The F.B.I. A Quinn Martin Production

On September 19, 1965 at 8pm The F.B.I. premiered on ABC. I can still hear the announcer saying “THE F.B.I. A QUINN MARTIN PRODUCTION STARRING…” That was the way almost all of his productions started but it never seems complete to me without hearing the F.B.I. in front of it. Not too surprising I suppose since the show ran till September 8, 1974. An incredible run of 9 years. The star was Efrem Zimbalist, Jr. as Inspector Lewis Erskine and he was on the show the entire run. Being on a long running hit show was not new to Mr. Zimbalist. He was also one of the stars of 77 Sunset Strip as private detective Stuart Bailey and it ran from 1958 to 1964. He was on the entire run of that series too. If you were a fan of 77 Sunset Strip it probably felt like Stuart Bailey joined the F.B.I. The first year of the series tried to show Erskine at work and at home with his daughter Barbara. Later she was written out of the show to concentrate on the crimes that were being investigated. Many Special Agents came and went over the years but Erskine and Arthur Ward, the man Erskine reported to who was played by Philip Abbott, were the ones who were with the show the entire time.
This show was one of the jewels in ABC and QM Productions crowns. Quinn Martin must have mended some fences with the government since the Untouchables. He got the full backing of J. Edgar Hoover on the show and even got Hoover and Zimbalist together on the cover of TV Guide. Hoover helped bring the show closer to reality by allowing them to shoot some scenes at the F.B.I. building in Washington DC.
The real stars of the show were the cases that the F.B.I; worked on. They were taken straight out of the files of the F.B.I. They were never asked to tell if any parts of the show were fictionalized. The cases they worked on involved organized crime, Communist spies, counterfeiters and since this was the era of the Vietnam War debate they investigated radical bombings.
The show always portrayed the Federal Bureau of Investigation in a positive light. Inspector Erskine and his Special Agents were always in neatly pressed and tailored business suits. They were calm and cool in every situation. They showed almost no emotion at all during their investigations. They solved the crimes scientifically and methodically. Another program at that time did the same thing for the LAPD. That was the Jack Webb produced Dragnet. Dragnet was seen as campy and teenage viewers made that show a hit by watching to laugh at the police. Somehow The F.B.I. was able to avoid the campy label and got adult viewers to watch.
The show was really ahead of it’s time. Some episodes closed asking for information on the F.B.I.’s most wanted criminals. In 1968 they asked for information on James Earl Ray the man who shot Martin Luther King. This was all done before America’s Most Wanted which didn’t start airing till April of 1988.
ABC had a contract with Ford Motor Company. Since Ford was a sponsor on the show all of the F.B.I. Agents drove Fords.
The above TV Guide cover that I saw on TV Guide.com I chose because it is the only time that I saw them list the television schedule on the cover of the magazine.