By Kathryn Ware

Our look back on the debut season of Ironside continues.
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Episode 4: Dead Man’s Tale
Airdate: 28 September 1967
Plot: This episode has a pre-credit opening worthy of The Sopranos. Warren Stuart, a middle-aged “big shot” “criminal” (“The No. 2 man in the organization”) and his much younger fiance Tina emerge from a large California split-level. They stroll arm-in-arm toward the gleaming turquoise swimming pool. After a cursory conversation in which the German beauty pouts when she learns Stuart is “sending (her) away” – because of “them” – Stuart tells her to go ahead and take her swim.
As soon as Tina and her three-foot-long blond braid are under the water, a sniper’s gun emerges from the trees, zeroes in on Stuart, and bang-bang, he’s a goner. Before he expires, Stuart tells his screaming fiance not to call the doctor, but to make “the other call first.” A dripping Tina grabs the avocado green poolside phone – an unintentional dramatic pause inserted while she dials the number on the rotary phone, dial-whirr, dial-whirr, dial-whirr, dial-whirr, dial-whirr, dial-whirr, dial-whirr, to call . . . Chief Ironside.

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Posted on August 25, 2008

By Kathryn Ware

Our look back on the debut season of Ironside continues.
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Episode 3: The Leaf in the Forest
Airdate: 21 September 1967
Plot: In a newspaper headline befitting the outbreak of World War III, the Bayside Strangler has hit again and Chief Robert T. Ironside is on the case. Five little old ladies have met their untimely ends, but something about the most recent murder doesn’t sit right with Ironside, who suspects a second killer has used the Strangler’s MO to disguise his own dastardly deed.

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Posted on August 19, 2008

By Kathryn Ware

Our look back on Ironside continues.
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Airdate: 14 September 1967
Title: Message From Beyond
Plot: It looks like an inside job when $175,000 is stolen from a horseracing track. Good thing Robert T. Ironside and his team of three (police officers Eve Whitefield and Ed Brown and the Chief’s bodyguard/driver Mark) just happen to be enjoying one of their semi-regular afternoons at the track when the power goes out and the cash is taken. Bad thing for Ironside that it happened just moments before he’s about to post his sure thing, big-money bet.

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Posted on August 11, 2008

By Kathryn Ware

Following my rundown of the amazing debut season of Maude, I’m ready to delve back into another iconic television series from my youth. As I write this, the disc I’ve received from Netflix is fresh out of its shipping envelope. Though my next foray into ’70s TV pop culture is only 15 minutes into the first episode, I’m already marveling at how well this program lives up to my high expectations.
Ironside is a crime drama that ran straight through my formative TV years, from 1967-1975. Long before I saw Raymond Burr’s performance as the creepy wife killer in Rear Window, I knew him as chief of detectives Robert T. Ironside, a 30-year veteran of the San Francisco police force confined to a wheelchair by a would-be assassin’s bullet in the first scene of the pilot episode.
Each week, Ironside solved a new case with his Mod-Squadesque team: Don Galloway as Ken-doll detective Ed Brown, Don Mitchell as Mark Sanger (Ironside’s African-American bodyguard with an attitude), and Barbara Anderson as the cool socialite-turned-policewoman Eve Whitfield. (“Yes, I’m one of those Whitfield’s,” she purrs to a team of reporters in her first scene.) In 1971, she was replaced by another mod-looking blond, Elizabeth Baur as Fran Belding.
I loved Ironside. My family gathered each week around our TV trays in front of the set, our evening meal (complete with iceberg wedge salad) perfectly timed to coincide with the electronic siren sound that kicked off Quincy Jones’ thrilling theme song.
Here’s my rundown of the “World Premiere” episode of Ironside. The highlights are many.

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Posted on August 1, 2008