Mannix is Coming! (All things Mannix w/spoilers) (5 Viewers)

[swan4022]

I too was "on the fence" about sticking with Mannix while watching Season 1. The next season gets better, progressively, but it wasn't until I hit Season 3 that I "felt" a connection to the show. Several of the episodes in Season 2 and 3 personalize the work Joe does, and there are many episodes where he experiences tremendous personal pain or loss (not just getting beaten up) that enhanced my connection to the character; in addition, Peggy becomes a more prominent partner and friend in his life, sharing in his agonies and achievements (and he is there for hers too). It's possible that both of these qualities--vicarious experience of a hero's emotional scarring, the development of a real friendship--that spoke to me lately.

I think a turning point for me was "A Question of Midnight" that co-stars Lee Meriwether; I recall this S3 episode having a snappy and playful (almost cinematic, in that late-60s sense of the word) tone to it. I've stated this before, but it was a few episodes later, with "The Sound of Darkness" that cemented my bond to the show; it's a fine showcase for all of the creative personnel involved, and makes you appreciate how a lot of people working together for 5-6 days at a frantic pace could create a work of art.

(Also, Robert Reed was my favorite of the revolving lieutenants during that period!)

 

[benbess]

I don't think we'll ever having anything like Mannix or The Virginian made for American network TV again. You're right that on The Virginian there were many episodes where James Drury only had a small part. He was the star of the majority of them, and these were 90-minute (with commercials) movie-length episodes, but what this all emphasizes is exactly what you say: what Mike Connors pulled off for the role of Mannix is nothing less than extraordinary. He's in practically every scene of the show! And he seems to really do most of his own stunt work and stunt fights, which makes it all the more impressive.

Similarities between Mannix and The Virginian include that they were both, by television standards, big budget productions. Some tv shows from this era (and others) look cheap, but both of these programs were aiming, within the budget and time limitations of a weekly series, for quality.

One major difference, aside from the difference in genre, is the difference in pacing. The editing and pacing of The Virginian is often deliberate, and sometimes even slow. I think the pace of the editing, on average, picked up a bit by the late 1960s, but The Virginian more or less kept to the style of its origins in 1962. Mannix, begun in 1967, is clearly meant to be an action packed show. The Virginian is more talky and sometimes almost philosophical, which has its pros and cons. I actually like both styles, but it's interesting to see how on The Virginian the characters almost always have a sum up scene at the very end, where they talk through something of what it all meant, or the journey a character has gone through. But Mannix just—boom—ends, often with some loose threads that you have to finish off yourself in your own mind. I really see virtues in both ways of doing it, and am enjoying the differences. As the French say: vive la différence!

Watched a couple more, both good: Who Will Dig the Graves? and The Need of a Friend. Especially liked Graves, because the hippies, rather than being the loony bad guys of many cop shows of this time, are actually treated with some respect. In fact, the folk singer "Susan Ward" is kind of the hero of the piece. Was she supposed to be Navajo? I thought of her as being inspired by both Joni Mitchell and Buffy Saint Marie, who are two of my favorite singers of this era. Friend was ok, and the plot twist certainly fooled me. Do you think the character in the very end is about to die? Or is he going to make it? Or is that just unknown. The abrupt ending style of this show is taking some getting used to for me, but again I think I like it.

 

[jompaul17]

I too was "on the fence" about sticking with Mannix while watching Season 1. The next season gets better, progressively, but it wasn't until I hit Season 3 that I "felt" a connection to the show. Several of the episodes in Season 2 and 3 personalize the work Joe does, and there are many episodes where he experiences tremendous personal pain or loss (not just getting beaten up) that enhanced my connection to the character; in addition, Peggy becomes a more prominent partner and friend in his life, sharing in his agonies and achievements (and he is there for hers too). It's possible that both of these qualities--vicarious experience of a hero's emotional scarring, the development of a real friendship--that spoke to me lately.

I think a turning point for me was "A Question of Midnight" that co-stars Lee Meriwether; I recall this S3 episode having a snappy and playful (almost cinematic, in that late-60s sense of the word) tone to it. I've stated this before, but it was a few episodes later, with "The Sound of Darkness" that cemented my bond to the show; it's a fine showcase for all of the creative personnel involved, and makes you appreciate how a lot of people working together for 5-6 days at a frantic pace could create a work of art.

(Also, Robert Reed was my favorite of the revolving lieutenants during that period!)

Ron,

I'm not sure what I can add to this (except that, given my pattern, if I don't respond people are going to think I didn't like the post!).

There is a danger in suggesting, "wait until this part of the series" or "wait until this episode." Because the build up generally makes expectations so high that the reality can't ever deliver.

But you eloquently expressed the progression and what cemented a lot of people's bonds to the show.

And if there is any episode that can deliver on its expectations, especially once the viewer has connected with the characters thus far, it is "The Sound of Darkness." How did they do that episode in a single week? They just couldn't have done those scenes in more than a very few takes!

Robert Reed was key to that episode, for sure. Notice how they made him a categorically different kind of "cop buddy" in the episodes that precede it in season 3. Ivan Goff and Ben Roberts knew how to set up certain episodes with small things in preceding episodes -- they were simply brilliant at subtle forms of character development.

I'm not sure how many people mourned the loss of Robert Reed more because of Adam Tobias than Papa Brady -- but I was one of them.

 

[benbess]

Nice to hear from Swan and JP that the third season is even better than the second. As I said, I'll keep an open mind.

I also watched another episode, Edge of the Knife. Solid episode. Used the soon to be overused "mask gimmick" from MI, but it was ok.

I did have another idea, probably far-fetched, for promoting Mannix, as well as a little bit the book that it inspired. What about doing a series of c. 5 minute video reviews for youtube of the various seasons of the show on dvd? Since you're an expert on the show, I'm thinking of something classier and more in-depth than most reviews of TV shows on youtube, and using clips or stills from the seasons to illustrate points and highlight a few favorite episodes. At the beginning or end you could just mention that your credentials are that you've written a book on Mannix. Again, I realize it's probably not realistic. Just a thought.

I assume you've all seen all of these reviews by Paul Mavis, which seem pretty good, and have some amusing and perceptive passages:

http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/39111/mannix-the-third-season/

 

[jompaul17]

I don't think we'll ever having anything like Mannix or The Virginian made for American network TV again. You're right that on The Virginian there were many episodes where James Drury only had a small part. He was the star of the majority of them, and these were 90-minute (with commercials) movie-length episodes, but what this all emphasizes is exactly what you say: what Mike Connors pulled off for the role of Mannix is nothing less than extraordinary. He's in practically every scene of the show! And he seems to really do most of his own stunt work and stunt fights, which makes it all the more impressive.

Similarities between Mannix and The Virginian include that they were both, by television standards, big budget productions. Some tv shows from this era (and others) look cheap, but both of these programs were aiming, within the budget and time limitations of a weekly series, for quality.

One major difference, aside from the difference in genre, is the difference in pacing. The editing and pacing of The Virginian is often deliberate, and sometimes even slow. I think the pace of the editing, on average, picked up a bit by the late 1960s, but The Virginian more or less kept to to the style of its origins in 1962. Mannix, begun in 1967, is clearly meant to be an action packed show. The Virginian is more talky and sometimes almost philosophical, which has its pros and cons. I actually like both styles, but it's interesting to see how on The Virginian the characters almost always have a sum up scene at the very end, where they talk through something of what it all meant, or the journey a character has gone through. But Mannix just—boom—ends, often with some loose threads that you have to finish off yourself in your own mind. I really see virtues in both ways of doing it, and am enjoying the differences. As the French say: vive la différence!

Watched a couple more, both good: Who Will Dig the Graves? and The Need of a Friend. Especially liked Graves, because the hippies, rather than being the loony bad guys of many cop shows of this time, are actually treated with some respect. In fact, the folk singer "Susan Ward" is kind of the hero of the piece. Was she supposed to be Navajo? I thought of her as being inspired by both Joni Mitchell and Buffy Saint Marie, who are two of my favorite singers of this era. Friend was ok, and the plot twist certainly fooled me. Do you think the character in the very end is about to die? Or is he going to make it? Or is that just unknown. The abrupt ending style of this show is taking some getting used to for me, but again I think I like it.

Ben,

Nice summary of the differences between the two series.

So, I've heard so many times that they can't do now what they did then in terms of production qualities. But, these days shooting schedules seem so much more lenient, fewer shows are made per year, and cable channels such as HBO surely have big budgets for some series, like The Sopranos.

Something else is going on here -- something about the relationship of the money to the stories that contain, I'll go back to that word in a previous post, wisdom.

It isn't that the time or money isn't there. It's that there is more of a will to use it to display cleverness than wisdom.

I really like that word "quality." It implies something designed to stand the test of time. Surely that is exactly what certain shows of that time period were trying to achieve. Cleverness does not stand the test of time. Wisdom does.

These days, there are quite a few shows out there that are really quite intelligent and certainly contain shock and awe. But they do not tend to hold very much wisdom. They do not inspire us to be better versions of ourselves so much as they point out the so-called more realistic problems of the human condition.

The pacing of Mannix is legendary -- and adds to the almost unbelievable schedule MC had over that eight year period. MC discussed the pacing in PBS's Pioneers of Television: Crime Dramas. Bruce Geller had the idea that he could tell a lot more story by extremely tight editing, inspired by the kinds of stories told in 30 second commercials! As a result, Mannix had significantly more camera set-ups than the average drama. Since MC was still in every scene, this meant even more work for MC over that eight year period than even your "normal" show so much about one man with a mix of emotional response and all sorts of action, including stunts!

Put it all together and no other leading actor comes close to the amount of work he put into that character.

By the way, that right editing and rapid pacing is what leads some to believe, even to this day, that "The Sound of Darkness" was actually a two-part episode. ( Of course, it was not -- they just got a whole lot done in 50 minutes!)

But the pacing didn't have to do with 1967 so much as Bruce Geller's innovation. And while I'm sure it influenced other series, Mannix may still be one of the most tightly edited series, ever.

I have a somewhat better view of "in Need of a Friend," perhaps because of the scenes between Joe and Peggy. That is, if memory serves, the first episode where Peggy shows some chops. She actually tells her boss off, to the point that she walks out on him! Hey folks, this is 1968! And there was some anger displayed in that scene in Joe's apartment. The episode was directed by Sutton Roley, who seemed to like a lot of emotion and got it out of his actors.

The ending of that episode has been brought up before (but I can't remember where now). I think we are supposed to think he does live, but it isn't going to be the last time a Mannix episode cuts you off -- and almost begs your mind to fill in the rest.

I love that part of the show -- that it forces your imagination to fill in the missing scenes and go beyond the endings. In so many ways, the series wants you to not just watch it, but engage with it.

 

[jompaul17]

Nice to hear from Swan and JP that the third season is even better than the second. As I said, I'll keep an open mind.

I also watched another episode, Edge of the Knife. Solid episode. Used the soon to be overused "mask gimmick" from MI, but it was ok.

I did have another idea, probably far-fetched, for promoting Mannix, as well as a little bit the book that it inspired. What about doing a series of c. 5 minute video reviews for youtube of the various seasons of the show on dvd? Since you're an expert on the show, I'm thinking of something classier and more in-depth than most reviews of TV shows on youtube, and using clips or stills from the seasons to illustrate points and highlight a few favorite episodes. At the beginning or end you could just mention that your credentials are that you've written a book on Mannix. Again, I realize it's probably not realistic. Just a thought.

I assume you've all seen all of these reviews by Paul Mavis, which seem pretty good, and have some amusing and perceptive passages:

http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/39111/mannix-the-third-season/

Ben,

Well, that's quite a suggestion -- and thanks very much for that!

I think I've learned from the radio interviews that I'm better with the written word than the spoken word, but perhaps such a goal could be motivation to improve. I think that after many years of classroom teaching the translation to radio interviews can be more challenging than one might think -- I've read where stage actors have to learn how to act "smaller" for movies and TV.

That aside, I'd have to approach Paramount, since scenes from Mannix are copyright protected. Not sure how that would go...

Yes, I know of Mr. Mavis. I have a story about him, but I will only tell it offline.

"The Edge of the Knife" has a great, satisfying ending! Mannix does not have stock ending styles!

 

[benbess]

....I really like that word "quality." It implies something designed to stand the test of time. Surely that is exactly what certain shows of that time period were trying to achieve....

The pacing of Mannix is legendary -- and adds to the almost unbelievable schedule MC had over that eight year period. MC discussed the pacing in PBS's Pioneers of Television: Crime Dramas. Bruce Geller had the idea that he could tell a lot more story by extremely tight editing, inspired by the kinds of stories told in 30 second commercials! As a result, Mannix had significantly more camera set-ups than the average drama...

I have a somewhat better view of "in Need of a Friend," perhaps because of the scenes between Joe and Peggy. That is, if memory serves, the first episode where Peggy shows some chops. She actually tells her boss off, to the point that she walks out on him! Hey folks, this is 1968!....

In terms of making quality shows that will last, I think Lucille Ball had a lot to do with getting that rolling. She and Dezi, as we all know, made the famous decision to take a pay cut on the original "I Love Lucy" back in 1951 in order to pay for the show to be filmed in 35mm. But then she and Dezi owned the film, which turned out to be a gold mine that kept on giving in reruns, and which essentially invented syndication.

Those reruns helped build up Desilu as a studio, and, more importantly, as Lucy ran year after year (they were still going strong in the 70s, when I was growing up) showed everyone that a television show made in one decade could still be raking in the money many years later. It was almost like magic. As production values steadily grew for some shows in the 1950s and 60s, the studios producing those shows were often losing money on the first run. The networks rarely paid as much as it cost to produce a show, but the gamble was that in reruns, if the quality and entertainment value was there, it could keep earning back its investment years later. And so for Mannix, Star Trek, The Virginian, and other shows, that was part of the gamble in the backs of minds of some of the people making these shows—put in the quality (both in terms of production values and human values) now, and the show will live on.

The fates of these three shows were, however, rather different. Star Trek, a struggling and expensive show killed after three years, ended up being a colossal money-maker in the long run, even to this day. Mannix was more typical, having some nice years in reruns in the late 70s and early 80s before drifting away. The Virginian, with its very unusual 90-minute run time, was rarely seen in reruns in the 1970s. At least, I don't recall seeing it as a kid, even though I saw Bonanza, Twilight Zone, Green Acres, Gunsmoke, etc., etc. My guess is that the gamble to put quality into The Virginian never really paid off in terms of money, even though they made very good show. The DVD sales for the last few years are no doubt helping, and its been shown on some cable stations off and on, but again my guess is that somewhere in the accounting offices of Universal Studios there's still some red ink in the paper and computer files for The Virginian.

The same may be true of Mannix, for all I know, even though it is owned by CBS. The losses generated by even a hit show from its original run can take a very long time to make up. And, of course, there's the infamous Hollywood accounting to add to the mix. When Roddenberry, part owner of Star Trek, asked about his checks as the show became a huge hit in reruns in the mid 1970s, the studio apparently showed him the books with the losses still there, even if they were rapidly being erased. They hired him instead to make a new Trek show, which, when Star Wars became a hit, was morphed into The Motion Picture.

Sorry, I got off topic!

And now, back to Mannix.

That's fascinating that producer Bruce Geller had the idea of adapting the editing pace of commercials to a TV program. I didn't know that, but it explains a lot.

And yes, Friend does have good character development for Peggy Fair. That was probably the best part of that episode, and fairly remarkable for 1968.

 

[jompaul17]

In terms of making quality shows that will last, I think Lucille Ball had a lot to do with getting that rolling. She and Dezi, as we all know, made the famous decision to take a pay cut on the original "I Love Lucy" back in 1951 in order to pay for the show to be filmed in 35mm. But then she and Dezi owned the film, which turned out to be a gold mine that kept on giving in reruns, and which essentially invented syndication.

Those reruns helped build up Desilu as a studio, and, more importantly, as Lucy ran year after year (they were still going strong in the 70s, when I was growing up) showed everyone that a television show made in one decade could still be raking in the money many years later. It was almost like magic. As production values steadily grew for some shows in the 1950s and 60s, the studios producing those shows were often losing money on the first run. The networks rarely paid as much as it cost to produce a show, but the gamble was that in reruns, if the quality and entertainment value was there, it could keep earning back its investment years later. And so for Mannix, Star Trek, The Virginian, and other shows, that was part of the gamble in the backs of minds of some of the people making these shows—put in the quality (both in terms of production values and human values) now, and the show will live on.

The fates of these three shows were, however, rather different. Star Trek, a struggling and expensive show killed after three years, ended up being a colossal money-maker in the long run, even to this day. Mannix was more typical, having some nice years in reruns in the late 70s and early 80s before drifting away. The Virginian, with its very unusual 90-minute run time, was rarely seen in reruns in the 1970s. At least, I don't recall seeing it as a kid, even though I saw Bonanza, Twilight Zone, Green Acres, Gunsmoke, etc., etc. My guess is that the gamble to put quality into The Virginian never really paid off in terms of money, even though they made very good show. The DVD sales for the last few years are no doubt helping, and its been shown on some cable stations off and on, but again my guess is that somewhere in the accounting offices of Universal Studios there's still some red ink in the paper and computer files for The Virginian.

The same may be true of Mannix, for all I know, even though it is owned by CBS. The losses generated by even a hit show from its original run can take a very long time to make up. And, of course, there's the infamous Hollywood accounting to add to the mix. When Roddenberry, part owner of Star Trek, asked about his checks as the show became a huge hit in reruns in the mid 1970s, the studio apparently showed him the books with the losses still there, even if they were rapidly being erased. They hired him instead to make a new Trek show, which, when Star Wars became a hit, was morphed into The Motion Picture.

Sorry, I got off topic!

And now, back to Mannix.

That's fascinating that producer Bruce Geller had the idea of adapting the editing pace of commercials to a TV program. I didn't know that, but it explains a lot.

And yes, Friend does have good character development for Peggy Fair. That was probably the best part of that episode, and fairly remarkable for 1968.

Ben,

I don't see how it is off-topic, since Mannix was a Desilu production made in the golden era of television!

While I Love Lucy was groundbreaking and a mega-hit in syndication, I sometimes wonder if syndication was the plan for series started in the 1960s. The Virginian started in, what -- 1962? By then it wasn't clear that I Love Lucy would run in perpetuity. And yet it is discussed as being expensive to make, right from the beginning.

I have noticed that Mannix does its best to not have dated references. But, any drama set in the modern day is less likely to have long-term syndication value. Oddly, the fanciful projections of science fiction tend to hold up better for younger viewers than modern-day settings do, even when those projections turn out to be far less than present-day technology, in some cases! (Star Trek could have used some flat-screen TVs...). And, of course, while the country has lost its taste for Westerns, 1960 and 1860 hardly seem different to a Generation Xer (or less) -- so the fact that they were made long ago does not matter.

Having said that, I almost hope there isn't a resurgence of interest in Mannix, because I'd hate to see what Hollywood might do to it these days. Modern-day "interpretations" of classics tend to be horrible.

As for productions being "expensive," I truly believe that has more to do with fanciful Hollywood accounting than anything else. Expensive is a relative thing -- to other productions and profits. If The Virginian was expensive, then it was expensive relative to other productions. Someone prioritized it. The same could be true of Mannix, which surely invested a lot of money in blowing up real cars, among other things. And, if I remember correctly, Bruce Geller was banned from the Paramount lot for being so over-budget on Mission: Impossible.

But were Mannix and The Virginian really "expensive?" That all depends upon the money charged for commercials -- and series that ran for eight years were likely to have loyal followings. By the 1960s surely the commercial networks realized what they could charge for commercials.

Quite a few series have had lawsuits filed from their major stars, Mannix included. Many decades-old studio profit/loss sheets have been challenged -- and in a lot of cases, the stars have prevailed. Many speculate that MC's part-ownership of the series had a lot to do with it not being run in syndication so much -- and with the DVDs taking so long to come out. The studio does not want to make it seem as if the series has crossed the profit line when stars obtain part-ownership.

I get quite upset, actually, when I realize someone I've watched has wound up in near poverty because they became typecast and made hardly any money working in some series. That happens to far too many Hollywood actors.

Those that read and write these threads probably identify with the stars more than the studios. But, it also seems to me as if back then everyone had a higher standard of excellence. That simply comes from caring about the product more than the bottom line. What a thought.

Yes, the scenes in "In Need of a Friend" were quite remarkable for 1968. Peggy Fair went way, way beyond where any black actress went before (so to speak) in terms of her relationship with her white co-star. Watching it was a thing of beauty -- and it lends yet more reality to the heroism of the series and character.

 

[benbess]

....But were Mannix and The Virginian really "expensive?" That all depends upon the money charged for commercials -- and series that ran for eight years were likely to have loyal followings. By the 1960s surely the commercial networks realized what they could charge for commercials.

Quite a few series have had lawsuits filed from their major stars, Mannix included. Many decades-old studio profit/loss sheets have been challenged -- and in a lot of cases, the stars have prevailed...

Yes, these shows really were expensive. They were huge financial gambles, and were made with a long-term view in mind.

The new books on the making of the original Star Trek, "These Are the Voyages," by Marc Cushman, give a fairly detailed picture of what was going on at Desilu as Star Trek was made. I recommend the books if you're a fan of Star Trek, but the information about Desilu applies to a large degree to Mannix as well.

Let me see if I can try to make a long story a little bit shorter, but it's really quite complicated. No doubt there's some of this you already know...

Lucille Ball's husband, by the early 1960s, had sold out his share of the studio, which made her the only woman in Hollywood heading a studio at that time. She had all these sound stages, but they weren't being used enough, and the overhead costs were killing her profits. And so she was looking for work for her studio when, in 1964, NBC ordered a pilot of Star Trek. The Cage episode, starring Jeffrey Hunter, went way over budget. It was budgeted at $450k, but ending up costing $616,000—almost $5 million today. That's a huge amount for a TV pilot. Consider that about ten years ago the movie-length Lost pilot cost, iirc, about $10 million, and was considered so expensive that at least one executive was fired as a result. Anyway, Desilu had to take the losses on how much it went over budget.

NBC, as we all know, was blown away by the quality of the first Star Trek, but didn't think it was commercial enough. And so it was retooled, Shatner was cast, and a second pilot was ordered—with a strict budget of $212,000. But it ended up costing Desilu $355,000, and the studio again had to eat the losses. The Board of Directors of Desilu encouraged studio head Ball to end this costly Star Trek fiasco right then and there, no matter what NBC said. She heard the other side, Roddenberry and producer Herb Solow, that they were doing something new that had lasting value. And so she let Star Trek live, overruling her financial advisors.

When NBC ordered the series, again the Board of directors urged Ball to stop Star Trek. NBC would pay them a fee for the show, but that fee was apparently tens of thousands of dollars an episode less than it was going to cost Desilu to make Star Trek. Roddenberry wanted to make a quality show, and to do that was expensive. They hacked down the budget to some degree, but the lowest they could get the average production budget for the first group of episodes was about $193,000, and in fact they often went over that. City on the Edge of Forever, for instance, was a special episode that cost almost $250k.

To make a show like this today would probably cost at least $2 million an episode, and so Star Trek's first season of 29 episodes was a gamble somewhere in the neighborhood of almost $60 million in today's dollars for tiny Desilu.

It's not clear what NBC was paying, but I'll just guess here that it was maybe about $160,000 an episode. Whatever it was, the more episodes that were made, the more the losses mounted at a staggering rate for the small studio. This is why Lucille Ball's executives thought of Star Trek, and Desilu's other expensive shows, as "successes" in name only that would at the same time potentially destroy the studio.

Ball again overruled her advisors. She knew it was a gamble, but no doubt thinking of "I Love Lucy" in reruns, as well as all the other shows that were successful in syndication at that point, she guessed that in the long run the shows would have value. The huge losses would be eventually erased in her estimation by reruns.

Yes, the network was making big profits on the ads from Star Trek, and even more from Mannix, which was a bigger hit, but until renegotiation time that didn't mean that the studio saw this money. That was NBC's money or CBS's money. In first run, the studio was losing money on every episode in the hope that in syndication they'd clean up big. That's probably why, many years later, they killed Mannix while it was still doing well in the ratings. It was time to start cleaning up the red ink off of the books.

But you're also right that Hollywood accounting is notorious for showing "losses" on even the most successful projects. An internal WB document on the accounting of one of the Harry Potter movies came out a few years ago. The movie had a production budget of c. $150 million, and grossed c. $900 million worldwide, and yet WB claimed that they still lost money on it. It was a lie, obviously, or else they wouldn't have kept making those expensive movies.

But back to Mannix. My guess is that Mannix was in the late 1960s almost as expensive as Star Trek. Not quite, because it didn't have a large cast, didn't have special effects of the same kind, etc. But since Star Trek started out costing c.$190k an episode, we might guess that Mannix was perhaps in its first few seasons maybe around $170k an episode?? In any case, by 1968 Bonanza was costing $180k an episode, and so this seems to be the ballpark for a first-class hour-long network series in this era:

http://ponderosascenery.homestead.com/costs.html

But the network paid the studio maybe only c. 70-80% of that production cost, and so again with each episode the accounts for Mannix would go more and more into the red. Maybe foreign markets would erase that? Not sure. Maybe the network sometimes bought those rights too as part of the deal?

Anyway, first Desilu and then Paramount (because the execs had been right, Desilu couldn't sustain the losses forever, and Ball had to sell out—although she made a nice profit and got a lot of stock) had to cover the losses on shows until syndication, and then they hoped they would make out big.

With Star Trek they definitely did. With Mannix it might be more of a grey area. Don't know. Was MC's lawsuit ever resolved? With The Virginian my guess is that it's still in the red, and that only some of that is funky Hollywood accounting.

These particular shows really were expensive....

 

[FanCollector]

Very effectively summarized, Ben! The only thing of interest I can add is that this was a transitional period for television in that until the early to mid 1960s, deficit financing for television was rare and generally seen as an exception or an error. As the shows got more expensive, the idea of time periods being "owned" by one or two sponsors became less feasible and the networks were in a better position to make all the rules. From that point forward, studios were risking their own money every time, hoping that syndication would pay them back later. From the late 60s on, almost every show cost more to make than the networks would pay and that has made it much more of a high-stakes money game.

 

[jompaul17]

Ben and Lee,

I just have a moment but wanted to add something. (And, if I click on the popup ad that just came up on this site that my PC Performance is Poor, I may never be able to come back here, due to lack of a working computer...).

There are two issues here:

(1) What constitutes a profitable series (first-run)?
(2) How closely are the networks aligned with the studios (even if "behind the scenes") in determination of said profits?

We know the answer to the latter question these days -- they are one and the same. How much were they really separate, way back when? That was, and still in many ways is, a small community -- consumers (networks) and producers (studios) closely aligned. And there were exactly three consumers for television series back then to go along with fewer studios than there are now -- only three commercial networks in an era where people had to get up to change the channel in order to avoid a series they didn't like after their favorite one just ran. Affiliates were a part of this mix as well -- they wanted to have shows with solid audiences run right before the local news.

Most companies have a business model for loss-leaders. Not everything produced or put on the shelves is designed for a profit. For example, networks might overpay for a series so that they can be considered the network of X -- where X is some series or event that captures the imagination of the public. Then, lesser (cheaper) products can be run (sold) at a relatively greater profit because people watch them just by association (I certainly did that for CBS -- no question). But that is only because of the association with the item that loses money.

That raises the question then -- is X really sold at a profit or a loss for the vendor?

Put another way, what year was it that GM paid no taxes -- thus made no profits, from the perspective of the IRS?

Things like this, I'm sure, factored into the examination of the accounting in those lawsuits. (I don't feel comfortable saying any more about Mannix here.)

Arguably, Desilu put out nothing but expensive, high quality series -- for one reason or other, even if just to establish themselves against the movie studios who were getting into TV. Remember how powerful those movie studios were?

My point is that terms like expense, profit, loss, etc... can be extremely difficult to pin down. Often, only those behind the scenes really know what is going on -- if then.

 

[FanCollector]

All legitimate questions and issues, although there is no question that Desilu went out of business by financing productions it could not afford. Lucy did OK with her receipt of Gulf and Western stock, but the studio was indeed losing money on all its shows except her own at the end. (The way Desilu actually made back some money through most of the years was as a landlord. It was a small studio with a lot of space, so they rented out studios to lots of non-Desilu shows and that was clear profit. One reason that Star Trek, Mission: Impossible, and Mannix got the green light was that Lucy was tired of Desilu being more of a venue than a studio.)

 

[benbess]

FanCollector's right about this. I noticed a week ago or so that some episodes on my new blu-ray of the Dick van Dyke Show say there were filmed as Desilu. Maybe all of them were. But I don't think it was a Desilu production. And so, as FanCollector says, Desilu was earning nice short term profits, but they weren't big ones. The big one profits for the DVDS, just like for I Love Lucy, Star Trek, etc., came during syndication. And I don't know for sure, but my guess is that Desilu didn't get money from the Dick Van Dyke Show from that....

 

[FanCollector]

The Dick Van Dyke Show was an example of the older model: the CBS license fee was sufficient to cover costs and a small profit for the studio. But yes, the serious DVDShow money came with syndication. All the Danny Thomas/Sheldon Leonard shows were at least partially filmed at Desilu, but Desilu just got upfront rental payments for them; no ongoing profit participation.

 

[Rob_Ray]

FanCollector's right about this. I noticed a week ago or so that some episodes on my new blu-ray of the Dick van Dyke Show say there were filmed as Desilu. Maybe all of them were. But I don't think it was a Desilu production. And so, as FanCollector says, Desilu was earning nice short term profits, but they weren't big ones. The big one profits for the DVDS, just like for I Love Lucy, Star Trek, etc., came during syndication. And I don't know for sure, but my guess is that Desilu didn't get money from the Dick Van Dyke Show from that....

I don't think Desilu ever saw the syndication profits from I LOVE LUCY because, if I'm not mistaken, Desilu sold I LOVE LUCY to CBS in 1957 in order to get the money to buy the RKO property.

 

[FanCollector]

I don't know if it was 1957 or a few years later, but yes, Desi sold the rights back to CBS and so Desilu didn't enjoy those profits in later years. (Notice that as soon as Lucy sold Desilu to G+W, she closed up The Lucy Show, started another production company that then produced Here's Lucy, allowing her to have complete ownership of that series, rather than continuing The Lucy Show which was then a Paramount property.)

 

[benbess]

FanCollector: Thanks. That makes sense. Watching the DVDS on blu-ray clearly it's very professionally made, but it also seems produced on a very tight budget. There seems to be virtually no location photography, and just a few standard standing sets that aren't particularly elaborate. It looks like they were taking "I Love Lucy" as a model in terms of how it was made, right down to the studio audience.

If you know, can you say exactly how and when it was that studios first realized they could lose money on a show during the network run, while gambling that they'd make profits in reruns?

I'm sure The Virginian was made on this model, because the reported average production budget for that show was something like $300,000, making it the most expensive weekly tv show in the 1960s, at least as far as I know. In the book on that show, the most important producer of The Virginian, Frank Price, tells an interesting story. The show was a slow starter, but the ratings grew steadily during the first season. By the second season it was a big hit, although not in the top ten, and the third season was a hit too. Price wanted to do other things, and so the job of executive producer (I guess what we would call today the show runner) fell to Norman MacDonnell, for what would turn out the be a nearly disastrous 4th season. MacDonnell let the actor playing the head of the ranch, Lee Cobb, slip through his fingers, but more importantly he commissioned from the writers a series of grim tending toward tragic screenplays, one after the other. Some of the shows in the 4th season are good, but the whole tone is dreary and often sad. Not surprisingly, the ratings for The Virginian plummeted, and by the end of the season everyone began to realize that the show was probably dead.

Frank Price was so proud of the show, however, that he wanted to save it, and begged Universal to let him try to revive it by resuming his work as executive producer. Universal was actually reluctant, which shocked him, but that may have been because of the red ink they'd already spilled for the show. Anyway, it was partly pride, but the business idea behind saving The Virginian was to eventually have a larger group of episodes for successful and profitable syndication. The long story short was that it worked. Price revived the show and the ratings soared, and the show was in the top 10 for the first time (although at #10) for 1966-67. The original show had been done on a 5 year contract at a certain rate for NBC. Although Price is vague, it seems like from Universal's point of view NBC had been getting a steal of a deal for this expensive show. But now that the show was a hit again, and NBC *really* wanted to keep it, Universal negotiated a tough deal and made NBC pay something much closer to what it actually cost to make the show.

Anyway, back to Mannix. One thing I notice is that there's a lot of location photography for Mannix. Almost all of it is in the LA area, but still, the books on Star Trek and The Virginian make very clear that location photography is quite expensive. And Bonanza, which was a hugely successful and profitable show, was filmed almost entirely in studios to save money.

And the more complicated the set-ups for location photography, the more expensive it gets. It just really adds up quickly, which is why as Star Trek went forward they increasingly did "bottle shows"—set almost exclusively on the Enterprise to save time and money. The first year of Star Trek had the most lavish budget, but even by the end of the first year they were trying to cut back. The second year they were already counting things so carefully that for the classic episode Journey to Babel they had Spock's father and mother arrive by shuttlecraft—because it was much cheaper than having them beam up! And then the whole episode was set aboard the ship. It's still a classic episode, but Desilu was trying to stem the tide of red ink for Trek, and it affected every aspect of the show.

But part of the Mannix formula, as far as I can tell, is location work for flavor, and authenticity. They use cars, planes, picturesque outdoor locations, etc. The location stuff, except for maybe a few episodes, could not be cut, because it was an essential part of the DNA of the show. Mannix didn't have a large or expensive cast, but they spent in other places, like location shoots, stunt work, and guest stars.

 

[FanCollector]

I'm sorry, Ben. Great question, but I don't know when the first time was that a studio knowingly budgeted a show to lose money, banking on successful syndication sales. Desi Arnaz inaugurated the idea by spending his own money to pay for the three-camera filming technique in exchange for owning the filmed episodes and the rights to them afterward. So even though it wasn't financing the show at a loss, it was the first time someone cut into contemporary profits in order to gamble on the value of reruns. (A few years later, Audrey Meadows made a similar gamble by taking a lower salary on the filmed episodes of The Honeymooners so as to receive residuals in perpetuity.) Reruns of filmed shows started to be big business around 1959, so someone could have started doing it anytime after then, although it would be several years before it was standard practice.The Dick Van Dyke Show did use the Lucy model of filming with three cameras and a studio audience. There has always been a one-camera/multi-camera mix of sitcoms, but the cycle goes from one dominating to the other dominating. In the 60s, single-camera dominated, but The Dick Van Dyke Show was the most successful multi-camera show. There tends to be little location filming for shows like that because it is a) expensive, as you outlined and b) the studio audiences can't enjoy it and that kind of defeats the purpose. There are individual episodes of shows that combine the two forms, but it's very uncommon.Journey to Babel was not only filmed at a point in the season at which Star Trek was massively over budget, it was filmed shortly after the sale of Desilu. Desilu had been a little tight because they didn't have much money to spend, but Paramount immediately set strict rules about keeping within the budget, which they also lowered. Unlike the mom-and-pop feel of Desilu, Paramount was all business.Which brings us back to Mannix...after the first half season, it was a Paramount production and they managed to do all that marvelous location and stunt work under those quite limiting budget conditions. I like your phrase about "the DNA of Mannix." Cutting corners on production would have been a disaster for a show that depended on putting Mannix in a believable, three-dimensional world. Mannix is a show that would have suffered terribly by being set-bound on a regular basis, so whatever budget problems they faced, executive producers Goff and Roberts had the right priorities. Having a hit show, which Mannix eventually became, does give the studio leverage to get a higher license fee from the network (ER went through those negotiations VERY publicly with NBC late in their run), although I'm sure it still didn't fully cover production costs for the show, which also usually go up each year because of contractual salary increases. The Virginian probably benefited twice from that system. A 90-minute prestige drama filmed in color on a network owned by RCA was a good thing to have, especially for a relatively low fee. NBC might have been quicker to cancel the show if they paid more for it in those first couple of years. Then, when it was time to renegotiate the license fee, the show was a hit, so The Virginian won again. It also helped, I think, that Frank Price's new job was as a studio executive at Universal. He didn't have the final say on its continuing, but it didn't hurt that he was now in the offices of "The Black Tower."

 

[jompaul17]

Very interesting discussion!

Just a few comments... One odd night I started to become fascinated with where all of the shows I watched in my youth were filmed. I found this website (luckily I saved the link in my email)...

http://www.retroweb.com/tv_studios_and_ranches.html

Scroll down to Desilu-Cahuenga and notice how it has a different address from Paramount (the "western" side of which now includes the old RKO sound stages, hence the main part of Desilu). Here is a link that shows how far apart they are:

https://www.google.com/maps/dir/5555+Melrose+Ave,+Los+Angeles,+CA+90038/846+N+Cahuenga+Blvd,+Los+Angeles,+CA+90038/@34.0850484,-118.3283708,16z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m13!4m12!1m5!1m1!1s0x80c2b8b6f3505e0b:0xe4bc58442f994f94!2m2!1d-118.3194931!2d34.0835505!1m5!1m1!1s0x80c2b8cb771af74f:0xaf3a37629dbee254!2m2!1d-118.3284652!2d34.0866284

That first link describes some interesting history of Desilu-Cahuenga, which closed for a time as a studio. But it certainly staged some classic sitcoms. It also staged I Spy which was, like The Dick Van Dyke Show, done by an independent production company but using Desilu-rented space, even if neither show was filmed on the main Desilu lot (where Star Trek, Mission: Impossible and Mannix were filmed -- scroll down further to Desilu-Gower for that).

Also notice how The Dick Van Dyke Show's stage was taken over by That Girl after TDVDS went out of production. Marlo followed her father's lead by setting up her own production company, renting space, and winding up with the vacated space of TDVDS.

It is curious that Mannix retained all of that location shooting and emphasis on expensive action after it became a Paramount production!

In fact, I would argue that its production quality actually went up, after it became a Paramount production!

There is a TV Guide article that talks about how expensive it was to make a few seconds worth of film when the racecar goes over the cliff and explodes in "To the Swiftest, Death" -- which was the first episode filmed for season 2 and thus the first Paramount-produced episode of Mannix. Sure, that clip was used in the opening of Mannix for many years. But they could have gotten away with cheaper ways to fill the grid and still convey action! And, while there is some location shooting in season 1, it seems relatively less than in later years -- can't think of too many expensive stunts from season 1, either. Season 1 tended to rely more upon MC's athleticism for action.

But notice how many cars go over cliffs and explode in Mannix in later seasons -- they never seem to stop! And the show was in love with aviation.

Notice the opening of "A View of Nowhere." It has MC in a helicopter -- and we see him in that helicopter -- which almost seems to have been filmed from another helicopter (if not that, then a not so cheap camera located on.... what?). Two helicopters were used for filming that scene and the series' star was in one of them? And you can hardly even see it is him -- yet, if you freeze the frame, it is. How much did that cost?

They didn't stop in season 2 either. The end of "To Cage a Seagull" (from season 4) has MC's face in a real helicopter. And multiple series from later seasons have all sorts of custom aviation scenes -- not stock footage. In terms of story, this is throwaway stuff! It's all there to set a tone. Two other TV Guide articles that come to mind describe the expensive stunts in Mannix (one article describes one from season 4 -- "What Happened to Sunday?" and another describes one from season 7 -- "A Way to Dusty Death").

Why did Paramount never seem to cut back on production costs for Mannix? I bet that is another way the series benefitted by being all about a single character -- all they had to do was pay MC, and they had a series.

And, of course, in later years he also traded some of his salary for part ownership of the series -- hence hoping for profits from re-runs and DVD sales. So, they kept the costs down that way, and hired an accountant who liked to cook.

I love this line, worth repeating:

One reason that Star Trek, Mission: Impossible, and Mannix got the green light was that Lucy was tired of Desilu being more of a venue than a studio.

Sometimes, guts can be a business model. Whether the plan was to obtain money back via syndication, or simply survive long enough to be recognized for quality productions -- and then make money on follow-on productions -- we may never know for sure. We do know the model for I Love Lucy. But, the point is well take from a later post -- when did studios decide to produce unprofitable shows and gamble to make money in syndication? My guess is, again, that profitability and motivation are a harder things to pin down than many people realize.

But Lucille Ball liked Mannix, and likely in no small part because she both had and admired guts.

Of the big three -- and last three -- Desilu productions, surely Mannix both ran and retained its production qualities longer than the others (the original versions, of course). Mannix went out on top -- in terms of both ratings and PQ.

 

[benbess]

JP: Good point about the helicopter shot in A View of Nowhere. I was floored in that episode when I saw it was him—didn't even have to freeze it. My guess is that it was one helicopter filming another helicopter. That was an expensive day! I liked the air view of the coast. Wish we'd gotten to see Santa Barbara, which was where I went to grad school. And where, sadly, producer Bruce Geller died in a plane crash in the late 1970s.

Anyway, I really like the Hitchcock-esque A View of Nowhere. It even had as a guest star Michael Wilding, in one of his last roles. He was the star of two Hitchcock films, Under Capricorn and Stage Fright. I highly recommend Stage Fright, which is a neglected Hitchcock classic.

And I'd say this episode was close to being a TV classic. Also enjoyed seeing Katherine Woodville, who was in the Trek Episode For the World is Hollow. Another very solid episode. My rating: B+.

I'm glad Mannix didn't suffer the fate of Star Trek's third year. There were several good to great episodes, but some of the rest were duds, and a few were cringe-worthy. In some the budget cutbacks make the show into almost a shadow of its former self....