Swerling Jr.
From the opening theme to the star and the writing, City of Angels tried to give us a believable 30’s hardboiled PI and occasionally succeeded, as in “The November Plan,” but more often failed.
For example, listen to Oscar winner Nelson Riddle’s theme here.
A nice theme but it fails to establish the 1930’s setting or mood. The soundtrack made heavy use of the Universal sound library, so far too often we heard generic background music that also failed to fit the time period. Though in a couple of episodes such as “Say Goodbye to Yesterday” the background music was a positive asset to the story.
The writers tried to take advantage of the volatile period of American history that was the 1930s. To establish setting the series often name-dropped (Harry Cohn of Superior Pictures aka Columbia Pictures) and used the politics of the period as the backdrop for the drama. But in the end the episodes were typical TV mysteries, rushed from lack of production time with clunky dialog, plot holes and often lacking in logic.
Much like Philip Marlowe, Jake spent much of his time dealing with the problems of the rich. Jake began as a mercenary Sam Spade wannabe who enjoyed the thrill of fighting the system, then during the series changed into a hard luck James Rockford type.
Jake had only two friends in the world. Marsha, who he let use his outer office rent-free for her switchboard service used by prostitutes, and Mike, his attorney with an office across the hall. He either was beat up by or bribed his police contact Lt. Quint.
To be a hardboiled PI, a character that is often unlikable, you need an actor with certain type of appeal. Actors such as Bogart, Mitchum, Garner and Janssen could make you like the character no matter how the character behaved. Wayne Rogers never pulled it off despite coming close in “The November Plan.”
The costumes, transportation, and locations were generally a plus, but by the end of the series it seemed as if they were running out of 1930s-like exterior locations.
From the beginning, Roy Huggins was credited as producer with Philip DeGuere, Jr. as executive story consultant until the episode “A Sudden Silence.” The credits for the rest of the series episodes changed to Philip DeGuere, Jr. and William F. Phillips as the producers instead of Huggins. Perhaps it is time to consider the influence of the late Philip DeGuere, Jr. (Simon and Simon) on the series.
City of Angels aired Tuesday at 10pm opposite ABC’s Marcus Welby (or Family in March/April) and CBS’s Switch. The ratings began well but faded fast.
EPISODE GUIDE:
“The November Plan.” Part 1 (2/3/76), Part Two (2/10/76), Part Three (2/17/76). Teleplay by Stephen J. Cannell. Story by Roy Huggins and Stephen J. Cannell. Directed by Don Medford. Guest Cast: Diane Ladd, Meredith Baxter Birney, Laurence Luckinbill, Lloyd Nolan, Dorothy Malone, Jack Kruschen, Steve Kanaly * Jake’s client has been framed for murder of her boyfriend after they witness a fight at a formal party. Jake discovers the disappearance of a Pulitzer prized reporter ties into the murder and involves some of the most powerful corrupt people in Los Angeles. Very loosely based on a real event.
“The Parting Shot.” (2/24/76). Teleplay by Philip DeGuere Jr. Story by John Thomas James (Roy Huggins). Directed by Sigmund Neufeld Jr. Guest Cast: Donna Mills, Corinne Michaels, Stefan Gerasch * Rich man hires Jake to discover if his wife is cheating on him. Before Jake finds out anything his client is shot and in a coma. The man assumed to be the wife’s lover is arrested. The daughter who hates her step-mom likes Jake. The solution to the shooting reminds one of John Dickson Carr.
“A Lonely Way To Die.” (3/2/76). Written and Directed by Douglas Heyes. Guest Cast: Belinda J. Montgomery, William Smith, Lynn Carlin * A predictable mystery features a popular ex-governor who wants to be President but has a secret. His rebellious daughter blames him for her mother’s mental problems. Jake gets involved when a girl he was trying to help turns up dead. The ending wants to be cynical but instead was a lame cop out.
“The House on Orange Grove Avenue.” (3/16/76). Teleplay by Stephen & Elinor Karpf. Story by John Thomas James. Directed by Robert Douglas. Guest Cast: Susan Howard, Susan Sullivan, Lara Parker * Jake is hired by two sisters publicly believed to have murdered one’s husband and his mistress seven years ago. The episode drowns in false cynicism with a weak pointless ending.
“Palm Springs Answer.” (3/23/76). Teleplay by Merwin Gerard. Story by John Thomas James. Directed by Allen Reisner. Guest Cast: Signe Hasso, Terry Kiser, George Gaynes * Sweet naïve mother hires Jake to find her good girl daughter, who is really a dancer with information about a murder with mob connections.
“The Losers.” (4/6/76). Teleplay by Gloryette Clark & John Thomas James. Story by John Thomas James. Directed by Barry Shear. Guest Cast: Marcia Strassman, Brett Halsey, Broderick Crawford * Loyal remake of Roy Huggins’ script for the TV Movie The Outsider minus the LSD subplot and visits to the L.A. nightclub scene (reviewed here on this blog). Jake is hired by a rich businessman to follow a girl he claims may be stealing from him.
“A Sudden Silence.” (4/13/76). Teleplay by Douglas Heyes. Story by Roy Huggins (not John Thomas James). Directed by Douglas Heyes. Guest Cast: Darleen Carr, Joel Fabian, Edward Winter * Young headstrong daughter of a rich conservative is involved with the anti-fascist movement growing on her college campus. She hires Jake to discover who is following her. Her boyfriend is murdered and the politics of the 30s plays a major role in the plot.
“The Castle of Dreams.” (4/20/76). Teleplay by Stephen J. Cannell. Story By Stephen J. Cannell and Philip DeGuere Jr. Directed by Robert Douglas. Guest Cast: James Luisi Veronica Hamel, Jack Kruschen * Marsha witnesses the kidnapping of one of her call girls who had just witnessed a murder. Jake goes nuts when Marsha is arrested and Quint hides her from lawyer Mike Brimm and Jake. This episode was more interested in establishing the relationship between the regulars than the mystery.
“Say Goodbye To Yesterday.”(5/4/76). Teleplay by Gloryette Clark. Story by John Thomas James. Directed by Jerry London. Guest Cast: G.D. Spradlin, Cassie Yates, Jack Colvin * A rich oil tycoon and his wife are in love. When she disappears, Jake is hired to find her. The trail leads to a Chinese Madame in Portland, a nightclub singer, a nun, and a murder Jake will solve for Quint.
“The Bloodshot Eye.” (5/11/76). Written by Philip DeGuere, Jr. Directed by Hy Averback. Guest Cast: Geoffrey Lewis, Charles Tyner, Robert Donner * Insurance agency hires Jake to confirm the reports of a death of a man in New Mexico. Jake ends up caught up in the corruption of a small New Mexico town.
“Match Point.” (5/18/76). Written by Richard Boeth. Directed by Ralph Senensky. Guest Cast: Dana Wynter, Renee Jarrett, Victor Holchak * A man is killed during a tennis tournament where Jake provided security. The political changes in Europe play an important role.
The series is currently not available on official DVD or download. Source of episodes: Thomas Film Classics
April 16th, 2012 at 2:40 pm
Michael
I agree with you that “The November Plan,” the three-part story that began the series was very very good. This is one show that I tried to be sure I never missed, and I was sorry to see it cancelled. You are probably right that the series went downhill as it went along, but back then I didn’t mind.
I do remember watching SWITCH, but I must have switched to that myself after ANGELS had gone. Times were tough back in 1976 and the Dark Ages before VCRs and Tivo’s came along.
— Steve
PS. You are also right about the opening theme music. Totally wrong.
April 16th, 2012 at 3:24 pm
I watched every episode of this one. I liked it in spite of its flaws, and I had hoped it would stick around for a while.
April 16th, 2012 at 4:59 pm
Besides a good story to start off with, I think there was another reason for the the high ratings at the beginning. This was Wayne Rogers’ first series after he left M*A*S*H, and he was at the height of his popularity.
April 16th, 2012 at 6:21 pm
#3. Steve, perhaps. If so they did not like him as Jake.
Ratings (“Broadcasting”)
Feb. 3 Pt 1: 28.7 rating and a 50 share
Feb 10 Pt. 2: 18.3 rating and a 31 share
And the drop continued.
April 16th, 2012 at 6:23 pm
I think we (and critics) have a tendency to want to like shows set in the past, because after all, it does speak to a certain amount of ambition on the part of the producers. Mad Men obviously is an example of this done very well; City of Angels, in my opinion, not so well.
As I’m sure everyone who visits this site knows, this was tried several other times with crimes dramas. I can think of Banyon, also set in the 1930s, starring Robert Forster, which ran for four months on NBC; Private Eye, also running for four months on NBC, which was created by Miami Vice’s Anthony Yerkovich and set in 50s LA; Michael Mann’s great Crime Story, set in the early 60s in Chicago and Las Vegas; Showtime’s retro-noir series Fallen Angels; and HBO’s Philip Marlowe, Private Eye, also set in 30s LA.
I see that Huggins took a lot of story credits on City of Angels, sometimes as himself and sometimes as John Thomas James (would be curious to know why the difference), which was always a source of friction between him and his writers.
TV Guide reported in 1976 that Rogers was paid $25,000 an episode for this show, and of course blamed the writers for the cancellation (“Angels is a classic example of convoluted, disconnected, bad storytelling,” he is reported to have said). A Rogers associate tells TV Guide that “Wayne actually tore up Angels scripts while they were shooting on the set and rewrote them himself. He hated the material they gave him.”
Of course it is never the star’s fault. If Rogers was so good at rewrites, how come the show got bounced so quickly?
April 16th, 2012 at 7:01 pm
As Bill Crider said in #2, mystery fans liked it despite its flaws.
Flaw one was Rogers. Even in “The November Plan” (which I found good but disappointing compared to how I remembered it), Rogers was terrible in the scene where he tells his client to make a run for Mexico. Granted it was a badly written scene but I pictured TV PI’s Garner and Janssen doing that same scene and either could have made it work.
Remember how Bogart played Spade as on the edge of crazy? The writers tried that with Jake, watching Rogers overact yelling he was crazy, he was nuts…was embarrassing. Boys, show it, don’t say it.
The scripts did not help. “November Plan” was good and established time well, but the plot that was the backdrop of the story was much more interesting and scary than this episode showed.
Looking back and comparing Huggins and Cannell, I find Huggins leaned heavily on wiseass dialog for humor while Cannell had a thing for visual gags that are without logic but move fast enough you don’t care (scene in “The November Plan” with repo man).
Why they focused on the politics and not the social problems of the era I don’t know. L.A. from the beginning of the 20th Century was created to be a white man’s paradise. I don’t remember one Latino in the series, only two blacks (shoeshine man and a bodyguard) and only two homeless people (two hobos in New Mexico).
Huggins response to Rogers claim the scripts were bad was Rogers was miscast. They both were right.
Wikipedia page for this series has a link to Rogers comments in “People” magazine. Read it and you find an unprofessional actor with no respect for television nor ambition to succeed in it.
April 16th, 2012 at 7:12 pm
#5. David, the on the air credits for this series is a mystery all to itself. Why the change in producers in mid-season? Did Huggins bail? Why did Huggins use John Thomas James for some stories and Roy Huggins for others? The name of Stephen J. Cannell was limited to created by and the writer credits for two episodes (both he shared). What was his involvement with the series? What was the involvement of Philip DeGuere, Jr.?
April 16th, 2012 at 7:16 pm
I have an interview with exec producer Jo Swerling, Jr about this series which I am trying to develop into an academic journal article.
My interview with Cannell was supposed to take place after his book tour. Unfortunately, and too soon, he died.
I am still trying to get Wayne Rogers on the record about this show but reportedly really hated it.
How is the DVD quality of Thomas’s releases? I have a really crappy version from when the show aired on A&E (when that channel actually aired quality programs). I also contacted Mill Creek, the company who is releasing Cannell shows but no one will say if COA is a potential release.
April 16th, 2012 at 8:11 pm
The DVD’s were from airings on KTTV-TV (LA), WAGA (Atlanta) and other unknown sources. The picture quality is not studio released but I’d call it an 8 out of 10. Two problems, there were some breaks in film (or tape) but you don’t miss anything and since KTTV is not the NBC station in Los Angeles my guess is these are from syndicated rerun and as such may have been slightly edited.
Having said that, it is better than crappy.
Don’t forget to try and talk to the supporting cast. Elaine Joyce, and Clifton James. They might give you some different POV.
Good luck.
April 16th, 2012 at 10:56 pm
It is clear the series began a bit better than it finished but from the beginning I felt the City of Angels channeled Chinatown, too well, but not well enough.
April 16th, 2012 at 11:16 pm
The main reason I remember this show is because of inconvenience. I used to have a post office box at the main Glendale, CA Post Office (built in the 30s by the WPA). They were filming there one day and I could not get in to get to my PO Box!
April 17th, 2012 at 12:16 am
Stan Burns, as someone who lived in Hollywood and the Valley for a quarter of a century, I understand your pain.
April 17th, 2012 at 12:20 am
10. Barry, it is not unusual for this year’s hit movie to “inspire” a TV series the following series. Yes, CHINATOWN was an “inspiration.” No doubt NBC was really hoping for a similar hit.
April 17th, 2012 at 8:03 am
Jon Abbott’s “Stephen J. Cannell Television Productions” from McFarland includes a chapter on this series that is actually accessible online:
http://books.google.com/books?id=Dc0TF0GHAmAC&q=%22city+of+angels%22#v=snippet&q=%22city%20of%20angels%22&f=false
One very good point Abbott makes is that Rogers’s Axminster was one of the few TV private eyes without a friend at the local police HQ (rather, the Lieutenant Quint character was “thuggish and corrupt”).
While this was a film noir trope taken from the hardboiled stories of Chandler and Marlowe, TV private-eye shows for some reason (network reluctance to depict the cop as the bad guy?) commonly cheated here: the relationship between PI’s like Harry Orwell, Rockford, and Peter Gunn and their contacts on the force may have been ostensibly fractious, but in fact the characters were quite fond and respectful of each other. There is a great scene in Harry O where Orwell and Trench discuss this very friction between organization men (cops) and lone wolves (private eyes).
For Brian Sheridan: I don’t know if your interest in Cannell is limited to City of Angels, but we at the Paley Center do have a 1999 one-on-one interview with him in which he discusses the arc of his career, including his relationships with Huggins and Jack Webb, though from what I gather he does not talk about COA.
April 17th, 2012 at 8:53 am
Some truly fascinating information here, thanks very much. I saw this in the 80s (dubbed into Italian actually) and have quite fond memories of it, epsecially those episodes handled by Douglas Heyes, who seems still to be seriously underrated. Would love to see it again.
Cheers,
Sergio
April 17th, 2012 at 10:30 am
#14. David, I read that chapter and thought he gave Cannell way too much credit for this show.
As for Quint the crooked cop, in both of Cannell’s scripts (“The November Plan” and “The Castle of Dreams”) Jake has contact with a helpful Bill Parker. Parker was the cop most credited for “cleaning up” the L.A. police force in real life. There is a wonderful book (soon to become a TNT TV series) called L.A. NOIR THE STRUGGLE FOR THE SOUL OF AMERICA’S MOST SEDUCTIVE CITY that tells the story of Bill Parker and Mickey Cohen.
I wondered why Jake chose to bribe and pay off his contact when there were honest ones to help. In “The November Plan” Jake tells Parker, that he knew where he stood with Quint, but the thought of an honest cop scared him half to death.
You could guess where the network held the series writers back from showing how corrupt the city was then (the embarrassing opening narration screams NBC standards & practices).
The point of Quint was Jake trusted no one and was more comfortable with a honest crooked cop than an honest one that could be lying to him.
But I always wondered why Jake could not find a nice crooked cop who did not beat him and throw him in jail.
April 17th, 2012 at 10:46 am
#15. Sergio, I fondly remember Heyes’ BARBARY COAST as well as his work on MAVERICK. YouTube has complete episodes of his series BEARCATS with Rod Taylor.
I was disappointed in “A Lonely Way To Die.” “A Sudden Silence” (with one of my favorite actresses of the period Darleen Carr) was a nice mystery with a political backdrop that made it feel like the 1950s rather that the 1930s. The facts about the anti-fascist organization were true but one minor plot point shoved it into the 50s.
Any critic wonders if his own POV negatively affects his review. I enjoy studying history and the 1930s is one of my favorite subjects. It could have made me harder on the episodes use of the period than the average viewer.
April 17th, 2012 at 11:39 am
My understanding of the situation (derived from years of reading TV Guide and other sources):
Whenever Roy Huggins launched a series, it was his habit to micromanage at the story level: he would personally outline as many stories as he thought would be needed, and then assign the actual scripting to other writers. These would be the stories that recieved the “John Thomas James” story credit (the name deriving from Huggins’s sons).
Stephen Cannell and Philip DeGuere were at this point proteges of Huggins, employees of his Public Arts company. Another Huggins habit was to groom others to take over shows when he (Huggins) left them to start others.
Cannell took over Rockford in this fashion; it seems apparent that DeGuere would have ultimately done the same at City Of Angels had it lasted.
It seems that Douglas Heyes, as a known writer-director, enjoyed a kind of “independence” within the structure.
As to the early cancellation:
The 1975-76 season saw NBC’s ratings generally fall apart, as ABC surged to the top that year. My recollection is that Marcus Welby, then in its last season (Robert Young wanted to fold while he was ahead), was the usual timeslot winner for ABC, with CBS’s Switch a close second.
City Of Angels came in third and paid $2.40. *rimshot*
If memory serves, “November Plan” started fast, but faded by the time Part 3 got on, and NBC panicked and chased Huggins.
Seriously, these were the back-up-the-truck years for NBC; many worthy shows ( and a load of unworthy ones too) fell by the wayside back then.
Of course, the stories reported here about Wayne Rogers’s bad behavior can’t have helped any.
Then again, there were similar stories about Robert Blake exercizing a reign of terror of his own on Baretta … but that show was a ratings hit, so there too.
April 17th, 2012 at 12:41 pm
Mike, I am forever in your TV GUIDE collection debt.
It was common practice for the showrunner (for example Larry Cohen in BLUE LIGHT) to write all the story outlines and then turn them over to writers to write the teleplay. Most did not take a story credit because there is a financial difference between teleplay by and written by. Thus, I suspect, one reason fellow writers might have problems with Mr. Huggins credit mania.
Cannell deserves most of the credit for the creation of THE ROCKFORD FILES according to Jim Garner who also says he banned Huggins from working on any script (Garner owned a large piece of RF).
Huggins Public Arts owned part of CITY OF ANGELS (Rogers did not thus he could be ignored).
Your idea that Huggins let DeGuere take over seems most likely to be true. Cannell and Huggins played important roles in the development of CITY OF ANGELS, but my guess Philip DeGuere, Jr. was what today we would call the showrunner.
Oh, as for Mr Blake and BARETTA. Cannell had been the producer for TOMA, helped change it to BARETTA but then left the show because he knew what it would be like working with Robert Blake.
December 23rd, 2017 at 11:51 am
LOVED THIS SERIES,ESPECIALLY THE HOUSE ON ORANGE GROVE AVE.WITH LARA PARKER AS EUNICE WHELLER A BETTY BOOP TYPE STARLET !