The Stars On TV: McCoy

On October 5, 1975 NBC aired a new show as part of its NBC Mystery Movie series. It was McCoy and it starred Tony Curtis. Mr. Curtis had tried for TV stardom before with British produced program The Persuaders. While that show was a hit in England it didn’t do well in America and was too expensive to be produced. Economics canceled that series.

NBC must have had some faith in McCoy to add it to the line up of the NBC Mystery Movie series. Mr. Curtis played McCoy, a professional gambler who had a very expensive lifestyle. He had hit an unlucky streak and was having a hard time maintaining that lifestyle. He decided he had to find another way to make a living in order to maintain the way he liked to live. He became a professional con man. He was hired by people, who had been taken by criminals, to set up sting operations to get all or most of their money back. McCoy’s fee was so huge that he was able to get the money back, pay other people that he hired to help him and still keep a large amount for himself. One of his main helpers was a nightclub comedian named Gideon Gibbs played by Roscoe Lee Browne. Roscoe Lee Browne as a nightclub comedian??? The show had a very brief run. You would never know by its air dates that it ran only four episodes. The last show was broadcast on March 28, 1976.

After this Mr. Curtis found some success on TV as a co-star when he joined the cast of Vegas as Philip Roth in 1978. The real star of the series was Robert Urich as detective Dan Tanna and, as Mr. Roth, Tony Curtis was his boss. After that series ended in 1981 MR. Curtis pretty much retired and kept busy with his favorite hobby of painting.