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The Felony Squad

 The Felony Squad
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 The Felony Squad
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 The Felony Squad is a Police Procedural that ran on ABC from September 8, 1966 to January 31, 1969.The series was created for 20th Century Fox Television by Richard Murphy and produced by Walter Grauman, a prolific TV director whose credits included Perry Mason, Burke's Law and The Fugitive, among other series. However, it didn't quite start out as a pure detective drama. It was originally conceived as a nighttime soap opera about police officers entitled Men Against Evil. Both Howard Duff and Dennis Cole, who appeared in the revised series, were cast in the original series, though Cole's character was a patrolman rather than a detective. '40's starlet Jeanne Crain was to have appeared as Duff's wife, and Michael Cole (who later became famous as part of a different squad) was also slated as a regular. There exists a short clip of the original variant, directed by Gordon Douglas.L&M Cigarettes, the series' sponsor, decided that they weren't going to back a soap opera, and the decision was made to change the series from a soap to a straight police drama. L&M insisted on one other change: they didn't want to sponsor a show with the word 'evil' in the title, and so the series became The Felony Squad.When the series debuted in the Fall of 1966, Jeanne Crain and Michael Cole were not in the cast. Duff's character, Sgt. Sam Stone, was made into a widower whose wife and son were killed in a car accident. Jim Briggs, played by Dennis Cole, went from being a uniformed cop to a detective. The other major character in the series was Jim's dad, Sgt. Dan Briggs, played by Ben Alexander, who was the desk sergeant at the Westwood Precinct where Sam and Jim were based. The recurring role of their boss, Captain Frank Nye, was played by Frank Maxwell. Maxwell departed the show after one season for a role on another ABC series, The Second Hundred Years, and was replaced by Captain Ed Franks (Barney Phillips). When The Second Hundred Years was canceled, Maxwell returned to the series for the abbreviated third season.The detectives handled numerous cases during the series' run, ranging from drug offenses to murder. Oftentimes, they were brought in to protect witnesses in cases.The series managed to run to respectable ratings on Monday nights for the first two seasons, but a move to Fridays in the 1968-69 season proved fatal. The Felony Squad ended its run on January 31, 1969, with a crossover episode with another Fox-produced series, Judd For the Defense. The Judd episode aired a hour and a half after the Felony Squad episode.Sadly, Ben Alexander died from a heart attack a mere four months after the show was canceled, at the age of 58.The Felony Squad contains examples of:
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