HAWAIIAN EYE
Private eye series billed as ’77 Sunset Strip’ in Hawaii, and with good reason. Both series were produced by Warner Bros., and it was not unusual for the characters in one show to turn up in the other. Stars of the series (apart from the weekly parade of beautiful women) were Robert Conrad as Tom Lapaka and Anthony Eisley as Tracy Steele , two young and handsome private detectives who were based in the poolside offices of the Hawaiian Village Hotel. The main leads alternated with each episode and both had assistance from local nightclub songstress "Cricket" Blake as played by Connie Stevens and local cab driver Kazuo Kim, who was played by a Hawaiian actor with the name Poncie Ponce (honest). Grant Williams joined the cast as fellow detective Greg MacKenzie and Eisley left the series in 1962, his gap being filled for the final season by Troy Donahue as the hotel’s social director.
60 minute episodes. Warner Bros. 1959-63.
HAWKEYE AND THE LAST OF THE MOHICANS
Based on John Fennimore Cooper's character, who battled the Huron Indians in the northern frontier of upstate New York during the 1750's, Hawkeye was played by John Hart, who had previously taken the reins from Clayton Moore -but only temporarily, of another Western hero,
'The Lone Ranger'. Hawkeye was a trapper, fur trader and scout for the US Cavalry and was joined on his adventures by his redskin 'bloodbrother', Chingachgook, the 'Last of the Mohicans' of the title, played by Lon Chaney Jnr. Chaney's father had been a famous Hollywood actor who was known as 'The Man of a Thousand Faces' (James Cagney portrayed him in a 1957 film of the same name), playing amongst others, 'The Phantom of the Opera.' Junior had reluctantly followed his father's footsteps into the same movie genre, appearing in the 1941 Universal production of 'The Wolfman.'
39 episodes of 26 minute duration. Black and White. Canada. 1957.
HAZEL
Based on Ted Key's long running cartoon strip published in the Saturday Evening Post, Hazel starred Shirley Booth as the titular housemaid to the Baxter family who ran the family home far more efficiently than George Baxter (Don DeFore) ran his office, where he was a highly successful corporation lawyer for the firm of Butterworth, Hatch, Noll and Baxter. Hazel had a nose for everyone else's business, although ultimately this proved to be to everyone's advantage. George's wife, Dorothy (Whitney Blake) was more likely to be found shopping than housekeeping and it was Hazel's organisational skills that kept the Baxter household running smoothly. In 1965 the show moved networks so George and Dorothy were 'transferred' to the Middle East on assignment leaving Hazel and their son, Harold (Bobby Buntrock) to move in with George's brother's family. Steve Baxter (Ray Fulmer) was insistent that Hazel would not take over his home. She did!
154 shows of 30 minute duration. NBC 1961-1965 and CBS 1965-1966.
HAZELL
When James Hazell was forced to retire from the police force due to an on-duty injury he took to the bottle, became an alcoholic and destroyed his marriage. By the time television viewers were introduced to him he was almost a reformed character, having dried out and, with the help of his cousin, Tel, formed his own private detective agency in an area frequented by London's more seedier residents. Nicholas Ball played private eye Hazell like a Cockney Phillip Marlowe (complete with commentary voice over) in this stylishly film noir series based on the books of former footballer (and future England coach) Terry Venables and Gordon Williams, who also contributed to the TV version. The raunchy theme song was written by Andy McKay of Roxy Music and was a minor hit for Maggie Bell in April/May 1978.
22 shows of 60 minute duration. ITV 1978-1979.
HELEN-A WOMAN OF TODAY
After Helen Tulley (Alison Fiske) discovers that her husband, Frank (Martin Shaw), has been having an affair with another woman her friends and family urge her to forgive and forget and stand by her man. Perhaps there was a time and a television drama when she would have done, but this was now the 1970s and there was an increasing awareness of the feminist movement, and so we see Helen bravely decide to leave the cheating Frank and go it alone with her two children (Diana Hutchinson and Christopher Ballantyne). The thirtysomething mother turns to study and becomes self reliant as she goes through the traumatic changes in her life. One of the first series to actually explore the woman's point of view and make her the centre of the drama.
13 episodes of 50 minutes duration. LWT. 1973
THE HIGH CHAPARRAL
Created by David Dotort, the man behind televisions most famous Western family, the Cartwright's, this series attempted to recreate ’Bonanza's’ success by following a similar format. Big John Cannon (Leif Erickson) was the head of The High Chaparral, a ranch in the Arizona Territory that was beset by drought, Mexican outlaws and Cochise Indians. In the first episode John's wife was killed during a raid, leaving him to live with his son Billy Blue Cannon (Mark Slade), and brother Buck (Cameron Mitchell). Big John's widower-hood was short lived though, as he was soon married off to the daughter of Mexican nobleman Don Sebastian Montoya (Frank Silvera) -the beautifully elegant Victoria (Linda Cristal). Accompanied by his new wife's brother Manolito (Henry Darrow), Big John and the Cannon clan settled in to a series of adventures that reflected the political liberalism of the late 1960's and maintained a sympathetic and well-balanced attitude towards White - Indian relations. When Mark Slade was written out of the series towards the end of its run he was replaced by Wind (Rudy Ramos), a half-breed who came to live with the Cannon's after helping Big John avert a disaster. Although not enjoying the longevity of ’Bonanza’ or many other TV Westerns, (the genre had, by the early 1970's, become a television diet of the past), ’The High Chaparral' came across as a highly polished product that included a stirring theme tune and stylish photography. In the UK it was one of the first series to be broadcast in colour.
98 episodes of 52 minute duration. NBC 1967-71.
HIGHWAY PATROL
Starring Hollywood Oscar winner Broderick Crawford as Chief Dan Mathews, ’Highway Patrol’ is today seen as the father of the TV Cop show genre with it's all-action storylines involving the pursuit of murderers, bank robbers, smugglers and hijackers, by car, bike or helicopter across the highways and byways of the Western United States. Made on a shoestring budget and starring no other regulars apart from the star himself (who was also a part-owner in the production company that made the series, Ziv TV), the series was a massive hit around the world. In Italy it was known as ’Policia Della Strode’, in Spain –‘Petrulla de Seguridad’ and by various other titles in twenty other countries. Its most enduring legacy was the introduction to the phrase 'Ten-Four', meaning 'message received and understood.' Crawford, a Californian, had begun his career in the 1930's playing tough gangster roles and won his Best Actor Oscar in 1949 for ’All The King's Men’, plus a special critics award for ’Of Mice and Men’. He insisted on doing most of his own stunt work and as a result of this incurred a number of injuries, as he explained in 1958. "Running around filming in helicopters and fast cars for three years you're bound to have accidents, and I've certainly had my share. So far I've fractured my skull, broken an arm and an ankle and taken hundreds of falls." The series ran from 1955 to 1958 and at the end of its run Crawford secured the lead in ’King of Diamonds’ and later in ’The Interns’ before popping up as a guest star in ’Get Smart,’ ‘Burke's Law’ and ’Fantasy Island’, to name a few.
156 episodes of 30 minute duration. Ziv TV. 1955-1959.
HOGAN'S HEROES
Based on the more serious Billy Wilder film ’Stalag 17’, ’Hogans Heroes’ featured the goings on at a prisoner-of-war camp run by the inept Colonel "no one ever escapes from Stalag 13" Klink (Werner Klemperer) and his overweight, chocolate loving Sgt Hans "I know nothing" Schultz (John Banner). But in reality it was the prisoners, led by the dashing Colonel Robert Hogan (Bob Crane), who really ran things here, ably supported by French chef Louis LeBeau (Robert Clary, who had actually been imprisoned by the German's as a child), Sgt Carter (Larry Hovis), Corporal Andrew Klinchoe (Ivan Dixon), and Cockney inmate Corporal Peter Newkirk (Richard Dawson, who went on to host the popular US game show ’Family Feud’), Hogan used the camp as a base for resistance activities that included passing on intelligence information, the printing of counterfeit money and helping others to escape. The series actually courted a lot of criticism for it’s flippant portrayal of the war from people who had been forced to fight between 1939 and 1945-for them 20 years passage of time wasn’t long enough to begin to treat such a serious matter with such disregard and frivolity, and making the German’s the butt of the joke by having them appear as buffoons trivialized the evil of the Nazis and the war. However, like the British sitcom ’'Allo, 'Allo’ many years later, which was set in occupied France, the audience made the series a huge hit. ‘Hogan’s Heroes’ ran for six years until 1971 but made front-page news again in 1978, when its leading actor was found beaten to death in his Arizona home.
168 episodes of 25 minute duration. US CBS. 1965-71.
HUGH AND I
Hugely popular long-running comedy series starring former stage partners Hugh Lloyd and Terry Scott as a type of modern day Laurel and Hardy double-act, forever finding themselves in hot water and situations that tested their friendship to the limits. At his mother's house at 33 Lobelia Avenue, Tooting, Scott was the overbearing work-shy bachelor who aspired to wealth in a number of 'get-rich-quick' schemes. Lloyd was the rather dim-witted, hapless lodger who worked at a local aircraft factory and who was easily led from one misadventure to another by his boisterous partner. By the end of the fifth series both Lloyd and Scott decided to call it a day, but after some persuasion by the BBC they returned for another series but with a different setting. After Lloyd won £5000 on the Premium Bonds the pair left behind Terry's mum (Vi Stevens) and two sets of nosey neighbours (the Crispins and the Wormwolds) to go on a world cruise. The pair teamed up one more time after this in a parody of a US adventure series in 1968 -'Hugh and I Spy'.
79 episodes of 30 minute duration. Black and White. 1962-1968.
