After Seven Years, Even the Rookie's a Pro

It is easy to lose count on the new crime-chaser shows that launch every TV season, and it would be easy to forget those that are dropped in mid-season--except that they may well pop up again in reruns.

This makes it all the more worthwhile to turn to your CTV channel Friday nights (well, most stations) or your NBC channel Tuesdays for Adam-12. It's in its seventh season now and its producer (Tom Williams of Mark VII Ltd.) and its starring police partners clearly know what they're doing. It may seem a bit perplexing that Martin Milner is still cast as Senior Officer Pete Malloy and that, after those seven years, Kent McCord is still billed as rookie Officer Jim Reed. But then, serials on TV, radio or the comic strips were almost ever thus.

Adam-12's durability and believability owe much to the fact that its creators decided at the start that every week couldn't see its pair of uniformed cops bust the crime of the century. On almost any show they may actually answer several routine and quite unrelated calls to duty--settling a neighborhood dispute, investigating a burglary, returning a lost child--as well perhaps as working in an action chase. That gives their patrol car a bit of a workout too, for as Adam-12--the call sign of their patrol unit, actually--the car becomes a silent third partner in the team, except for ocassional bursts of its siren.

A newspaper reporter who covers the same beat week after week can't play fast and loose with his facts without alienating all his best contacts. Similarly a show like Adam-12 that must go on location in the streets of the same big city--Los Angeles--every week, has to play it straights with the real cops. Each segment filmed means temporarily blocking off an alley or re-routing traffic, and that means keeping the goodwill of authorities. Moreover, its uniformed actos become practically free advertising fr the city's own police force and they know they better make it good. So the officer of the Los Angeles Police Department who is on hand as technical advisor throughout the shooting of each chapter is listened to carefully--another assurance of believability.

The very name of the Adam-12 producing company, Mark VII Ltd., is a trademark for know-how in making cops-and-robbers shows because Mark VII is pretty much Jack Webb, Sergeant Friday of the Dragnet series. It was Webb who chose the "rookie" to play Officer Jim Reed--he may be remembered by some faithful viewers as the young vice squad officer to whom Sgt. Friday delivered his famous "What Is a Cop?" monologue in a long-ago Dragnet episode.

McCord wasn't exactly a rookie actor even then. While at school he used to play pickup football with Rick Nelson and this led to his playing Rick's fraternity brother in 40 or more segments of the Ozzie and Harriet series. A drama coach persuaded him to quite college and get serious about acting. McCord and his wife debated the decision for six months before chance brought him a screen test at universal Studios, and that brought a contract. So he did quit college and start studying acting instead. Meanwhile he got roles in shows like The Virginian and Run for Your Life--and Dragnet.

"You could put Kent into any Los Angeles Police Department squad inspection and I don't think even the chief would be able to spot him as an actor," says Jack Webb, who has seen to it that actor McCord has become a better cop every week.

The man in the driver's seat in Adam-12, of course, is Senior Officer Pete Malloy and one thing Kent McCord has to admit his partner is senior in his driving, or at least acting/driving. For Martin Milner previously put in four years of driving in an earlier TV series, Route 66.

Way before that Milner made his acting debut in a children's play in Seattle, at age 10. Moving to North Hollywood in his teens, he was so convinced that he was going to be an actor that while still in high school he hired a dramatic coach and then an agent.

His first motion picture role was as John Day, the second oldest son in Life With Father. After that his would-be career was nastily interrupted by a bout of polio, from which he fortunately made a full recovery. A two-year army hitch gave him further theatrical experience, directing training films.

But he was back in the acting mainstream again in 1957 with an important movie role in Sweet Smell of Success and another in Marjorie Morningstar. Then came his chance in Route 66 in which location shooting took him all across the country. He filled in with more motion picture work and TV guest roles until he was signed to play lead cop in Adam-12.

Every follower of TV's law-and-order shows knows that "DOA" means dead on arrivalm that a suspect who's "clean" is carrying no weapon and that "smack" means heroin. But what does "hinky" mean, what's a "390W"?

One more way in which the series Adam-12 strives for realism and authenticity in it's portrayal of police work is by using standard abbreviations and jargon common to most police forces, and a series of code numbers and letters for radio communication between squad car and dispatcher that police employ for speed and efficiency. Adam-12 itself is code to designate the patrol unit of Officers Pete Malloy and Jim Reed.