Adam-12
Adam-12 is an American television police procedural drama that follows Los Angeles Police Department officers Pete Malloy and Jim Reed as they ride the streets of Los Angeles in their patrol unit, 1-Adam-12.
The series was created by Robert A. Cinader and Jack Webb, the latter of whom also created Dragnet. It starred Martin Milner and Kent McCord and purported to realistically capture a typical day in the life of police officers. The show ran from September 21, 1968, through May 20, 1975, and helped to introduce police procedures and jargon to the general public in the United States.
Locations
Adam-12's radio call sign identified it as a Central Division unit serving Downtown Los Angeles, but the show actually featured the fledgling LAPD Rampart Division station at 2710 West Temple Street as the setting for the series. This was either a production creative decision or an LAPD bureaucratic decision to showcase a new modern facility rather than the much older Central Division police station.Many of the filming locations were in the San Fernando Valley ; and the garage used tow trucks from the North Hollywood Division, close to Universal Studios, which co-produced the show with Mark VII Limited. The Temple Street building was closed in 2008, as a newer and larger station now houses the Rampart Division; the old building is being renovated to serve as headquarters for LAPD's Metro Division, an elite reserve unit that includes counterterrorism and SWAT platoons.
Name
The designation "1-Adam-12" is a combination of three elements. The first element indicates the unit's LAPD division. The second element indicates the type of unit. The third element identifies the patrol car's reporting district. Therefore, the one in 1-Adam-12 means the patrol car operates in Division 1. LAPD assigns two-person units the letter "A". In the LAPD phonetic alphabet, the letter "A" is spoken as "Adam". The third element is the patrol car's assigned reporting district. In the program, the Rampart Division, Division 2, portrayed the Central Division, Division 1, so in reality the unit's call sign should have been 2-Adam-12. As all LAPD reporting districts are odd-numbered, there was never an actual patrol car with the call sign of 1-Adam-12.Premise
Adam-12 was a realistic police drama which followed two officers of the Los Angeles Police Department: veteran Police Officer II Pete Malloy, Badge 744, and his rookie partner, probationary Police Officer I Jim Reed, Badge 2430. Each episode of the series was based on actual cases, with names changed to protect the innocent, and covered a variety of incidents that the officers encountered during a shift, from the tragic to the trivial. The series' first episode was filmed in September 1967, a year before the pilot was picked up. It was directed by Jack Webb.In episode 1, Reed is less than a week out of the prestigious Los Angeles Police Academy and is eager to begin his career. Three weeks earlier, Malloy's patrol partner and friend had been killed in a warehouse. The reason for them being in the warehouse is never mentioned; Malloy is deeply saddened, to the extent that he plans to resign from the force. Watch commander Lieutenant Moore was Malloy's first training officer seven years earlier, and he assigns Malloy to take Reed the rookie out for his first patrol on Malloy's final shift. Reed shows tremendous potential on his first night on the job, but Malloy realizes that his new partner has plenty to learn, and the veteran officer decides to stay on the job and guide Reed during his nine-month probationary period.
Reed's probationary period is played out during the first and second seasons, after which he is promoted to a full officer. Reed and Malloy remain partners. In later seasons, Malloy and Reed began patrolling other beats of Los Angeles, including the Los Angeles International Airport, the Los Angeles Harbor, the Foothill District, the West Valley area, Venice, Van Nuys, Hollywood, Rampart, and North Hollywood. Several episodes featured the officers working with other rookie officers, with guest actors playing these one-time characters. Some episodes had Reed serving as the training officer, whereas Malloy had been promoted to the rank of a Senior Lead Officer who coordinates patrols in many neighborhoods and works as the acting shift supervisor.
Malloy displays a "Distinguished Expert" shooting medal, Reed displays a "Sharpshooter" medal.
Malloy and Reed reported to Shift Supervisor William "Mac" MacDonald, who occasionally took a black-and-white command cruiser Mac's call sign was 1-L-20 into the field. Reed once questioned why Malloy had not taken the sergeant's exam, as he would have rated higher than Mac did. Malloy related he preferred working patrol on the street to supervision. Malloy later showed he could supervise when Mac was ill, and Malloy filled in.
Several of their fellow officers were recurring characters; the most frequent were Jerry Woods, Ed Wells, Detective Sgt Jerry Miller, and Officer Brinkman. Shaaron Claridge voiced the dispatcher and was a dispatcher for the LAPD in real life.
The personal lives of Malloy and Reed came up on occasion and were always tied in to their duties. Malloy is a bachelor who has at least five girlfriends during the course of the series, while Reed is married to a woman named Jean ; in Season 2 he becomes a father.
Cultural impact
The police vehicles were central characters in that "mobile patrol units associated with the black and white units made famous in such television shows as Adam-12. It was one of the shows that portrayed "the professionalism of the officers and police departments". Ronald Wayne Rodman pointed out that the theme of Adam-12 referred to a "military style topic while portraying a sense of contemporary action". Douglas Rushkoff noted, "Adam-12 also marked last gasp of the righteous style of cop TV." Their set was not a squad room or an office, but the actors "watched the changes in American culture through the windshield of their squad car".In 1999, Mattel paid homage to Adam-12 by producing a die-cast toy police car based on the series a part of their "Star Car" series.
In The Matrix Reloaded, Agent Johnson stands on a bridge by a police car and the call comes over the radio, "1-Adam 12" as an homage to the show.
Other notable actors and actresses
Episode 2, "Log 141: The Color TV Bandit", stars Cloris Leachman and Melody Patterson.Episode 8, "Log 72: El Presidente" guest-stars James Sikking, later of Hill Street Blues fame and other various character roles, as an armed robber.
Episode 10, "Log 132: Producer", stars Karen Black and James McEachin. McEachin also appeared in five additional episodes, each time in a different role, as well as several episodes of Emergency! as a Sheriff's Detective.
Episode 16, "Log 62: Grand Theft Horse?", guest-stars Tim Matheson as a horse thief.
Episode 19, "Log 51: A Jumper, Code 2" stars Hal Smith of The Andy Griffith Show.
Episode 22, "Log 152: A Dead Cop Can't Help Anyone", stars Barry Williams.
Episode 25, "Log 92: Tell Him He Pushed Back a Little Too Hard" guest-stars Dick Sargent and Jacqueline Scott.
Episode 26, "Log 22: So This Little Guy Goes into This Bar, and..." guest-stars Harry Dean Stanton as a welfare hustler.
Episode 43, "Log 24: A Rare Occasion" stars David Cassidy of The Partridge Family.
Episode 53, "Loan Sharks" guest-stars Eve McVeagh, film actress of High Noon, Tight Spot, and television series The Clear Horizon and Faraway Hill.
Episode 57, "Cigarettes, Cars, and Wild, Wild Women" features Tony Dow as a young US marine who is a victim of a car theft ring.
Episode 58, "Log 55: Missing Child" guests-stars Jodie Foster as the playmate of a missing child.
Episode 60, "Log 105, Elegy for a Pig" guest-stars Mark Goddard as Malloy's friend and police academy classmate, Officer Tom Porter; and shows a great deal of Malloy's backstory, as well as what happens when an LAPD officer is killed in the line of duty.
Episode 66, "Log 115: Gang War" guests-stars Trini Lopez as a local Latino priest who tries to help the officers prevent a rumble between two Latino gangs. Lopez would also appear the following year as "Steve Hernandez" in Episode 95, :"The Parole Violator".
Episode 69, "Log 66: The Vandals" guest-stars Robert I. Clarke as a father of a teenage girl.
Episode 77, "Log 88 - Reason to Run" guest-stars Randolph Mantooth as "Neil Williams"; and in an Emergency! cross-over episode as paramedic "John Gage", Episode 106, "Lost and Found" This episode also guest-starred Linda Kaye Henning of Petticoat Junction.
Episode 78, "Log 125: Safe Job" guest-stars Larry Linville as a police detective whom Malloy and Reed assist on an ongoing case.
Episode 80, "The Million Dollar Buff", guests-stars Lindsay Wagner as a jewelry counter attendant.
Episode 81, "The Grandmother" guest-starred Ozzie Nelson of The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet fame. He also directed this episode.
Episode 82, "The Radical" guest-starred Robert Conrad as Paul Ryan of the DA's office. This episode was a crossover with Conrad's series, The D.A.
Episode 91, "The Pickup" guest-starred Barbara Hale of Perry Mason and Kathy Garver of Family Affair.
Episode 92, "Tell him he pushed a little too hard" guest-starred Dick Sargent Murders neighbor over dispute sharing a boat.
Episode 98, "Sub-Station" guest-starred Frank Sinatra, Jr., portraying a disturbed man who takes a stewardess hostage and demands a meeting with a Hollywood director. He would also guest-star in a later season episode as an officer in the same division.
Episode 100, "Who Won" guest-starred Dick Clark of American Bandstand and Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve fame as Benson, the drag strip owner.
Episode 103, "Dirt Duel" guest-starred Edd Byrnes of 77 Sunset Strip and Micky Dolenz of The Monkees as bikers.
Episode 104, "The Late Baby" guest-stars both Tina Sinatra and Frank Sinatra, Jr. as unrelated characters.
Episode 108, "Badge Heavy" features Jack Bailey, host of Queen for a Day and Truth or Consequences.
Episode 131, "Venice Division" guest-stars Laurette Spang of the original Battlestar Galactica as a woman who fears for her life after receiving obscene phone calls.
Episode 137, "Northwest Division" guest-stars Johnny Whitaker of Family Affair as a juvenile on a minibike. In addition, Martin Milner's real-life son Andrew played Whitaker's stunt double in the minibike chase scene.
Episode 150, "Clinic on Eighteenth Street" guest-stars Sharon Gless, later of Cagney & Lacey fame and most recently co-star of Burn Notice on USA Network and Frank Sinatra Jr. in his third role on the show.
Episode 158, "X-Force" guest-stars Paul Gleason as a father of a kidnapped girl. Gleason guest-starred in other various roles throughout the series.
Episode 159, "Alcohol" guest-stars Dick Van Patten, later of Eight Is Enough fame, as a belligerent drunk who believes himself to be Albert Einstein.
Episode 164, "Victim of the Crime" features Martin Milner's real-life daughter Amy Milner as Debbie McMahon, the shopkeeper's daughter.
Episode 170, "Operation Action" features Kent McCord's real-life daughter Kristen McCord as a child named Debra, who is playing hopscotch when Reed pulls up behind Malloy's abandoned car.
Episode 171, "Gus Corbin", guest-stars Mark Harmon, the star of NCIS since 2003.
Police cars
The production of the program involved showing all aspects of correct police procedures, and "Webb wanted the vehicle itself to be considered a character." The show specifically centered on police radio cars and helped reinforce "the sound of radio as an anti-crime technology." The police vehicles used in the production of show were purchased from local dealerships and outfitted by the prop department to LAPD cruiser specs.- 1967 Plymouth Belvedere - pilot
- 1968 Plymouth Belvedere - season one
- 1969 Plymouth Belvedere - seasons two and three
- 1971 Plymouth Satellite - season four
- 1972 AMC Matador - seasons five through seven
Connections to other Mark VII shows
Dragnet, Adam-12, and Emergency! take place in the same universe and depict different aspects of the public safety infrastructure of Los Angeles, California. There are several "crossover" episodes on each series with characters from other Mark VII shows.Officers Pete Malloy and Jim Reed appear on the Dragnet episode "Internal Affairs: DR-20", The D.A. episode "The People vs. Saydo" and the Emergency! pilot movie, "The Wedsworth-Townsend Act". Sergeant MacDonald appears on the Dragnet episode "Personnel: The Shooting". The episode "Lost And Found" was set at Rampart General Hospital and featured the Emergency! cast. However, during an Emergency! episode, Adam-12 is shown as a TV show that the paramedics like to watch, causing somewhat of a paradox between the shows.
Several years after Adam-12 was cancelled, Kent McCord was signed to appear in a planned third series of Dragnet playing Sgt. Friday's partner, but the project was cancelled due to Jack Webb's sudden death in December, 1982; since none of the scripts Webb wrote for the project were ever produced or released, it is not clear if he intended McCord to play a different character or to revive the Jim Reed character.
Other television appearances
Milner and McCord made cameo appearances as their Adam-12 characters in various episodes of the fifth season of Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In.Episodes
Home media
released Season 1 of Adam 12 on DVD in Region 1 on August 23, 2005.In fall 2008, Shout! Factory acquired the distribution rights through an agreement with Universal. They have subsequently released the remaining 6 seasons, with season 7 packaging titled "The Final Season".
In Region 4, Umbrella Entertainment has released the first two seasons on DVD in Australia.