How Sweet It Was -
And How Simple

by Andrew J. Fenady 

Tales are told of noble men and women, their hair turned white, in rank dark cells - maundering, babbling, bridled by invisible bonds of bureaucracy, confounded by conflicting commands from battalions of vice-presidents proffering advice and constraints gleaned from weeks of experience.

As out of a vintage Warner Bros. montage a la 20,000 Years In Sing Sing, pages flake off a calendar - DAYS - WEEKS - MONTHS - YEARS! - YEARS! - YEARS! - while these talented, intelligent, outwardly successful people, who are trying to go from pilot development to production to series, sink into a Kafkaesque quagmire. Their senses blunted. Their brains rotting in their skulls.

Marriages break up. Families are fractured. The ranks of alcoholics swell. The Betty Ford Foundation bids welcome.

All these are the victims of an insidious disease - pilot madness. Out of the thousands who enter the arena less than a score will find a spot on the schedule. And for most of them the axe of cancellation, swift and fatal, will fall faster than one can whisper “Rosebud” or “Neilsen.”

That’s the way it is - and likely will be, for untold seasons to come. Welcome to Sucker’s Paradise, to Lemming’s Lodge. It’s the trail from Bonanza to the Bone Orchard.

But, ‘twas not always thus. Gather round, brothers and sisters. Let me spin a sweet and simple tale.

Flashback - or fade - or dissolve - or morph: 1999 minus 40. The year is 1959.

By the late 1950s, I still smelled faintly of college, albeit layered with scents of the streets of Los Angeles. I had done over 150 episodes of Paul Coates’ Confidential File - the precursor to 60 Minutes - and we had collected 3 Emmys. My partner Irv Kershner and I had bootlegged a feature, Stakeout On Dope Street, with a borrowed $21,000 and sold it to Colonel Jack Warner for $150,000.

We made a low-budget feature at Paramount and we were still smoking cigars in offices formerly occupied by another odd couple, Bracket and Wilder.

I had written a script called The Syndicate Executioner and we had an option on a book, The Execution of Pvt. Slovik, which Paul Newman, according to Louella Parsons, had agreed to star in.

Dick Powell, the high hickolorum of FOUR STAR, called me at home one night and asked if I could come to his office the next day. Could I?! Would I?! Powell was my hero. Could a WPA ditch-digger meet with FDR? Could a dogface meet with Ike? Could the molehill come to Mohammed?

At the meeting, Powell said that my agent, Malcom Stuart, had given him The Syndicate Executioner. Powell thought it was “terrific.” He further said that FOUR STAR was thinking about making some low-budget features in about a year or so. When the time came, would I be interested?

My reaction was restrained, I leaped out of the chair - did a handspring over his desk - pumped his palm and proclaimed, “You’ve got a deal.”

Powell puffed on his pipe, smiled that 42nd Street smile, said he’d “keep in touch” and matter-of-factly mentioned that FOUR STAR was primarily in the television business. If I had any series ideas would I give him a holler?

Would I? Holler, hell I’d rupture my windpipe.

A few days later at Paramount, my secretary announced that somebody named Nick Adams was on the phone. “Says he’s an actor.”

I had seen Rebel Without A Cause, No Time For Sergeants, Teacher’s Pet - evidently my secretary hadn’t.

On the phone, Nick confirmed he was an actor, but with the adjective “sensational” - and he’d like to buy me lunch at Oblath’s and talk about a movie. Why not? We met the next day. After machine gunning his Jimmy Cagney, Cary Grant and Burt Lancaster imitations, Nick said he wanted me to know that if anything happened to Paul Newman, he was ready to pinch hit. “Like Slovik, I’m Polish” - that was the truth – “Like Slovik, I’m from Detroit” - that was a lie. But we became instant pals. I paid for lunch.

Nick came over to our house New Year’s Eve, 1958. That night he was going to appear live on a local television panel show and asked me if he could tell them we were going to do something together. Why not? Two hours later, I watched Nick announce “A.J. Fenady and I are going to do a series.” An hour later, just before midnight, he was back at the house.

At midnight, we toasted 1959 and Nick said, “Well partner - what are we going to do? How about a series where I’m a James Cagney kind of character?” And I said, “Nick, Westerns are in now. Seven out of the top ten shows are Westerns. You’re young... you did Rebel Without A Cause. Losers are in. We’ll do a Western about a loser but NOT a loser. He lost a war but gained insight. He wants to be a writer. Jack London in the West.” It came out just that fast and Nick was nodding even faster.

I had never before written a Western but had seen every John Wayne, Randolph Scott and “B” Western that ever played in Toledo, Ohio. Four days later, I had written the pilot script. All we had to do was get it made and on the air.

What today is a marathon - was then just a sprint, a 100 yard dash - for us.

Nick and I took the script to Dick Powell who loved it. “Next season we’ll spin it off Zane Grey Theater. Keep in touch.”

Meanwhile, Kershner was directing an episode of Philip Marlowe for Goodson-Todman. Harris Katleman, G-T’s VP, overheard Kershner’s end of my phone conversation about Powell-Zane Grey-The Rebel pilot script. Katleman called me and asked to read the Western pilot. They were looking for one. I told Katleman about our agreement with Powell, but said he could read it and if he liked it, I’d write G-T a different one.

Katleman read it, so did G-T. They didn’t want a different one - they wanted this one. “How much would it take to shoot the pilot?” Katleman asked. “Fifty G’s,” I answered. The truth was I didn’t know how to spend $50,000 for a half-hour show, but I figured that would end the conversation. It didn’t. “You got it!” he blitzed.

No network. No studio. No agents. No advertising agency. No development. No re-writes. Right now. Firm!

Nick and I went to see Powell. “Grab it,” he said, “who knows what’ll happen to Zane Grey Theater by next season - and good luck boys.”

We grabbed it.

We shot the pilot in 4 days for $40,000. Besides Nick, the cast included Strother Martin, John Carradine, Jeanette Nolan and Dan Blocker (the week after that, Dan did the Bonanza pilot). Three weeks later, The Rebel was in New York making the rounds - not for long.

Nick and I were in a projection room at Paramount watching the monkey burial scene in Sunset Boulevard when Katleman called with a report: Procter and Gamble and Liggett and Meyers wanted to sponsor The Rebel. ABC was down to its last half hour time slot - Sunday 9 pm. It was between a Dick Powell FOUR STAR pilot Buckskin starring Michael Ansara and The Rebel. Katleman told us that The Rebel won! We were on the schedule!

I told him we’d call him back after the movie. For us there was never a doubt. The next call we got was from Dick Powell – “Congratulations, boys,” he said, “you weren’t just whistling Dixie.”

Were there any hitches or suggestions along the way? Yes. Two. The first from George Giroux of P&G. “Andy,” he said, “here at Proctor and Gamble, we sell soap and toothpaste. Could you please clean Nick up a little and have him smile once in a while?” You bet. The second came from Tom Moore at ABC during a meeting. “I want to go on record saying I think The Rebel ought to have a dog.”

Moore was just a vice-president at the time, so I paid no attention.

Seventy-nine episodes. 1959-1961 were the happiest years of Nick’s life and great ones for me. When we went off the air we were the highest rated Sunday show on ABC. Why did we go off? Politics, but that’s another chapter of the book. And speaking of books, besides my many adventures with series, features, and MOWs, since then I’ve written seven novels. The last one published by Berkley-Putnam in 1999 is THE REBEL: Johnny Yuma. It’s doing great - and yes, there have been a lot of calls.

“How about doing The Rebel as a movie?”

“A series, starting with a two hour MOW?”

“Let’s make a pilot!”

Would I? Well, as Jack Benny once said, “I’m thinking it over.” Maybe it would be as sweet. But I know it wouldn’t be as simple.

Andrew J. Fenady is a well-known writer, producer, and novelist. His numerous credits include the TV series The Rebel and Branded. Feature motion pictures include John Wayne’s Chisum.