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80s TV Ladies Theme Song 00:39
80s TV Ladies, I’m so sexy and so pretty. 80s TV Ladies, I’m steppin out into the city. 80s TV Ladies, I been treated kind of sh#*ty. Working hard for the money in a man’s world. 80s TV Ladies!

Susan Lambert Hatem 00:17
Good morning 80s TV Ladies! I'm Susan Lambert Hatem.

Sharon Johnson 00:20
And I'm Sharon Johnson. 80s TV Ladies is our podcast where we get to talk about female driven television shows from the 1980s. Today we're diving into the last couple of seasons of Remington Steele. We have a special guest today who worked on some of the final episodes of the show. And if you don't know by now, Remington Steele starred Stephanie Zimbalist, Pierce Brosnan and Doris Roberts. It ran from 1982 to 1987 on NBC.

And I know today we're going to be talking about both Seasons Four and Five. But all my questions are about Season Five.

I don't know that I have any questions about Season Four, but still looking forward as always to talk about it. But we have a special guest today who worked on Season Five. Is that why it's the one where you have all the questions?

Well, that and because Season Five is infuriating, confusing, and just plain weird.

It may have suffered some Season Five, the-show-was-canceled-and-then-it-wasn't, blues.

Before we get started with Season Four. Just to recap at the end of Season Three, Remington Steele takes off because of immigration issues, state license issues, and Laura Holt has said things were easier without him. So, he disappears to the UK. And then in Season Four, we pick up with Laura and Mildred showing up in the UK to find him. And they do in the first two episodes. Then they all reconcile, and Laura spills the beans to Mildred on the Remington Steele secret truth. So, Mildred now knows that the man she knew as Remington Steele is not Remington Steele. By the end of Season Four, Laura and Steele have a fake marriage to keep him in the country.

A lot of the fans were both excited and unexcited by that, but it was the end of, it was the end of the Series. At that point, then the show was canceled, and they think it's over. Season Four... just to to concentrate a little bit on stuff that I really found a challenge in Season Four is... Some of, some of the episodes felt like Oh, here's the wrestling episode. Right? You know? Um, but also Laura Holt really is... And and Stephanie Zimbalist is doing a beautiful job... But she, Laura Holt keeps sort of having to insert herself and assert herself into her own show, (guffaw) is what it felt like to me. That it was a lot of the Pierce Brosnan show. Again, hard to fault the appeal of him but it becomes the struggle of the show. The struggle of the show becomes not them working together, but him dealing with his immigration issues. And him struggling to kind of win her over. And him doing this, and then Laura being mad at him for it. (guffaw) And then Laura basically going No, but it's my agency! You know, and It's my this. And so it felt more like she was sort of always on the defensive in in Season Four a lot. Even though it started I think, pretty well when she shows up and it's like, Okay, I'm coming to get you because you're an idiot for running away.

I wonder to what degree some of that had to do with the fact that Television and certainly Remington Steele is more episodic at that time. And they with that, they have a tendency to write and rewrite certain beats of the relationship where, because because I think from research, they know that most people don't watch every episode. So for those of us that do watch every episode, it does become repetitive. You're thinking didn't they resolve that already? But okay, we'll go, we'll move on.

This happened in the 80s a lot, because if you missed an Episode, you missed it till the Summer. Right? Or a re-run. And so they didn't do a lot of tracking relationships so carefully as you would kind of have to do now. Now, it is about watching, you know, one, then two, then three, then four, then five, and you just consume them all, almost like a Mini-Series.

And I'm also not trying to to give the Writers too hard of time, because writing that many episodes of Television every Season is really hard under the best of circumstances. And I, it's easy, it was probably easy, if you will, for them to fall in the pattern of, Okay. That we've we, we’re gona write about this conflict, whatever it is. Instead of trying to be a little bit more, for lack of a better word, creative in the way that they dealt with the situation, the circumstances between them, maybe they felt like they've kind of, I don't know. There's, there could be a lot of reasons for it.

I think it was one of the shows that was kind of inventing how to do that, somewhat for the first time on Television.

True

A lot of people I think that would then do uh, will they-won't they? Uh, Jim and Pam are a thing, really had had those forerunners. They stood on the shoulders of giants... (laughs)

(Laughs)

... like Remington Steele.

Exactly.

Season Four, I actually like the first couple episodes of of London, because because I liked it when they went on location. But also, there's an Episode, Forged Steele, Episode Five where Remington stuffers a memory loss and it turns out apparently he he lost the Agency in a poker game. And I just thought that was actually very clever. You know it uh, it becomes a case, and I thought it was a pretty clever clic, case. I loved when Louis Anderson came on and guest starred. I thought he was really just adorable. And that was for Steele Spawning, Episode 12. They had to chase down some missing you know, Russian Caviar as you do for the American Caviar Czar, which was Louie Anderson's father. Like he had made some deal and he didn't want his Daddy to find out, because he was like the son that was always messin' up. And then I also, another Episode that stood out for me was Suburban Steele, Episode 13. Kind of in the, in the dead middle of the Season, and a dead man shows up in Laura's Sister's kitchen. Laura and Remington have to take care of Laura's nieces and nephews and I think there are direct nods in that Episode to Scarecrow and Mrs. King because Laura's Sister's car is basically the same station wagon as Mrs. King drove.

One of the ones that stand out for me that Season is, Coffee Tea or Steele, which is set on a luxury Airline. And to be honest, I think it it stood out for me more because of the depiction of air travel as being this potentially, this this luxurious experience where you have Stewardesses, as they call them at the time, walking around with trays of drinks and all the space up in the the the...

It was so glamorous.

... First Class or wherever this, these people were sitting. And lot, you know, chairs, and I, it, I had frankly never experienced that and it certainly isn't the case these days, that you would see something like that on a plane. So.

Yes, it felt like a cruise ship.

Yes, exactly.

Yeah, liked that episode because also in that episode is, you know again, Laura goes undercover as an Airline Stewardess and is, and is treated poorly because of it as a woman. Also Terry O'Quinn guest stars on that....

That's right.

... from Lost. So at the end of Season Four, the Series is canceled. Looks like Pierce Brosnan is gona, is gona to be cast as as James Bond. And Stephanie Zimbalist actually is cast opposite Peter Weller in Robocop. But summer repeats happen. Remington Steele ratings go up, and they reboot the show and they call everybody. We need our, everybody back. And they had shut everything down. So they call everybody back. Stephanie doesn't get to do Robocop. Pierce Brosnan has to wait to do James Bond. He does that crazy People Magazine Cover where he's like, I hate them. (guffaw)

Pretty much.

And we come back for basically three TV Movies, sort of six Episodes or three TV Movies, we're still not sure. They have a bad honeymoon in Mexico meets Romancing The Stone kind of episodes. They introduce a romantic rival for Remington Steele to try and make a love triangle happen. Jack Scalia, we'll talk about him in a minute. And it's still all about the immigration. So Remington goes back to LA and then has to go back to London, and then finds out he inherited a Castle with a lot of debt. And then suddenly we're in Scotland, and then suddenly, we're wrapping up the show. But at least they bring Daniel Chalmers back, Efrem Zimbalist, Jr, which I thought was quite lovely. And then they kind of wrap up Remington-Laura pretty well. It's kind of nice.

And also, it's very clear that Season Five is about him. It's really not about Laura. It's all about HIM. And the Season, I mean the Series is really tipped from being initially about her to being about them. And now it's all about him, and it's the, everything that's going on is revolves around him, and she's just sort of there.

Well, and then and then they introduce a guy character, and Mildred has nothing to do.

But even what they do with the guy character is, first he starts out as one thing, and then suddenly, he's something else. And then he suddenly something else again, and it's very confusing and don't really care. Because they're not at all consistent with what or who he's supposed to be, which I just found a waste of time at the end of the day, as much as I like Jack Scalia from that time. So, you know.

Yes but, you know who could answer maybe some of these questions? Not all of them, and he's not responsible for any of the writing of this Season, or any of the conceptual stuff. But I want to introduce our guest, Jerram Swartz, who worked on some of the final episodes of Remington Steele. We've known each other for years, he and I, since he worked with my husban, Richard Hatem on an incredible Mini-Series called The Lost Room in 2006, starring Peter Krause, Julianna Margulies, Dennis Christopher, Peter Jacobson, and Elle Fanning. It is a beautiful underrated, not many people know about it Mini-Series, that everyone should see. The Lost Room.

Jerram is an Assistant Director and Production Manager with over 100 credits that include E.T. The Extra Terrestrial, The Blues Brothers, and The Walking Dead. He has filmed on locations throughout the US and Europe. Jerram left the glamorous 16 hour work days for the comparative sanity of the life of an analyst at the California Film Commission. He is also an occasional Lecturer and Producer-Director-Lyricist for seven Seasons of the Pasadena Follies.

So welcome to the show Jerram! How are you?

Jerram Swartz 10:16
Fantastic. Thank you.

I'm so excited to have you on. Jerram, tell us a little bit more about yourself. I mean, we of course, we have your Bio, but how did you get into movies and television in the first place?

I took a class in college about Movies, and went to a college in England called Sussex University.

Ooo.

And the assignment was to write a screenplay. And so I did that and they said, Okay, now go produce it. It's like, Hummina, hummina, hummina. And so we built our own lights. And we took our 16 millimeter film camera and pushed it three stops, so that. I mean, we just invented it with some guys from school. And we had little green screen little things, and it was terrible. But that was fun. And when I graduated, I came to America and got into the Universal Studios mailroom. And there, I started delivering mail to people whose names are now on the buildings, the Alfred Hitchcock's and the Verna Fields and the people like that The Lew Wassermans.

Wow.

And from that, I found that about a thing called the Assistant Director's Training Program. And I went down to USC one morning and took the test and I did not get in. And then the next year, I went down to USC and got in. And the rest is history. I've done that for years and years and years and years.

Wow.

That's amazing. That's through the Director's Guild.

Through the Directors Guild. Yes.

And they still have that program, yes?

They do.

Okay. All right. Let's just, you know, cut to the chase of how you ended up on Season Five of Remington Steele.

You know, the life of, as an Assistant Director. When I started, if you worked at Universal Studios, they would put you on show after show after show, and you'd just stay at the Studio. But um, Sharon Gless and I presided over the very end of the Studio System. I think she was actually the last Contract Player in Hollywood.

She was! I just read that.

For both of us, it was the end of the Studio System, which meant that once I was through the training program, I had to find my own work. And that meant going from place to place, Studio to Studio, Independent to Independent, depending on who liked you, who didn't like you. And eventually over 40 years it became who died and didn't die. But.

(Laughs)

So from time to time, I would find myself working at CBS Radford on shows. And uh, what was different then, is that the people who hired the Assistant Director in Television, were basically the Producers and the, the ah, oh I can't think of the guy. Oh, Abby Singer was there at that time.

Oh, okay.

Is that a name that means anything to you guys?

It is, it is familiar to me.

He was, Abby Singer is the man after whom the shot, "the Abbey Singer' was named. May I tell you about that?

Yes. Please explain the 'Abby Singer shot'.

This is something as an Assistant Director, you learned very quickly you had to announce when you're on the next to last shot of the day, We're on the Abby Singer.

Ah!

And the reason for that was back in, when I knew Abby, he was in his 80s. 70s or 80s. Way back in the day, probably the '50s or '60s, he was an assistant director, and he was famous for saying, Okay, this is the last shot. Okay, this is the last shot. He never actually got the last shot correct. So the next to the last shot is historically "the Abbey Singer'. So when you know that you have two shots left, you make the announcement to the crew.

It is crazy because I guess I assumed that Abby Singer was an actual person, but I didn't, never actually knew that anybody knew Abby Singer.

He was a total sweetie pie.

Aww, that's great.

There's actually one other old soul that I'd like to do a commercial for because his name is largely forgotten at this point. And that is Wally Worsley Jr. And when I was a Trainee when I was a young pup at Universal, he was an old dog there. He was the, and I I worked with him. I knew him when I was in the mailroom and then later I worked with him. On E.T. He was the Production Manager on E.T. The Extra Terrestrial. He had been the Prop man on Wizard of Oz.

Come on.

He and his dad, Wally Worsley Sr., had been the Director of the original Lon Chaney of, Hunchback of Notre Dome.

Wow.

So

That is pretty amazing. So you you started when like old Hollywood's was still around, but the end. The end of it. The end of the Studio System, like like you said, and Sharon Gless talks about that in her book.

I did have a Camera Assistant say to me on a, on a Movie set, Are you the same Jerram Swartz that working in the '70s?

(Chuckles)

And it's like, Okay, I'm gonna have to kill you.

(Laughs) I think most people like me are familiar with the Studio System as it applied to actors and actresses, but not as much to the production crew that that was something similar in that regard. So that's really interesting, that that was also part of the system.

And really, when I started everybody was, everybody looked like they were in their 50s and 60s and they were all white guys, and they all smoked. And coffee a Craft Service cost a nickel or are a dime or something.

You had to pay for coffee at Craft Service?

You had to pay for coffee at Craft Service. And it was very crude. It was very crude. So you asked me how I got on to...

Remington Steele. And it was really just one of those calls. I've worked, I guess, was there a Kevin on it? No, I don't think so. It's just one of the guys at CBS called me. And sure, you know, I went in and I met the Director is a guy named Chris hip, Christopher Hibler, who came from a, a Line that was well regarded at Disney in particular. His dad was oh, he had a cool first name. Do you remember?

Remington Steele.

Oh, no. I don't remember anything at Disney. (Laughs)

Okay. So I've worked actually, I've worked with Chris so it's possible he put my name in at some point. On a Disney movie, I'd been a Second Assistant Director on something called, Hot Lead and Cold Feet.

Yeah, I saw that title!

With Jim Dale.

And, you know, it was kind of an old timey Disney kids movie. It was Western. And the guy who was the Head of the Studio was run somebody who had been Walt Disney's Son In-Law. And they still remembered Walt. And Chris Hibler, he told me stories about how he had had to work with Walt teaching him how to sign his name, the way it looks on the TV Show.

Okay. Yeah.

Wow.

Oh, my God.

Christopher directed did a promo at Disneyland. And they had all kinds of ways and, and complicated routines that you had to go through. And there was a giant shot of things happening and things happening and people doing things, and dancers, and they were screening it for Walt. And Walt said, What's that little triangle of grass there? That isn't green. What's wrong with that? So he was relating how extraordinary attention to detail Walt Disney had. And it's like, there was still at a time, and I can't remember what year it is probably '77-'78. That, you know, this was still a name that was spoken with reverence.

For sure.

You did not make a joke about about Walt being in a, you know, cooling chamber somewhere. Somebody said it while I was there, this would have been '77-'78... Walt who?

No way.

That somebody actually said, you know, that's not the way Walt would have said it, done it or done it. And somebody said, Walt who? And it's like everybody's, everybody went nuts.

(Laughs)

Yeah. No. I think you'd get in trouble for doing that now.

So when you joined the crew of Remington Steele, I would imagine that the crew was maybe half folks that had worked on the show before. To what degree were there people who had worked on the show before it was cancelled?

They were all new to me.

Oh, okay.

And I mean, it wasn't clear about anything. I can't, here's the thing that I remember about it. First, I get to go to Ireland. Well, I have my wife and I have my new baby. Kate is six months old.

Oh my god, Kate was six.

So what I'd like to do, I asked...

Hold on, hold on. I just have to picture that for a minute, because I know Kate. Okay, go.

What I'd like to do is, I'd like to take the First Class ticket that you give me as an Assistant Director, as member of The Guild, and change it into two, you know, steerage tickets. You know, there we were with this little six month old baby, and she'd already been on location. When she was six weeks old, we went to Texas to do a movie, Adam, the sequel to the movie, Adam.

Oh, okay. Yeah.

In fact, she has an appearance in TV Guide being held by JoBeth Williams in the Ad Art.

Oh that's so funny.

They'd have a little baby there. So she was there. And she was, so this was her second location. And uh.

(Laughs)

So what I remember was the excitement of going someplace fantastic. And we hadn't been to Dublin before. I had been as a student, but Abey and obviously Kate had not. But we started off filming in town. And the only part of the filming that I remember is that we did a car chase and it was in the little alleys behind in Pasadena. We were not we were not centered in Pasadena. But this was, you know, before Pasadena really happened. We had. We were living in Altadena at the time, so we were very familiar with the Pasadena and the little alleys between Union and Colorado.

Oh. Okay. All right. All right. I know what you're talking about

(Laughs)

(Guffaws)

And we had like a London Cab and a car that we were gona double over there.

And we did some some Chase stuff here, which we later did there.

Oh that's do funny.

Alright, I'm goin' back and looking at that, the that last Episode. I know what your, I know what chase you're talkin' about.

Okay, good. I don't.

(Laughs)

The other thing I remember is once we got to shooting, is that it was clear that there was a cloud. Remember Pigpen? In...

Yes.

There was a cloud over, uh, the name of the star...

Pierce Brosnan?

... Pierce Brosnan's head, and that was all around James Bond. I mean that that he was just perpetually in a bad mood because he would Never, Ever get to play James Bond now.

It looked like that at the time.

I mean, that's what it looked like.

That, that was like clearly, that was never ever going to happen. mean,

Right.

For sure. It looked like that, that that ship had sailed in some ways.

So I think that, and I and I took have that as a great life lesson. You know, the great life lesson is if you’re Pierce Brosnan and they say you can't be James Bond, that it doesn't mean you're not ever ever gona do James Bond. It just means you're not going to do James Bond this time. And I've, I've referred to that in my life, actually.

So were you aware of all of the drama around Pierce Brosnan not getting to play James Bond at the end of Season four before you started working on the show? Or was that something you learned when you got there?

No. I mean, no. I might have, might have known about it. I didn't care. You know, he was-- He was professional. He was fine. Stephanie, I liked. We met her dad. At one point he came. Was he in my Episode?

He's in. He's in your episode. Yeah.

I remember at that point, doing some research and finding about his father.

Yes, the violinist.

things, some bricks there. I mean, that was very impressive. I mean, that was probably the most impressive celebrity aspect of it for me. It was, you know, the-- What was it? The violinist to the, to the Tsar, right?

Yeah.

Yeah. And not bad for a nice Jewish boy, right?

Right.

Right. (Chuckling)

So I will say this, the performances are not lackluster,

Correct.

They are working really hard. So I'm gonna give some like I-- It, it was clear to everybody that he was really bummed that he lost. I mean, and who wouldn't be? It looks like you just lost playing James Bond, a role that, quite honestly, you were kind of built to play and thought you were gonna get to play. And then you lose it because they want to just take a slight advantage of your contract. (Chuckles)

Well, and I'm sure that helped them, right? That the notoriety around-- Oh, he could play-- His value went up to the, to the show people.

And we surmise that that's exactly why it was brought back because it was cancelled. And then literally at the last minute, when it became apparent he was going to be cast as James Bond, they said, "Oh, no, we need to do this. We need to do more of this."

Because everybody got excited about watching Remington Steele. Like they were like, "Whoa, with the new James Bond." So we have questions.

So many questions.

So many questions. Were you part of the castle? Was there a castle where you were?

No. We were filming Dublin for London. We brought a red bus up, red double decker bus up from England to Dublin. They don't belong in, in Ireland.

Oh, that's so funny. Okay, so I just assumed you were filming Dublin for Scotland. So you were on--

How stupid is that!

(Laughing)

They had a great studio there, by the way. A very old studio, way out in the boonies. You can look it up and find out the name. I can't think of it now. It's still there. But I remember we were filming a police squad room there. And there was-- In every squad room you go to, there's like pigeonholes filled with papers and stuff. And I happen to look at it. And it was timecards from guys working at the studios in the '50s and '60s.

Wow.

I mean, it was just you know, it's just random paper that happened to be around that the art department had access to and jammed them in and jammed them in and jammed them in. Oh.

Ardmore, yes. And memorably, memorably, I had a production meeting to lead at Ardmore, and they gave me a rental car. And I was like, 45 minutes late because I got totally lost in the backwoods of driving around. There was before satellites, of course,

Ardmore Studios?

it was all real time, real-life stuff. There's no cell phones, there's no, you know, there's no video. You're filming on film.

Even for a long time-- I'm not sure, I'm not sure when. What's that-- Reflex cameras came in. I remember when I started as a trainee, that not even the camera operator could see exactly what image was going on to the film. He had to rack over, right?

Right.

It's like you had to look through here and then kind of assume what was going to be there.

Wow.

Now, you know, any idiot on the set can see exactly, you know, on his iPhone.

Yes.

You can see exactly what the shot is. But then even the operator couldn't see.

Yes.

Sometimes they broadcast, right?

Wow.

All right. So you were on like four and five, then? Or you--

No, I think it would have been one and two, three and four, five and six, right?.

So you were on three and four.

Yeah.

So you were on three and four. So--

I accept that.

Okay, I'm gonna--

No castle,

I mean, no castle.

Right.

But I think when we were watching it, your name came up on four or five.

It would have been four. It would have been-- I mean--

It came up on five or six. It came up on one of the ones--

Okay, maybe somebody owes me money then.

(Chuckling)

Yeah. All right. All right. All right. So no castle, but I am glad you got to meet Efrem Zimbalist, Jr. He's wonderful in the show.`

And I have favorable feelings for Jack Scalia too. That was a nice guy.

Well, that's good that he was a nice guy.

Yeah.

It was the wrong-- It was the wrong show and the wrong part, I think, for him

Well, it would have been-- If they had been consistent with what, who this character was supposed to be--

They changed what he was--

...every episode.

Yeah.

There were only six episodes or three hours and-- But he's, he's this and-- It was so confusing.

He does a fine job.

It was the writing.

Right.

It's not him. He's got, he's got a great career. He's what, was totally the hunk of the '80s, you know. One of the hunks of the '80s and is still working and worked a lot. Did a lot of cool stuff.

And was an actual, you know, major league baseball player. And I also think that in some ways, they were like, "Okay, well, we're not going to have Pierce, but maybe we'll get Stephanie and a new guy." Like for a minute, it feels like that's what they're trying to do.

In that Season five is like, "Oh, okay. So we, you know, he had to come back for Season five. He's not going to stay. Maybe we can carry this show through." That's what it feels like. And that may have been Michael Gleason. That may have been somebody at the studio.

Oh, I hadn't thought about it from that standpoint.

Which would have made sense if at some level, if the show weren't called Remington Steele, because how do you continue the show without Remington Steele? You can't put another guy and say this is now Remington Steele.

It's the spin off, right?

Your job as the first assistant director is just to keep things rolling.

My job as the first assistant director is to prep the show within an eyelash of its being. And to take the script, break it down, figure out how long everything's going to take to film. Put the strips in order. We still had cardboard strips then.

Cardboard strips. Okay, so--

Cardboard strips wouldn't--

Can you explain this to our listeners.

This is a technology that was invented, according to lore, by Charlie Chaplin and his secretary. And that was they would take strips of emulsion and write on it with a grease pencil what this what the scene was.

An emulsion is filmstrips.

Film strips, exposed film strips. So it's like not, not reactive. And pin it on a bulletin board. And evidently, this woman came up with the idea of giving each actor a number, Charlie Chaplin being number one. And that's where 'number one on the call sheet' comes from, from that moment.

Um-hmm. Nice.

And having a list of the different characters, not the actual, but the characters and numbers that go down. And every time a character number one is in the scene, you put a one there. And every time number two is in the scene, you put it to a little bit lower. And so you can see by this array on your cork board, where one works. And for example, you don't want Charlie waiting around. So you don't have a scene with one at the beginning of the day and one at the end of the day. So it's a graphic way of looking at the information. And that became-- By the time you get into the '30s, you have the technology that I was brought up on, which is cardboard strips of different colors. Daytime, nighttime, interior, exterior, There's a whole-- Actually, each studio had its own coding of that.

Code system.

Yes.

Well, I mean, that's how I learned in film school 19, mid 80s.

So well, that's how it was. That's how we did it for years. And for years, even after we had computers, I still kept a board that I felt that I was able-- And to this day, I will tell you that my boards were five to seven percent better, because there was a tactile aspect of moving the strips around to get the correct schedule that you don't get when you're dragging and dropping on a computer.

Just to have the visualization of it in front of you. For me, I could see that being better for me.

But what you can't do on a computer is you can't get the whole movie in front of you.

Yeah, that's what I-- I think that's what I mean, to see the whole picture of what's happening.

And to have to walk to the end of the movie and pick strips and bring them to the front of the movie.

Yes. Yes.

So it is different. And I remember some big movies we worked on had multiple boards, had boards that you know, stretched run and-- And I worked with a director who said that the-- And what would happen is every time you, you have a list of strips that are going to be your day's work followed by a black strip. It says okay, everything before that is this day, Thursday, day seven, right. And there was a director that I worked with, he said that the act of putting the strips that you've shot behind the headerboard is the headerboard moves down is better than--

(Laughing)

We still do the board exactly the same way. Movie Magic is really kind of the go-to technology. Other people have-- Other people have tried to come up with things. It really is the standard. It's a very effective way of manipulating information, being able to print out vast amounts of incorrect information very quickly.

Yes.

(Laughing)

(Laughing) We heard that!

That by the time I got to RIPTIDE, we had gotten it down to the point where I would finish prep-- this is the night before the production meeting at seven o'clock. I would finish at Cannell's office, which is still at high-- The office isn't there; the building is there. Hi-- La Brea and Hollywood Boulevard.

Drive down to Barbara's Place on Santa Monica and drop it off to them and they would work all night and generate the--

And generate the--

The shooting schedules for the production meeting.

I'm sorry that Rich isn't here to talk about RIPTIDE. I think he wants to do a whole podcast on RIPTIDE. That I'll leave to you and him. You also worked on a lot of cool '70s shows. EMERGENCY. One of the first shows you worked on

it was literally the first show I worked on. I worked so much, so many hours on that that I sometimes slept in the firemen bed on the set.

Oh, that's so sweet. I was Randolph Mantooth and Kevin--

Tighe. Yep.

Tai. Alright, so say that again. Kevin--

Teege? Tighe?

(Laughing)

Kevin Tighe.

Kevin Tighe. Randolph Mantooth and Kevin Tighe. They were so adorable. They were saving lives all over town.

Julie London

Julie London.

Who is the bandleader that?

That I don't know.

With white hair. He was also in the show.

Oh, man. I don't know.

And Robert Fuller.

Okay.

Randy Mantooth. It was so funny. He was like, he was like this idol. Right?

He was like the sexy one.

Yeah. Nice guy. So really nice. And Kevin was more of an intellectual. So I had a nice rapport with him. And he did a lot of movies for like us in six man.

Oh, he's he's done a ton of stuff.

No, no, really? What's the name of that Writer/Director that did a bunch of cool stuff with Kevin Tighe? Nine Men Out. Who did that?

Oh, Sayles.

John Sayles.

John Sayles.

So, he did a lot of John Sayles movies.

Yeah, that's right. I mean, he's just done a lot of movies, but I didn't know that he was-- I guess he is one of these go-to guys. Sure.

So, the thing I remember about Randy Mantooth, we were shooting-- We were always shooting in really hot places. It was like, you get the script. I remember it. It's like, oh, yeah, we got a car on the roof this one and you know what other--

Horrible build.

Whatever horrible things are happening. But I remember we were shooting way up by Magic Mountain in those days. It took a long time to get the Magic Mountain, right? And, and it was a million degrees. And he invited me into his trailer and he offered me a, an ice cold Vernors diet ginger ale. And I'd never had it before and that was like his thing that he loved and he was very generous in sharing that with me.

Was Bobby Troup the--

Bobby Troup! Thank you. Yes, yes. He was a big-deal bandleader. He was a big, big deal.

Big, big deal.

Yeah. And Julie London was a great singer.

Well, Emergency was like the first time I was like, oh, that's what Los Angeles looks like, because it was set in LA. But you also worked on Barnaby Jones and Colombo. Worked with Peter Falk, Buddy Epsen.

Buddy Epsen was adorable. He would occasionally fall asleep during takes.

You know.

(Laughs)

And about 30 years later, I went to my bank in Altadena. It was the Bank of America up on Lake Avenue. And there was a security guard there, a much older guy with big mutton chop, white mustache. And he said to me, "Did you work on Barnaby Jones?" I said, "Yeah, I worked on Barnaby Jones." He said, "I remember Barnaby Jones trying to teach you to tap dance." And swear to God, it was true. He was, he was a stand-in on the show.

Oh my god.

Wow.

That came back to haunt me many, many years later,

Adam wouldn't say hi. I think you should you should put it on a plaque somewhere that Barnaby Jones taught you to tap dance.

No, he didn't.

He wasn't successful. (Laughs)

He tried to, as the security guard said. But how did that come about that he wanted to--

The Tin Man. We're gonna take a little break. We're gonna come back. We're gonna ask some more questions of Jerram and his life in the '80s on television and movies.

Oh, of course. I mean, of course, I was a young schmuck. You know, can you teach me the tap dance or something? You know, I don't remember what it was. But it was like, of course, I want to learn to tap dance from the original Tin Man. From the Tin Man.

Life in the '80s.

All right, Sharon, welcome back. Welcome back, Jerram. We are-- See, we're getting goofy over here. We're getting a little bit--

Well, because we're having this great conversation. It's been so fascinating.

Alright, so again, not an '80s TV lady at all. But we have to talk about the Blues Brothers. That was your first movie as a First Assistant.

Well, so what happened was I had started at Universal in the mailroom. And then when it came time, once I got into the training program, I was kind of seamlessly integrated into Emergency there. That was a show there. So I'm still working at the studio,

Which clearly I'm the only one that loved but okay. Melissa loved it, too.

I didn't see it, unfortunately.

Yes, Julie London.

I worked on a couple of features there. Start-- The first one was Swashbuckler.

Oooh!

Anybody ever hear of that? That was a pirate movie before pirate movies were successful. After they were successful, before they were successful.

Yes.

With Robert Shaw and James Earl Jones and Genevieve Bujold.

I'm trying to figure out how I never knew about Swashbuckler considering the cast because wow. I'm gonna have to find it and watch it so--

James Earl Jones was the nicest guy in the world. And Genevieve Bujold was so hot. She was great.

All right, well, okay, now we gotta all go watch Swashbuckler.

Exactly.

And Robert Shaw was a drunk jerk. And at one point, we were standing next to each other and he was, he was super intellectual. Really smart. He wrote a bunch of plays. He wrote The Man in the Glass Booth.

Oh, yeah. Okay, Alright.

You know, he was, he was very much into the bottle at that point. This was before The Sting, but after Jaws,

Alright, so--

Yes, it was after Jaws.

No, but, but The Sting was '73, '74?

Then I guess maybe it was after The Sting. We were down in Mexico. And he's standing there in this little red pirate outfit. And we're watching James Earl Jones do a thing. And suddenly he hits me in the ribs. He just goes like whap. And he takes my breath away. And I look at him. And he says to me, "And there's nothing you can do about it."

Are you serious?

I'm serious.

Wow.

So I got custody of the story.

You got custody of the story.

So here we are. And I'm not ashamed. I'm not ashamed to say that. I came back to Universal. And they hired me actually, while releasing some of the other guys. They hired me for a couple of months to wander around, poke my nose around and write the manual of Universal Studios. And this is this department. And this is who's here and things like that. And they took out all my jokes and all my quotes and all my cartoons and things. And they made it corporate policy for seven years. So that was a nice gig. And then they promoted me to First Assistant Director, and I was working on a show called Buck Rogers in the 25th century.

Oh, wow.

Also one of my favorites from childhood,

"Biddi-biddi-biddi" This was 1979. Universal at that point, was still like a college campus. And everybody kind of knew each other, and you'd visit each other's sets. And you'd see people at the commissary and kind of, you know-- There was-- It was like, it was like a collegial sort of organization. And people started disappearing. It was like, one by one people were disappearing. And it's like, "Oh, what happened to Fran?" "Oh, she's in Chicago." "Oh, what happened to--"They sent them to Chicago." And what was happening is they were prepping this movie called The Blues Brothers there, which was just getting bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger. And they were expanding the number of people they needed to work on it. And sure enough, I got this call, "Jerram, you're going to Chicago."

You're going to Chicago.

So I was a freshly minted First AD. I'd been a First on one or two episodes of Buck Rogers. And they were quick to tell me, we don't want you to go and run the set. There's a guy David Sosna, who's been prepping with John Landis for months, he's gonna run the set. David, by the way is to my mind, like the best in the business. The work he did on Blues Brothers is second to none. But we need help coordinating stunt men coming in and out Bluesmobiles, this security at the mall, things-- You know, they couldn't even enumerate what they needed. We just want to send you there. So, okay, well, whatever it is, it's better than Buck Rogers in the 25th Century. And so I I kiss my girlfriend, goodbye. I said, I'll see you in three months. A week later, I sent her a ticket. We've been together ever since 1979. That's my wife.

You just take her to all the best sets.

Well, that's right.

(Laughs)

I mean, but this is obviously before 1986. So that was the first one I took her to and so we will always have Chicago as kind of a romantic-- You know. This isn't necessarily what you wanted to know about.

I'm loving this!

This is awesome.

Because this is fantastic!

I will tell you one story from that and that is there is a scene in Blues Brothers at the mall. You familiar with--

Yes. Yeah, I'm familiar with Blues Brothers.

Can you tell me what the first shot, the first interior shot is after the cars--

Okay, I guess I spoke too soon.

They crash through the wall going into the mall and they come into a toy store. And so we had a toy store set in the, in the mall. And we put a fake wall there and ran the car through, and it burst through and knocked over every shelf in the thing and knocked all the toys off the shelves. And you know when the dust clear-- Everybody okay? Everybody's okay. John Landis pull,took, picked up a Kermit doll, Kermit the Frog doll that had fallen over here and wired it to the front bumper of the Bluesmobile..

Okay.

And you can't see it. I've looked frame by frame. I've tried to see it in the thing. And then we shot for a week there. Complete mayhem. I don't think you could do that scene today. Certainly not the way we did it. Because we were all working in this interior thing, cars with exhaust, actual glass, not breakaway glass. I mean, how hazardous, how dangerous by today's standards. Back then it was like, oh, yeah, we'll take one for the team. We're gonna, we're gonna, you know, it's gonna be fine. And by the way, John Landis would later go on in 1980-- In 1982, to kill three people at the, at Indian Dunes on Twilight Zone.

Twilight Zone.

And I'd be happy to come back and talk about that all day long with you. But what I will say is that if David Sosna had been the First on Twilight Zone, it would not have happened. That he would have had the wherewithal to say, "John, let's stop the shot. Let's do this properly, we'll get the shot. It will be where you want it to be. But we're not going to do it unsafely." So I just want to do that shot out. So anyway, at the end of the week of shooting, and the place was trashed, right. There was nothing there. I found the Kermet doll. And so I took that home and that has become them our icon for Debie and me. The-- Every location I've been on-- Poland Italy, everywhere-- Kermit's come with us.The portrait of our children has them holding Kermit, and it's just-- That really became a kind of an icon for us, our first child.

Wonderful I love that story so much. Oh my gosh.

My favorite thing about Blues Brothers is, is it sweetness. Like it's, it's got a lot of heart for a movie that's about--

You know, it's about the music.

It's about the music.

You know? And I tell you, Cab Calloway. I was, I was just-- I met him. I was just, could not have been more knocked out.

That is fantastic.

More than Aretha Franklin, more than anything. Now I only did the Chicago portion. They came back and did an awful lot of it here, which I was not on payroll for, unfortunately. But I had a great time. We had three months there. It was fantastic.

It has a lot of that recklessness, revolutionary like rawness of the '70s movies and television. And yet it also is the beginning of okay, really, let's just do a, you know, 25-minute car chase and, and crash things.

Well, you know, I guess what they had in the '70s, for a brief shining moment, is when they were letting auteurs do studio movies. And they were letting, right to is that the stream is crossed. And you had the Chinatown and you had The Godfather and you had right. And there-- Harold and Maude and you know that, that kind of group of things. And then it just became clear that that's not the movie the studios-- That's not the business studios wanted to be in.

Well, and again, it was also Jaws and Star Wars that turned into, everything into a blockbuster, right? Like, like suddenly, that's, the that's the business we want to be in.

Yeah.

And I love both those movies. But in some ways, their success marked the beginning of a blockbuster era that has never ever, ever left us.

I've got to tell you my Jaws story, even though it's completely off the track.

Okay!

You've heard it, I think but this is just--

But our viewers haven't. All those viewers out there.

Okay, let me paint you a picture that in 1974 we'd all been-- I was in the mailroom at Universal. And we were aware that there was this movie that they were shooting that was really in trouble. And it was Jaws, and there were a number of reasons that it was not shut down, that are not particularly well known. One is that Marsh Green, who was the film executive. His brother Hilton Green was the TV executive. They had both grown up as part of the Universal family. Their dad had been Doug Green, had been Mary Pickford's director. Right? They came by it honestly. So anyway, Marsh was out with a heart attack, and John Oser who was the head of the budget department was also out for health reasons for a particular amount of time. So it's-- They were not--My perspective's they were not getting the information amalgamated correctly to shut down the movie, they would absolutely have shut down. So anyway, so Jaws was going on. We're aware that there have been issues with it. But you know, it's also there's the big shark. At one point we'd actually snuck out from the mailroom to see where the shark was being built and seeing Bruce. And you know where he is now, right?

He's in, he's at Universal.

On the tram tour. Isn't that him?

No, he is-- You know something, there might be more than one Bruce, but I'm under the impression that the real Bruce the shark is hanging in the Academy Museum.

Oh!

Really?

When you go up to the top floor--

He is, he is there in space there for -- So anyway, the movie's getting ready to to open and it's about a month before the movie opens. And I can't remember if they've had the Dallas screening where they got the idea, oh, yes, this might be successful movie. But there's going to be a screening this Wednesday coming up. And I go to my friend Stan Musgrove, because, you know, I've been schmoozing him for a year in the mailroom, and I say, can I get into the screening? Can you, can you help me get into the screening on Wednesday? He said okay. I came back the next day. "Okay, here's what you do. The screenings at eight o'clock. At a quarter to eight, you stand outside the main gate. A white limo will pull up, the back door'll open, you get in and you can go as Mae West's guest."

Yeah!

What?

Hello. Hold on. We're sitting up, go.

For your listeners, Mae West was the first Madonna. I don't know. Even Madonna is probably dated now.

Who is the Lady Gaga? Before there was Lady Gaga there was Mae West.

There was Madonna. And then before there was Madonna. there was Marilyn Monroe. And before Marilyn Monroe, there was Mae West.

Yeah.

May West was a creator. She was a playwright. She was, she was much more than Marilyn Monroe. Right? And she was arrested and she had a play on Broadway called Sex. I mean, she was really, she was the real thing.

Okay.

In 1974. She's 83 years old. She is still making movies. She was in a movie called Sectet-- Sextet that very year. And I, you know, I can't believe it. Yes, I will go there. That-- I absolutely can do that. So there it is quarter to eight. I'm there. The car pulls up, door opens, I get in, and there she is. Right?

You are going--

Wow!

To see Jaws.

Yes.

In a white limo--

Yes.

With Mae West.

The shortest ride in the world and a white limo because they've already arrived at the studio.

That's okay,

And there's two or three other guys in addition to the driver. It's not a one-on-one date, you know? Nothing, I don't expect anything's gonna happen.

You're part of her entourage.

Absolutely. I probably the worst-built guy there. Okay, and so we go into the Hitchcock Theater. Right? Park, get out, walk in. And I'm sitting next to her. And we're a few minutes early, right? Waiting for the lights to go down. And she started to tell me some stories about the 1930s, how she discovered Cary Grant, how she had a, an all0white apartment, that she had a pet monkey, and he threw his feces all over the place.

(Laughs)

And I am in hog heaven. This is the greatest thing. I mean, I'm a big fan of the movies of the '20s and '30s. So I'm well aware of who she is, and I am having such a great time. Then the lights come down. And none of us has ever seen Jaws before. Right? We don't know. Everybody knows now that there's this poor stunt girl that goes out from the, from the party and is gonna get eaten immediately. Mae West has not finished. She is still telling me the story.

(Laughs)

Because once you start her at age 83, she finishes when she's ready to finish and she has this arc. She has the whole thing down to a science. And no shark is going to stop her from telling a story. So it's like, "Mae West, shut up! I'm trying to watch the movie." So that really it just made my 21-year-old head explode. It was, like, one of the greatest nights of all time.

(Laughs) When you get into the limo, though, what does she say? Does she say anything to you? Or does--

You know, it's "Hello, I'm Jerram." I don't even remember. That part is not known to us. Now--

(Laughs)

That's one of the most amazing stories I've ever heard.

There's so many parts of that are amazing. That's the best part.

That's right. That's right. Shut up, Mae West!

Jerram-Susan-Sharon 46:51
(Laughing)

Oh my goodness.

Okay. So it's a little off topic.

It isn't. But it's a great off topic.

One thing about Blues Brothers I'm going to say--

Yes.

Is my assistant whom we found in Chicago-- I interviewed a few-- was a gal named Katterli Frauenfelder.

Who was brilliant. She was so smart. And she has been Tim Burton's Assistant Director and Executive Producer for about 25 years.

That's a name.

That is fantastic.

Wow.

I mean, her career is so much better than my career. But I was lucky. Very lucky to have her on Blues Brothers.

Oh, that's fantastic. Your career has been pretty good.

Yeah, but it's not Katterli's career.

(Chuckles)

But I do, but I do have the Kermit doll and she does not, so--

There you go.

So there.

Alright. So Cagney & Lacey. We got to talk about Cagney & Lacey, because this is '80s TV Ladies, after all. Let's bring it back into our sweet spot. And you worked on a couple episodes of Cagney & Lacey. How was that? What was going on?

Oh, it was fun. It was great. I liked the ladies.

What season was it? Do you remember? Had they been around for a while? I mean--

Oh, yeah. It was one of their very last seasons.

Oh, okay.

It was-- Obviously then it was, it was Sharon Gless playing--

Yeah,

Yes.

Yeah. There were three Cagneys. We've talked about that before. We're gonna get-- When we get to Cagney & Lacey, we will, we will dive further into that hole. THREE Cagney's, which I'm very excited about. But yeah, so what it also looks like-- And again, we haven't, we haven't examined it closely. But it definitely was a show that in the '80s felt like it was trying to be a feminist show. It was clearly like--

Oh, absolutely.

Here there, there are two ladies and they're cops

Right.

But they're--

One's a single lady.

One's a single lady.

And the other's a nice married lady with a lovely husband.

And don'tworry. She still likes to have sex with him.

Right.

That-- (Chuckles) It's fine. But it's, you know, again, it-- More than the other shows we've yet really talked about or looked at closely, this was a show that had an agenda and was also an issue show. Like, it was, like, you know, the, the, you know, Hill Street Blues the hospital show.

it was all Barney Rosenzweig. He was really the, the genius behind that. And for every episode, what we would do is we would come-- The director and I and production designer would sit in Barney's office in a small office, kind of crowded around. And he would take us through the script beat by beat and explain to us exactly what the intention was. That was always very useful.

And it was really the first show we're going to be talking about that is about the two female leads. It's their stories and they're the ones that are driving story without having the counterpart who is a man. Obviously there are men in the show, but the show is really about their relationship.

They are driving the story. It is their journeys to their end and that female work friendship. So particularly unique, even now. Like there's not a lot that is that is focused on these are two people who work together and they create a relationship that is a friendship but also a working friendship.

And they didn't hang out together.

Yeah,

I mean, because, because Lacey went home, she went to church, she went to her husband,

And her kids and had stuff to do it. And Chris went out to wherever it was that she went to and lived her life as a single woman in New York, you know. So good for her, good for both of them. And I think that's one of the things I like about the premise in the show that it does show that balance, that there isn't one way to be a feminist. It's, it's a combination of things.

All right, but that was shot in LA.

Yeah.

It's set in New York, shot in LA.

That was a-- they always said that was their biggest mistake.

Yeah.

It was not shooting it in New York, as we were like fighting it. I remember this is the first time I found, I saw this particular gag. It was that our camera truck said New York Times on the front and New York Post on the back so we can park into the shot. But it was always, it was always guys rushing around putting license plates on to real cars. (Chuckles) Because you didn't have the CGI, you know, you couldn't just do that.

Oh my god. All right. That's fantastic.

I have

one memory that has nothing to do with Cagney or Lacey, but it was just a funny thing that happened. We were shooting in the Alexandria Hotel.

Downtown?

Downtown. At that point, it was one of its terrible periods. It's come back. It's gone away. It's come back. It's got-- I don't know where it is right now. So we were shooting a scene where Cagney & Lacey come out of the elevator and they run down the corridor for something. So the cameras set up in this little landing opposite the elevator, and we're ready to go. And the other elevator door opens. And you know, we all look over, you know. We're controlling the elevators. I'm in charge of you know, okay, it's, it's on hold. But unexpectedly, the other elevator door opens. And this guy looks out and he sees the camera pointing essentially at him. And as the door is closed, he goes Stella!

Susan-Sharon 51:37
(Laughing)

What was great about it, and of course, the late episodes was that we were filming at this, this lot on Lacey Street, as it happens. There's actually, there's actually a lot there, right. And what was great, it was so close to downtown, that it was very easy to make moves to and from the studio. We could go out do running shots and then come back in and have lunch and shoot the rest of the day. And also it was unusual in that is we shot I believe seven and a half days per episode.

For the-- Okay.

We didn't, we did not cross board. We shot seven and a half days an episode. That meant that lunch on the eighth day, we changed directors.

Oh, okay. That's a little bit crazy.

Wow.

Well, you know, it was fine. But it was always funny to have like an extra director's chair saying director on it hanging around for the guys that-- We didn't always finish exactly at lunch.

Yeah. How you doin'? Oh, you're gonna put the timer there.

It's probably more directors than we're used to seeing at a time.

All right. And so more recently, you've worked on Mercy Street and Astronaut Wives Club. And yeah, some what I would call like 2015 TV ladies shows.

Is Mercy Street something that you guys are familiar with?

I was familiar with it. It the PBS show about Civil War nurses.

Yeah.

Yeah. All right.

It was a great show. I thought ,I thought that was a terrific, underrated show that never found its audience and, and finally, what happened after two seasons, the people would not work for PBS money anymore.

And so you work with the Film Commission? What are you doing now?

So I'm helping with the films that get tax credits, movies and TV.

In California.

In California. And part of the process of getting tax credit is you have to submit your script, your budget, your schedule, you know, a number of different things. And I'm tasked with going through evaluating, correcting the budget, certain things qualify, certain things don't qualify. And then we throw a bunch of mathematics at it and we figure out, your show is going to provide more jobs in California than your shows. It's mathematical, you know whether it's accurate, who can say but it started out as a lottery. And it's conceived that this is more fair than a lottery. Every show that receives a tax credit also needs to give back in the sense of having and hiring an intern, bringing a class of students on to the set to visit and nebb around doing a teacher externship, things like that. And I, I'm in charge of that. That's the career readiness requirement. And so I put shows together with schools, you know. With whether it's the Fashion Institute, whether it's John Muir High School, whether it's Ghetto Film School, you know, I get them together. And we've been doing a lot of panels lately, where the director and the producer-- We had people from Macbeth, the show Macbeth, do a very generous panel for I forget who it was. And so we're eventually going to be linking to them on our website so other people can see those and enjoy them.

Alright, so we have three questions that we ask all of our guests.

So first question. What's the '80s Ladies-driven TV shows that most resonated with you? Think back to the '80s and--

I wasn't watching TV in the '80s; I was shooting. I was, you know, I had a time only for my career and for my family. Can you give me a hint? What shows were on?

You know what? Because you were working with people, I'm gonna give you what '80s Ladies actress was fun to work with?

Fair enough. On Cagney. & Lacey there was

Tyne Daly. Sharon Gless.

Tyne was my favorite. I love Tyne.

Okay.

Fantastic.

Yeah.

And actually I became friendly with Ellen Burstyn for a while. She wasn't really an '80s lady on TV. But I did a, I did a show with her in the would have been late '70s. And she and I became Scrabble buddies and we corresponded for a while.

All right. I love that..

Oh, that's--

I really liked her. We were taking an airplane to Texas to do the show, and I was sitting next to her. And, and as we started our descent, she says, "Hang on. I have to help land the plane." And then we landed, she was okay.

I loved her.

Oh, that's fantastic. All right. And what are your current-- Any current television shows with ladies leading the pack? TV movie?

Well, there's some good ones on Game of Thrones, there's some ladies that I liked on Game of Thrones, which I recently caught up with. We also recently watched Treme.

Oh!

And do you know that one?

You haven't seen it, but yes,

I thoroughly enjoyed it. And there were a couple of wonderful ladies in that. There was a gal who ran a restaurant that her travails were terribly interesting, and I liked the ladies in that show a lot. Oh, and Hacks!

Oh, of course!

And that's wonderful. I think both leads are good. Although I think the young writers a bit of a jerk.

The young writer's a little hard. Jean Smart's amazing.

Jean Smart. I've done a number of shows with Jean Smart. She was in Samantha Who.

Samantha Who!

I did Samantha Who.

Okay.

And Melissa McCarthy was in that too.

Okay.

And she was fanta-- And I love Christina-- And Christina Applegate is tops in my book. She-- I love her. One weird thing. After I got a cell phone-- After I got an iPhone, and I kept trying to try automatic dial. For whatever reason the cell phone decided it would always call Christina Applegate, "Calling Christina Applegate." I'd have to hang up real quick. I don't know why it just got it into its head.

(Laughs) They do have a minor their own sometimes.

I, I loved her. She was just so much fun. I was the Production Manager on that; I wasn't on the set. So I wasn't really connected that closely to them. And we all thought Melissa McCarthy was fantastic.

It's fantastic. That great cast, great cast on that.

That was a show that really was I think overlooked, unfortunately.

Yeah, but did it-- Feels like it ran for a while.

I think only two seasons, maybe a little more.

I think two seasons if that, so--

Yeah. When my mind was like three seasons, that third Season was amazing.

Yeah, when we went to Ireland.

(Laughs) Going to Ireland is always the best. So third question is what's the most action hero slash television moment you've experienced in real life?

Okay, so we were doing a movie called The 13th Year, a TV movie about, for Disney about a kid that turns into a merperson. It was kind of, it was kind of a metaphor for adolescence. And we were filming down in one of those Newport beaches or sort of places and two things happened in quick succession. One was we were on some rocks or something overlooking the bay. And I walked out in front of the crew and I was holding the board in front of me to explain something and I suddenly realized I was doing Moses. Right? With my tablets in front of everybody.

And then just as that happened, the location manager played a prank on me, which took me so by surprise, it made me think I was crazy. And that was there was a ferry going by. And this must have been 300 yards away. And everybody on the ferry suddenly went "Hello, Jerram!"

(Laughing)

(Laughing)

Oh my god.

And it was just like-- It just you know, I just--

So those two things happened at almost the same moment. And so that was kind of weird.

(Laughing)

Oh, that's--

Okay. That's a good one. That's a good one. Oh my god. It has been such a pleasure to have you on the show and hear all these stories.

Thank you very much. I had a good time.

Thank you so much, Jerram.

Thank you.

Hey, Susan, what time is it?

It's audioaugraphy time, Sharon.

Whoo-hoo! You can find out more about the Television Academy at emmys.com. That's E-M-M-Y-S.com. They have really cool events, some of which are open to the public.

And Jerram mentioned the Directors Guild of America DGA training program. And you can find out about that program and other director development programs through the directors guild at dga.org. And there will be links on our website to those resources.

And if you want to watch Remington Steele on streaming, breaking news, all five seasons are currently available on Amazon Prime and Apple TV. We're not sure for how long all five seasons will be streaming, so go watch them while you can.

Susan Lambert Hatem 1:00:02
And, Sharon, I'm not saying that the last three seasons are now available because of '80s TV Ladies and our fans, but actually that is what I'm saying. Because I'm telling you when we started this podcast only Season one and two were legally available anywhere online.

Sharon Johnson 1:00:17
And now we've got them all.

I think it's us and our fans. Thank you, '80s TV Ladies fans. And a book I want to tell you about-- Backwards and in Heels by film reporter and critic Alicia Malone. This book highlights stories of specific women in film from Alice Guy Blanché to Ava DuVernay, while exploring the past, present and future of women working in film. It's really quite good even though it's not just about TV ladies.

Next time on '80s TV Ladies, the amazing, adorable and ever-surprising '90s TV Babies will be back.

Sarita,

Meghan and Sergio were assigned three episodes of Remington Steele to watch, so we are looking forward to hearing the thoughts of the youths. If you're a Remington Steele fan, I'm curious what three episodes you would pick to represent the show to someone who has not watched it? Let us know at 80sTVLadies.com.

In the meantime, please follow, rate, and review on your favorite podcast player or on Apple podcasts.

We love your suggestions and questions. Keep them coming. And as always, thanks for listening.

We hope '80s TV Ladies brings you joy and laughter and lots of fabulous new and old shows to watch all of which will lead us forward toward being amazing ladies of the 21st Century.
80s TV Ladies Theme Song 00:22.
80s TV Ladies, I’m so sexy and so pretty. 80s TV Ladies, I’m steppin out into the city. 80s TV Ladies, I been treated kind of sh#*ty. Working hard for the money in a man’s world. 80s TV Ladies!

Episode 114: “Remington Steele: Making it Happen with Jerram Swartz”

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