For most of us growing up in the 1960s and 1970s, the words were as familiar as the title theme music of our favorite shows: “A Quinn Martin Production.”
That phrase was usually intoned, in dramatic fashion, in the opening credits of producer Quinn Martin’s series. It was a convention that made his name recognizable even to people who didn’t pay attention to the names of Hollywood producers.
The list of TV series that Martin produced includes some of the best and most popular shows of their time, including “The Fugitive,” “The FBI,” “The Invaders” and “The Streets of San Francisco.”
In the 1970s, Martin’s productions seemed to center around the offbeat detectives of the day, including “Cannon” – featuring William Conrad as a portly detective not above bouncing bad guys into submission with his belly – and “Barnaby Jones,” featuring Buddy Ebsen as a senior citizen detective.
(You might remember that the odd detectives of the day included “Longstreet,” a blind detective, and “Ironside,” the wheelchair-bound detective.)
Martin’s shows feel kind of dated now. I’ve seen episodes of “Cannon” and “The Fugitive” recently and they’re pretty notable for embracing the TV conventions of the day, including endless transitions (long shots of cars tooling along Southern California roads, anyone?) between dialogue scenes and melodramatic music.
Of all of Martin’s shows, I was most partial to “The Invaders” – in which a man stumbles upon an alien invasion and must try to convince others what’s happening – and “Streets of San Francisco,” featuring Karl Malden and Michael Douglas as a veteran cop and his young maverick partner.
One of the most memorable things about the Martin series was the dramatic titles of the episodes.
Courtesy of the List of the Day webpage on Blogspot, a few Quinn Martin episode titles:
“To Ride a Tiger”
“Death is the Punchline”
“Shadow of Fear”
“Web of Deceit”
“See Some Evil, Do Some Evil”
The titles were parodied, years later, in the “Police Squad” series that led to the “Naked Gun” movies. In that Leslie Nielsen spoof, however, the titles on screen didn’t match those read by the narrator.
Martin died in 1987 at only 65 years old. Among his many distinctions at the time was having produced a series in primetime TV for each of 21 years from 1959 to 1980.
keithroysdon 