August 29, 1967: "The Fugitive" Finale

Left to right: Barry Morse as Lt. Philip Gerard,

David Janssen as Dr. Richard Kimble,

and Bill Raisch as "one-armed man" Fred Johnson

 

August 29, 1967: The final episode of The Fugitive airs on ABC. It becomes the most-watched program in the history of American series television.

The Fugitive premiered on September 17, 1963. The premise was delivered in the series' opening narration:

The Fugitive, a QM Production. Starring David Janssen as Dr. Richard Kimble, an innocent victim of blind justice. Falsely convicted for the murder of his wife, reprieved by fate when a train wreck freed him en route to the death house.

Freed him to hide in lonely desperation, to change his identity, to toil at many jobs. Freed him to search for a one-armed man he saw leave the scene of the crime. Freed him to run before the relentless pursuit of the police lieutenant obsessed with his capture.

This narration was read by William Conrad. "QM" was Quinn Martin, who specialized in crime dramas. In the 1970s, he created and produced The Streets of San Francisco, Barnaby Jones, and Cannon, starring Conrad.

"Dick" Kimble was a pediatrician in Stafford, Indiana, convicted and sentenced to death for the murder of his wife, Helen (played in flashback scenes throughout the series by Diane Brewster). The town of Stafford is fictional, but in the series finale, it is suggested that it is near South Bend, home of the University of Notre Dame. His story was based on the case of Dr. Sam Sheppard, a neurosurgeon in the suburbs of Cleveland, whose wife Marilyn was murdered in 1954. He was convicted, but insisted on his innocence all the way. He never escaped, but got a 2nd trial, and was exonerated in 1966, while The Fugitive was still on the air. 

The show's creator, Roy Huggins, always insisted that the show was not based on the Sheppard case, but that claim wouldn't have held up in court.

In 1960, Route 66 had pioneered the theme of a TV show without a single set location, with a protagonist (or, in that show's case, two) going all over the country, helping people when they could, and then, when the job was done, moving on. The Fugitive added the man-on-the-run angle, which would be copied by many shows, most notably the 1977-82 CBS version of The Incredible Hulk.

Barry Morse played Lieutenant Philip Gerard, who was accompanying Kimble to the prison where he was to be executed, and thus "lost" him. It's a matter of honor for him to bring Kimble back to justice. He doesn't care that Kimble says he's innocent: Gerard is upholding the decision of the people in accordance with the law. This made him the 1st TV show antagonist who wasn't a stereotypical bad guy: He was fighting for justice in an official way, just as Kimble was in an unofficial way.

A few times, Gerard almost caught Kimble. On some occasions, they even saved each other's life, at which point Gerard's sense of honor let him give Kimble a head start on the next phase of his run.

At first, Gerard has no doubt as to Kimble's guilt. He attended the trial, and was witness to the evidence. But as the series went on, doubt crept in. At one point, when someone asked him if Kimble killed his wife, he said, "The law said he did," but he said it without conviction -- if you'll pardon my choice of words.

This fascinating dynamic made the show one of the most popular of the 1960s. And so, in what was a rarity at the time -- but not unprecedented: The Dick Van Dyke Show had already done it -- a definitive final episode was written for the show, without the network canceling it outright. Huggins knew that people wanted "the one-armed man" to be caught, and for Kimble to be vindicated.

The actual killer was played by Bill Raisch, and he was a hero in real life: He lost his right arm when he was badly burned while serving in the U.S. Merchant Marine in World War II. Before, he had been a dancer, hard to believe because of his large, bulky frame. He took to acting, and had a good career of it.

And so, on Tuesday night, August 22, 1967, "The Judgment, Part I" aired. At the end, Kimble, having tracked "the one-armed man," whose name he now knows is Fred Johnson, to Los Angeles, makes contact with a friend of the family living there, a court stenographer named Jean Carlisle (Diane Baker). After 6 years on the run (an origin story, not the pilot episode, established that timeline), he's not only closing in on his quarry, he has found love again. He is about to get into a taxi to pursue his lead on Johnson, when Gerard catches him. He takes no pleasure in the arrest: "I'm sorry. You just ran out of time."

Seven nights later, "The Judgment, Part II" begins the way the pilot began, with Kimble and Gerard handcuffed together, sitting on a train. Kimble now knows that Gerard has doubts as to his guilt, suggests that Johnson is also going back to Stafford, and begs Gerard to allow him 24 more hours to prove his innocence. Gerard goes for it.

Spoiler alert for a 55-year-old TV episode: At an abandoned amusement park, there is a final confrontation. Johnson shoots Gerard in the leg, and runs up a tower. Kimble chases him, they fight -- the stub of Johnson's missing right arm being a more effective weapon than you might think -- and Kimble beats a confession out of Johnson. But Johnson regains the advantage, and is about to shoot Kimble, when Gerard picks up a rifle and shoots him. Johnson falls, and is dead before he hits the ground.

Coming down from the tower, Kimble knows that Johnson's confession is now useless. But Kimble's detective work had forced a friend who had witnessed the original murder, Lloyd Chandler (J.D. Cannon), afraid to come forward at the time because it would suggest that he and Helen Kimble were having an affair, to admit what he saw.

The episode ends with Kimble and Jean walking out of the courthouse. He sees Gerard, and shakes his hand. Both men got what they wanted: The law upheld, and justice done. A police car pulls up. Kimble stops, but the policemen walk right past him, having no reason to pursue him. Conrad's closing narration: "Tuesday, August 29: The day the running stopped."

According to the Nielsen Ratings, over 78 million people watched, breaking the record of the February 9, 1964 edition of The Ed Sullivan Show, when The Beatles made their American debut. The Fugitive finale held the record until 1980, surpassed by "Who Done It," the episode of Dallas where it was revealed who shot J.R. Ewing. That record lasted until 1983, the finale of M*A*S*H. Although several Super Bowls have had more viewers, these remain the 3 highest-rated episodes of American TV shows.

David Janssen had previously starred on Richard Diamond, Private Detective. He would later star on O'Hara: U.S. Treasury, and as another private detective on Harry O. He did not live long enough to see Dallas break The Fugitive's record, or even to see J.R. get shot: He died on February 13, 1980, only 48 years old, of a heart attack while filming the movie Father Damien. (Ken Howard of The White Shadow was cast as his replacement.) Barry Morse had called Janssen "one of the hardest-working actors in the U.S.A.," and it appears he worked himself to death. But his prodigious smoking and drinking didn't help.

My generation was too young to have seen The Fugitive -- it's been suggested that knowing the ending "killed it" for syndication, making people not want to watch it -- and thus we didn't know Janssen. But we did know Morse, as Dr. Victor Bergman on the 1975-77 science fiction series Space: 1999. 

Bill Raisch died in 1984, Quinn Martin in 1987, Diane Brewster in 1991, William Conrad in 1994, Roy Huggins in 2002, J.D. Cannon in 2005, and Barry Morse in 2008. As of August 29, 2022, Diane Baker is still alive.

A 1993 film version of The Fugitive starred Harrison Ford, and Tommy Lee Jones as U.S. Marshal Samuel Gerard. This time, the one-armed man does not act alone, but is a hitman for an enemy of Kimble's. To help generate publicity for it, NBC aired the show's pilot episode and each part of the two-part finale over 3 nights. This enabled me to see it for the first time. It also generated interest in not only the movie, but in the show itself: Ever since, it's been in regular syndication on cable nostalgia networks.

The Fugitive lives on: The 1998 film Wrongfully Accused, a spoof film, starred Leslie Nielsen; a 2000-01 CBS series starred Tim Daly as Kimble and Mykelti Williamson as a black Gerard; and a 2020 Quibi series rewrote the premise by having Boyd Holbrook play a completely different character, accused of a completely different crime, and Kiefer Sutherland as a detective who immediately finds evidence that the accusers have the wrong man, and pursues both man and angle.

*

August 29, 1967 was a Tuesday. Future Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch was born.

It was the off-season for the NFL the AFL, the NBA, the brand-new ABA, and the NHL. But these Major League Baseball games were played -- not that any fan of The Fugitive was going to leave his TV room to go watch them: 

* The New York Yankees also had a 2-parter, against the Boston Red Sox at the old Yankee Stadium. The season was an anomaly for the era: The Red Sox were challenging for the Pennant, and the Yankees were nowhere near it. The twi-night doubleheader began at 5:00 PM, and Mickey Mantle didn't play in either game.

The Red Sox won the opener, 2-1. Jim Lonborg, on his way to winning the American League Cy Young Award, outpitched the Yankees' ace, Mel Stottlemyre. Jose Tartabull (father of future Yankee Danny) brought home a run with a suicide squeeze bunt in the 3rd inning.

Both teams scored in the 7th: Lonborg helped his own cause with an RBI single, and Tom Tresh got the Yankees on the board with a home run. Other than that, Lonborg only allowed 3 baserunners: Singles by Steve Whitaker and Bill Robinson, and he hit Mike Hegan with a pitch. No walks. 

The 2nd game, the rescheduling of a June 19 rainout, remains the longest game in the history of the Yanks-Sox rivalry. Ken Harrelson hit a home run in the top of the 2nd to give Boston a 2-0 lead. Whitaker tripled home a run in the bottom of the 4th. Roy White hit a sacrifice fly in the bottom of the 7th. The game stayed tied, and went to extra innings.

The Red Sox had men on 1st and 2nd with 2 outs in the top of the 10th, but Dooley Womack -- yes, Ball Four freaks, the Dooley Womack -- got the 3rd out without allowing a run. Former Yankee Norm Siebern singled home a run off Womack in the top of the 11th, but Whitaker tied it with a home run in the bottom of the 11th, against a rookie reliever who hadn't yet discovered mustaches: Future Yankee Albert Walter "Sparky" Lyle.

The Yankees got 1st and 2nd with 2 out in the bottom of the 12th, and again in the bottom of the 13th, but didn't score either time. Elston Howard, recently traded by the Yankees to the Red Sox, walked to lead off the top of the 14th. This time, the cliche about walks, especially the leadoff variety, being a killer did not hold true. 

The Red Sox loaded the bases with 2 outs in the top of the 15th, but Joe Verbanic got out of it. The Yankees had 1st and 2nd with 1 out in the bottom of the 15th, but couldn't score. The Yankees got a leadoff walk from John Kennedy (no relation to the late President) in the bottom of the 16th, but couldn't bring him around. Mike Andrews walked to lead off the top of the 17th, but was stranded. The Yankees again got 1st and 2nd with 2 outs in the bottom of the 17th, and again in the bottom of the 19th, but couldn't score either time.

Jim Bouton was now pitching in the top of the 20th. With his elbow shot, his great fastball gone, and not yet having sufficient confidence in his knuckleball, he loaded the bases with 2 out. But he got Howard to ground out to end it. With 1 out in the bottom of the 20th, Kennedy singled, Bouton (nobody was left on the bench, so he had to bat for himself) was hit with a pitch, and Horace Clarke singled Kennedy home.

The Yankees had won, 4-3, in a game ending near 2:00 AM. Bouton, later to be the author of Ball Four, was the winning pitcher. The losing pitcher was Darrell "Bucky" Brandon, who was to be his teammate on the 1969 Seattle Pilots.

* The New York Mets beat the St. Louis Cardinals, 2-0 at Busch Memorial Stadium in St. Louis. Cal Koonce pitched a 5-hit shutout. The Mets only got 4 hits themselves, but 1 was a solo home run by Ron Swoboda.

* The Washington Senators beat the Chicago White Sox, 3-0 at District of Columbia Stadium in Washington. Dick Bosman pitched a 5-hit shutout. The stadium would be renamed Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium in 1969.

* The Atlanta Braves beat the Pittsburgh Pirates, 7-3 at Atlanta (later Atlanta-Fulton County) Stadium. Hank Aaron went 1-for-4, his hit a solo home run. Roberto Clemente went 1-for-4.

* The Cincinnati Reds beat the Philadelphia Phillies, 1-0 at Crosley Field in Cincinnati. Jim Bunning only allowed 2 hits, but 1 was a leadoff double by Vada Pinson in the bottom of the 7th. He advanced to 3rd base on a groundout, and Lee May drove him in with a sacrifice fly. Gary Nolan pitched 7 scoreless innings, and Billy McCool and Ted Abernathy were needed to finish off the 7-hit shutout.

* The Houston Astros beat the Chicago Cubs, 5-3 at Wrigley Field in Chicago.

* The Baltimore Orioles beat the Minnesota Twins, 4-3 at Metropolitan Stadium in the Minneapolis suburb of Bloomington, Minnesota.

* The Cleveland Indians beat the Kansas City Athletics, 9-8 at Kansas City Municipal Stadium. Chico Salmon got the winning run home on a fielder's choice in the top of the 10th inning.

* The Detroit Tigers swept a doubleheader from the California Angels at Anaheim Stadium. They won the 1st game 4-2, and the 2nd game 2-1.

* And the San Francisco Giants beat their arch-rivals, the Los Angeles Dodgers, 11-1 at Candlestick Park in San Francisco. Willie Mays went 2-for-3 with a solo home run.