Claudette Colbert, Groucho Marx, Richard Dreyfuss, Orson Welles, Sydney Pollack, Robert Altman, Steven Spielberg, Stephen J. Cannell, Steven Bochco. . . . For Lee Goldberg`s purposes, they were all failures.
Goldberg is the author of ”Unsold Television Pilots, 1955-1988”
(McFarland, $45), the definitive reference book on television shows that never got past the one-shot pilot stage. Yes, all the aforementioned successful actors, directors and producers have unsold pilots lurking in their histories.
”The fascinating thing about pilots is that no other industry trots out its prototypes and tells the world what it is they`re doing in the way that television does,” said 28-year-old Goldberg, executive story editor on
”Baywatch” and a writer for the defunct ”Spenser: For Hire” and
”Murphy`s Law.”
”My book is equivalent to looking at all the car designs Ford Motor Co. discarded, or all the dresses that Halston decided not to make.”
Which is not to imply that all unsold TV shows were would-be Edsels. Altman and Pollack directed some ambitious projects in the `50s and `60s, Marx played billionaire J. Paul Greedy in a half-hour comedy in 1967, and Colbert played a congresswoman juggling career and family way back in 1958.
Indeed, of the 2,269 finished pilots catalogued and described in the book (often with quotations from reviews, producers and directors), there were, Goldberg said, some potential hits and ”wonderful pieces of work”-among them Spielberg`s ”Savage,” with Martin Landau as an investigative reporter;
Richard Dreyfuss in a version of ”Catch-22”; a 1974 all-Asian program;
”Judge Dee” (written by Nicholas Meyer), about solving crimes in 17th Century China; and, perhaps most intriguingly, ”The Orson Welles Show,” a 1958 Desilu production in which Welles was to direct adaptations of classic literature, or devote programs to magic, interviews, readings or anything he wished. The pilot featured Welles directing, narrating and starring in an adaptation of John Collier`s ”Fountain of Youth.”
Although given the Peabody Award for excellence, the Welles pilot was rejected by the networks, Goldberg wrote, for being ”too sophisticated.”
The same could not be said, probably, for ”Where`s Everett?” a 1966 half-hour sitcom featuring Alan Alda as the guardian of an invisible alien baby, or the 1976 production of ”Twin Detectives,” in which Jim and John Hager of ”Hee-Haw” fame solved crimes by pretending to be one detective.
(”It was,” Goldberg said flatly, ”as good as it sounds.”)
The book is rife with such flops. A few of the author`s favorites:
– ”Samurai,” a 1979 Danny Thomas Productions pilot in which Joe Penny
(Jake on ”Jake and the Fat Man”) played an Amerasian ”district attorney by day and sword-wielding samurai warrior by night.” ”He drives a big Mack truck to the offices of those people he couldn`t prosecute as D.A. and takes care of them as a samurai,” Goldberg explained.
– ”Dr. Franken,” a 1980 NBC co-production updating the Frankenstein myth, in which Robert Vaughn built his monster from parts removed from a hospital medical bank. The result? ”Once this guy is built, he gets vibes from all these different organs,” Goldberg chortled. ”You know, `Oh, my pancreas!` and then he hunts down the families that these organs came from and helps them through their troubles.”
– ”The Infiltrator,” a 1987 TriStar co-production featuring Scott Bakula (”Quantum Leap”) as ”a wacky Bruce Willis-type scientist who is creating a transporter beam.” In an adjoining lab, however, is Deborah Mullowney, ”this cool, sexy Cybill Shepherd-type who is building a satellite.” As a lark, Bakula beams himself into her lab, but accidentally lands in the satellite. ”He looks fine,” said Goldberg, ”unless he gets mad and then he becomes . . . half-man, half-satellite! Sort of a Go-bot.” And, the author added, like most other ”guys who gain an uncontrollable and unpredictable power in a freak accident,” he becomes a secret agent.
The son of a television news anchor and a gossip columnist, Goldberg grew up in San Francisco, was a reporter for the Contra Costa Times, and spent his 20s as a free-lance writer and author of the ”.357 Vigilante” series of pulp thrillers under the name Ian Ludlow.
When New World Pictures bought, but did not use, a ”Vigilante” script he wrote with partner Bill Rabkin, Goldberg broke into television by writing
(with Rabkin) a ”Spenser: For Hire” episode. But research for the unsold pilots project, he says, began at age 9.
”When I was a kid,” he said, reclining in the study of his Encino home, ”I remember seeing something in a TV Guide that said `unsold pilot.`
Something about it fascinated me.”
Goldberg`s research consisted of clipping every pilot listing and every review of a pilot he found in trade publications. When VCRs arrived, Goldberg taped every pilot that came along. While doing free-lance interviews with actors and producers, he would ask if they remembered any pilots they had made.
Advertising agencies, he discovered, keep reviews of all pilots. The Leo Burnett Agency, which has reviewed pilots since 1955, opened its files to him. Serious organization of the esoteric reference book began three years ago.
While a lot of the book consists of such hilarities as 1979`s
”Dracula,” which found the count teaching a night course in history in San Francisco (”so he can meet chicks,” Goldberg writes), the author cautions against excessive sneering.
”It`s all in the execution. I mean, look at `Beauty and the Beast`: big hairy monster who lives in the sewer and fights crime with the D.A. he loves. It`s asinine!” he says. ”But look how it turned out-an acclaimed series.”
He may have another reason to ask readers to go easy on the ridicule. His own ”Spenser” script, an unsold pilot, is on Page 483.
”Right,” he laughed. ”And I was hoping to get through the first edition without ending up in my own book as one of the disasters.”
