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The Fugitive (1963 TV series)

The Fugitive is an American crime drama television series created by Roy Huggins and produced by QM Productions and United Artists Television. It aired on ABC from September 1963 to August 1967. David Janssen starred as Dr. Richard Kimble, a physician who is wrongfully convicted of his wife's murder and sentenced to death. En route to death row, Dr. Kimble's train derails over a switch, allowing him to escape and begin a cross-country search for the real killer, a "one-armed man" (played by Bill Raisch). At the same time, Richard Kimble is hounded by the authorities, most notably by Police Lieutenant Philip Gerard (Barry Morse).

The Fugitive
GenreCrime
Drama
Created byRoy Huggins
StarringDavid Janssen
Barry Morse
Narrated byWilliam Conrad
Dick Wesson (episode credits)
Theme music composerPeter Rugolo
Country of originUnited States
No. of seasons4
No. of episodes120 (90 in black-and-white, 30 in color) (list of episodes)
Production
Executive producerQuinn Martin
ProducersAlan Armer (1963–1966)
Wilton Schiller (1966–1967)
Running time51 minutes
Production companiesQuinn Martin Productions
United Artists Television
Release
Original networkABC
Original releaseSeptember 17, 1963 (1963-09-17) –
August 29, 1967 (1967-08-29)

The Fugitive aired for four seasons, with 120 51-minute episodes produced. The first three seasons were filmed in black-and-white, while the fourth and final season was filmed in color.[1]

The series was nominated for five Emmy Awards and won the Emmy for Outstanding Dramatic Series in 1966.[2] In 2002, it was ranked number 36 on TV Guide's 50 Greatest TV Shows of All Time. TV Guide named the one-armed man number five in their 2013 list of the 60 Nastiest Villains of All Time.

Plot Edit

The series premise was set up in the opening narration, but the full details about the crime were not offered in the pilot episode; at the time of the pilot, Kimble has been on the run for six months, having exhausted all of his appeals against his death sentence. While in transit, the train carrying Kimble derails, and Kimble becomes the titular "fugitive" attempting to clear his name. In the series' first season, the premise (heard over footage of Kimble handcuffed to Gerard on a train) was summarized in the opening title sequence of the pilot episode as:

Name: Richard Kimble. Profession: Doctor of Medicine. Destination: Death Row, state prison. Richard Kimble has been tried and convicted for the murder of his wife. But laws are made by men, carried out by men, and men are imperfect. Richard Kimble is innocent. Proved guilty, what Richard Kimble could not prove was that moments before discovering his wife's body, he encountered a man running from the vicinity of his home. A man with one arm. A man who has not yet been found. Richard Kimble ponders his fate as he looks at the world for the last time, and sees only darkness. But in that darkness, fate moves its huge hand.

This title sequence was shortened from episode seven through the remainder of the first season as:

The name: Dr. Richard Kimble. The destination: Death Row, state prison. The irony: Richard Kimble is innocent. Proved guilty, what Richard Kimble could not prove was that moments before discovering his murdered wife's body, he saw a one-armed man running from the vicinity of his home. Richard Kimble ponders his fate as he looks at the world for the last time, and sees only darkness. But in that darkness, fate moves its huge hand.

The main title narration, as read by William Conrad, was changed for the second season premiere onward through the last episode of the series:

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.

Viewers were not offered the full details of Kimble's plight until episode 14, "The Girl from Little Egypt". A series of flashbacks reveals the fateful night of Helen Kimble's death, and for the first time offers a glimpse of the "one-armed man".

Cast and characters Edit

Main characters Edit

Dr. Richard Kimble Edit

 
Janssen as Richard Kimble with Clint Howard, 1965

The show's lead, and the only character seen in all 120 episodes, was Dr. Richard David Kimble (David Janssen), based in part on the story of Sam Sheppard.[3]

Though Dr. Richard Kimble was a respected pediatrician in the fictional small town of Stafford, Indiana, his wife Helen and he were generally known to have been having arguments prior to her death. Helen's pregnancy had ended in a stillborn birth of a son, and surgery to save her life had also rendered her infertile. The couple was devastated, but Helen refused to consider adopting children as Richard wanted.

On the night of Helen's murder, the Kimbles had been heard, earlier the same day, arguing heatedly over this topic by their neighbors. Richard later went out for a drive to cool off; as he was driving home, he nearly hit a man with only one arm, who was fleeing from the vicinity of the Kimble house. Richard then found that Helen had been killed, but no one had seen or heard Richard go out for his drive, or seen him while he was out, and no evidence showed that the "one-armed man" Kimble saw ever existed. At his trial, Kimble was unjustly convicted of Helen's murder and sentenced to death in the electric chair.

After the train wreck and his escape from custody, Kimble moves from town to town, always trying to remain unobtrusive and unnoticed as he evades capture and hopes to find the one-armed man. He adopts many nondescript aliases, and toils at low-paying, menial jobs (i.e. those that require no identification or security checks, and bring about little social attention). In many episodes, he comes across a damsel in distress or possibly a child in danger; he then chooses to put his anonymity at risk by aiding this deserving person. Another frequent plot device is for someone to discover Kimble's true identity and use it to manipulate him, under the threat of turning him in to the police.

Dr. Richard Kimble is smart and resourceful, and is usually able to perform well at any job he takes. (This sometimes leads to suspicion, as his educated demeanor is often very much at odds with the menial nature of the jobs he is forced to take.) He also displays considerable prowess in hand-to-hand combat. In the episode "Nemesis", he distracts, then knocks out, a forest ranger (played by Kurt Russell's father Bing), then quickly unloads the man's rifle to ensure he cannot shoot him if pursued. In the sixth episode, Kimble revealed that he had served as a doctor in the Korean War.

Kimble's family makes scattered appearances throughout the series, most notably his sister, Donna (Jacqueline Scott) and her husband, Leonard Taft (played by James Sikking, Lin McCarthy and James Anderson in different episodes; Richard Anderson played Leonard Taft in the classic two-part final episode, "The Judgment"). Kimble's family first appears in the 15th episode, "Home is the Hunted", wherein Kimble returns to his hometown after reading in his hometown newspaper that his father, Dr. John Kimble (Robert Keith), is retiring. Also introduced is Kimble's brother Ray (Andrew Prine). While Donna and John believed Kimble's innocence, Ray was unconvinced and grew to resent Richard, as their association cost Ray his job and his fiancée; however, Ray becomes convinced of Richard's innocence during his stay. Also featuring are Leonard and Donna's sons, David (Bill Mumy) and Billy (Clint Howard); despite their appearance, though, only Billy (Johnny Jensen) appears in the series' two-part finale "The Judgement" (in part two, Donna mentions temporarily moving Billy in with his brother to accommodate a visitor). Although the whole family was introduced, only Donna and her family reappeared in subsequent episodes. Ray was not mentioned again in the show, and the third-season episode "Running Scared" dealt with Kimble and Donna reuniting to grieve over their father's death.

In "The Survivors", Kimble re-establishes contact with Helen's family, the Waverlys, after learning that her father Ed (Lloyd Gough) is facing bankruptcy over medical bills for his wife Edith (Ruth White), who has developed a heart condition by obsessively clinging to Helen's memory and listening to phonograph records she made before her death. Kimble visits the family and stays with them, despite Edith's objections, and with help from Helen's sister Terry (Louise Sorel) locates a secret bank account Helen kept for emergencies. He signs the account over to Ed, saving him financially, but his safety is compromised when Edith learns that Terry believes his innocence (as does Ed, to a lesser extent) and is in love with Kimble and threatens to report him to the police. Kimble escapes the household before this can happen, after gently letting Terry down.

David Janssen's understated portrayal skillfully captured the essence of Dr. Richard Kimble's plight.[4] He won the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Television Series Drama in 1965, and was nominated in 1966. He was nominated three times for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series (1964, 1966, 1967).[5]

Lt. Philip Gerard Edit

 
Barry Morse as Gerard in the pilot episode, 1963

Dr. Richard Kimble is pursued by the relentless Stafford police detective Lt. Philip Gerard (Barry Morse), a formidably intelligent family man and dedicated public servant. Gerard directly appears in 37 episodes and also in the main title sequences of all 120 episodes; Barry Morse is also listed in the closing credits of 119 episodes. For some reason, he is not in the end credits of the season-one episode "Glass Tightrope".

Morse portrayed Gerard as a man duty-bound to capture Kimble. Guilt or innocence was of no consequence to Gerard, whose own beliefs have been stated as:

I enforce the law. The law pronounced him guilty; I enforce the law. ... Whether the law was right or wrong is not my concern. Let others debate and conclude; I obey ... and when I begin to question, doubt—I can't permit it. Others found him guilty; others were about to execute him. I was merely an instrument of the law ... and am.

— "Fear in a Desert City", 1963

In "Never Wave Goodbye Pt. I", he states again, "The law pronounced him guilty, not me." In "Nightmare at Northoak" and "Wife Killer", he states with certainty that the one-armed man does not exist and that Kimble is guilty; in "Corner of Hell", even after his own Kimble-like experience, he still scoffs at the existence of the one-armed man. ("Still the same fairy tale", he sneers.) He also tells Kimble, "The truth is, you're still guilty before the law."

Contributing to Gerard's obsession with re-capturing Kimble is the personal responsibility he feels for Kimble's escape, which happened while he was in Gerard's custody. As he remarks to an LA police captain in "The Judgment, Part 1", the show's penultimate episode, "I've lost a lot of things these past four years ... starting with a prisoner the state told me to guard."

Over time, Gerard also appeared to have gained some doubts as to Kimble's guilt. In one episode, when a female witness remarks that Kimble killed his wife, Gerard simply replies, "The law says he did," but with a tone of doubt audible in his voice. In the episode "Nemesis", the local sheriff (John Doucette) states, "You said he's a killer." To this, Gerard sharply replies, "The jury said that." Gerard's doubts are augmented after Kimble rescues Gerard in episodes such as "Never Wave Goodbye", "Corner of Hell", "Ill Wind", "The Evil Men Do", and "Stroke of Genius". "The Evil Men Do", in particular, played on the respect that develops between the two men when Gerard is pursued by former Mob hitman Arthur Brame (James Daly), who is rescued from a runaway horse by Kimble; Kimble rescues Gerard from Brame. When Kimble escapes from Gerard, the lieutenant, instead of pursuing Kimble, goes after and kills Brame. In the epilogue, Gerard explains to Brame's widow Sharon (Elizabeth Allen) that he wanted to go after both men, but that Arthur was a career killer and far more dangerous, while Kimble "has done the one murder he'd probably ever do." Gerard comes close to acknowledging Kimble's innocence when he concludes, "Until I find him, and I will, he's no real menace to anyone but himself."[6]

In the course of the series, Gerard's family becomes entangled in Gerard's obsession with finding Kimble. In "Nemesis", Kimble unintentionally kidnaps Gerard's young son Philip, Jr. (played by 12-year-old Kurt Russell). Though as concerned as any father should be, Gerard is confident that Kimble will not do his boy any real harm. After his experience with Kimble, Philip, Jr., questions whether he is guilty, and his father openly admits that he could be wrong, though it does not change his duty. This almost inhuman dedication to his duty strains his relationship with his wife Marie (Barbara Rush) almost to the breaking point, and causes her to leave him in season three's two-part episode "Landscape with Running Figures"; her actually coming into contact with Kimble (unknowingly at first) causes an emotional collapse when she realizes who he is, with her screaming at Kimble, "It began with you—it'll END with you!" Gerard clearly does indeed love his wife when he finally chooses to go and find her over chasing Kimble. (Gerard admits to Marie, however, that he will go again when the next time comes: "He's stuck in my throat and I can't swallow him.")

When Gerard finally captures Kimble in part one of "The Judgment", he does not gloat over the arrest, reflecting his respect for his adversary and possibly his recollections of Kimble's past attempts to save him and help others while on the run. "I'm sorry," he says. "You just ran out of time." His decision to give Kimble 24 hours to clear himself in part two of "The Judgment" also reflects that respect and his increasing doubts of Kimble's guilt regardless of the conviction. That leads to the climactic scenes where the truth of Helen Kimble's murder emerges along with an eyewitness, family friend and war hero Lloyd Chandler, who was at the Kimble home and who witnessed Fred Johnson murder Helen Kimble on that fateful night, but was too cowardly to intervene. Ironically, as Kimble and Johnson fight atop a carnival ride, Gerard fatally shoots Johnson just before he can shoot Kimble. Gerard firmly tells Chandler, "You can keep that man (Kimble) alive—but you won't, will you?" Gerard's comments lead Chandler to agree to testify. After Kimble is exonerated in court, Gerard meets Kimble outside the courthouse; he silently smiles and offers his hand. After hesitating, Kimble shakes it.

Parallels can be seen between Gerard's pursuit of Kimble and the pursuit of Jean Valjean by Inspector Javert in Les Misérables, though Javert never lets go of his obsession to follow the letter of the law, and hunts down his fugitive, even killing himself when he discovers that he cannot reconcile his tenets with the mercy Valjean shows him. Gerard, though, was portrayed externally as a man like Javert, but internally as more of a thinking man who could balance justice and duty. According to some of those who worked on the show, these parallels were not coincidental. Stanford Whitmore, who wrote the pilot episode "Fear in a Desert City", says that he deliberately gave Kimble's nemesis a similar-sounding name to see if anyone would recognize the similarity between "Gerard" and "Javert".[7] One who recognized the similarity was Morse; he pointed out the connection to Quinn Martin, who admitted that The Fugitive was a "sort of modern rendition of the outline of Les Misérables."[7] Morse accordingly went back to the Victor Hugo novel and studied the portrayal of Javert, to find ways to make the character more complex than the "conventional 'Hollywood dick'" as whom Gerard had originally been conceived. "I've always thought that we in the arts ... are all 'shoplifters'", Morse said. "Everybody, from Shakespeare onwards and downwards ... But once you've acknowledged that ... when you set out on a shoplifting expedition, you go always to Cartier's, and never to Woolworth's!"[7]

The One-armed Man Edit

 
Bill Raisch as the one-armed man

"The One-armed Man" (Bill Raisch) is a shadowy figure, seen fleeing Kimble's house by Kimble after the murder of Helen. The series revealed little about the man's personal life and never explained how or when he lost his right arm.

In the 29th episode of the first season ("Storm Center"), Helen Kimble was revealed to have been strangled. This is not the method of choice for a man with only one arm; accordingly, this detail was later retconned, with the murder having been committed due to blunt force trauma with a lamp. (In the pilot episode, "Fear in a Desert City", Kimble does state that he found his wife "beaten to death.")

The One-armed Man was rarely seen in the series, appearing in person in only 10 episodes. He also appears in the opening credits beginning with season two, and in a photograph in the episode "The Breaking of the Habit". He is seen infrequently in the first three seasons, and has almost no actual dialogue until season four, when his character begins to take a more prominent part in the plotline.

The One-armed Man is aware that Kimble is after him, and frequently tips off the police as to Kimble's whereabouts, most notably in "Nobody Loses All The Time", when he telephones his girlfriend (Barbara Baxley) at a hospital and orders her to call the police, though Kimble risked arrest to save her life.

Like Kimble, he uses a variety of aliases and holds down various jobs while on the run. In the episode "A Clean And Quiet Town", he is credited as Steve Cramer and works as a mob-employed numbers runner. In the episode "The Ivy Maze", he poses as a college janitor and groundskeeper named Carl Stoker. He goes by the name Fred Johnson in several episodes; first in the season-two episode "Escape into Black", where he works as a dishwasher using this name. In the season-three episode "Wife Killer", reporter Barbara Webb (Janice Rule) discovers that the One-armed Man carries a wide range of identifications using various names. As Fred Johnson, he has a membership in an athletic club, and a receipt for the sale of a pint of blood; this particular receipt shows that his blood type is B negative, and that he claims his age as 47. (Raisch himself was 60 years of age when this episode was filmed.) The other identities used by the One-armed Man are not revealed in the episode, although as Barbara flips through a wallet full of identifications, she notes that he is "a man of many identities, not one of them the same."

The One-armed Man is identified as Fred Johnson in the two-part series finale, "The Judgment". He is also referred to as Johnson in "The Ivy Maze" (where he is posing as Carl Stoker), and at one point, Fritz Simpson (William Windom) addresses him as Fred. (That episode is where Kimble, Gerard, and the One-armed Man all appear in the same scene for the first time). This is the only consistent name that they have to go by, and both Gerard and Kimble refer to the One-armed Man as Fred Johnson in a few later episodes; in the series finale, Lloyd Chandler (J.D. Cannon) also refers to him as Johnson. However, when interrogated by Lt. Gerard in "The Judgment", the One-armed Man denies that Fred Johnson is his real name. While the character's real name is never definitively established, a case could be made that it is Gus Evans; as revealed in "The Judgment", that was the name that he used before killing Helen Kimble, when he would presumably have had no need to adopt an alias.

Bill Raisch played a bitter war veteran who starts a bar fight with Kirk Douglas' John W. Burns in the 1962 film Lonely are the Brave. The role was a natural lead-in to his part in The Fugitive.

Minor characters Edit

  • Dr. Richard Kimble's murdered wife Helen (née Waverly) was portrayed in flashbacks in three episodes, including season one's "The Girl from Little Egypt" and (uncredited) in season four's "The Judgment: Part II" by Diane Brewster. Brewster's uncredited voice is also heard in recorded messages of Helen's voice in season two's "The Survivors". However, in an extremely brief flashback in the second-season episode "Ballad For A Ghost", Helen (discovered dead) was played not by Brewster but by Janis Paige; in this episode, Paige also played a singer who bore a marked resemblance to Helen.
  • Jacqueline Scott as Dr. Richard Kimble's married sister, Donna Taft, appeared in four stories, including the two-part series finale.
  • Her husband, Dr. Richard Kimble's brother-in-law, Leonard Taft, appeared in three of those stories and was played by a different actor each time: James B. Sikking in season one, Lin McCarthy in season three, and Richard Anderson in the season-four finale.
  • Paul Birch appeared as Captain Carpenter, Gerard's superior at the Stafford, Indiana, police department, in 13 episodes of seasons one and two.
  • Gerard's wife, Marie, appeared in three stories, played by a different actress each time. In "Never Wave Goodbye, Part One", she was briefly played by Rachel Ames. She was later played by British-born actress Mavis Neal Palmer, uncredited in "May God Have Mercy. In the two-part story "Landscape with Running Figures", the only story in which hers is a major role, she is played by Barbara Rush.
  • The nun Sister Veronica (played by Eileen Heckart) appears in two stories - season one's two-part episode "Angels Travel on Lonely Roads" and season four's "The Breaking of the Habit". She is the only character with no direct ties to Kimble's family or the murder of Helen Kimble to appear in more than one story.

In season one, episode 15, Billy Mumy and Clint Howard appear in roles as Kimble's nephews, sons of Kimble's sister Donna.

Four episodes with two parts were aired over the course of the series, all of them featuring characters in both parts. "Never Wave Goodbye" features in both parts, in addition to Gerard, Susan Oliver as Karen Christian, Robert Duvall as her brother Eric, and Lee Philips as Dr. Ray Brooks, with Karen and Richard Kimble falling in love, while Ray pines for Karen. "Angels Travel on Lonely Roads" has in both parts, in addition to Sister Veronica, Albert Salmi as Chuck Mathers, the brutish owner of a gas station who gives Kimble trouble and later tries to collect the reward money when he finds out who Kimble is; filling in for Gerard (this is the only two-parter in which Gerard does not appear) Sandy Kenyon as a local sheriff and Ken Lynch as a local plainclothes police detective. "Landscape with Running Figures" has in both parts, in addition to Lt. Gerard and Mrs. Gerard, Herschel Bernardi and Jud Taylor as two local plainclothes police officers assisting Gerard in the manhunt. The series finale, "The Judgment", has, in both parts, in addition to Gerard, Donna, Leonard, and the One-armed Man, also Diane Baker as a Kimble family friend from Stafford, Jean Carlisle, and she leaves arm-in-arm with Dr. Richard Kimble in the final scene of the series.

Only the character of Dr. Richard Kimble is present onscreen in every episode; off-screen narrator William Conrad is also heard at the beginning and end of each episode, though he was never credited, while a different voice announces the title of the episode and the names of the episode's guest stars in the opening teaser. That announcer (an uncredited Dick Wesson) also says, "The Fugitive" aloud at the end of the closing credits leading into studio sponsorships of the series ("'The Fugitive' has been brought to you by ..."). The Untouchables, which was Martin's first series as a producer, also contained both a narrator (Walter Winchell) and an announcer (Les Lampson), as did The New Breed, the first series QM Productions produced, with Wesson as the announcer and Art Gilmore as the narrator.

Guest cast Edit

With 120 episodes and typically two or more guest stars per episode, the series offered a massive who's who of stars from stage and screen, character actors, and up-and-coming talent. Many guest stars appeared as different characters in multiple episodes. Here is a partial list:

Other notable guest star appearances:[8]

Production Edit

Development Edit

 
David Janssen as The Fugitive

The series was conceived by Roy Huggins and produced by Quinn Martin. One popular belief is that the series was based in part on the real-life story of Sam Sheppard, an Ohio doctor accused of murdering his wife.[9] However, Huggins repeatedly denied basing the series on Sheppard.

Although convicted and imprisoned, Sheppard claimed that his wife had been murdered by a "bushy-haired man". Sheppard's brothers hired F. Lee Bailey to appeal the conviction. Bailey defended Sheppard and won an acquittal in the second trial. Coincidentally, the show's music supervisor, Ken Wilhoit, was married to Susan Hayes, who had had an intimate relationship with Sheppard prior to the murder and testified during the first trial in 1954.[10]

The show presents a popular plot device of an innocent man on the run from the police for a murder he did not commit, while simultaneously pursuing the real killer. It had its antecedents in the Alfred Hitchcock movies The 39 Steps, Saboteur, and North by Northwest. The theme of a doctor in hiding for committing a major crime had also been depicted by James Stewart as the mysterious Buttons the Clown, who never removed his makeup, in The Greatest Show on Earth. Writer David Goodis claimed that the series was inspired by his 1946 novel Dark Passage, about a man who escapes from prison after being wrongly convicted of killing his wife. Goodis' litigation over the issue continued for some time after his 1967 death.[citation needed]

The plot device of a fugitive living on the run from the authorities was loosely inspired by Victor Hugo's 1862 novel Les Misérables. The Richard Kimble character was inspired by the novel's protagonist, Jean Valjean, an ex-convict living a life as a fugitive and having numerous aliases, as well as helping people around him. The character of Lt. Gerard, who hounds Kimble throughout the series, is also loosely inspired by a character from the same novel, a relentless police inspector named Javert, who is obsessed with capturing the fugitive.[11]

Other shows, such as Route 66, had employed the same anthology-like premise of wanderers finding adventure in each new place to which they came. The Fugitive, however, answered two questions that had bedeviled many similar series – first, why the protagonist never settled down anywhere, and second, why the protagonist tried to solve these problems himself instead of calling in the police. Casting a doctor as the protagonist also provided the series a wider "range of entry" into local stories, as Kimble's medical knowledge would allow him alone to recognize essential elements of the episode (e.g., subtle medical symptoms or an abused medicine), and the commonplace doctor's ethic (e.g., to provide aid in emergencies) would naturally lead him into dangerous situations.[citation needed]

Musical score Edit

Pete Rugolo, who had worked on David Janssen's earlier series Richard Diamond, Private Detective, composed the original music for The Fugitive. (Rugolo later worked with creator Roy Huggins on Run for Your Life and other projects.) Tracking music was standard practice at the time, but unlike virtually all primetime scripted series of the 1960s, no episode – not even "The Judgment" – received an original score;[12] all the original music used for the series was composed by Rugolo and recorded in London before the series was filmed. In fact, many episodes had Rugolo as the sole credited composer for the episode's scores, but only a fraction of all the music heard throughout the series was original Rugolo music. Library music (either from other classic TV shows or from stock music libraries, as was the case with The Adventures of Superman) provided a majority of the episodes' scores. For example, Dominic Frontiere cues became common in season four; a keen listener could find oneself listening to such cues from the Outer Limits series during the climactic final episode of The Fugitive. Numerous ominous, dramatic, and suspenseful cues from The Twilight Zone episodes such as "The Invaders", among others, are used to strong effect throughout the series. The old pop songs "I'll Never Smile Again" and "I'll Remember April" each appear several times in the series, often associated with Kimble's deceased wife, Helen.

What little original melody was actually written and recorded was built around a fast-paced tempo representing running music. Different variations, from sad to action-oriented, would be used, with many arrangements developed for the music supervisor to select as best suited for particular scenes. Also, an original "Dragnet"-type theme was used for Lt. Gerard.

In the unreleased longer version of the show's pilot, a different (canned) music score was used in the opening and closing sequences. Also, several deleted scenes were shot, including one, with Lt. Gerard talking to Captain Carpenter, that was reshot. Quinn Martin felt it made Gerard out to be a bit deranged in his obsession. That version also listed William Conrad as the narrator in the end credits.

Episodes Edit

SeasonEpisodesOriginally aired
First airedLast aired
130September 17, 1963 (1963-09-17)April 21, 1964 (1964-04-21)
230September 15, 1964 (1964-09-15)April 20, 1965 (1965-04-20)
330September 14, 1965 (1965-09-14)April 26, 1966 (1966-04-26)
430September 13, 1966 (1966-09-13)August 29, 1967 (1967-08-29)

The Fugitive premiered in the United States on September 17, 1963. Over the course of the show's four seasons, 120 episodes were produced, with the last original episode airing in the United States on August 29, 1967.[13] The series aired Tuesdays at 10:00 pm on ABC.

Final episode Edit

 
A scene from the final episode

The two-part final episode, titled "The Judgment", aired on Tuesdays, August 22 and 29, 1967.

Part 1

The one-armed man, going by the alias Fred Johnson, is arrested after tearing up a Los Angeles strip bar. When Kimble reads about it in a newspaper, he travels to Los Angeles. Gerard has already arrived in Los Angeles, though, and is working with the local police, convinced Kimble will come to the city. Gerard is spotted by Jean Carlisle (Diane Baker), an old friend of the Kimble family's, who is working as a typist with the Los Angeles Police Department. Jean manages to reach Kimble just as the police start searching the area, and takes him to her apartment.

Meanwhile, Gerard interrogates Johnson and begins thinking that Kimble may be telling the truth. After Kimble learns that Johnson has been arrested, he elects to turn himself in, hoping to confront Johnson. Before he can carry out his plan, Johnson is bailed out of jail by a corrupt bail bondsman, who plans to blackmail the person who supplied the bail money. The bondsman is killed by Johnson after revealing that the money came from someone in Kimble's hometown of Stafford, Indiana. With Jean's help, Kimble tries to head back home, but Gerard arrests him. The lieutenant does not express any triumph or satisfaction in making the arrest. "I'm sorry," Gerard tells him. "You just ran out of time."

Part 2

Kimble informs Gerard that he found something that might lead him to the truth and believes Johnson is going to Stafford to use the information for which he killed the bail bondsman. He persuades Gerard to give him 24 hours to clear himself, agreeing to turn himself in if he fails.

Kimble's key evidence is the bail-bond slip signed by a man using the name Leonard Taft, the name of his sister Donna's husband. The man is actually the Tafts' neighbor, Stafford city planner Lloyd Chandler. Chandler learns from Donna that she had received a phone call from someone who claimed that he knew who really killed Helen Kimble, and arranged a meeting that night at an abandoned stable. Donna and Leonard dismiss the call as a prank, but Chandler keeps the meeting, arming himself. Johnson overpowers Chandler and then blackmails him for $50,000. Later, after learning from Donna about the phone call, Kimble and Gerard go to the stable, but find only an unspent cartridge dropped from Chandler's gun. Meanwhile, Jean surprises Kimble, Donna, and Len by arriving at the Taft home to re-unite with Kimble.

Chandler secretly tries to raise the money, but when his wife Betsy finds out what he is doing, he eventually cracks and tells her the whole story. He saw Johnson kill Helen, but did nothing to stop it. Johnson spotted him as he was leaving. Chandler, a war hero, was too ashamed to tell what he saw for fear of exposing his failure to intervene and save Helen's life.

When Kimble runs out of time and is about to leave with Gerard, Donna finds a bullet hidden in one of her son's dresser drawers; Gerard identifies it as being identical to the one they found at the stable the night before. Donna mentions that the bullet must have come from Chandler, who had taken a group of boys to a shooting range the day before. Kimble and Gerard head over to the Chandler residence and learn from Betsy that he is luring Johnson to an abandoned amusement park to kill him to atone for his cowardice.

Kimble and Gerard arrive as Chandler and Johnson are engaged in a gunfight. Johnson shoots Gerard in the thigh. With Gerard's gun, Kimble chases Johnson to the top of a tower. Johnson disarms Kimble and the two wrestle. Kimble eventually beats a confession from Johnson. Johnson then grabs the loose gun, but Gerard shoots him from the ground with Chandler's rifle, and Johnson falls to his death. Kimble informs Gerard that Johnson confessed, but since nobody else heard it, the confession is worthless. Then Chandler suddenly tells Gerard and Kimble that he saw Johnson murder Helen Kimble and will testify to that effect in court.

In the final scene, an exonerated Kimble leaves the courthouse and hesitantly shakes Gerard's hand. Kimble and Jean walk off toward his new life. Narrator William Conrad states, "Tuesday, August 29th: The day the running stopped."

Assessment

According to Ed Robertson's book The Fugitive Recaptured (the first book written about the series), the final episode aired in Canada on September 5, 1967, with an alternate closing narration, giving that date. The "Special Features" DVD states that the final episode was interrupted in some parts of the U.S.[specify] This version was also seen in some areas in syndication and was later released on VHS tape.[citation needed] Both versions are available on DVD.

Part two of the finale was the most-watched television series episode up to that time. It was viewed by 25.7 million households (45.9 percent of American households with a television set and a 72 percent share), meaning that more than 78 million people tuned in.[14] That record was held until the November 21, 1980 episode of Dallas, titled "Who Done It", viewed by 41.47 million households (53.3 percent of households and a 76 percent share), which was later surpassed by the series finale of M*A*S*H, titled "Goodbye, Farewell and Amen", on February 28, 1983, viewed by 50.15 million households (60.2 percent of households and a 77 percent share). According to producer Leonard Goldberg, the network was simply going to end the series with a regular episode without any kind of denouement, as network executives were totally oblivious to the concept that a television audience actually tuned in week after week and cared about the characters of a TV series.[15] The timing of the broadcast was unusual: Rather than ending the regular season, the finale was held back while suspense continued through the summer reruns.

In 1997, "The Judgment, Part 2" was ranked No. 23 on TV Guide's 100 Greatest Episodes of All Time.[16]

Reception Edit

Ratings Edit

In its debut season, The Fugitive was 28th in the U.S. Nielsen ratings (with a 21.7 rating), and it jumped to fifth in the second season (27.9). It fell out of the top 30 during the last two seasons,[17] but the series finale, in which Dr. Kimble's fate was shown, currently holds the third rank for the all-time highest U.S. television household share, at 72%.

The Fugitive season rankings in the U.S. television market
Season Episodes Original air dates TV season Nielsen ratings
Season premiere Season finale Rank Rating Viewers
(millions)
1 30 September 17, 1963 April 21, 1964 1963-64 #28 21.7% 11,197,200[18]
2 30 September 15, 1964 April 20, 1965 1964-65 #5 27.9% 14,703,300[19]
3 30 September 14, 1965 April 26, 1966 1965-66 #34[20]
4 30 September 13, 1966 August 29, 1967 1966-67 #50[21]

Awards Edit

The Fugitive was nominated for five Emmy Awards and won the Emmy for Outstanding Dramatic Series in 1966.[2] In 2002, it was ranked No. 36 on TV Guide's 50 Greatest TV Shows of All Time.[22] TV Guide named the one-armed man No. 5 in their 2013 list of The 60 Nastiest Villains of All Time.[23]

The show also came away with other honors. In 1965, Alan Armer, the producer of the series, received an Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America for his work. And in a 1993 ranking, TV Guide named The Fugitive the best dramatic series of the 1960s.

Home media Edit

A total of 40 episodes have been released on VHS by NuVentures Video (Volumes 1–10 were later re-released with Barry Morse providing introductions to each episode, as in Volumes 11–20), with selected shows from the 40 later issued by Republic Pictures. Twelve episodes were also released on laserdisc.

Currently, Republic Pictures and CBS Television Studios own the copyrights to the series (while CBS itself now owns distribution rights); CBS DVD (with distribution by Paramount Pictures Home Entertainment) released Season 1, Volume 1 on DVD in Region 1 in late 2007. Reviews of the first DVD set have been very positive as the show appears uncut, unedited and uncompressed, digitally transferred and re-mastered from the original negatives and restored from original magnetic soundtrack, although a disclaimer by CBS mentions some episodes are "edited from their original broadcast versions" and some music changed for home video. Incidental music was altered in at least two episodes, "Where the Action Is" and "The Garden House". There are no subtitles or alternate languages, but English closed captions are provided, and the "liner notes" consist merely of TV-Guide-style episode synopses inside the four-disc holder. Season 1, Volume 2 was released on February 26, 2008.[24] Season 2, Volume 1 was released on June 10, 2008.[25] Many reviews of this third DVD set were highly negative due to the replacement of the original used music tracks with the aforementioned synthesizer music (see Musical score section above for details.) Season 3, Volume 1 was released on October 27, 2009,[26] and Season 3, Volume 2 was released on December 8, 2009,[27] with most, but not all, of the original music intact. Season 4, volume 1 was released on November 2, 2010. This volume was the first to include any extras, including a Featurette titled "Season of Change: Composer Dominic Frontiere".[28] Season 4, Volume 2 was released on February 15, 2011.[29]

On October 23, 2012, CBS released The Fugitive: The Most Wanted Edition on DVD in Region 1. This 34 disc set featured all 120 episodes of the series as well as bonus features, such as the unaired version of the pilot with different footage. The set was recalled due to possible music issues, but some sets were released.[30] The set was later re-released with 5 replacement discs, so that now all original music is intact.

On February 9, 2015, CBS Home Entertainment announced they would release a repackaged The Fugitive: The Complete Series on DVD at a lower price on May 5, 2015 but did not include the bonus disc that was part of the original complete series set.[31]

CBS' rights only cover the original series; the later productions were handled by Warner Bros. Entertainment.

DVD name No. of
episodes
Release date
Season 1, Volume 1 15 August 14, 2007[32]
Season 1, Volume 2 15 February 26, 2008[33]
Season 2, Volume 1 15 June 10, 2008[34]
Season 2, Volume 2 15 March 31, 2009[35]
Season 3, Volume 1 15 October 27, 2009[36]
Season 3, Volume 2 15 December 8, 2009[37]
Season 4, Volume 1 15 November 2, 2010[38]
Season 4, Volume 2 15 February 15, 2011[39]
The Most Wanted Edition 120 October 23, 2012[30]
The Complete Series 120 May 5, 2015[31]

In other media Edit

Soundtrack Edit

In 1963, a soundtrack was issued containing the key music that Rugolo wrote and recorded for the series. In 2001, it was released on CD from Silva Screen Records. About 40 minutes in length, this CD contains mono yet hi-fidelity cuts and cues that were recorded in London.

  1. Theme From The Fugitive (1:18)
  2. The Kimbles (2:48)
  3. Tragic Homecoming (3:53)
  4. Under Arrest (1:43)
  5. Lt. Gerard (1:46)
  6. The Verdict/Train Wreck (2:07)
  7. On The Run (1:57)
  8. The Life Of A Fugitive (1:27)
  9. Main Title Theme (:39)
  10. Life On The Road (1:35)
  11. Main Theme – Jazz Version (1:30)
  12. The One-Armed Man's Name Is Fred Johnson (2:38)
  13. Brass Interlude (2:53)
  14. Sorrow (1:03)
  15. Dreams Of The Past (1:11)
  16. Youthful Innocence (1:35)
  17. Back On The Road (1:11)
  18. A New Love (2:16)
  19. Family Reunion (2:34)
  20. Watching And Waiting (1:33)
  21. Kimble vs. The One-Armed Man/Hand To Hand (5:11)
  22. The Day The Running Stopped (2:12)
  23. Freedom And Finale (0:43)
  24. End Credits (1:09)

Syndication/Cable Edit

The Fugitive was part of the original lineup on the Arts & Entertainment Network (A&E), beginning in February 1984. It ran until the summer of 1994. The show also appeared on the nationwide WWOR EMI Service and briefly on Nickelodeon's TV Land network in 2000.

In February 2015, reruns of The Fugitive appeared on Decades, a new Digital TV (DTV) subchannel network co-owned by Weigel Broadcasting and CBS. The Fugitive was seen as part of its "Countdown to Decades", in which all four seasons of The Fugitive was played in sequence 24 hours a day. The two part finale was shown on Monday May 25, 2015, at 5 am and 6 am ET. Decades was available in over 45% of all US TV viewing households at that time, including markets where CBS owned & operated a DTV station.[40] MeTV airs "The Fugitive" on late Sunday nights/Early Monday mornings at 1 AM CT (2018).[41] From July 2020, the series is being repeated in the United Kingdom on CBS Justice.

Remakes and spin-offs Edit

Film Edit

The Fugitive (1993) Edit

A feature film of the same name, based on the series, was directed by Andrew Davis and released by Warner Bros. Pictures on August 6, 1993, starring Harrison Ford as Kimble, Tommy Lee Jones as Gerard (now named "Samuel" instead of "Philip"), and Andreas Katsulas as the one-armed man (now called Fredrick Sykes instead of Fred Johnson). The movie's success came as Hollywood was embarking on a trend of remaking old television series into features. In the film, Kimble is portrayed as a prominent Chicago vascular surgeon instead of a small-town Indiana pediatrician, while Gerard is portrayed as a U.S. Marshal rather than a police lieutenant. Kimble's wife is killed in an attempt on Kimble's own life (rather than during a robbery attempt, as in the TV series) as the result of a conspiracy involving a pharmaceutical company called Devlin MacGregor, by which the one-armed man is employed.

However, the film remained true to its source material—in particular, the notion that Kimble's kindness led him to help others even when it posed a danger to his freedom or physical safety. The film also showed Gerard pursuing his own investigation into the murder as part of his pursuit of Kimble and coming up with his own doubts as to the case.

Roy Huggins, who created The Fugitive for television, is credited as executive producer of the film version. At the time of the film's release, Huggins told the Los Angeles Times, "The filmmakers and the people at Warners did a tremendously good job with this movie... I don't really take any credit for it. Wish I could."[42]

To coincide with the film's theatrical release, NBC aired the show's first and last episodes in the summer of 1993, and later hosted the film's broadcast television premiere in 1996. Jones received the 1993 Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. The film was nominated for six other Academy Awards, including Best Picture. It also spawned a spin-off, U.S. Marshals, in which Jones reprised his role as Gerard. The motion picture was later developed into a parody film as well called Wrongfully Accused, with Leslie Nielsen portraying the lead character.

Nirnayam (1995) Edit

The Malayalam movie Nirnayam, directed by Santosh Sivan, follows the same storyline.

Television Edit

The Fugitive (2000) Edit

A short-lived TV series remake (CBS, October 6, 2000 – May 25, 2001) of the same name also aired, starring Tim Daly as Kimble, Mykelti Williamson as Gerard, and Stephen Lang as the one-armed man. It was filmed in various places, including Seattle, Washington. CBS cancelled the series after one season, leaving a cliffhanger unresolved.

The Fugitive (2020) Edit

A spinoff that was broadcast on the Quibi platform, features Boyd Holbrook as a new fugitive, blue-collar worker Mike Ferro, who is wrongly accused of setting off a bomb on a Los Angeles subway train. He is relentlessly pursued by Detective Clay Bryce (Kiefer Sutherland), a legendary cop who is uncovering evidence that Mike may not be guilty.[43][44][45]

The Fugitive (2020) Edit

A 2-part TV mini-series, Tôbôsha, was broadcast on TV Asahi which stars Ken Watanabe as Dr. Kazuki Kakurai in a plot that closely follows the 1993 film.[46] (See also Monster, inspired by The Fugitive.)

Bibliography Edit

  • Proctor, Mel (1995). The Official Fan's Guide to the Fugitive. Stamford, CT: Longmeadow Press. ISBN 978-0-681007-54-3. OCLC 31606751.
  • Robertson, Ed (1993), The Fugitive Recaptured: The 30th Anniversary Companion to a Television Classic, Introduction by Stephen King, Foreword by Barry Morse, Los Angeles, CA: Pomegranate Press, Ltd., ISBN 978-0-938817-34-5
  • Starman, Ray (2006). TV Noir: The Twentieth Century. Troy, NY: Troy Bookmakers Press. Theme and major chapters on film noir and TV noir related to the American TV program The Fugitive

References Edit

  1. ^ Harris, Jay S., ed. (1978). TV Guide: The First 25 Years. New York: New American Library. p. 123. ISBN 0-452-25225-3.
  2. ^ a b "Nominations Search". Television Academy. from the original on 2015-05-27. Retrieved 2015-05-26.
  3. ^ "The Lies That Bind". Sun Sentinel. p. 3. from the original on 2014-05-04. Retrieved 2014-05-04.
  4. ^ Nye, Doug (August 17, 2007). ""Fugitive"; series now can be caught on DVD". The Philadelphia Inquirer. Philadelphia, PA. McClatchy-Tribune News Service. from the original on July 23, 2021. Retrieved April 19, 2020.
  5. ^ "Biography, David Janssen". TV Guide.com. New York, NY: TV Guide. from the original on October 12, 2015. Retrieved April 19, 2020.
  6. ^ (Television drama). Archived from the original on 2014-06-15 – via YouTube.
  7. ^ a b c Robertson, Ed (1993). The Fugitive Recaptured. Universal City, California: Pomegranate Press. p. 27. ISBN 0-938817-34-5.
  8. ^ The Fugitive (season 1)
  9. ^ Bailey, F. Lee; Aronson, Harvey (1 September 1972). The Defense Never Rests. pp. 18–20. ISBN 9780812814415. PMID 3482358. from the original on 25 April 2023. Retrieved 2 January 2013. More than ten years later, the Sheppard card would serve as a model for the popular television show The Fugitive. {{cite book}}: |journal= ignored (help)
  10. ^ Linder, Douglas. Dr. Sam Sheppard Trials: An Account. from the original on 7 November 2017. Retrieved 30 October 2017. {{cite book}}: |website= ignored (help)
  11. ^ Green, Paul (2018). Roy Huggins: Creator of Maverick, 77 Sunset Strip, The Fugitive and The Rockford Files. McFarland. p. 80. ISBN 978-1476613499.
  12. ^ Burlingame, Jon (1996). TV's Biggest Hits: The story of television themes from Dragnet to Friends. Schirmer Books. p. 134. ISBN 0-02-870324-3.
  13. ^ . Internet Movie Database. Archived from the original on 4 July 2010.
  14. ^ "Fugitive gets huge rating in last show". Chicago Tribune. 31 August 1967. p. C-19.
  15. ^ Pasternack, Dan (October 21, 2004). Leonard Goldberg on "The Fugitive" series finale (documentary). Archive of American Television - EmmyTVLegends.org. Archived from the original on 2021-11-17. Retrieved April 17, 2013.
  16. ^ "Special Collector's Issue: 100 Greatest Episodes of All Time". TV Guide. No. June 28–July 4. 1997.
  17. ^ Brooks, Tim; Marsh, Earle (2003). The Complete Directory to Prime Time Network and Cable TV Shows, 1946–Present (8th ed.). New York, NY: Ballantine Books. pp. 1459–1460.
  18. ^ "ClassicTVHits.com: TV Ratings > 1960's". from the original on 2023-02-22. Retrieved 2023-02-27.
  19. ^ "ClassicTVHits.com: TV Ratings > 1960's". from the original on 2023-02-22. Retrieved 2023-02-27.
  20. ^ Walter Spencer, "TV's Vast Grey Belt". Television Magazine (August 1967): 55.
  21. ^ Walter Spencer, "TV's Vast Grey Belt". Television Magazine (August 1967): 56
  22. ^ "TV Guide Names Top 50 Shows". CBS News. from the original on 2012-09-04. Retrieved 2011-06-19.
  23. ^ Bretts, Bruce; Roush, Matt; (March 25, 2013). "Baddies to the Bone: The 60 nastiest villains of all time". TV Guide, pp. 14–15.
  24. ^ . Archived from the original on 21 December 2007.
  25. ^ . Archived from the original on 2 March 2008.
  26. ^ . Archived from the original on 29 July 2009.
  27. ^ . Archived from the original on 12 September 2009.
  28. ^ . Archived from the original on 26 August 2010.
  29. ^ . Archived from the original on 10 December 2010.
  30. ^ a b . TVShowsOnDVD.com. Archived from the original on 4 March 2016. Retrieved 4 March 2016.
  31. ^ a b . TVShowsOnDVD.com. Archived from the original on 4 March 2016. Retrieved 4 March 2016.
  32. ^ "The Fugitive: Season One, Volume One". from the original on 2010-02-05. Retrieved 2010-12-07.
  33. ^ "The Fugitive: Season One, Volume Two". from the original on 2010-02-05. Retrieved 2010-12-07.
  34. ^ "The Fugitive: Season Two, Volume One". from the original on 2010-10-04. Retrieved 2010-12-07.
  35. ^ "The Fugitive: Season Two, Volume Two". from the original on 2010-02-05. Retrieved 2010-12-07.
  36. ^ "The Fugitive: Season Three, Volume One". from the original on 2010-02-05. Retrieved 2010-12-07.
  37. ^ "The Fugitive: Season Three, Volume Two". from the original on 2010-02-05. Retrieved 2010-12-07.
  38. ^ "The Fugitive: The Fourth and Final Season, Volume One". from the original on 2010-11-17. Retrieved 2010-12-07.
  39. ^ "The Fugitive: The Fourth and Final Season, Volume Two". from the original on 2011-01-30. Retrieved 2011-02-21.
  40. ^ "Decades opens 'daily time capsule' today". from the original on 2015-09-24. Retrieved 2015-06-11.
  41. ^ "The Fugitive". MeTV. shows. from the original on 2018-02-28. Retrieved 2018-02-28.
  42. ^ Braxton, Greg (1993-08-06). "'The Fugitive': A Thriller With Smarts : The creator-producer: Roy Huggins' idea, which was made into a TV series, was initially met with hostility in Hollywood". The Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 2023-08-07.
  43. ^ ""'The Fugitive' Remake Starring Kiefer Sutherland and Boyd Holbrook Greenlit at Quibi"". Collider. 17 September 2019. from the original on 2019-09-21. Retrieved 2019-09-18.
  44. ^ ""Kiefer Sutherland & Boyd Holbrook to Star in 'The Fugitive' For Quibi"". 17 September 2019. from the original on 2019-09-22. Retrieved 2019-09-18.
  45. ^ ""'The Fugitive': Kiefer Sutherland, Boyd Holbrook Set for Quibi Series"". 17 September 2019. from the original on 2019-11-14. Retrieved 2019-09-18.
  46. ^ ""Ken Watanabe to star in Japanese remake of 'The Fugitive'"". from the original on 2022-05-01. Retrieved 2022-05-01.

Further reading Edit

  • Deane, Bill (2006). Following the Fugitive: An Episode Guide And Handbook to the 1960s Television Series. McFarland & Company. ISBN 978-0-786-42631-7.
  • Liebenson, Donald (29 August 2017). "How The Fugitive's Heart-Pumping Finale Changed TV Forever". Vanity Fair. examines the impact of the series' final episode on its 50th anniversary

External links Edit

  • The Fugitive (1963) at IMDb
  • . Encyclopedia of Television. Archived from the original on 2005-08-27. Retrieved 2005-09-06.
  • . TV.com. shows. Archived from the original on 2012-07-29. Retrieved 2011-09-26.
  • Explanation of Huggins' approach. Stephen J. Cannell's Archive of American Television (documentary).[dead link]
  • Fish, Stanley. "The Fugitive in Flight: Faith, Liberalism, and Law in a Classic TV Show". examines the moral structure of the series
  • Lodge, Stephen. . Archived from the original on 2004-12-07. Collection of crew member Stephen Lodge (set costumer)
  • "A tongue-in-cheek parody website that portrays Devlic Macgregor Pharmaceuticals as if they actually exist in 2021".

fugitive, 1963, series, fugitive, american, crime, drama, television, series, created, huggins, produced, productions, united, artists, television, aired, from, september, 1963, august, 1967, david, janssen, starred, richard, kimble, physician, wrongfully, con. The Fugitive is an American crime drama television series created by Roy Huggins and produced by QM Productions and United Artists Television It aired on ABC from September 1963 to August 1967 David Janssen starred as Dr Richard Kimble a physician who is wrongfully convicted of his wife s murder and sentenced to death En route to death row Dr Kimble s train derails over a switch allowing him to escape and begin a cross country search for the real killer a one armed man played by Bill Raisch At the same time Richard Kimble is hounded by the authorities most notably by Police Lieutenant Philip Gerard Barry Morse The FugitiveGenreCrimeDramaCreated byRoy HugginsStarringDavid JanssenBarry MorseNarrated byWilliam ConradDick Wesson episode credits Theme music composerPeter RugoloCountry of originUnited StatesNo of seasons4No of episodes120 90 in black and white 30 in color list of episodes ProductionExecutive producerQuinn MartinProducersAlan Armer 1963 1966 Wilton Schiller 1966 1967 Running time51 minutesProduction companiesQuinn Martin ProductionsUnited Artists TelevisionReleaseOriginal networkABCOriginal releaseSeptember 17 1963 1963 09 17 August 29 1967 1967 08 29 The Fugitive aired for four seasons with 120 51 minute episodes produced The first three seasons were filmed in black and white while the fourth and final season was filmed in color 1 The series was nominated for five Emmy Awards and won the Emmy for Outstanding Dramatic Series in 1966 2 In 2002 it was ranked number 36 on TV Guide s 50 Greatest TV Shows of All Time TV Guide named the one armed man number five in their 2013 list of the 60 Nastiest Villains of All Time Contents 1 Plot 2 Cast and characters 2 1 Main characters 2 1 1 Dr Richard Kimble 2 1 2 Lt Philip Gerard 2 1 3 The One armed Man 2 2 Minor characters 2 3 Guest cast 3 Production 3 1 Development 3 2 Musical score 4 Episodes 4 1 Final episode 5 Reception 5 1 Ratings 5 2 Awards 6 Home media 7 In other media 7 1 Soundtrack 7 2 Syndication Cable 8 Remakes and spin offs 8 1 Film 8 1 1 The Fugitive 1993 8 1 2 Nirnayam 1995 8 2 Television 8 2 1 The Fugitive 2000 8 2 2 The Fugitive 2020 8 2 3 The Fugitive 2020 9 Bibliography 10 References 11 Further reading 12 External linksPlot EditThe series premise was set up in the opening narration but the full details about the crime were not offered in the pilot episode at the time of the pilot Kimble has been on the run for six months having exhausted all of his appeals against his death sentence While in transit the train carrying Kimble derails and Kimble becomes the titular fugitive attempting to clear his name In the series first season the premise heard over footage of Kimble handcuffed to Gerard on a train was summarized in the opening title sequence of the pilot episode as Name Richard Kimble Profession Doctor of Medicine Destination Death Row state prison Richard Kimble has been tried and convicted for the murder of his wife But laws are made by men carried out by men and men are imperfect Richard Kimble is innocent Proved guilty what Richard Kimble could not prove was that moments before discovering his wife s body he encountered a man running from the vicinity of his home A man with one arm A man who has not yet been found Richard Kimble ponders his fate as he looks at the world for the last time and sees only darkness But in that darkness fate moves its huge hand This title sequence was shortened from episode seven through the remainder of the first season as The name Dr Richard Kimble The destination Death Row state prison The irony Richard Kimble is innocent Proved guilty what Richard Kimble could not prove was that moments before discovering his murdered wife s body he saw a one armed man running from the vicinity of his home Richard Kimble ponders his fate as he looks at the world for the last time and sees only darkness But in that darkness fate moves its huge hand The main title narration as read by William Conrad was changed for the second season premiere onward through the last episode of the series 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 Viewers were not offered the full details of Kimble s plight until episode 14 The Girl from Little Egypt A series of flashbacks reveals the fateful night of Helen Kimble s death and for the first time offers a glimpse of the one armed man Cast and characters EditMain characters Edit Dr Richard Kimble Edit Richard Kimble redirects here For the baseball shortstop of the same name see Dick Kimble For others with a similar name see Richard Kimball disambiguation nbsp Janssen as Richard Kimble with Clint Howard 1965The show s lead and the only character seen in all 120 episodes was Dr Richard David Kimble David Janssen based in part on the story of Sam Sheppard 3 Though Dr Richard Kimble was a respected pediatrician in the fictional small town of Stafford Indiana his wife Helen and he were generally known to have been having arguments prior to her death Helen s pregnancy had ended in a stillborn birth of a son and surgery to save her life had also rendered her infertile The couple was devastated but Helen refused to consider adopting children as Richard wanted On the night of Helen s murder the Kimbles had been heard earlier the same day arguing heatedly over this topic by their neighbors Richard later went out for a drive to cool off as he was driving home he nearly hit a man with only one arm who was fleeing from the vicinity of the Kimble house Richard then found that Helen had been killed but no one had seen or heard Richard go out for his drive or seen him while he was out and no evidence showed that the one armed man Kimble saw ever existed At his trial Kimble was unjustly convicted of Helen s murder and sentenced to death in the electric chair After the train wreck and his escape from custody Kimble moves from town to town always trying to remain unobtrusive and unnoticed as he evades capture and hopes to find the one armed man He adopts many nondescript aliases and toils at low paying menial jobs i e those that require no identification or security checks and bring about little social attention In many episodes he comes across a damsel in distress or possibly a child in danger he then chooses to put his anonymity at risk by aiding this deserving person Another frequent plot device is for someone to discover Kimble s true identity and use it to manipulate him under the threat of turning him in to the police Dr Richard Kimble is smart and resourceful and is usually able to perform well at any job he takes This sometimes leads to suspicion as his educated demeanor is often very much at odds with the menial nature of the jobs he is forced to take He also displays considerable prowess in hand to hand combat In the episode Nemesis he distracts then knocks out a forest ranger played by Kurt Russell s father Bing then quickly unloads the man s rifle to ensure he cannot shoot him if pursued In the sixth episode Kimble revealed that he had served as a doctor in the Korean War Kimble s family makes scattered appearances throughout the series most notably his sister Donna Jacqueline Scott and her husband Leonard Taft played by James Sikking Lin McCarthy and James Anderson in different episodes Richard Anderson played Leonard Taft in the classic two part final episode The Judgment Kimble s family first appears in the 15th episode Home is the Hunted wherein Kimble returns to his hometown after reading in his hometown newspaper that his father Dr John Kimble Robert Keith is retiring Also introduced is Kimble s brother Ray Andrew Prine While Donna and John believed Kimble s innocence Ray was unconvinced and grew to resent Richard as their association cost Ray his job and his fiancee however Ray becomes convinced of Richard s innocence during his stay Also featuring are Leonard and Donna s sons David Bill Mumy and Billy Clint Howard despite their appearance though only Billy Johnny Jensen appears in the series two part finale The Judgement in part two Donna mentions temporarily moving Billy in with his brother to accommodate a visitor Although the whole family was introduced only Donna and her family reappeared in subsequent episodes Ray was not mentioned again in the show and the third season episode Running Scared dealt with Kimble and Donna reuniting to grieve over their father s death In The Survivors Kimble re establishes contact with Helen s family the Waverlys after learning that her father Ed Lloyd Gough is facing bankruptcy over medical bills for his wife Edith Ruth White who has developed a heart condition by obsessively clinging to Helen s memory and listening to phonograph records she made before her death Kimble visits the family and stays with them despite Edith s objections and with help from Helen s sister Terry Louise Sorel locates a secret bank account Helen kept for emergencies He signs the account over to Ed saving him financially but his safety is compromised when Edith learns that Terry believes his innocence as does Ed to a lesser extent and is in love with Kimble and threatens to report him to the police Kimble escapes the household before this can happen after gently letting Terry down David Janssen s understated portrayal skillfully captured the essence of Dr Richard Kimble s plight 4 He won the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor Television Series Drama in 1965 and was nominated in 1966 He was nominated three times for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series 1964 1966 1967 5 Lt Philip Gerard Edit nbsp Barry Morse as Gerard in the pilot episode 1963Dr Richard Kimble is pursued by the relentless Stafford police detective Lt Philip Gerard Barry Morse a formidably intelligent family man and dedicated public servant Gerard directly appears in 37 episodes and also in the main title sequences of all 120 episodes Barry Morse is also listed in the closing credits of 119 episodes For some reason he is not in the end credits of the season one episode Glass Tightrope Morse portrayed Gerard as a man duty bound to capture Kimble Guilt or innocence was of no consequence to Gerard whose own beliefs have been stated as I enforce the law The law pronounced him guilty I enforce the law Whether the law was right or wrong is not my concern Let others debate and conclude I obey and when I begin to question doubt I can t permit it Others found him guilty others were about to execute him I was merely an instrument of the law and am Fear in a Desert City 1963 In Never Wave Goodbye Pt I he states again The law pronounced him guilty not me In Nightmare at Northoak and Wife Killer he states with certainty that the one armed man does not exist and that Kimble is guilty in Corner of Hell even after his own Kimble like experience he still scoffs at the existence of the one armed man Still the same fairy tale he sneers He also tells Kimble The truth is you re still guilty before the law Contributing to Gerard s obsession with re capturing Kimble is the personal responsibility he feels for Kimble s escape which happened while he was in Gerard s custody As he remarks to an LA police captain in The Judgment Part 1 the show s penultimate episode I ve lost a lot of things these past four years starting with a prisoner the state told me to guard Over time Gerard also appeared to have gained some doubts as to Kimble s guilt In one episode when a female witness remarks that Kimble killed his wife Gerard simply replies The law says he did but with a tone of doubt audible in his voice In the episode Nemesis the local sheriff John Doucette states You said he s a killer To this Gerard sharply replies The jury said that Gerard s doubts are augmented after Kimble rescues Gerard in episodes such as Never Wave Goodbye Corner of Hell Ill Wind The Evil Men Do and Stroke of Genius The Evil Men Do in particular played on the respect that develops between the two men when Gerard is pursued by former Mob hitman Arthur Brame James Daly who is rescued from a runaway horse by Kimble Kimble rescues Gerard from Brame When Kimble escapes from Gerard the lieutenant instead of pursuing Kimble goes after and kills Brame In the epilogue Gerard explains to Brame s widow Sharon Elizabeth Allen that he wanted to go after both men but that Arthur was a career killer and far more dangerous while Kimble has done the one murder he d probably ever do Gerard comes close to acknowledging Kimble s innocence when he concludes Until I find him and I will he s no real menace to anyone but himself 6 In the course of the series Gerard s family becomes entangled in Gerard s obsession with finding Kimble In Nemesis Kimble unintentionally kidnaps Gerard s young son Philip Jr played by 12 year old Kurt Russell Though as concerned as any father should be Gerard is confident that Kimble will not do his boy any real harm After his experience with Kimble Philip Jr questions whether he is guilty and his father openly admits that he could be wrong though it does not change his duty This almost inhuman dedication to his duty strains his relationship with his wife Marie Barbara Rush almost to the breaking point and causes her to leave him in season three s two part episode Landscape with Running Figures her actually coming into contact with Kimble unknowingly at first causes an emotional collapse when she realizes who he is with her screaming at Kimble It began with you it ll END with you Gerard clearly does indeed love his wife when he finally chooses to go and find her over chasing Kimble Gerard admits to Marie however that he will go again when the next time comes He s stuck in my throat and I can t swallow him When Gerard finally captures Kimble in part one of The Judgment he does not gloat over the arrest reflecting his respect for his adversary and possibly his recollections of Kimble s past attempts to save him and help others while on the run I m sorry he says You just ran out of time His decision to give Kimble 24 hours to clear himself in part two of The Judgment also reflects that respect and his increasing doubts of Kimble s guilt regardless of the conviction That leads to the climactic scenes where the truth of Helen Kimble s murder emerges along with an eyewitness family friend and war hero Lloyd Chandler who was at the Kimble home and who witnessed Fred Johnson murder Helen Kimble on that fateful night but was too cowardly to intervene Ironically as Kimble and Johnson fight atop a carnival ride Gerard fatally shoots Johnson just before he can shoot Kimble Gerard firmly tells Chandler You can keep that man Kimble alive but you won t will you Gerard s comments lead Chandler to agree to testify After Kimble is exonerated in court Gerard meets Kimble outside the courthouse he silently smiles and offers his hand After hesitating Kimble shakes it Parallels can be seen between Gerard s pursuit of Kimble and the pursuit of Jean Valjean by Inspector Javert in Les Miserables though Javert never lets go of his obsession to follow the letter of the law and hunts down his fugitive even killing himself when he discovers that he cannot reconcile his tenets with the mercy Valjean shows him Gerard though was portrayed externally as a man like Javert but internally as more of a thinking man who could balance justice and duty According to some of those who worked on the show these parallels were not coincidental Stanford Whitmore who wrote the pilot episode Fear in a Desert City says that he deliberately gave Kimble s nemesis a similar sounding name to see if anyone would recognize the similarity between Gerard and Javert 7 One who recognized the similarity was Morse he pointed out the connection to Quinn Martin who admitted that The Fugitive was a sort of modern rendition of the outline of Les Miserables 7 Morse accordingly went back to the Victor Hugo novel and studied the portrayal of Javert to find ways to make the character more complex than the conventional Hollywood dick as whom Gerard had originally been conceived I ve always thought that we in the arts are all shoplifters Morse said Everybody from Shakespeare onwards and downwards But once you ve acknowledged that when you set out on a shoplifting expedition you go always to Cartier s and never to Woolworth s 7 The One armed Man Edit nbsp Bill Raisch as the one armed man The One armed Man Bill Raisch is a shadowy figure seen fleeing Kimble s house by Kimble after the murder of Helen The series revealed little about the man s personal life and never explained how or when he lost his right arm In the 29th episode of the first season Storm Center Helen Kimble was revealed to have been strangled This is not the method of choice for a man with only one arm accordingly this detail was later retconned with the murder having been committed due to blunt force trauma with a lamp In the pilot episode Fear in a Desert City Kimble does state that he found his wife beaten to death The One armed Man was rarely seen in the series appearing in person in only 10 episodes He also appears in the opening credits beginning with season two and in a photograph in the episode The Breaking of the Habit He is seen infrequently in the first three seasons and has almost no actual dialogue until season four when his character begins to take a more prominent part in the plotline The One armed Man is aware that Kimble is after him and frequently tips off the police as to Kimble s whereabouts most notably in Nobody Loses All The Time when he telephones his girlfriend Barbara Baxley at a hospital and orders her to call the police though Kimble risked arrest to save her life Like Kimble he uses a variety of aliases and holds down various jobs while on the run In the episode A Clean And Quiet Town he is credited as Steve Cramer and works as a mob employed numbers runner In the episode The Ivy Maze he poses as a college janitor and groundskeeper named Carl Stoker He goes by the name Fred Johnson in several episodes first in the season two episode Escape into Black where he works as a dishwasher using this name In the season three episode Wife Killer reporter Barbara Webb Janice Rule discovers that the One armed Man carries a wide range of identifications using various names As Fred Johnson he has a membership in an athletic club and a receipt for the sale of a pint of blood this particular receipt shows that his blood type is B negative and that he claims his age as 47 Raisch himself was 60 years of age when this episode was filmed The other identities used by the One armed Man are not revealed in the episode although as Barbara flips through a wallet full of identifications she notes that he is a man of many identities not one of them the same The One armed Man is identified as Fred Johnson in the two part series finale The Judgment He is also referred to as Johnson in The Ivy Maze where he is posing as Carl Stoker and at one point Fritz Simpson William Windom addresses him as Fred That episode is where Kimble Gerard and the One armed Man all appear in the same scene for the first time This is the only consistent name that they have to go by and both Gerard and Kimble refer to the One armed Man as Fred Johnson in a few later episodes in the series finale Lloyd Chandler J D Cannon also refers to him as Johnson However when interrogated by Lt Gerard in The Judgment the One armed Man denies that Fred Johnson is his real name While the character s real name is never definitively established a case could be made that it is Gus Evans as revealed in The Judgment that was the name that he used before killing Helen Kimble when he would presumably have had no need to adopt an alias Bill Raisch played a bitter war veteran who starts a bar fight with Kirk Douglas John W Burns in the 1962 film Lonely are the Brave The role was a natural lead in to his part in The Fugitive Minor characters Edit Dr Richard Kimble s murdered wife Helen nee Waverly was portrayed in flashbacks in three episodes including season one s The Girl from Little Egypt and uncredited in season four s The Judgment Part II by Diane Brewster Brewster s uncredited voice is also heard in recorded messages of Helen s voice in season two s The Survivors However in an extremely brief flashback in the second season episode Ballad For A Ghost Helen discovered dead was played not by Brewster but by Janis Paige in this episode Paige also played a singer who bore a marked resemblance to Helen Jacqueline Scott as Dr Richard Kimble s married sister Donna Taft appeared in four stories including the two part series finale Her husband Dr Richard Kimble s brother in law Leonard Taft appeared in three of those stories and was played by a different actor each time James B Sikking in season one Lin McCarthy in season three and Richard Anderson in the season four finale Paul Birch appeared as Captain Carpenter Gerard s superior at the Stafford Indiana police department in 13 episodes of seasons one and two Gerard s wife Marie appeared in three stories played by a different actress each time In Never Wave Goodbye Part One she was briefly played by Rachel Ames She was later played by British born actress Mavis Neal Palmer uncredited in May God Have Mercy In the two part story Landscape with Running Figures the only story in which hers is a major role she is played by Barbara Rush The nun Sister Veronica played by Eileen Heckart appears in two stories season one s two part episode Angels Travel on Lonely Roads and season four s The Breaking of the Habit She is the only character with no direct ties to Kimble s family or the murder of Helen Kimble to appear in more than one story In season one episode 15 Billy Mumy and Clint Howard appear in roles as Kimble s nephews sons of Kimble s sister Donna Four episodes with two parts were aired over the course of the series all of them featuring characters in both parts Never Wave Goodbye features in both parts in addition to Gerard Susan Oliver as Karen Christian Robert Duvall as her brother Eric and Lee Philips as Dr Ray Brooks with Karen and Richard Kimble falling in love while Ray pines for Karen Angels Travel on Lonely Roads has in both parts in addition to Sister Veronica Albert Salmi as Chuck Mathers the brutish owner of a gas station who gives Kimble trouble and later tries to collect the reward money when he finds out who Kimble is filling in for Gerard this is the only two parter in which Gerard does not appear Sandy Kenyon as a local sheriff and Ken Lynch as a local plainclothes police detective Landscape with Running Figures has in both parts in addition to Lt Gerard and Mrs Gerard Herschel Bernardi and Jud Taylor as two local plainclothes police officers assisting Gerard in the manhunt The series finale The Judgment has in both parts in addition to Gerard Donna Leonard and the One armed Man also Diane Baker as a Kimble family friend from Stafford Jean Carlisle and she leaves arm in arm with Dr Richard Kimble in the final scene of the series Only the character of Dr Richard Kimble is present onscreen in every episode off screen narrator William Conrad is also heard at the beginning and end of each episode though he was never credited while a different voice announces the title of the episode and the names of the episode s guest stars in the opening teaser That announcer an uncredited Dick Wesson also says The Fugitive aloud at the end of the closing credits leading into studio sponsorships of the series The Fugitive has been brought to you by The Untouchables which was Martin s first series as a producer also contained both a narrator Walter Winchell and an announcer Les Lampson as did The New Breed the first series QM Productions produced with Wesson as the announcer and Art Gilmore as the narrator Guest cast Edit With 120 episodes and typically two or more guest stars per episode the series offered a massive who s who of stars from stage and screen character actors and up and coming talent Many guest stars appeared as different characters in multiple episodes Here is a partial list Six episodes Richard Anderson Dabbs Greer Five episodes Crahan Denton Bruce Dern Carol Eve Rossen Jud Taylor Harry Townes Four episodes Joseph Campanella Dabney Coleman Diana Hyland Lin McCarthy David Sheiner Three episodes Elizabeth Allen Lou Antonio R G Armstrong Ed Asner Malcolm Atterbury Edward Binns Antoinette Bower Geraldine Brooks Michael Constantine Robert Doyle Robert Duvall Harold Gould Arch Johnson Shirley Knight John Milford Joanna Moore Laurence Naismith Lois Nettleton Tim O Connor Woodrow Parfrey Phillip Pine Don Quine Telly Savalas Patricia Smith June Dayton 2 episodes John Anderson Ed Begley Beau Bridges James T Callahan J D Cannon Paul Carr Russell Collins James Daly Kim Darby Ivan Dixon James Doohan Robert Drivas Andrew Duggan Norman Fell Lloyd Gough Murray Hamilton June Harding Pat Hingle Celeste Holm Clint Howard Steve Ihnat Johnny Jensen Georgann Johnson Wright King Jack Klugman Ted Knight John Larch Jack Lord Nancy Malone Paul Mantee Joe Maross Nan Martin Ed Nelson Leslie Nielsen Sheree North Warren Oates Arthur O Connell Collin Wilcox Paxton Suzanne Pleshette Andrew Prine Madlyn Rhue Paul Richards Peter Mark Richman Gilbert Roland Carlos Romero Barbara Rush Janice Rule Kurt Russell Albert Salmi Brenda Scott Milton Selzer Madeleine Sherwood Tom Skerritt Julie Sommars Michael Strong Malachi Throne Joan Tompkins Diana Van Der Vlis Ruth White Nancy Wickwire Donald LosbyOther notable guest star appearances 8 Claude Akins Martin Balsam Peter Brocco Charles Bronson Richard Carlson Michael Conrad Tim Considine Patricia Crowley Ossie Davis Ruby Dee Gabriel Dell Sandy Dennis Angie Dickinson Melvyn Douglas James Farentino Anne Francis James Frawley Betty Garrett Mark Goddard Gloria Grahame Lee Grant Arthur Hill Steven Hill Earl Holliman Ronny Howard Dean Jagger Brian Keith DeForest Kelley Diane Ladd Hope Lange Carol Lawrence Ruta Lee Kevin McCarthy John McGiver Vera Miles Greg Morris Bill Mumy Carroll O Connor Susan Oliver Warren Oates Jerry Paris Larry Pennell Slim Pickens Donald Pleasence Percy Rodriguez Mickey Rooney Kerry Rossall Bing Russell Diana Sands Pippa Scott Vin Scully William Shatner James Sikking Rudy Solari Frank Sutton Pamela Tiffin Brenda Vaccaro George Voskovec Jessica Walter Jack Warden Fritz Weaver Robert Webber Tuesday Weld Jack Weston William Windom Lana WoodProduction EditDevelopment Edit nbsp David Janssen as The FugitiveThe series was conceived by Roy Huggins and produced by Quinn Martin One popular belief is that the series was based in part on the real life story of Sam Sheppard an Ohio doctor accused of murdering his wife 9 However Huggins repeatedly denied basing the series on Sheppard Although convicted and imprisoned Sheppard claimed that his wife had been murdered by a bushy haired man Sheppard s brothers hired F Lee Bailey to appeal the conviction Bailey defended Sheppard and won an acquittal in the second trial Coincidentally the show s music supervisor Ken Wilhoit was married to Susan Hayes who had had an intimate relationship with Sheppard prior to the murder and testified during the first trial in 1954 10 The show presents a popular plot device of an innocent man on the run from the police for a murder he did not commit while simultaneously pursuing the real killer It had its antecedents in the Alfred Hitchcock movies The 39 Steps Saboteur and North by Northwest The theme of a doctor in hiding for committing a major crime had also been depicted by James Stewart as the mysterious Buttons the Clown who never removed his makeup in The Greatest Show on Earth Writer David Goodis claimed that the series was inspired by his 1946 novel Dark Passage about a man who escapes from prison after being wrongly convicted of killing his wife Goodis litigation over the issue continued for some time after his 1967 death citation needed The plot device of a fugitive living on the run from the authorities was loosely inspired by Victor Hugo s 1862 novel Les Miserables The Richard Kimble character was inspired by the novel s protagonist Jean Valjean an ex convict living a life as a fugitive and having numerous aliases as well as helping people around him The character of Lt Gerard who hounds Kimble throughout the series is also loosely inspired by a character from the same novel a relentless police inspector named Javert who is obsessed with capturing the fugitive 11 Other shows such as Route 66 had employed the same anthology like premise of wanderers finding adventure in each new place to which they came The Fugitive however answered two questions that had bedeviled many similar series first why the protagonist never settled down anywhere and second why the protagonist tried to solve these problems himself instead of calling in the police Casting a doctor as the protagonist also provided the series a wider range of entry into local stories as Kimble s medical knowledge would allow him alone to recognize essential elements of the episode e g subtle medical symptoms or an abused medicine and the commonplace doctor s ethic e g to provide aid in emergencies would naturally lead him into dangerous situations citation needed Musical score Edit Pete Rugolo who had worked on David Janssen s earlier series Richard Diamond Private Detective composed the original music for The Fugitive Rugolo later worked with creator Roy Huggins on Run for Your Life and other projects Tracking music was standard practice at the time but unlike virtually all primetime scripted series of the 1960s no episode not even The Judgment received an original score 12 all the original music used for the series was composed by Rugolo and recorded in London before the series was filmed In fact many episodes had Rugolo as the sole credited composer for the episode s scores but only a fraction of all the music heard throughout the series was original Rugolo music Library music either from other classic TV shows or from stock music libraries as was the case with The Adventures of Superman provided a majority of the episodes scores For example Dominic Frontiere cues became common in season four a keen listener could find oneself listening to such cues from the Outer Limits series during the climactic final episode of The Fugitive Numerous ominous dramatic and suspenseful cues from The Twilight Zone episodes such as The Invaders among others are used to strong effect throughout the series The old pop songs I ll Never Smile Again and I ll Remember April each appear several times in the series often associated with Kimble s deceased wife Helen What little original melody was actually written and recorded was built around a fast paced tempo representing running music Different variations from sad to action oriented would be used with many arrangements developed for the music supervisor to select as best suited for particular scenes Also an original Dragnet type theme was used for Lt Gerard In the unreleased longer version of the show s pilot a different canned music score was used in the opening and closing sequences Also several deleted scenes were shot including one with Lt Gerard talking to Captain Carpenter that was reshot Quinn Martin felt it made Gerard out to be a bit deranged in his obsession That version also listed William Conrad as the narrator in the end credits Episodes EditMain article List of The Fugitive episodes SeasonEpisodesOriginally airedFirst airedLast aired130September 17 1963 1963 09 17 April 21 1964 1964 04 21 230September 15 1964 1964 09 15 April 20 1965 1965 04 20 330September 14 1965 1965 09 14 April 26 1966 1966 04 26 430September 13 1966 1966 09 13 August 29 1967 1967 08 29 The Fugitive premiered in the United States on September 17 1963 Over the course of the show s four seasons 120 episodes were produced with the last original episode airing in the United States on August 29 1967 13 The series aired Tuesdays at 10 00 pm on ABC Final episode Edit This article s plot summary may be too long or excessively detailed Please help improve it by removing unnecessary details and making it more concise August 2017 Learn how and when to remove this template message nbsp A scene from the final episodeThe two part final episode titled The Judgment aired on Tuesdays August 22 and 29 1967 Part 1The one armed man going by the alias Fred Johnson is arrested after tearing up a Los Angeles strip bar When Kimble reads about it in a newspaper he travels to Los Angeles Gerard has already arrived in Los Angeles though and is working with the local police convinced Kimble will come to the city Gerard is spotted by Jean Carlisle Diane Baker an old friend of the Kimble family s who is working as a typist with the Los Angeles Police Department Jean manages to reach Kimble just as the police start searching the area and takes him to her apartment Meanwhile Gerard interrogates Johnson and begins thinking that Kimble may be telling the truth After Kimble learns that Johnson has been arrested he elects to turn himself in hoping to confront Johnson Before he can carry out his plan Johnson is bailed out of jail by a corrupt bail bondsman who plans to blackmail the person who supplied the bail money The bondsman is killed by Johnson after revealing that the money came from someone in Kimble s hometown of Stafford Indiana With Jean s help Kimble tries to head back home but Gerard arrests him The lieutenant does not express any triumph or satisfaction in making the arrest I m sorry Gerard tells him You just ran out of time Part 2Kimble informs Gerard that he found something that might lead him to the truth and believes Johnson is going to Stafford to use the information for which he killed the bail bondsman He persuades Gerard to give him 24 hours to clear himself agreeing to turn himself in if he fails Kimble s key evidence is the bail bond slip signed by a man using the name Leonard Taft the name of his sister Donna s husband The man is actually the Tafts neighbor Stafford city planner Lloyd Chandler Chandler learns from Donna that she had received a phone call from someone who claimed that he knew who really killed Helen Kimble and arranged a meeting that night at an abandoned stable Donna and Leonard dismiss the call as a prank but Chandler keeps the meeting arming himself Johnson overpowers Chandler and then blackmails him for 50 000 Later after learning from Donna about the phone call Kimble and Gerard go to the stable but find only an unspent cartridge dropped from Chandler s gun Meanwhile Jean surprises Kimble Donna and Len by arriving at the Taft home to re unite with Kimble Chandler secretly tries to raise the money but when his wife Betsy finds out what he is doing he eventually cracks and tells her the whole story He saw Johnson kill Helen but did nothing to stop it Johnson spotted him as he was leaving Chandler a war hero was too ashamed to tell what he saw for fear of exposing his failure to intervene and save Helen s life When Kimble runs out of time and is about to leave with Gerard Donna finds a bullet hidden in one of her son s dresser drawers Gerard identifies it as being identical to the one they found at the stable the night before Donna mentions that the bullet must have come from Chandler who had taken a group of boys to a shooting range the day before Kimble and Gerard head over to the Chandler residence and learn from Betsy that he is luring Johnson to an abandoned amusement park to kill him to atone for his cowardice Kimble and Gerard arrive as Chandler and Johnson are engaged in a gunfight Johnson shoots Gerard in the thigh With Gerard s gun Kimble chases Johnson to the top of a tower Johnson disarms Kimble and the two wrestle Kimble eventually beats a confession from Johnson Johnson then grabs the loose gun but Gerard shoots him from the ground with Chandler s rifle and Johnson falls to his death Kimble informs Gerard that Johnson confessed but since nobody else heard it the confession is worthless Then Chandler suddenly tells Gerard and Kimble that he saw Johnson murder Helen Kimble and will testify to that effect in court In the final scene an exonerated Kimble leaves the courthouse and hesitantly shakes Gerard s hand Kimble and Jean walk off toward his new life Narrator William Conrad states Tuesday August 29th The day the running stopped AssessmentAccording to Ed Robertson s book The Fugitive Recaptured the first book written about the series the final episode aired in Canada on September 5 1967 with an alternate closing narration giving that date The Special Features DVD states that the final episode was interrupted in some parts of the U S specify This version was also seen in some areas in syndication and was later released on VHS tape citation needed Both versions are available on DVD Part two of the finale was the most watched television series episode up to that time It was viewed by 25 7 million households 45 9 percent of American households with a television set and a 72 percent share meaning that more than 78 million people tuned in 14 That record was held until the November 21 1980 episode of Dallas titled Who Done It viewed by 41 47 million households 53 3 percent of households and a 76 percent share which was later surpassed by the series finale of M A S H titled Goodbye Farewell and Amen on February 28 1983 viewed by 50 15 million households 60 2 percent of households and a 77 percent share According to producer Leonard Goldberg the network was simply going to end the series with a regular episode without any kind of denouement as network executives were totally oblivious to the concept that a television audience actually tuned in week after week and cared about the characters of a TV series 15 The timing of the broadcast was unusual Rather than ending the regular season the finale was held back while suspense continued through the summer reruns In 1997 The Judgment Part 2 was ranked No 23 on TV Guide s 100 Greatest Episodes of All Time 16 Reception EditRatings Edit In its debut season The Fugitive was 28th in the U S Nielsen ratings with a 21 7 rating and it jumped to fifth in the second season 27 9 It fell out of the top 30 during the last two seasons 17 but the series finale in which Dr Kimble s fate was shown currently holds the third rank for the all time highest U S television household share at 72 The Fugitive season rankings in the U S television market Season Episodes Original air dates TV season Nielsen ratingsSeason premiere Season finale Rank Rating Viewers millions 1 30 September 17 1963 April 21 1964 1963 64 28 21 7 11 197 200 18 2 30 September 15 1964 April 20 1965 1964 65 5 27 9 14 703 300 19 3 30 September 14 1965 April 26 1966 1965 66 34 20 4 30 September 13 1966 August 29 1967 1966 67 50 21 Awards Edit The Fugitive was nominated for five Emmy Awards and won the Emmy for Outstanding Dramatic Series in 1966 2 In 2002 it was ranked No 36 on TV Guide s 50 Greatest TV Shows of All Time 22 TV Guide named the one armed man No 5 in their 2013 list of The 60 Nastiest Villains of All Time 23 The show also came away with other honors In 1965 Alan Armer the producer of the series received an Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America for his work And in a 1993 ranking TV Guide named The Fugitive the best dramatic series of the 1960s Home media Edit The template below Overly detailed is being considered for merging See templates for discussion to help reach a consensus This article may contain an excessive amount of intricate detail that may interest only a particular audience Please help by spinning off or relocating any relevant information and removing excessive detail that may be against Wikipedia s inclusion policy October 2012 Learn how and when to remove this template message A total of 40 episodes have been released on VHS by NuVentures Video Volumes 1 10 were later re released with Barry Morse providing introductions to each episode as in Volumes 11 20 with selected shows from the 40 later issued by Republic Pictures Twelve episodes were also released on laserdisc Currently Republic Pictures and CBS Television Studios own the copyrights to the series while CBS itself now owns distribution rights CBS DVD with distribution by Paramount Pictures Home Entertainment released Season 1 Volume 1 on DVD in Region 1 in late 2007 Reviews of the first DVD set have been very positive as the show appears uncut unedited and uncompressed digitally transferred and re mastered from the original negatives and restored from original magnetic soundtrack although a disclaimer by CBS mentions some episodes are edited from their original broadcast versions and some music changed for home video Incidental music was altered in at least two episodes Where the Action Is and The Garden House There are no subtitles or alternate languages but English closed captions are provided and the liner notes consist merely of TV Guide style episode synopses inside the four disc holder Season 1 Volume 2 was released on February 26 2008 24 Season 2 Volume 1 was released on June 10 2008 25 Many reviews of this third DVD set were highly negative due to the replacement of the original used music tracks with the aforementioned synthesizer music see Musical score section above for details Season 3 Volume 1 was released on October 27 2009 26 and Season 3 Volume 2 was released on December 8 2009 27 with most but not all of the original music intact Season 4 volume 1 was released on November 2 2010 This volume was the first to include any extras including a Featurette titled Season of Change Composer Dominic Frontiere 28 Season 4 Volume 2 was released on February 15 2011 29 On October 23 2012 CBS released The Fugitive The Most Wanted Edition on DVD in Region 1 This 34 disc set featured all 120 episodes of the series as well as bonus features such as the unaired version of the pilot with different footage The set was recalled due to possible music issues but some sets were released 30 The set was later re released with 5 replacement discs so that now all original music is intact On February 9 2015 CBS Home Entertainment announced they would release a repackaged The Fugitive The Complete Series on DVD at a lower price on May 5 2015 but did not include the bonus disc that was part of the original complete series set 31 CBS rights only cover the original series the later productions were handled by Warner Bros Entertainment DVD name No ofepisodes Release dateSeason 1 Volume 1 15 August 14 2007 32 Season 1 Volume 2 15 February 26 2008 33 Season 2 Volume 1 15 June 10 2008 34 Season 2 Volume 2 15 March 31 2009 35 Season 3 Volume 1 15 October 27 2009 36 Season 3 Volume 2 15 December 8 2009 37 Season 4 Volume 1 15 November 2 2010 38 Season 4 Volume 2 15 February 15 2011 39 The Most Wanted Edition 120 October 23 2012 30 The Complete Series 120 May 5 2015 31 In other media EditSoundtrack Edit In 1963 a soundtrack was issued containing the key music that Rugolo wrote and recorded for the series In 2001 it was released on CD from Silva Screen Records About 40 minutes in length this CD contains mono yet hi fidelity cuts and cues that were recorded in London Theme From The Fugitive 1 18 The Kimbles 2 48 Tragic Homecoming 3 53 Under Arrest 1 43 Lt Gerard 1 46 The Verdict Train Wreck 2 07 On The Run 1 57 The Life Of A Fugitive 1 27 Main Title Theme 39 Life On The Road 1 35 Main Theme Jazz Version 1 30 The One Armed Man s Name Is Fred Johnson 2 38 Brass Interlude 2 53 Sorrow 1 03 Dreams Of The Past 1 11 Youthful Innocence 1 35 Back On The Road 1 11 A New Love 2 16 Family Reunion 2 34 Watching And Waiting 1 33 Kimble vs The One Armed Man Hand To Hand 5 11 The Day The Running Stopped 2 12 Freedom And Finale 0 43 End Credits 1 09 Syndication Cable Edit The Fugitive was part of the original lineup on the Arts amp Entertainment Network A amp E beginning in February 1984 It ran until the summer of 1994 The show also appeared on the nationwide WWOR EMI Service and briefly on Nickelodeon s TV Land network in 2000 In February 2015 reruns of The Fugitive appeared on Decades a new Digital TV DTV subchannel network co owned by Weigel Broadcasting and CBS The Fugitive was seen as part of its Countdown to Decades in which all four seasons of The Fugitive was played in sequence 24 hours a day The two part finale was shown on Monday May 25 2015 at 5 am and 6 am ET Decades was available in over 45 of all US TV viewing households at that time including markets where CBS owned amp operated a DTV station 40 MeTV airs The Fugitive on late Sunday nights Early Monday mornings at 1 AM CT 2018 41 From July 2020 the series is being repeated in the United Kingdom on CBS Justice Remakes and spin offs EditFilm Edit The Fugitive 1993 Edit Main article The Fugitive 1993 film A feature film of the same name based on the series was directed by Andrew Davis and released by Warner Bros Pictures on August 6 1993 starring Harrison Ford as Kimble Tommy Lee Jones as Gerard now named Samuel instead of Philip and Andreas Katsulas as the one armed man now called Fredrick Sykes instead of Fred Johnson The movie s success came as Hollywood was embarking on a trend of remaking old television series into features In the film Kimble is portrayed as a prominent Chicago vascular surgeon instead of a small town Indiana pediatrician while Gerard is portrayed as a U S Marshal rather than a police lieutenant Kimble s wife is killed in an attempt on Kimble s own life rather than during a robbery attempt as in the TV series as the result of a conspiracy involving a pharmaceutical company called Devlin MacGregor by which the one armed man is employed However the film remained true to its source material in particular the notion that Kimble s kindness led him to help others even when it posed a danger to his freedom or physical safety The film also showed Gerard pursuing his own investigation into the murder as part of his pursuit of Kimble and coming up with his own doubts as to the case Roy Huggins who created The Fugitive for television is credited as executive producer of the film version At the time of the film s release Huggins told the Los Angeles Times The filmmakers and the people at Warners did a tremendously good job with this movie I don t really take any credit for it Wish I could 42 To coincide with the film s theatrical release NBC aired the show s first and last episodes in the summer of 1993 and later hosted the film s broadcast television premiere in 1996 Jones received the 1993 Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor The film was nominated for six other Academy Awards including Best Picture It also spawned a spin off U S Marshals in which Jones reprised his role as Gerard The motion picture was later developed into a parody film as well called Wrongfully Accused with Leslie Nielsen portraying the lead character Nirnayam 1995 Edit Main article Nirnayam 1995 film The Malayalam movie Nirnayam directed by Santosh Sivan follows the same storyline Television Edit The Fugitive 2000 Edit Main article The Fugitive 2000 TV series A short lived TV series remake CBS October 6 2000 May 25 2001 of the same name also aired starring Tim Daly as Kimble Mykelti Williamson as Gerard and Stephen Lang as the one armed man It was filmed in various places including Seattle Washington CBS cancelled the series after one season leaving a cliffhanger unresolved The Fugitive 2020 Edit Main article The Fugitive 2020 TV series A spinoff that was broadcast on the Quibi platform features Boyd Holbrook as a new fugitive blue collar worker Mike Ferro who is wrongly accused of setting off a bomb on a Los Angeles subway train He is relentlessly pursued by Detective Clay Bryce Kiefer Sutherland a legendary cop who is uncovering evidence that Mike may not be guilty 43 44 45 The Fugitive 2020 Edit A 2 part TV mini series Tobosha was broadcast on TV Asahi which stars Ken Watanabe as Dr Kazuki Kakurai in a plot that closely follows the 1993 film 46 See also Monster inspired by The Fugitive Bibliography EditProctor Mel 1995 The Official Fan s Guide to the Fugitive Stamford CT Longmeadow Press ISBN 978 0 681007 54 3 OCLC 31606751 Robertson Ed 1993 The Fugitive Recaptured The 30th Anniversary Companion to a Television Classic Introduction by Stephen King Foreword by Barry Morse Los Angeles CA Pomegranate Press Ltd ISBN 978 0 938817 34 5 Starman Ray 2006 TV Noir The Twentieth Century Troy NY Troy Bookmakers Press Theme and major chapters on film noir and TV noir related to the American TV program The FugitiveReferences Edit Harris Jay S ed 1978 TV Guide The First 25 Years New York New American Library p 123 ISBN 0 452 25225 3 a b Nominations Search Television Academy Archived from the original on 2015 05 27 Retrieved 2015 05 26 The Lies That Bind Sun Sentinel p 3 Archived from the original on 2014 05 04 Retrieved 2014 05 04 Nye Doug August 17 2007 Fugitive series now can be caught on DVD The Philadelphia Inquirer Philadelphia PA McClatchy Tribune News Service Archived from the original on July 23 2021 Retrieved April 19 2020 Biography David Janssen TV Guide com New York NY TV Guide Archived from the original on October 12 2015 Retrieved April 19 2020 The Evil Men Do Television drama Archived from the original on 2014 06 15 via YouTube a b c Robertson Ed 1993 The Fugitive Recaptured Universal City California Pomegranate Press p 27 ISBN 0 938817 34 5 The Fugitive season 1 Bailey F Lee Aronson Harvey 1 September 1972 The Defense Never Rests pp 18 20 ISBN 9780812814415 PMID 3482358 Archived from the original on 25 April 2023 Retrieved 2 January 2013 More than ten years later the Sheppard card would serve as a model for the popular television show The Fugitive a href Template Cite book html title Template Cite book cite book a journal ignored help Linder Douglas Dr Sam Sheppard Trials An Account Archived from the original on 7 November 2017 Retrieved 30 October 2017 a href Template Cite book html title Template Cite book cite book a website ignored help Green Paul 2018 Roy Huggins Creator of Maverick 77 Sunset Strip The Fugitive and The Rockford Files McFarland p 80 ISBN 978 1476613499 Burlingame Jon 1996 TV s Biggest Hits The story of television themes fromDragnettoFriends Schirmer Books p 134 ISBN 0 02 870324 3 Episode Guide for The Fugitive Internet Movie Database Archived from the original on 4 July 2010 Fugitive gets huge rating in last show Chicago Tribune 31 August 1967 p C 19 Pasternack Dan October 21 2004 Leonard Goldberg on The Fugitive series finale documentary Archive of American Television EmmyTVLegends org Archived from the original on 2021 11 17 Retrieved April 17 2013 Special Collector s Issue 100 Greatest Episodes of All Time TV Guide No June 28 July 4 1997 Brooks Tim Marsh Earle 2003 The Complete Directory to Prime Time Network and Cable TV Shows 1946 Present 8th ed New York NY Ballantine Books pp 1459 1460 ClassicTVHits com TV Ratings gt 1960 s Archived from the original on 2023 02 22 Retrieved 2023 02 27 ClassicTVHits com TV Ratings gt 1960 s Archived from the original on 2023 02 22 Retrieved 2023 02 27 Walter Spencer TV s Vast Grey Belt Television Magazine August 1967 55 Walter Spencer TV s Vast Grey Belt Television Magazine August 1967 56 TV Guide Names Top 50 Shows CBS News Archived from the original on 2012 09 04 Retrieved 2011 06 19 Bretts Bruce Roush Matt March 25 2013 Baddies to the Bone The 60 nastiest villains of all time TV Guide pp 14 15 The Fugitive Season 1 Volume 2 Box Art Archived from the original on 21 December 2007 The Fugitive Season 2 Volume 1 Box Art Archived from the original on 2 March 2008 The Fugitive Season 3 Volume 2 Archived from the original on 29 July 2009 The Fugitive Season 3 Volume 2 Archived from the original on 12 September 2009 The Fugitive Season 4 Volume 1 Archived from the original on 26 August 2010 The Fugitive Season 4 Volume 2 Archived from the original on 10 December 2010 a b The Fugitive bring him in CBS Paramount Announces 33 disc complete series The most wanted edition TVShowsOnDVD com Archived from the original on 4 March 2016 Retrieved 4 March 2016 a b The Fugitive new unlimited DVD re release run for The Complete Series TVShowsOnDVD com Archived from the original on 4 March 2016 Retrieved 4 March 2016 The Fugitive Season One Volume One Archived from the original on 2010 02 05 Retrieved 2010 12 07 The Fugitive Season One Volume Two Archived from the original on 2010 02 05 Retrieved 2010 12 07 The Fugitive Season Two Volume One Archived from the original on 2010 10 04 Retrieved 2010 12 07 The Fugitive Season Two Volume Two Archived from the original on 2010 02 05 Retrieved 2010 12 07 The Fugitive Season Three Volume One Archived from the original on 2010 02 05 Retrieved 2010 12 07 The Fugitive Season Three Volume Two Archived from the original on 2010 02 05 Retrieved 2010 12 07 The Fugitive The Fourth and Final Season Volume One Archived from the original on 2010 11 17 Retrieved 2010 12 07 The Fugitive The Fourth and Final Season Volume Two Archived from the original on 2011 01 30 Retrieved 2011 02 21 Decades opens daily time capsule today Archived from the original on 2015 09 24 Retrieved 2015 06 11 The Fugitive MeTV shows Archived from the original on 2018 02 28 Retrieved 2018 02 28 Braxton Greg 1993 08 06 The Fugitive A Thriller With Smarts The creator producer Roy Huggins idea which was made into a TV series was initially met with hostility in Hollywood The Los Angeles Times Retrieved 2023 08 07 The Fugitive Remake Starring Kiefer Sutherland and Boyd Holbrook Greenlit at Quibi Collider 17 September 2019 Archived from the original on 2019 09 21 Retrieved 2019 09 18 Kiefer Sutherland amp Boyd Holbrook to Star in The Fugitive For Quibi 17 September 2019 Archived from the original on 2019 09 22 Retrieved 2019 09 18 The Fugitive Kiefer Sutherland Boyd Holbrook Set for Quibi Series 17 September 2019 Archived from the original on 2019 11 14 Retrieved 2019 09 18 Ken Watanabe to star in Japanese remake of The Fugitive Archived from the original on 2022 05 01 Retrieved 2022 05 01 Further reading EditDeane Bill 2006 Following the Fugitive An Episode Guide And Handbook to the 1960s Television Series McFarland amp Company ISBN 978 0 786 42631 7 Liebenson Donald 29 August 2017 How The Fugitive s Heart Pumping Finale Changed TV Forever Vanity Fair examines the impact of the series final episode on its 50th anniversaryExternal links Edit nbsp Wikimedia Commons has media related to The Fugitive TV series nbsp Wikiquote has quotations related to The Fugitive 1963 TV series The Fugitive 1963 at IMDb Fugitive The Encyclopedia of Television Archived from the original on 2005 08 27 Retrieved 2005 09 06 The Fugitive 1963 TV com shows Archived from the original on 2012 07 29 Retrieved 2011 09 26 Explanation of Huggins approach Stephen J Cannell s Archive of American Television documentary dead link Fish Stanley The Fugitive in Flight Faith Liberalism and Law in a Classic TV Show examines the moral structure of the series Lodge Stephen Behind the scenes production photos Archived from the original on 2004 12 07 Collection of crew member Stephen Lodge set costumer A tongue in cheek parody website that portrays Devlic Macgregor Pharmaceuticals as if they actually exist in 2021 Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title The Fugitive 1963 TV series amp oldid 1173955614, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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