Harry-O on Decades

[ZelenskyTheValiant (Ivan)]

I saw the second pilot - "Smile Jenny, You're Dead". Definitely an improvement over the first pilot. Orwell is more like the character in the series (much more likable) and the voice-overs are introduced here and just the story was more interesting. That psycho sure was creepy. The guy taking a swan dive off the high-rise at the end sure was satisfying (he wanted to show he could fly ) but why he didn't drag Jenny with him (which was his original intent) is a mystery. Guess he was really confused at that point.

Anyway, good episode. I can see why it sold the series.

Jenny’s husband from this second pilot reappears in the first season episode Balinger’s Choice and another in season two.

Tim McIntire is the son of veteran actor John McIntire (who replaced Ward Bond on TV's WAGON TRAIN) and actress Jeanette Nolan.

[Luther's nephew Dobie]

As for Harry 0, perceived wisdom is season one is better than season two but for what it's worth so far - having seen only three season one episodes - I like season two better, but maybe that will change.

Just curious, which three season 1 episodes of HARRY-O did you see?

Ivan I have seen all but the last two of season 2 as Decades didn't show them. I really liked Zerbe so I think when I came to start watching season one I wasn't as open to them
because I really missed "Lt. Trench". Especially because the last season 2 episode I viewed was "Mister Five and Dime", which I found an utterly delightful send up of
detective shows. I don't want to describe it lest I ruin it for others other than to say Zerbe's slow burns when he had to repeatedly go to the jail made me laugh out
loud. Harry and Trench are one of the best buddy teams ever, IMHO.
Anyway, I have now seen the first 4 of season 1, and now accepting they are Zerbe free, I say they are excellent. "Guardian at the Gates was superb, and Linda Evans, holy smokes!
By the way, Magnum Mania seems to have misplaced most all it's female members.
I never see them posting anymore.
I always assumed a certain number would be around because they both appreciate good TV and Selleck as a sex symbol.
Anyway I have been promoting Magnum Mania at the various sites I go to, never hurts to recruit new people.

Hey Dobie,
Here’s a link to all the season two episodes so you can see the last two. I found it right around the time METV started playing the show.
I was suddenly inundated with Harry-O options after years of struggling to find it myself or anyone who had seen it recently.

https://archive.org/details/harry-o-s-02

…and season one:
https://archive.org/details/harry-o-s-0 ... ade+On.mp4

Pahonu,
Thank you so much for these links. I just viewed the penultimate episode "The Mysterious Case of Lester and Dr. Fong". I quite enjoyed it, though writer Robert Dozier liberated
the basic frame of the story and just who was the killer from fellow Warner Brothers series Maverick, the 25th episode "Black Fire".
I just saw that Maverick otherwise I would not have connected them.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Peter Gunn:
Does the name Lisa Nye mean anything to you?
Lieutenant Jacoby:
It depends on your education. She's a very rich lady and also a very fine sculptress - classical or contemporary.
She's no Rodin, but who is?
Peter Gunn:
Lieutenant, I'm continually amazed at your knowledge of the fine arts.
Lieutenant Jacoby:
The public library is free. Comic books cost money.

[Pahonu]

As for Harry 0, perceived wisdom is season one is better than season two but for what it's worth so far - having seen only three season one episodes - I like season two better, but maybe that will change.

Just curious, which three season 1 episodes of HARRY-O did you see?

Ivan I have seen all but the last two of season 2 as Decades didn't show them. I really liked Zerbe so I think when I came to start watching season one I wasn't as open to them
because I really missed "Lt. Trench". Especially because the last season 2 episode I viewed was "Mister Five and Dime", which I found an utterly delightful send up of
detective shows. I don't want to describe it lest I ruin it for others other than to say Zerbe's slow burns when he had to repeatedly go to the jail made me laugh out
loud. Harry and Trench are one of the best buddy teams ever, IMHO.
Anyway, I have now seen the first 4 of season 1, and now accepting they are Zerbe free, I say they are excellent. "Guardian at the Gates was superb, and Linda Evans, holy smokes!
By the way, Magnum Mania seems to have misplaced most all it's female members.
I never see them posting anymore.
I always assumed a certain number would be around because they both appreciate good TV and Selleck as a sex symbol.
Anyway I have been promoting Magnum Mania at the various sites I go to, never hurts to recruit new people.

Hey Dobie,
Here’s a link to all the season two episodes so you can see the last two. I found it right around the time METV started playing the show.
I was suddenly inundated with Harry-O options after years of struggling to find it myself or anyone who had seen it recently.

https://archive.org/details/harry-o-s-02

…and season one:
https://archive.org/details/harry-o-s-0 ... ade+On.mp4

Pahonu,
Thank you so much for these links. I just viewed the penultimate episode "The Mysterious Case of Lester and Dr. Fong". I quite enjoyed it, though writer Robert Dozier liberated
the basic frame of the story and just who was the killer from fellow Warner Brothers series Maverick, the 25th episode "Black Fire".
I just saw that Maverick otherwise I would not have connected them.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Peter Gunn:
Does the name Lisa Nye mean anything to you?
Lieutenant Jacoby:
It depends on your education. She's a very rich lady and also a very fine sculptress - classical or contemporary.
She's no Rodin, but who is?
Peter Gunn:
Lieutenant, I'm continually amazed at your knowledge of the fine arts.
Lieutenant Jacoby:
The public library is free. Comic books cost money.

Glad you liked! I believe that episode was a back door pilot that wasn’t successful. I always liked the Lester episodes. I think you commented on Mr Five and Dime. That was a good one for Trench as he continually stepped into trouble with the higher authorities.

[Luther's nephew Dobie]

Glad you liked! I believe that episode was a back door pilot that wasn’t successful. I always liked the Lester episodes. I think you commented on Mr Five and Dime. That was a good one for Trench as he continually stepped into trouble with the higher authorities.

Pahonu,
I thought this was excellent:

Harry O by J. Kingston Pierce

Television history may not recall the second week of September 1974 as indelibly momentous.
Yet for fans of small-screen private eye series, it most certainly was. On Friday, September 13, NBC-TV’s The Rockford Files premiered, featuring James Garner.
That was just one night after competitor ABC launched another Southern California-set gumshoe drama with a well-known lead and lofty ambitions: David Janssen’s Harry O.
The former program went on to five and a half seasons of public acclaim (plus eight TV reunion movies), and in 2002 was ranked No. 39 on TV Guide’s list of the “50 Best Shows of All Time.”
While a previous Janssen crime series, The Fugitive, scored even better than Rockford in TV Guide’s poll—seizing the No. 36 spot—Harry O was nowhere among those 50 picks.
Despite the fact that it consistently won its time slot, was nominated for an Edgar Award, and earned one of its performers an Emmy, Harry O was axed after only two seasons.
It’s said that Janssen was so embittered by that cancellation, he swore off ever tackling another weekly production.
Preliminary judgments of Harry O were decidedly mixed, but in the 45 years since that show’s concluding episode aired, its reputation has been burnished by retrospective reassessment and patent nostalgia. Writing in The New York Times in 1977, David Thorburn, a literature professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, opined that Janssen’s eponymous sleuth, Harry Orwell—with his twisted smile, tweed sports coat and khaki pants, and contemplative nature—was “more credibly and richly imagined than nearly all the TV detectives who preceded him, a true successor of the private eyes in the novels of Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler and in the movies that grew out of those books….Harry O drew creatively on this popular mythology, and the pleasure of watching the show partly consisted in one’s repeated recognition of the variations and shadings the series introduced into this fertile American tradition.”
Meanwhile, Allen Glover noted in TV Noir: Dark Drama on the Small Screen (2019) how thoroughly Janssen threw himself into his Orwell role, remarking that he “laid the bone-weary but persevering tally of his own life right on the counter, like a bar tab covered with too many cigarette burns and glass rings.
”“When Harry O first appeared in 1973,” says Robert J. Randisi, the author of several detective-fiction lines and founder of the Private Eye Writers of America, “it immediately became my favorite private eye television show. Also my favorite dramatic show ever. David Janssen, as Harry Orwell, embodied the perfect private eye….As much as I liked the more successful Rockford Files, I still preferred Harry O’s more serious tone, and Harry’s loner persona….The only other [show] I find comparable in the slightest is Darren McGavin’s The Outsider.”

“No actor on television,” the late critic Michael D. Shonk asserted in Mystery*File, “has been more convincing as a P.I. than David Janssen.”

Considering plaudits of this caliber, it’s astounding and regrettable to boot that Janssen’s final TV vehicle is today largely forgotten.

I was a school kid during Harry O’s prime-time run, and its weekly installments commenced past my bedtime. So I didn’t catch up with the series until decades later. That it was waiting around for me to enjoy—that it existed at all!—owed a great deal to the audacity of its creator, the appeal of its headliner, and not a little good luck.

If not for prolific, award-winning screenwriter Howard Rodman, the early 1970s might have seen two TV crime dramas inspired by Clint Eastwood pictures, rather than just one. The first such program, of course, was Dennis Weaver’s NBC Mystery Movie series, McCloud, which borrowed its “cowboy in a big city” premise from Eastwood’s 1968 film, Coogan’s Bluff. Then in 1972, a couple of years after McCloud’s start, Warner Bros. began exploring the possibility that its big-screen action-thriller Dirty Harry (1971), which had introduced Eastwood as San Francisco cop “Dirty” Harry Callahan, could become the basis for a boob-tube hit.

The studio took this idea to Rodman, who’d devised scripts for shows such as Naked City, Route 66, and The Man from U.N.C.L.E., and had co-written both Coogan’s Bluff and—under the pseudonym Henri Simoun—Richard Widmark’s 1968 hard-boiled cop sensation, Madigan. But Rodman was plainly unimpressed, for he came back to Warners with an entirely different proposal: an hour-long weekly serial pivoting around a private investigator in the Philip Marlowe/Sam Spade/Lew Archer mold, a veteran solo operator whose hard-knocks-won cynicism vies constantly with his hopes for a better life—for himself as well as others. Originally named Nick Orwell, Rodman’s principal was to be an aging, fallible, often brutally honest ex-policeman who lives on a disability pension he earned through the misfortune of being shot in the line of duty, and moonlights as a shamus. He has a modest house on the beach, along with a battered old sailboat—The Answer—that he’s striving to make seaworthy once more.
He doesn’t boast many friends, but will race out on a limb to help those he has, while simultaneously denying any altruistic motives. In addition, he refuses to carry a gun, and he doesn’t drive; instead, he gets around via public buses.

Rodman’s P.I. could hardly have had less in common with Warners’ Dirty Harry expectations. Even so, the studio agreed to proceed with a Harry O pilot.

That meant enlisting a star. Believe it or not, Telly Savalas was one of the actors considered to play Orwell. However, he had to pass (thank goodness) after accepting the main role in The Marcus-Nelson Murders, a gritty 1973 CBS flick that spawned the New York cop series Kojak. Rodman and his pilot’s director/producer, Jerry Thorpe (The Untouchables, Kung Fu), turned alternatively to David Janssen.

A Nebraska native, born David Harold Meyer in 1931, Harry O’s eventual leading man had moved with his divorced mother (a onetime Ziegfeld Follies showgirl) to Los Angeles when he was 5.
He reportedly excelled at basketball and track-and-field sports as a youth, and dreamed of an athletic career, but a high school pole-vaulting accident inflicted him with lifelong knee problems and refocused his future on acting. By age 25, jug-eared and dimpled David had shot 20 mostly forgettable films.
Then in 1957, Janssen—as he’d restyled himself for Hollywood, taking the last name of his mother’s second husband—landed the title part in Richard Diamond, Private Detective, a half-hour CBS (later NBC) series based on a Dick Powell radio mystery of the same name. That led him into a brace of TV ventures, ABC’s The Fugitive (1963–1967) and CBS’s far-less-welcomed Jack Webb presentation, O’Hara, United States Treasury (1971–1972).

Janssen could be aloof in person, but he was charismatic on screen. He had a rep, too, as a workhorse, someone who rarely took breaks from performing and whose talents had gained him hordes of devotees.
The Los Angeles Times once called him “television’s quintessential actor.” Regardless of all that, it took time for Thorpe to envision Janssen as Harry Orwell. “I thought he was too elegant,” Thorpe confided to Ed Robertson of Television Chronicles magazine in 1997. “He had a kind of ‘movie star’ quality, like a Clark Gable, which I didn’t think would work for this particular character.
Clearly, I was wrong. And I soon became a very big David Janssen fan.”

In the initial pilot, Martin Sheen (left) played the guy who’d ended Harry Orwell’s police career—with a bullet.
What’s easily overlooked is that Harry O was almost a failure from the get-go. The pilot Rodman and Thorpe had persuaded Warner Bros. to back debuted on ABC-TV on March 11, 1973.
It was shot to fill a 90-minute “movie of the week”-style hole, but the network insisted on cramming it into a 60-minute slot as part one of a Sunday-night “double feature” that presented, afterward, the pilot film Intertect, starring Janssen’s old pal Stuart Whitman (Cimarron Strip) as a jet-setting former spy who currently heads up an international detective agency called Intertect (which, coincidentally, was also the name of the high-tech security firm that employed Joe Mannix in Season 1 of Mannix). Rodman and Thorpe agreed to trim their teleflick, but that did it no favors, as critics complained about narrative gaps attributable to the truncated running time.

Those weren’t the only strikes against Harry Orwell’s TV premiere.

The pilot’s plot was quite promising: Harlan Garrison (played by Martin Sheen), a Vietnam vet who, four years prior, had shot Orwell during a drugstore burglary that resulted as well in the death of Harry’s partner, offers to give the P.I. $1,400—enough to pay for surgery to remove the bullet lodged near his spine. In exchange, Garrison wants Orwell to track down Walter Scheerer (Sal Mineo), the guy who’d joined him on that break-in. Garrison is certain that Scheerer, who has already purloined his junkie girlfriend, now wants to snuff him to keep his complicity in the heist a secret.

Trouble was, Harry was a dick. And I don’t intend that as a synonym for “detective.” Janssen portrayed Orwell as cantankerous and unsociable, a competent crime-solver but personally abrasive. He was especially rude to and dismissive of women, who, nonetheless, were enthralled by him in a cheesy fashion all too common on mid- to late-20th-century television.

Appraising the 1973 pilot, Daily Variety averred that “Janssen’s semi-sullen interpretation of the lead did not look too much like a character viewers could grow fond of.” ABC execs obviously concurred, because they swung thumbs down on Harry O joining their fall 1973 prime-time schedule. (The full 90-minute picture—including a lengthy motorcycle chase terminating in the Los Angeles River—was only later syndicated as Harry O: Such Dust as Dreams Are Made On.)

This wasn’t the first Janssen pilot not to generate a series. In 1960, on the heels of Richard Diamond, he was cast as a rugged Tinseltown press agent in The Insider, a 60-minute Screen Gems production in which he provided succor to a female recording artist (Polly Bergen) who was eager to elude the parlous attentions of a gangster syndicate and make her way on the nightclub circuit. Although The Insider was unable to find a network home—and notwithstanding its short runtime—the film was released in theaters two years later as Belle Sommers. Janssen didn’t get another chance at inducing broadcasters to pick up The Insider. Nor did he expect one.

But Harry O was, well, special. That was due chiefly to Janssen’s favorability. After four seasons of playing a slick Sherlock in Diamond, another four in the meatier role of The Fugitive’s Richard Kimble, a physician who flees for his life after being wrongly convicted of his wife’s murder, and a single year as Jim O’Hara, a Nebraska county sheriff turned uptight federal agent in O’Hara, United States Treasury, Janssen rated high with couch potatoes. Robertson wrote in Television Chronicles that members of a test audience assembled to preview the initial Harry O pilot weren’t wild about Janssen’s protagonist, but liked seeing the actor back on the small screen. They just wanted him to be “firm and capable, with a good amount of toughness, but, underneath, sensitive, understanding and a ‘bleeder’ for the problems of others—qualities that make him vulnerable on several levels.” As Robertson observed, those were the same attributes that had brought his Kimble a loyal following.

When, against the odds, ABC invited Rodman to put together a second pilot, he determined to make clear that Harry Orwell was—to quote Janssen himself—“a part-time investigator and a full-time human being.”

Andrea Marcovicci (right) was the obsession of a homicidal photographer in Smile Jenny, You’re Dead.
Smile Jenny, You’re Dead aired on February 3, 1974. That two-hour psychological thriller promoted Orwell as “tough, tender, smart, romantic, experienced and explosive.”
The story sees him being implored by an old cop friend to help his daughter, mid-20s model Jennifer English (singer/actress Andrea Marcovicci), who has acquired a stalker: a delusional photographer (future Red Shoe Diaries director Zalman King) willing to slay her estranged husband, her current, elder lover, and any other rivals for her affection. Harry goes about protecting Jennifer, but in the process the 43-year-old gumshoe becomes enamored of the emotionally frangible brunette beauty as well.
In a parallel plot line, our hero seeks to aid an adolescent girl (Jodie Foster), who’s been left homeless by her mother’s shoplifting arrest.

Reviewers applauded the movie’s pacing, its intriguingly offbeat camera angles, and its convincing suspense. What really drew and maintained the watcher’s attention, though, was the slow-boiling relationship between Orwell and Jennifer. Fictional P.I.s were always losing their hearts to winsome women on late-20th-century series…and generally bouncing back by the next week’s episode. Yet the poignancy of Harry’s attraction to his protectee, her quiet recognition and acceptance of it, and the inevitability of Jennifer eventually walking away from him were uncommonly well-handled during those couple of hours. In voice-over narration for the final scene, Harry mourned the reality of his aging and the likelihood that he’d never find lasting love:

“Days happen to you. And sometimes I wish I could go back to being 17 again. When I was 17, I once said, ‘A woman is like a bus—let her go, there’ll be another one along in five minutes.’
Now, that was a long time ago.

“Goodbye, Jennifer.”

The Harry Orwell of Smile Jenny was just as shrewd and resolute as he’d been in the preceding pilot, but he was also compassionate, self-effacing, somewhat sentimental, and respectful of the opposite sex.
He rather resembled Tom Valens, the part Janssen played in the 1967 film Warning Shot, a strained, sympathetic L.A. police sergeant who—after confronting a suspicious figure he sees wielding a pistol—fires in self-defense…only to be suspended and charged with manslaughter after the deceased’s alleged weapon vanishes from the crime scene. Desperate, Valens turns ad-hoc private eye and embarks on a principally existential quest to demonstrate his own innocence.


Jerry Thorpe told Television Chronicles that he’d learned a great deal about Orwell, and about Janssen, from the first pilot, and sought to bring out more of the performer’s personality in the second go-round.
The retooling succeeded: ABC announced Harry O’s addition to its fall 1974 weeknight lineup.


Crime and detective shows were much in evidence that September. Proven favorites such as Cannon, Barnaby Jones, Ironside, and Columbo were joined by Nakia, Get Christie Love!, The Manhunter, The Rockford Files, and—on Thursdays at 10 p.m., with The Streets of San Francisco as its strong lead-in—Harry O. It was up to Janssen, Rodman, and Thorpe to prove their fledgling drama could stand out from the crowd.

Might it benefit from a change of locale? Harry O’s two pilots had been set in Los Angeles, but ABC suggested basing the series somewhere less orthodox, say, Honolulu or Seattle. The former was a nonstarter, because Hawaii’s capital already hosted Hawaii Five-O, then beginning its seventh season. And what of Seattle? In spite of Washington’s largest burg claiming a long history of literary sleuths, its capricious weather made shooting delays a prospective problem. Thorpe ultimately proposed San Diego, 120 miles south of L.A.—very near the U.S./Mexico border (though Harry O’s stories never exploited that cultural proximity in any meaningful way); he had made a tailored-for-TV flick there a few years before. Filming in San Diego was destined to cost more, but hopes were that Harry O’s success would mitigate such losses.

The show did, indeed, have a lot going for it: melancholy theme music by Billy Goldenberg, who’d composed a dissimilar, haunting score for Smile Jenny (on top of themes for Banacek, Kojak, and the western Alias Smith and Jones); plus prominent directors—Richard Lang, Russ Mayberry, Paul Wendkos, and their like. In Harry O’s maiden season alone, guest stars ranged from Stefanie Powers, Broderick Crawford, Sharon Farrell, and Peter Gunn’s Craig Stevens to Jim Backus, Joanna Pettet, Kurt Russell, James McEachin, The Brady Bunch’s Maureen McCormick (cast against type as a drug addict), and legendary jazz singer Cab Calloway. Then there were Janssen’s rusty-throated voice-overs—reminiscent of those in 1940s radio detective serials—which supplied self-deprecating humor, pathos, and sporadic poetry. (“She hung on to me as if I was the edge of a cliff,” he tells us whilst comforting a sudden widow. “Then a doctor got there and she let go and started falling.”)

Furthermore, at a time when TV detectives vied for quirks, Harold Orwell possessed them aplenty. There was the whole business of his bad back, which led him to stretch and groan (“something that comes to me naturally,” Janssen joked to an interviewer), and sent him running a mile each morning from his beach shack in Coronado, just across San Diego Bay from downtown—an abode set designers had built with hinged walls, which could be opened to facilitate interior shooting. Howard Rodman’s intent in depriving Orwell of an automobile was to avoid any possibility of segments being padded out with rubber-squealing car chases, which he hated. But the show’s writers realized they could have fun, too, with Harry’s mass-transit savvy. During one early story, for instance, the peeper shakes off a tail by exiting the bus he’s riding, thus forcing an intelligence agent shadowing him in a sedan to pursue instead on foot. Orwell then reboards that same coach at the next stop, getting away before the agent can retrieve his wheels.

In what Robertson construes as a concession to the network (“ABC didn’t want to lose out on having the General Motors Corporation as a sponsor”), the P.I. was given a car when the series debuted. However, it wasn’t as cool as either Rockford’s Pontiac Firebird or the DeSoto Fireflite convertible—complete with mobile phone connecting him to a shapely but never fully revealed answering-service operator, Sam (Mary Tyler Moore)—that Janssen piloted as Richard Diamond. Orwell’s ride was a wheezy, gray 1960s Austin-Healey Sprite that was ever in need of repair, and even broke down once as he was being trailed by two hit men. Harry was unwittingly forced to ask those killers for a push off the busy street!

As this show evolved, we learned that Orwell was reared as an only child in Philadelphia, but relocated to California after serving in the Korean War. He spent 20 years on the San Diego police force, and had become a lieutenant prior to catching that bullet. He now bills $100 a day, plus expenses—half of Jim Rockford’s going rate—for his snooping, but occasionally does jobs “on the house” for clients he believes in. He’s divorced, despises telephones but gets along with young people, operates out of his home (which is frequently the target of criminal attack), and harbors few ambitions. “There was a time when I thought I wanted to be the chief of police,” he confesses, but in the long run settled for “just being a guy that goes to work and tries to make a living, keeps his promises, and gets a kick out of walking on the beach, looking at the sunset.”

Oh, one other thing: the P.I.’s repairs to The Answer would never end. Before Harry O started, Janssen told Francis Murphy, TV columnist for the Portland Oregonian, that the series offered unlimited story possibilities: “[Orwell] can get the boat built and set off on a cruise to the islands. Or we could have a couple of love stories with no crimes involved.” Neither ever happened, and the first one was impossible, because as Rodman told author Ric Meyers for the 1989 book Murder on the Air, Harry’s boat was a metaphor for the answers he wants from life, “which never come to reality.”

Forty-four weekly installments of Harry O were shot over two seasons. Like other critics, Ed Robertson (today the host of TV Confidential, a syndicated radio talk show about television history) ranks the primary 13—those set in San Diego—as the most singular and memorable. “They were, by design, written more like a novel than a typical 60-minute episodic private eye drama,” he explains. “This is particularly true of the first act of each of those first few shows. The premise unfolded at a leisurely pace (more like an HBO pace, so to speak); we got to know a little bit more of Harry’s existential character and bohemian personality each week, while the guest characters he met from week to week were also pretty well developed. That was unusual for network TV in 1974.”

Henry Darrow (right) portrayed Orwell’s San Diego police contact, Lieutenant Manny Quinlan.
Those atmospheric San Diego episodes found Henry Darrow, who’d filled the dusty boots of Manolito Montoya on the 1967–1971 western, The High Chaparral, playing snappy-dressing Lieutenant Manuel “Manny” Quinlan, Orwell’s friend and reluctant police ally. Stories varied in tenor, but were routinely thought-provoking and profuse with human tensions, addressing the damage life can inflict upon certain individuals.

An anomaly was the witty inaugural tale, “Gertrude,” which had Orwell joining Gertrude Blainey (Julie Sommars), a ditzy moralizing blonde, in the search for her sibling, Harold (Les Lannom), who’s gone AWOL from the Navy. Her single clue to his whereabouts? A brand-new civilian left shoe he’d mailed her way. Replete with lively badinage between Orwell and his client, as well as dexterously crafted puzzle elements, “Gertrude” was tipped to win scripter Howard Rodman the 1975 Edgar Award for Best Television Episode from the Mystery Writers of America, but it lost out ultimately to a teleplay for the anthology series Police Story.

Truer to form was “Guardian at the Gates,” centering on a prominent—and arrogant—architect, Paul Sawyer (Barry Sullivan), whose life has been threatened. Harry’s willingness to help clashes with his loathing of Sawyer, whose scattershot abuse doesn’t even spare his daughter, Marian (Linda Evans), with whom the shamus strikes up a tentative romance. As Mystery*File’s Shonk wrote, “The story is less a mystery than an examination of a genius without humanity, the price of such genius and the suffering it causes others around him.” Noteworthy besides was “Eyewitness,” one of several episodes rooted in Southern California’s Black communities. It sends Orwell in support of the nurse who’d led his recovery after he was shot. Her son has been arrested for homicide, but the teenager professes his innocence. Harry’s probing through the African American neighborhood where the killing occurred unearths a blind boy who heard the violence taking place, but his version of events will be hard to confirm. “Eyewitness” concludes—as do other early Harry O entries—with justice having been served, but victims no better off than they were hitherto.

In a final standout, “Shadows at Noon,” Harry discovers a strange young woman has broken into his home, which he isn’t in the habit of locking. Her name is Marilyn Sidwell (Diana Ewing), and she’s escaped from a mental institution, but insists she’s sane and is being held against her will. After she’s sent back to the sanatorium, Harry commits himself voluntarily to that same facility, hoping to determine the veracity of her claims…only to learn that he’s been betrayed, and can’t get free again. As this yarn progresses, questions of sanity are raised and proof of a conspiracy is established.
Still, in the end, Marilyn—with whom Harry has begun a warm association—is reinstitutionalized. As hard as Harry tried, he couldn’t save her.


“I felt like screaming,” he told the audience. “But I didn’t. You can get into a lot of trouble screaming. I decided to run instead. It didn’t do much good. I did another thing that didn’t do much good either.
I locked the door to my house. Not that I was worried about anyone trespassing. I just liked the feeling of having a key in my pocket.”

While the program’s nuanced plotting and downbeat air impressed viewers steeped in noir storytelling, it left ABC honchos clutching their worry beads. The costs of shooting outside of Hollywood were mounting, and Harry O’s solid but unspectacular Nielsen ratings made them hard to justify. A makeover was soon dictated, the most obvious result being the series’ relocation from San Diego back to smoggier Los Angeles, with Orwell evidently reoccupying the humble beach abode he’d had in Smile Jenny, You’re Dead. (That cabin was said to be located in Santa Monica, at 1101 Coast Road, but was in fact sited at Paradise Cove in Malibu—the same area where Rockford parked his trailer home.) In other concessions, car chases and gunplay were peppered into Orwell’s escapades; his health infirmities were de-emphasized in favor of physical action; his Austin-Healey finally ran consistently enough that he could give up bus riding (though a clip of him deboarding a San Diego local lingered in the opening title sequence); and his narration became less introspective and more about advancing the plot.

Before Charlie’s Angels, Farrah Fawcett-Majors had the role of Orwell’s flight attendant girlfriend, Sue Ingham.
What’s more, the P.I. got a steady girlfriend in the form of Farrah Fawcett-Majors (then in her late 20s, and known primarily from hair-case commercials). She played Sue Ingham, one of sundry curvaceous—and oft-bikini-clad—airline stewardesses renting the house next to Harry’s. Sue didn’t have a large role in the show, and Orwell wasn’t totally faithful to her; but she did manage intermittently to tease out Harry’s lighter side.

Scripts struggled to accommodate this jiggering. “For the Love of Money” imagined Orwell representing a woman who’d conspired with her boyfriend to “borrow” $25,000 in bonds from her boss’ safe…only to change her mind and try to give them back. Trouble was, by then her lover and the loot—now said to be worth $500,000—had both disappeared. In “Silent Kill,” a deaf young woman (Kathy Lloyd) asked Harry to investigate a deadly building blaze blamed on her deaf mute husband (James Wainwright). It was a fairly sweet saga, but heavy-handed messaging about disabilities made it less affecting. “Lester” sought to recapture the comedic élan of “Gertrude,” reintroducing Les Lannom from that episode as Lester Hodges, a brilliant and wealthy young would-be criminologist accused of perpetrating college-campus “sex murders.” (Hodges proved entertaining enough—with his bungling, mistimed grinning, and immoderate adulation of Orwell—that he returned in three Season 2 stories.) And then there was “Elegy for a Cop,” a doleful tale that repurposed footage from the 90-minute version of the initial Harry O pilot. “Elegy” had Manny Quinlan motoring north from San Diego to rescue his doper niece in L.A., only to be gunned down and set up as a corrupt copper for his trouble. It fell to Orwell to clear his name.

Anthony Zerbe (right) joined the show partway through Season 1 as Santa Monica cop—and regular Orwell foil—K.C. Trench.
Fortunately, by then Harry had recruited another law-enforcement contact: Lieutenant K.C. Trench of the Santa Monica Police Department, portrayed by Anthony Zerbe, known to telly enthusiasts for having brought numerous guest villains to life. Rodman (whose influence over the series waned after its return to La-La Land) had conceived of Harry O as a character-propelled drama, with his P.I. the predominant focus. Nevertheless, Zerbe’s Trench—hard-nosed, opinionated, and smartly besuited (like Quinlan, he seemed to dress in explicit protest of Orwell’s yard-sale wardrobe)—quickly became a brilliant foil, a hot-shot cop who respected Orwell’s instincts and ability to understand people, but was impatient with his flouting of rules, and bristled each time Harry helped himself to his office coffee—only to promptly deride its palatability.

Listening to some of that pair’s exchanges, one might deduce they were sworn adversaries. Au contraire: their sniping in fact concealed a durable brotherhood. “So, Orwell,” remarked Trench, surprised when the dropout detective turned to a high-profile bookie for aid on a case, “I thought you always worked alone.” “Only when I work with you,” Harry retorted. And at the end of an episode in which the sleuth rescued Trench from a hostage situation, the cop said, begrudgingly, “I probably should thank you, Orwell. You may have saved my life.” “Well,” groused Harry, “I didn’t do it on purpose.”

Los Angeles author/screenwriter Lee Goldberg commends Trench as “the best ‘friend on the force’ in TV P.I. history.”

By the time Harry O kicked off its sophomore season in September 1975—complete with an uptempo revamping of Billy Goldenberg’s theme—the relationship between peeper and policeman was smoothly honed. Murder on the Air says, “it was the acting sparks of David Janssen and Anthony Zerbe which kept the show artistically afloat during its hard times.” For his endeavors, in 1976 Zerbe would pick up an Emmy for Outstanding Continuing Performance by a Supporting Actor in a Drama Series.

This show may have shed a share of its original unconventionalness and compelling darkness in favor of melodrama and happier endings; and like other 20th-century network programs forced to churn out more than 20 episodes every year, Harry O now and then issued clunkers (including two—count ’em, two—Agatha Christie-esque stories about family members trying to off one another). Still and all, Season 2 furnished a number of distinctive yarns.

In “Anatomy of a Frame,” Orwell helped Trench disprove allegations that he had murdered an informant. The lieutenant soon returned that favor in “APB Harry Orwell,” which saw the snoop being fitted for a homicide rap by a paroled bank robber he’d put behind bars years before. (In a clever finishing twist, Orwell was flummoxed by the ex-con having stewed for so long over his incarceration, as Harry had no recollection whatsoever of working his case.) Once again dealing with mental health issues, “Portrait of a Murder” dispatched Harry to scrutinize a string of stranglings, ostensibly committed by a developmentally disadvantaged teenager (Adam Arkin), who contended that a “lion” was to blame, instead. And if prosaic in other respects, “Reflections”—wherein Harry helped his ex-spouse, Elizabeth (Felicia Farr), overcome blackmail threats—at least afforded us a peak into our hero’s history as a husband and cop. (It also found Harry’s car conking out in the midst of his tailing a suspect—not your typical crime-show turn.)

“Exercise in Fatality” tasked the shamus with both “a wandering daughter job,” as Hammett would have put it, and the protection of a former lover—the latter of which left him so enraged, he almost croaked a pusher’s enforcer. (“To this day, I don’t know if I would have killed that man,” Orwell intoned, “but I do know I came close, and that in itself is very frightening.”) Finally, in the outlandishly plotted but amusing “Mister Five and Dime,” one of Lester Hodges’ classmates (Glynnis O’Connor) turned to Harry after being implicated in a bogus-currency scheme. The P.I. then solicited Trench’s back-up—only to embarrass the lieutenant before one federal agency after the next.

Harry O appeared to have survived efforts by ABC suits to make it a different sort of detective show with no differences at all. There was cautious optimism about it winning a third season.
There were even hopes of spinning off a new series, partnering Lester Hodges with a celebrated criminalist played by Kung Fu’s Keye Luke.

But as various sources tell it, the show was doomed by the hiring of Fred Silverman as president of ABC Entertainment in 1975. Silverman was reckoned something of a wunderkind. After his years spent overhauling programming schedules at CBS, and witnessing that network’s consequent rise in fortunes, Silverman vowed to bestow the same magic on ABC. “He was looking for shows that he thought had the potential to be runaway hits,” Jerry Thorpe told Television Chronicles. “He didn’t want to settle for the ‘average.’” And Silverman thought Harry O was merely good, with limited prospects for audience growth.

The final fresh episode of Janssen’s fourth crime drama was broadcast on April 29, 1976. Silverman cancelled the show, together with a spate of other prime-time regulars, to make room for blockbuster-wannabes and such “jiggle TV” eye-catchers as Charlie’s Angels, co-starring Farrah Fawcett-Majors—who he’d become familiar with thanks to her scenes on Harry O.

David Janssen, who had invested so much of himself into Harry Orwell’s success, went on to make teleflicks such as S.O.S. Titanic and the better-than-average Golden Gate Murders, as well as the NBC mini-series Centennial, based on James A. Michener’s epic of that same title. He died from a massive heart attack in February 1980, at 48 years old. He never did star in another weekly series.

Not until the early 2010s did Harry O finally see a DVD release. While other mid-1970s crime shows have aged poorly, Ed Robertson says Harry O “holds up very well….The humor holds up (especially in the scenes between Janssen and Zerbe), and Harry remains someone whose adventures you like following, 60 minutes at a time.” Orwell wasn’t a perfect protagonist, but unlike myriad other small-screen gumshoes, he didn’t seriously test the bounds of plausibility. He was a low-key fellow, grapping with inner conflicts; “an irascible and contrary man with very little in life to care about, who nevertheless cares very much,” as The Thrilling Detective Web Site describes him. Janssen played this unremarkable man remarkably well.

I won’t go so far as Robert Randisi does, to suggest that Harry O outshone The Rockford Files as a classic TV private eye production. But it probably does merit second-place honors.
Who knows how much better remembered Janssen’s series might be nowadays had it remained on the air long enough to gain a surer footing.

It says a lot, don’t you think, that although I only recently rewatched Harry O in its entirety, I’m nearly ready to start all over again?

Please pass the remote.

[Pahonu]

Thanks Dobie! That review quotes many I have read previously, like Ed Robertson and Michael Shonk. It brings them together well. I also recall a review by the mystery writer Max Allan Collins that called the voice overs on Harry-O the best ever on television.

[Luther's nephew Dobie]

Thanks Dobie! That review quotes many I have read previously, like Ed Robertson and Michael Shonk. It brings them together well. I also recall a review by the mystery writer Max Allan Collins that called the voice overs on Harry-O the best ever on television.

Hi Pahonu,
I think the writer could have cut it down by a third, he should have striven more to make the case himself.
But as you noted he brought together a lot of threads/opinions and the piece nicely serves as a "Introduction to Harry O 101" course.

As I view the episodes for the first time I am taking them as they come and enjoying the ride, I will parse them more on the 2nd go around.

I am currently watching various 1970's shows, Harry O, Streets of San Francisco.
Plus Hawaii 5-0 whose reruns - except for a 30 or so episode run on MeTV one summer - I hadn't seen since the late 1980's.
In effect I am watching new - to me - productions full of favorite old time actors and writers.
After a few episodes the initial jarring reaction at seeing the old styles/culture etc evaporates and I am back in the rhythm of
those times, for 60 minutes it seems the everyday norm again. Not missing at all the sight of 6 people 'together' at a dinner table ignoring each other
while they tap away on their devices.
Of course then the credits roll and a healthy reality returns, though one where kids spend a average 13 hours a day on various devices/TV/computer screens.
Harry O and Mike Stone and McGarrett in 2022 would be interesting to see, wondering why no kids are in the streets tossing a ball or playing Four Square,
rather they just SIT transfixed in front of a screen, hour after hour, though twice a week their parents enter their rooms and turn them towards the sun.
Hmm, a cruise over to Catalina on Harry O 's boat The Answer is sounding better and better.
But I digress.

[ZelenskyTheValiant (Ivan)]

I am currently watching various 1970's shows, Harry O, Streets of San Francisco.

Hey Dobie,

Speaking of rewatching 70s shows was it you that some time ago had disparaging things to say about BARNABY JONES? If so, just curious what you didn't like about it? I always think of it as just another CANNON - another Quinn Martin show about a private eye. I would have thought that would be your thing.

[Luther's nephew Dobie]

I am currently watching various 1970's shows, Harry O, Streets of San Francisco.

Hey Dobie,

Speaking of rewatching 70s shows was it you that some time ago had disparaging things to say about BARNABY JONES? If so, just curious what you didn't like about it? I always think of it as just another CANNON - another Quinn Martin show about a private eye. I would have thought that would be your thing.

You are correct sir. When Barnaby was on it was a punchline to endless jokes, as well as jibes concerning Buddy Ebsen's sleep walking thru the performance. Carson and Bob Hope got much mileage
out of it in this vein. Hope memorably did a skit as BJ and had to be constantly woken up by Angie Dickinson, if I recall correctly. Which I do.
Normally I would have been expected to like Barnaby, it's by Quinn Martin and stars a favorite actor of mine. Ebsen could do everything, dance, musicals, drama, Westerns and
comedy. He was terrifying as a bad guy on many Westerns, pure evil. Also outstanding as a hand on the Ponderosa who challenges Ben Cartwright to get a job as a ranch hand on a small spread
to see if he can still hack it.
BUT, Ebsen does sleepwalk through Barnaby Jones, he's one note. The perception - and not just by me - was a bored Buddy was there for the paycheck, period, giving the hackneyed material
and recycled character types the respect such a production was due.
The BJ plots and characters I have seen too many times to count, 10 minutes in I can figure out the ending, if only for Dobie's Cop Show Rules # 1:

"The most famous guest star among the suspects is he/she what done it."

Because being the bad guy murderer is a much more juicy part and lets you do some serious emoting. You see Roddy McDowell in any crime drama in the 70's and it's 50 - 1 he's the killer,
a hammy one at that.

Dobie's Cop Show Rules # 2:
"If the PI/cop is fleeing armed bad guys, he may temporally knock one out but will leave the baddie's gun behind instead of arming himself so the chase can continue."

Sorry to report they did that on the Harry O I saw today, "Material Witness" with Barbara Anderson.
Oh well nobody's perfect not even Harry O, or even Jim Rockford who also did that.

[Pahonu]

I saw the second pilot - "Smile Jenny, You're Dead". Definitely an improvement over the first pilot. Orwell is more like the character in the series (much more likable) and the voice-overs are introduced here and just the story was more interesting. That psycho sure was creepy. The guy taking a swan dive off the high-rise at the end sure was satisfying (he wanted to show he could fly ) but why he didn't drag Jenny with him (which was his original intent) is a mystery. Guess he was really confused at that point.

Anyway, good episode. I can see why it sold the series.

Jenny’s husband from this second pilot reappears in the first season episode Balinger’s Choice and another in season two.

Tim McIntire is the son of veteran actor John McIntire (who replaced Ward Bond on TV's WAGON TRAIN) and actress Jeanette Nolan.

I just read that Tim McIntire died of heat failure at 41!

I recall seeing John McIntire and Jeanette Nolan as the villains in Cloak and Dagger, an 80’s film I saw in the theater as a early teen.

[ZelenskyTheValiant (Ivan)]

I am currently watching various 1970's shows, Harry O, Streets of San Francisco.

Hey Dobie,

Speaking of rewatching 70s shows was it you that some time ago had disparaging things to say about BARNABY JONES? If so, just curious what you didn't like about it? I always think of it as just another CANNON - another Quinn Martin show about a private eye. I would have thought that would be your thing.

You are correct sir. When Barnaby was on it was a punchline to endless jokes, as well as jibes concerning Buddy Ebsen's sleep walking thru the performance. Carson and Bob Hope got much mileage
out of it in this vein. Hope memorably did a skit as BJ and had to be constantly woken up by Angie Dickinson, if I recall correctly. Which I do.
Normally I would have been expected to like Barnaby, it's by Quinn Martin and stars a favorite actor of mine. Ebsen could do everything, dance, musicals, drama, Westerns and
comedy. He was terrifying as a bad guy on many Westerns, pure evil. Also outstanding as a hand on the Ponderosa who challenges Ben Cartwright to get a job as a ranch hand on a small ranch
to see if he can still hack it.
BUT, Ebsen does sleepwalk through Barnaby Jones, he's one note. The perception -and not just by me - was a bored Buddy was there for the paycheck, period, giving the hackneyed material
and recycled character types the respect such a production was due.
The BJ plots and characters I have seen too many times to count, 10 minutes in I can figure out the ending, if only for Dobie's Cop Show Rules # 1:

"The most famous guest star among the suspects is he/she what done it."

Because being the bad guy murderer is a much more juicy part and lets you do some serious emoting. You see Roddy McDowell in any crime drama in the 70's and it's 50 - 1 he's the killer,
a hammy one at that.

Dobie's Cop Show Rules # 2:
"If the PI/cop is fleeing armed bad guys, he can temporally knock one out but will leave the baddie's gun behind instead of arming himself so the chase can continue."

Sorry to report they did that on the Harry O I saw today, "Material Witness" with Barbara Anderson.
Oh well nobody's perfect not even Harry O, or even Jim Rockford who also did that.

I also remember Buddy Ebsen in the first season of BONANZA ("The Sisters") where he plays an evil sheriff/psycho/strangler, pretty effectively. You just don't expect such behavior from good ol' Jed Clampett.

I guess maybe he was a bit sleepy-eyed and one-note on BARNABY (I haven't seen much of that show) but isn't that kind of his thing? Basically playing the relaxed, home-spun kind of character. I'm thinking Jed Clampett, PI.

As for the other stuff you mention (e.g. main guest star is the villain) wasn't that true of pretty much every cop/detective show at the time? Especially Quinn Martin shows which announced the guest stars in the beginning? The main guest almost always was the main baddie of the piece, with a few exceptions here and there.

But now you've got me wanting to track down some Johnny Carson or Bob Hope snippets making fun of good ol' Barnaby!

[Luther's nephew Dobie]

I saw the second pilot - "Smile Jenny, You're Dead". Definitely an improvement over the first pilot. Orwell is more like the character in the series (much more likable) and the voice-overs are introduced here and just the story was more interesting. That psycho sure was creepy. The guy taking a swan dive off the high-rise at the end sure was satisfying (he wanted to show he could fly ) but why he didn't drag Jenny with him (which was his original intent) is a mystery. Guess he was really confused at that point.

Anyway, good episode. I can see why it sold the series.

Jenny’s husband from this second pilot reappears in the first season episode Balinger’s Choice and another in season two.

Tim McIntire is the son of veteran actor John McIntire (who replaced Ward Bond on TV's WAGON TRAIN) and actress Jeanette Nolan.

I just read that Tim McIntire died of heat failure at 41!

I recall seeing John McIntire and Jeanette Nolan as the villains in Cloak and Dagger, an 80’s film I saw in the theater as a early teen.

I didn't know Tim was the son of John McIntire, the star of the first season of Naked City whose character was famously murdered in the last episode.
I thought Tim was great in Gumball Rally(1976) and for my money stole the film from Raul Julia, Michael Sarrazin and Gary Busey.
You noted his appearance in Harry O, when I recently saw it I kept wondering why he didn't have a better career and appear in more productions.
It appears he died from years of alcohol and drug abuse, what a waste.
Alan Alda was right in keeping his family in small town NJ instead of Hollywood, he would jet out to Jersey every Friday and return to the MASH set on the Sunday night red eye.
He's still married to the same woman and his kids are all normal.

[Pahonu]

I saw the second pilot - "Smile Jenny, You're Dead". Definitely an improvement over the first pilot. Orwell is more like the character in the series (much more likable) and the voice-overs are introduced here and just the story was more interesting. That psycho sure was creepy. The guy taking a swan dive off the high-rise at the end sure was satisfying (he wanted to show he could fly ) but why he didn't drag Jenny with him (which was his original intent) is a mystery. Guess he was really confused at that point.

Anyway, good episode. I can see why it sold the series.

Jenny’s husband from this second pilot reappears in the first season episode Balinger’s Choice and another in season two.

Tim McIntire is the son of veteran actor John McIntire (who replaced Ward Bond on TV's WAGON TRAIN) and actress Jeanette Nolan.

I just read that Tim McIntire died of heat failure at 41!

I recall seeing John McIntire and Jeanette Nolan as the villains in Cloak and Dagger, an 80’s film I saw in the theater as a early teen.

I didn't know Tim was the son of John McIntire, the star of the first season of Naked City whose character was famously murdered in the last episode.
I thought Tim was great in Gumball Rally(1976) and for my money stole the film from Raul Julia, Michael Sarrazin and Gary Busey.
You noted his appearance in Harry O, when I recently saw it I kept wondering why he didn't have a better career and appear in more productions.
It appears he died from years of alcohol and drug abuse, what a waste.
Alan Alda was right in keeping his family in small town NJ instead of Hollywood, he would jet out to Jersey every Friday and return to the MASH set on the Sunday night red eye.
He's still married to the same woman and his kids are all normal.

That’s one choice for actors, but I don’t think it’s that simple. James Garner lived in Hollywood his whole adult life after an abusive childhood in Oklahoma. He remained married to the same woman until his death and his daughters GIgi and Kimberly are successful. He raised them purposely out of the spotlight, and they lived in the Brentwood neighborhood in LA, not in some out of the way place.

There are an immense amount of people with drug and alcohol problems across the US. Their struggles and deaths just don’t make the headlines like Hollywood celebrities. Neither do the stories of many in Hollywood who live very normal healthy lives. What a boring story that would be! When I was in production and living on the west side, it was not uncommon to see actors at the grocery store or in restaurants. Not the biggest stars, of course, as they lose that privacy, but many recognizable actors go about their lives in very normal ways.

By way of actual data rather than anecdote, California isn’t close to the top of the list for alcohol and drug related deaths in the US. It’s actually in the lower third. LA isn’t high either compared to other large cities. Tragically, much of the current opioid crisis is seeing overdose death rates highest in the Midwest and New England. New Jersey and Pennsylvania are high on the list as well. Many deaths are also occurring in smaller cities and towns. The overdose rate in rural counties is almost the same as in urban counties in many states and is actually higher than urban counties in California and a few other states. It’s a complex problem with many variables.

The most recent complete CDC data:

https://www.cdc.gov/drugoverdose/deaths/2020.html

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/databriefs/db403-H.pdf

[Rossapollo]

Lifelong MPI fan - recently vacationed and found Pahonu or as we say Robin’s Nest back in ‘19 just after unfortunately the main house was torn down. But the gate house and boat house were still there. Kids got to play and me too in the tidal pool and relax on Robins beach…My unanswered question what did the actual interior of the boat house which we know served as the ‘Guest House’ or Magnums quarters look like? How many scenes actually filmed inside ?
There are only a few camera angles that show the outside patio with the door open so that one can see up and out or down and in…and through those it looks like either the inside of the real boat or maybe the actual guest house which is the gate house building on the property. I have outside pics of both…due to the construction I regret that I did not climb the stairs and peek inside… So the curious ask here is anyone have pics off the inside of the boat house that was used as Magnums pad?

[ZelenskyTheValiant (Ivan)]

Lifelong MPI fan - recently vacationed and found Pahonu or as we say Robin’s Nest back in ‘19 just after unfortunately the main house was torn down. But the gate house and boat house were still there. Kids got to play and me too in the tidal pool and relax on Robins beach…My unanswered question what did the actual interior of the boat house which we know served as the ‘Guest House’ or Magnums quarters look like? How many scenes actually filmed inside ?
There are only a few camera angles that show the outside patio with the door open so that one can see up and out or down and in…and through those it looks like either the inside of the real boat or maybe the actual guest house which is the gate house building on the property. I have outside pics of both…due to the construction I regret that I did not climb the stairs and peek inside… So the curious ask here is anyone have pics off the inside of the boat house that was used as Magnums pad?

This is probably the wrong place to post this because this thread is specifically for HARRY-O. But everything Pahonu-related you can find here: https://magnum-mania.com/Forum/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=285. Good luck going through hundreds of pages and posts.

As for your question it's been asked and answered many times on this board (you'll probably find it in the above link that I posted) so you're not the first to ask nor will you be the last. But basically nothing was ever filmed inside the boat house. The exterior served as Magnum's pad (or guest house) but all the interior scenes were filmed elsewhere on a sound stage at Diamond Head Studios. Same for the interiors of the main house and Higgins' office. The actual interior of the boat house was just a storage area to store a boat. Basically like a garage.

[Pahonu]

Lifelong MPI fan - recently vacationed and found Pahonu or as we say Robin’s Nest back in ‘19 just after unfortunately the main house was torn down. But the gate house and boat house were still there. Kids got to play and me too in the tidal pool and relax on Robins beach…My unanswered question what did the actual interior of the boat house which we know served as the ‘Guest House’ or Magnums quarters look like? How many scenes actually filmed inside ?
There are only a few camera angles that show the outside patio with the door open so that one can see up and out or down and in…and through those it looks like either the inside of the real boat or maybe the actual guest house which is the gate house building on the property. I have outside pics of both…due to the construction I regret that I did not climb the stairs and peek inside… So the curious ask here is anyone have pics off the inside of the boat house that was used as Magnums pad?

To add some more details to Ivan’s comments above, the boathouse is indeed like a garage for boats and other water related equipment, but that is only on the bottom floor at the beach level. Above that space is the lanai we are all so familiar with and a very small enclosed space with a single room and a bathroom. It was never used for filming as Ivan said, but somewhere in the giant Pahonu thread is a photo of the interior room taken when the estate was listed for sale.

Also, another photo somewhere in the thread from the next door Shriners property shows the opposite side of the structure and the plumbing vent for the bathroom. The enclosed upstairs space is no where close to the size depicted by the sets at Diamond Head Studios and many a fan have had their hopes dashed that it was somehow possible to actually renovate the boathouse to match the sets. The magic of Hollywood is definitely evidenced by that fact.

On a side note, the gate house by the entrance on Kalanianaole Highway was not for guests. It was for household staff, male and female on separate floors, and included five bedrooms and two bathrooms, living space on each floor, along with a common kitchen and laundry and a single garage space. It was later remodeled into a single residence. The entire home was really a guest space. Pahonu was designed as a second home for entertaining and included five bedroom suites all similarly sized and appointed. The boathouse and bathhouse in the rear were for guests’ use while staying at the estate, along with the beach, tidal pool, and tennis court.

The owner, Mrs. Wall had her primary residence in Honolulu. Pahonu was built after her husband’s death and was assembled from multiple properties purchased over several years. Elsewhere in the Pahonu thread are maps of the previous properties and newspaper articles from the early 30’s about the estate’s design by architect Louis Davis and its construction.