Biography

[about Adam-12's legacy] We kind of had a sense of it. First of all when we started doing the show, Jack Webb called Marty and me into his office and he said 'You guys are joining a very small fraternity, *don't* embarrass them, and don't embarrass yourselves, if something happens in relationship to law enforcement, by whatever it is, because it'll go through this department like a wildfire if you try to talk yourself out of a ticket or anything like that'. And so Jack kind of talked about the influence it was going to have in that sense, but we were probably on the air for three-four months, and we were shooting up in North Hollywood park, and two guys in a black and white, on duty, pulled up and they walked over to where Marty and I were standing in between takes. And they said 'We really like the show', and one of the guys looked at me and said 'But you're really making it rough on us', and I said 'Why is that?' He said, 'We have to live up to your image', and I said 'Good'. I mean this was 1968, this is you know 'Cops are pigs', Vietnam is going on, the front line of the establishment was uniformed law enforcement, you'd had the Chicago police riot during the national convention. And then another guy that always sticks in my mind, he was a motor officer and he worked with us as a crowd control and stuff, and Ron came up to us and said 'You know, I can mark the difference pre-'Adam-12' and post-'Adam-12', post-'Adam-12', kids are talking to us'. And when we were shooting, the show was contained on the back lot in the early part of the show, and then we were out on the street, much more than many other shows at this time, and we were always, of course, recognizable, because here's this film crew with this black and white, and we would shoot during the summers, and we would have multitudes of kids around production, and you got a sense that the kids loved the show, and we never shot the show *for* kids, but it became a huge success with kids.