James Scott Garner was an American actor. He played leading roles in more than 50 theatrical films, which included The Great Escape (1963) with Steve McQueen; Paddy Chayefsky's The Americanization of Emily (1964) with Julie Andrews; Cash McCall (1960) with Natalie Wood; The Wheeler Dealers (1963) with Lee Remick; Darby's Rangers (1958) with Stuart Whitman; Roald Dahl's 36 Hours (1965) with Eva Marie Saint; as a Formula 1 racing star in Grand Prix (1966); Raymond Chandler's Marlowe (1969) with Bruce Lee; Support Your Local Sheriff! (1969) with Walter Brennan; Blake Edwards's Victor/Victoria (1982) with Julie Andrews; and Murphy's Romance (1985) with Sally Field, for which he received an Academy Award nomination. He also starred in several television series, including popular roles such as Bret Maverick in the ABC 1950s Western series Maverick and as Jim Rockford in the NBC 1970s private detective show, The Rockford Files.
The Rockford Files is an American detective drama television series starring James Garner that aired on the NBC network from September 13, 1974, to January 10, 1980. Garner portrays Los Angeles private investigator Jim Rockford, with Noah Beery Jr. in the supporting role of his father, Joseph "Rocky" Rockford, a retired truck driver. The show was created by Roy Huggins and Stephen J. Cannell. Huggins had created the television show Maverick (1957–1962), which starred Garner, and he wanted to create a similar show in a modern-day detective setting. In 2002, The Rockford Files was ranked No. 39 on TV Guide's 50 Greatest TV Shows of All Time.
Stephen Joseph Cannell was an American television producer, writer, novelist, occasional actor, and founder of Cannell Entertainment and The Cannell Studios.
Pamela Hensley is an American actress and author. Her notable acting roles include Princess Ardala on the 1979–1981 television series Buck Rogers in the 25th Century and C.J. Parsons on the 1982–1985 television series Matt Houston. She also appeared in Rollerball and Doc Savage and Double Exposure (1982).
Baretta is an American detective television series which ran on ABC from 1975 to 1978.
Hunter is an American crime drama television series created by Frank Lupo, which ran on NBC from September 18, 1984, to April 26, 1991. It stars Fred Dryer as Sgt. Rick Hunter and Stepfanie Kramer as Sgt. Dee Dee McCall. The title character Sgt. Rick Hunter is a wily, physically imposing, often rule-breaking homicide detective with the Los Angeles Police Department.
Susan Elizabeth Strasberg was an American stage, film, and television actress. Thought to be the next Hepburn-type ingenue, she was nominated for a Tony Award at age 18, playing the title role in The Diary of Anne Frank. She appeared on the covers of LIFE and Newsweek in 1955. A close friend of Marilyn Monroe and Richard Burton, she wrote two best-selling tell-all books. Her later career primarily consisted of slasher and horror films, followed by TV roles, by the 1980s.
Jeannot Szwarc is a French director of film and television, known for such films as Jaws 2, Somewhere in Time, Supergirl and Santa Claus: The Movie. He has also produced and written for TV.
Tom Atkins is an American actor. He is known for his work in the horror and thriller film genres, having worked with writers and directors such as Shane Black, William Peter Blatty, John Carpenter, Fred Dekker, Richard Donner, Stephen King, and George A. Romero. He is also a familiar face to mainstream viewers, often playing police officers and tough authority figures and is perhaps best known for his role as Lt. Alex Diel in The Rockford Files (1974–1977).
Tenspeed and Brown Shoe is an American detective comedy series originally broadcast by the ABC network between January and June 1980. The series was created by executive producer Stephen J. Cannell. Most of the show's creative staff were veterans of the private detective series The Rockford Files, which concluded its run about two weeks before Tenspeed and Brown Shoe debuted.
Joe Santos was an American film and television actor, best known as Sgt. Dennis Becker, the friend of James Garner's character on the NBC crime drama The Rockford Files.
Switch is an American action-adventure detective series starring Robert Wagner and Eddie Albert. It was broadcast on the CBS network for three seasons between September 9, 1975, and August 27, 1978, bumping the Hawaii Five-O detective series to Friday nights.
Roy Huggins was an American novelist and an influential writer/creator and producer of character-driven television series, including Maverick, The Fugitive, Hunter, and The Rockford Files. He became a noted writer and producer using his own name, but much of his later television scriptwriting was done using the pseudonyms Thomas Fitzroy, John Thomas James or John Francis O'Mara.
Simon Oakland was an American actor of stage, screen, and television.
City of Angels is a 1976 American television series created by Stephen J. Cannell and Roy Huggins, who had previously worked together on The Rockford Files. American mystery novelist Max Allan Collins has called City of Angels "the best private eye series ever."
Anthony Peter Musante Jr. was an American actor, best known for the TV series Toma as Detective David Toma, Nino Schibetta in Oz (1997), and Joe D'Angelo in As the World Turns (2000–2003). In movies, he achieved fame relatively early in his career, starring or having significant roles in such films as Once a Thief (1965), The Incident (1967), The Detective (1968) and The Last Run (1971), and also in a number of Italian productions, including The Mercenary (1968), Metti, una sera a cena (1969) and The Bird with the Crystal Plumage (1970).
Clarence Edward "Pete" Carpenter was an American jazz trombonist, arranger, and veteran of television theme music sheet music. After a long career playing the trombone in bands and as a studio musician, Carpenter started working with composer Earle Hagen and writing music for television on shows like Bewitched (1964), Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C. (1964), and The Andy Griffith Show (1966–1967).
Richie Brockelman, Private Eye is an American detective drama that was broadcast on NBC for five episodes in March and April 1978, with Dennis Dugan in the starring role. The Rockford Files was used to launch the series via character crossover in a 2-hour episode at the end of the 1977-78 season.
David Toma is a former police officer whose undercover work and battles with his superiors became the basis of the television series Toma, which ran on the ABC network from 1973 to 1974.
