It was the only television show in history to be shot completely on location. Called "Route 66," this one-hour black and white drama featured two young guys with nothing to lose, who hop in a Corvette and search for America, hoping to find a little of themselves in the process.
Sponsored in part by Chevrolet, the show probably did more to sell Corvettes than any TV commercial ever could. It helped establish the Corvette as a permanent part of American folklore. In fact, it could be argued that since "Route 66," no one marque has ever been so closely with a TV series. "Magnum, p.i." and its Ferrari is the only show in recent memory that even comes close.
A Ferrari was originally planned as the duo's mode of transportation. It was later decided, however, that an American-made sports car would better fit the image and romance projected by U.S. 66.
"Route 66" was the brainchild of producer Herbert Leonard and writer Stirling Silliphant who had worked together on "Naked City," another very popular drama at the time. Leonard remembers the birth of the show this way: "It was the spring of '59. We were in the last days of the half-hour version of 'Naked City.' ABC had canceled us, and there was no way of knowing then we'd be given another shot with that show in an hour-long format a year later. Silliphant, who wrote just about all of those episodes of 'Naked City,' and I were having lunch in a New York restaurant.
"I started reminiscing about how, when I was a poor kid of the New York streets, I used to pal around with a very wealthy prep-school guy. I began to wonder out loud what it would have been like for a couple of complete opposites like the two of us to go traveling around the country together in a sports car. Then I said something like "Stirling, that's our next show!" And he jumped at it.
"By the time we stepped outside to get a cab, we were already working on the story for our pilot. We even knew who we wanted one of the leads to be. There was this smart a--young actor we'd used in 'Naked City' and even though he had the worst attitude I'd ever seen...I had signed him to a separate contract because I believed he had real star potential. His name was George Maharis."
Leonard and Silliphant decided to sell their idea by using a unique "minipilot" method. In one of the last episodes of "Naked City," they used a storyline about two New York youths who team up to go traveling all over the country with George Maharis cast as one of the characters. Then Silliphant wrote the true pilot of "Route 66" (titled "Black November"), set in Garth, Miss. When this script was rejected, Leonard decided to shoot the pilot with his own money.
After searching for a month to find the right location, the small town of Concord, KY., was chosen to represent Garth, Miss. Production manager Sam Manners accidentally discovered Concord while looking for a riverside milltown locale. Everybody had already agreed to film entirely on location--which was quite innovative in those days--and because "sense of place" was all-important, Concord became Garth.
Now it was casting time and George Maharis got the same part as Buz Murdock, a street-smart, fight-first-talk-later New York kid who grew up in a Hell's Kitchen orphanage. The script had him working as an employee of Tod Stiles' father, who had dockside shipping business. There he met and was befriended by Tod, the college-kid-son-of-the-boss who worked with Buz during his summer breaks from Yale.
When Tod's dad dies, the family business fails and Tod discovers there's no money left, just the Corvette. Since Buz and now Tod have no family left, they decide to hit the road to find themselves while chasing rainbows. Because the role of Tod was so diametrically opposed to Buz, casting his part was much more difficult. Their first choice was Robert Redford. But they eventually rejected him in favor of Marty Milner, partly because they needed someone who could stand up to Maharis, since the show was created around Maharis' persona. They needed the "oppositeness" to create the chemistry, and it worked.
The actual pilot was filmed in February 1960, and CBS immediately bought the series, with Chevrolet and Columbia Screen Gems tagging along. It was a powerful story about how Tod and Buz helped the citizens of Garth deal with a dark secret in the rural town's past. The pilot was first shown on October 7, 1960, and it was an immediate hit.
But the problems were just beginning, as the challenge of filming entirely on location presented some logistical situations no one had ever experienced before.
Production manager Sam Manners recalls the complexities this way: "There's never been show like 'Route 66.' We were always under pressure, always close to missing deadlines--though we never did. Stirling would pick locations from the map--interesting places where events were happening, like the big cattle auction in Reno or a major harvest, and he and I and a team would visit these places and check them out. Then he, or a writer he chose, would build a story around Tod and Buz in that place.
"It was my job to supervise the shooting. I had a permanent crew of about 60 people, and we were on the road 50 weeks a year for four years. We shot 36 episodes a season in those days. We would make a particular place like, say, Pittsburgh, our base for about three shows, and we'd shoot one in the city and two in rural areas within a 50-mile radius. Then we'd move on in the same pattern. We avoided serious weather problems by shooting in warmer climates in winter and moving north in the summer.
"We trucked everything from place to place," adds Manners, "and when 'Route 66' visited a city it was a big event--like the circus coming to town.
"I raised my kids on the road with that show, as did some of the other crew. We even employed a full-time teacher to travel with us. The 60 of us, including George and Marty, were a family. This was not like making your average television show."
Even though location shooting was and is more expensive than studio production, they stuck with their original 100 percent on-location concept, because they believed that the extra cost was worth it to achieve the extra authenticity and realism.
One inherent problem was the hectic schedule, which caused nightmares for the directors. They had a five-day schedule, but six days was the norm. Usually the script wasn't received until the day before shooting began, and sometimes the writers would be making revisions while they were filming the same episode. Many times the guest stars weren't even signed until the day before production. All of these things were problems for the actors, too, but they still pulled it off 36 times per season, for a total of 116 episodes during the four-year run of the show.
Filming on location, and quite often outdoors, presented a few unusual technical problems to the crew, but they used ordinary methods to solve them. For instance, the scenes with Tod and Buz talking in the car while driving were done by towing the car behind a station wagon carrying the film crew. For rearview shots, they took the front trunk lid off a Corvair and mounted special cameras in the trunk well, so they could film the scene while the Corvair was following the Corvette.
Since "Route 66" aired on CBS, color shooting was out of the question because CBS didn't have color equipment. Therefore, all of the Corvettes used in the show were Fawn Beige in color except for the Horizon Blue 1960 Corvette used in the pilot episode. This was because Fawn Beige was the most neutral color to the camera.
Problems notwithstanding, CBS had a hit on their hands. Then star trouble set in: George Maharis had hired a new personal manager who, according to Hollywood gossip columns, convinced him that he was bigger than the show and that he should be a movie star instead of wasting his time in a weekly TV show. His complaints stepped up in intensity about halfway through the third season, but he was tied to a contract. Then he became ill with hepatitis and missed a few shows altogether.
At first, the scripts indicated that he was in a hospital in Pacoima, Calif., with a mysterious virus, and Tod, trying to carry the load by himself, would occasionally go to a phone and call Buz. Then Maharis came back, but he could only work for a few hours a day which, of course, created some production problems for the crew.
Finally it was Tod only, no Buz and no mention of him in the script or the credits. There were a total of six shows without George Maharis, and when it finally became apparent that he was not coming back, Stirling Silliphant removed him from the show without ever explaining his departure.
It was obvious from the poor quality of the single-character scripts that the show needed another Buz. Silliphant then wrote a script with a character that was supposed to be like Buz. They tried to get Burt Reynolds, but he didn't want to be another actor's replacement. (Ironically, Burt Reynolds had a small role in an earlier episode where he got into a fist fight with Buz.) Instead, they chose Glenn Corbett to play a new character named Linc Case. But Corbett's character just did not gel, primarily because he was trying to emulate Marty Milner's Tod, and the last thing "Route 66" needed was two Tods.
Without the chemistry and contrast between Tod and Buz, the series suffered and eventually was canceled after the fourth season, with the final episode (of a two-parter) airing on March 13, 1964. Tod married a character played by Barbara Eden and Linc went home to Texas.
The unfortunate part of this turn of events was that there were plans to take the boys to Europe had there been a fifth season.
"Route 66" became history, but not before leaving its distinctive mark clearly evident. During its four-year run, the show compiled an incredible 20.1 average rating, which is astounding even by today's tougher standards.
"I think it would be very hard to duplicate what we did in 'Route 66,' said Stirling Silliphant in an earlier interview. "We were able to show the American character on that show. The fact that we were all over the map, with all kinds of people in every kind of situation, gave us a special richness. That would be very difficult to do today since the country's become so homogenized. Regional differences are fading. Places all look alike now--it's all Holiday Inn Hotels and freeways. Tod and Buz might not find the road so exciting anymore.
"I also don't think any weekly V show, including the new 'Route 66' could have the impact we had. 'Route 66,' I believe, really did influence a generation. The General Motors people gave us some fascinating profiles of our audience from 1960-1964. We had a huge share of very young kids for an adult show, kids ages 10 to 14. Our shows were about young people searching for their identities, confronting conflicting values, frustration, anger, hope. That whole generation of kids that watched us every Friday night became the college-age protesters of the late '60s. I've got to believe that Tod and Buz were early expressions of that generation.