‘M Squad’ recalls the cheesiness of early TV
Forget this evening’s premiere of TNT’s “Leverage” for a minute. I’d rather write about “M Squad.”
Did any vintage TV show ever have cooler credits? I doubt it.
The opening credits for “M Squad” had something nothing else ever had — a funky blues theme by Count Basie ending not with Basie’s patented three-note rhythmic punctuation but a couple of gunshots from the gun of the show’s hero, Lt. Frank Ballinger, and then a big screaming tutti from the Basie band.
Every time I saw it, I’d think to myself “how cool is that?” On occasion, the quality of the half-hour show that followed the credits was even on par with it.
When I was asked a couple of years ago what specimens of 1950s TV noir they ought to package complete on DVD, “M Squad” was right there in the first tier, along with Blake Edwards’ “Peter Gunn” and John Cassavetes’ “Johnny Staccato.” All were only 30 minutes long and irresistible.
Well, they’ve done it — with “M Squad” anyway. All 117 episodes of “M Squad” are now out on a 15-DVD set from Timeless Media. I don’t know where they dug up tapes or films or kinescopes of some of this, but even they admit that such historical scrounging left them with a few episodes whose quality of visual reproduction is about on par with a sonogram.
No matter. The very idea that in 2008 someone who wants to spend 100 bucks or so can now buy the complete “M Squad” is truly delightful. It would be even more so if we lived in world whose economy actually allowed everyone to afford it who might be interested.
By far, the best part of the package is the CD of “M Squad” music from Basie, Benny Carter and Steven Spielberg’s favorite composer John Williams, when he was known as jazz arranger/ composer/pianist Johnny Williams.
I can’t fib here. I won’t claim to you that I watched all 15 discs of it but I watched enough to marvel at much of it and laugh out loud at a little feature of early television that even veterans tend to forget.
To wit: much of it was rather terrible.
Not all, by any means. It’s a kick to see the complete “M Squad” butt-naked and screaming on 15 CDs, but you just can’t ignore how bad the writing often was and how cheesy the production values were.
There were good reasons back then for the severe caste system afflicting Hollywood, where movies were considered the Big Time and TV was someplace downstairs you went for the money.
Watch “M Squad” and you’ll understand. In one of the early episodes, in fact, there was dialogue so bad between star Lee Marvin and Paul Newlan as his boss, Capt. Grey, that the two actors literally couldn’t even look each other in the eye while they delivered their lines.
I guffawed in my living room. I’ve seldom in my life felt more sympathy for the heroes of early TV.
And Marvin back then was all of that. He turned into one of the most remarkable movie stars we ever had until he died at only 63 in 1987. It’s surprising now to think how relatively young he was at death because his hair was prematurely gray throughout his performing life.
By the time he’d starred in “M Squad” at 33, he’d been one of the movies’ great villains. (See him immortally in “Bad Day at Black Rock” and, later, in John Ford’s “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance.”)
After “M Squad” he was that incomparably strange movie “hero” who still had on screen
all the latent savagery and truculent hipsterism of a “heavy.”
Marvin was that onscreen oddity who seemed, at times, genuinely frightening. You couldn’t listen to that barroom basso without wondering how many bottles had turned into “dead soldiers” on his watch.
He was, in life, quite literally a war hero — a decorated Marine whose service record was as distinguished as any combat veteran’s in show business. (He loved to tell people, in fact, that his bacon in the war had once been saved by another little-known soldier who went on to have a showbiz career — Bob Keeshan aka Capt. Kangaroo.)
Whenever you see those 1950’s TV classics now, you see big names in small roles and guest shots. And so it is here with the likes of Burt Reynolds, Charles Bronson, Angie Dickinson and, yes, Leonard Nimoy, all passing before your eyes on the way to the Big Time.
TV, when it’s bad now, is totally different. Watch, for instance, that premiere tonight of TNT’s “Leverage,” a show whose pilot was so crummy that it was almost unwatchable but is, nevertheless, filled with “production values” — good sets, good stunts, crackling dialogue amid the inanity, and actors who can sometimes look each other in the eye while they’re getting paid.
What made Marvin a star on “M Squad” is that he did it absolutely straight for 117 episodes. No wonder he graduated to “The Dirty Dozen,” “Cat Ballou” and “Point Blank.”
Look at his co-star Paul Newlan. You can practically catch him thinking “God I wish I were doing this on radio.”
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