TV used to be pretty good

Mannix

I've been sitting up in the middle of the night watching old episodes of Mannix. I usually sleep through most of it, but that show was violent with fights and gun fights in every episode. In the opening credits we see Mike Conners practicing karate, rolling on the ground firing a gun, nearly wrecking his sporty convertible. Strangely they seem to have a lot of scenes of people running and being chased by cars.

They were less fascinated with guns back then. Guns on TV were nondescript, black silhouettes. They never said what kind they were or what kind of bullets they used. TV cop shows today are basically infomercials for the gun industry.

His secretary, Peggy.

But there was a high price to pay for shows like this. There's a long interview with James Garner on YouTube. He talked about the Rockford Files. He said that doing shows like that meant walking a lot on pavement wearing bad shoes. He had knee surgery every time the show went on hiatus. You can see him limping terribly in some episodes.

It seems like they could do what they did on M*A*S*H*. The actors didn't want to clomp around in combat boots all the time, so they wore sneakers any time their feet didn't appear in the shot.

Marlon Brando was so overweight that he refused to wear pants on movie sets so they would have to film him only from the waist up. James Garner could have refused to wear anything but nurses shoes on the set of the Rockford Files and they would just have had no choice but to not show his feet.