Joseph Wambaugh
Encyclopedia
Joseph Aloysius Wambaugh, Jr. (born January 22, 1937, in East Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
East Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
East Pittsburgh is a borough in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, about southeast of the confluence of the Monongahela and the Allegheny rivers at Pittsburgh. The population in 1900 stood at 2,883, and in 1910, at 5,615. As of the 2010 census, the borough population was 1,822, having fallen from...

) is a bestselling American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 writer known for his fictional and non-fictional accounts of police
Police
The police is a personification of the state designated to put in practice the enforced law, protect property and reduce civil disorder in civilian matters. Their powers include the legitimized use of force...

 work in the United States. Several of his first novels were set in Los Angeles, California
Los Angeles, California
Los Angeles , with a population at the 2010 United States Census of 3,792,621, is the most populous city in California, USA and the second most populous in the United States, after New York City. It has an area of , and is located in Southern California...

, and the surrounding area, and featured Los Angeles police officers as protagonists.

Early life

The son of a police officer, Wambaugh joined the U.S. Marines at age 17 (an element he works into several of his novels) and married at 18.

Police career

Wambaugh received an Associate's degree
Associate's degree
An associate degree is an undergraduate academic degree awarded by community colleges, junior colleges, technical colleges, and bachelor's degree-granting colleges and universities upon completion of a course of study usually lasting two years...

 from Chaffey College
Chaffey College
Chaffey College is a public community college in the San Bernardino County city of Rancho Cucamonga, California, in the northern part of the community of Alta Loma. Chaffey provides students with different classes and programs, including business, science, the arts, history, philosophy,...

 and joined the Los Angeles Police Department
Los Angeles Police Department
The Los Angeles Police Department is the police department of the city of Los Angeles, California. With just under 10,000 officers and more than 3,000 civilian staff, covering an area of with a population of more than 4.1 million people, it is the third largest local law enforcement agency in...

 (LAPD) in 1960. He served 14 years, rising through the ranks from patrolman to detective sergeant. He also attended California State University, Los Angeles
California State University, Los Angeles
California State University, Los Angeles is a public comprehensive university, part of the California State University system...

, where he earned Bachelor of Arts
Bachelor of Arts
A Bachelor of Arts , from the Latin artium baccalaureus, is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate course or program in either the liberal arts, the sciences, or both...

 and Master of Arts
Master of Arts (postgraduate)
A Master of Arts from the Latin Magister Artium, is a type of Master's degree awarded by universities in many countries. The M.A. is usually contrasted with the M.S. or M.Sc. degrees...

 degrees.

Themes

Wambaugh's unique perspective on police work led to his first novel, The New Centurions
The New Centurions
The New Centurions is a 1972 crime drama film based on the novel by policeman turned author Joseph Wambaugh.It stars George C. Scott, Stacy Keach, Scott Wilson, Jane Alexander, Erik Estrada and James Sikking and was directed by Richard Fleischer....

, which was published early in 1971 to critical acclaim and popular success. The success of the early books happened while Wambaugh was still working in the detective division. He reportedly remarked, "I would have guys in handcuffs asking me for autographs."

Soon turning to writing full time, Wambaugh was prolific and popular starting in the 1970s. He mixed writing novels (The Blue Knight, The Choirboys
The Choirboys (book)
The Choirboys , a novel is a controversial 1975 work of fiction written by Los Angeles Police Department officer-turned-novelist Joseph Wambaugh...

, The Black Marble
The Black Marble
-Plot:Pragmatic Sgt. Natalie Zimmermann of the LAPD is paired with Sgt. Valnikov, a romantic detective of Russian origin who is going through a midlife crisis. They fall in love while solving the case of the kidnapping of a socialite's valuable pet dog...

) with nonfiction accounts of crime and detection, a.k.a. "true crime": The Onion Field
The Onion Field
The Onion Field is a 1973 nonfiction book by Joseph Wambaugh, a sergeant for the Los Angeles Police Department, chronicling the kidnapping of two plainclothes LAPD officers by a pair of criminals during an evening traffic stop and the subsequent murder of Officer Ian James Campbell.- Crime :On the...

. Later books included The Glitter Dome
The Glitter Dome
The Glitter Dome is a 1984 made-for-HBO film starring James Garner, Margot Kidder and John Lithgow. The film, based on the 1981 Joseph Wambaugh Hollywood-set homicide novel, was directed by Stuart Margolin, who also scored the film and played a supporting part. The movie was filmed in Vancouver,...

(a TV-movie adaptation starred James Garner
James Garner
James Garner is an American film and television actor, one of the first Hollywood actors to excel in both media. He has starred in several television series spanning a career of more than five decades...

 and John Lithgow
John Lithgow
John Arthur Lithgow is an American actor, musician, and author. Presently, he is involved with a wide range of media projects, including stage, television, film, and radio...

), The Delta Star
The Delta Star
The Delta Star is a novel by author Joseph Wambaugh first published in 1983. The book tells several stories of a group of police in the Rampart Division of the Los Angeles Police Department. The main characters include Detective Mario Villalobos and The Bad Czech.An excerpt of the first published...

,
and Lines and Shadows
Lines and Shadows
Lines and Shadows is a 1984 nonfiction book by Joseph Wambaugh, a sergeant for the Los Angeles Police Department, chronicling the activities of the Border Crime Task Force of the San Diego Police Department between October 1976 and April 1978....

.


In contrast to conventionally heroic fictional policemen, Wambaugh brought a gritty texture to his flawed police characters. Beginning with The Choirboys, Wambaugh changed his approach and began to use dark humor and outrageous incidents to emphasize the psychological peril inherent in modern urban police work. Many characters are referenced by often unflattering nicknames rather than given names, while other characters are given whimsical names to paint an immediate word portrait for the reader. Wambaugh became sharply critical of the command structure of the LAPD and individuals within it, and later, of the city government as well.

Beginning with The Black Marble in 1977, Wambaugh devoted at least half of a narrative to satirical, often biting, observations of the mores and extravagances of the Southern California
Southern California
Southern California is a megaregion, or megapolitan area, in the southern area of the U.S. state of California. Large urban areas include Greater Los Angeles and Greater San Diego. The urban area stretches along the coast from Ventura through the Southland and Inland Empire to San Diego...

 "rich and famous" lifestyle. The Black Marble parodied dog show
Conformation show
Conformation shows, also referred to as breed shows, are a kind of dog show in which a judge familiar with a specific dog breed evaluates individual purebred dogs for how well the dogs conform to the established breed type for their breed, as described in a breed's individual breed standard.A...

s and the fading lifestyle of "old" Pasadena
Pasadena, California
Pasadena is a city in Los Angeles County, California, United States. Although famous for hosting the annual Rose Bowl football game and Tournament of Roses Parade, Pasadena is the home to many scientific and cultural institutions, including the California Institute of Technology , the Jet...

, but not entirely unsympathetically. The Glitter Dome explored the pornographic film industry, The Delta Star delved into the politics and intrigue of the Nobel Prize
Nobel Prize
The Nobel Prizes are annual international awards bestowed by Scandinavian committees in recognition of cultural and scientific advances. The will of the Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, established the prizes in 1895...

 and scientific research, and The Secrets of Harry Bright savaged the Palm Springs
Palm Springs, California
Palm Springs is a desert city in Riverside County, California, within the Coachella Valley. It is located approximately 37 miles east of San Bernardino, 111 miles east of Los Angeles and 136 miles northeast of San Diego...

 lifestyle of wealthy people with second homes, inclinations to drugs and drinking, and restricted country club
Country club
A country club is a private club, often with a closed membership, that typically offers a variety of recreational sports facilities and is located in city outskirts or rural areas. Activities may include, for example, any of golf, tennis, swimming or polo...

s. With The Golden Orange, set in Orange County
Orange County, California
Orange County is a county in the U.S. state of California. Its county seat is Santa Ana. As of the 2010 census, its population was 3,010,232, up from 2,846,293 at the 2000 census, making it the third most populous county in California, behind Los Angeles County and San Diego County...

; Finnegan's Week, set in San Diego; and Floaters, set in San Diego within the events of the America's Cup
America's Cup
The America’s Cup is a trophy awarded to the winner of the America's Cup match races between two yachts. One yacht, known as the defender, represents the yacht club that currently holds the America's Cup and the second yacht, known as the challenger, represents the yacht club that is challenging...

 yacht racing, Wambaugh broadened the scope of his observations. He was a sharp observer of locations where he lived as a current celebrity himself.

In 1992, Wambaugh generated controversy with his nonfiction book, Echoes in the Darkness
Echoes in the Darkness
Echoes in the Darkness is the title of a 1987 book by crime writer Joseph Wambaugh which also became a made-for-TV movie the same year. The book details the lurid tale of the murder of Pennsylvania's Upper Merion Area High School English teacher Susan Reinert and her two children in 1979. The...

, based on the murder of Susan Reinert, a teacher in the Upper Merion School District in suburban Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Philadelphia is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the county seat of Philadelphia County, with which it is coterminous. The city is located in the Northeastern United States along the Delaware and Schuylkill rivers. It is the fifth-most-populous city in the United States,...

. Critics alleged that the author paid prosecutors in the trial of principal Jay C. Smith to funnel information to him before an arrest was made. Smith's conviction was overturned by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court on the grounds that the prosecution hid the existence of sand that could have supported Smith's case. Smith sued for release, but lost after a federal appeals court concluded that, despite his release, evidence of his guilt remained overwhelming. The earlier murder conviction of Smith's alleged co-conspirator, William Bradfield, remained undisturbed. Bradfield died in prison.

One of Wambaugh's most famous nonfiction books is The Blooding, which tells the story behind an early landmark case in which DNA fingerprinting
Genetic fingerprinting
DNA profiling is a technique employed by forensic scientists to assist in the identification of individuals by their respective DNA profiles. DNA profiles are encrypted sets of numbers that reflect a person's DNA makeup, which can also be used as the person's identifier...

 helped solve two murders in Leicester
Leicester
Leicester is a city and unitary authority in the East Midlands of England, and the county town of Leicestershire. The city lies on the River Soar and at the edge of the National Forest...

, England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

. The DNA evidence resulted in the arrest and conviction of Colin Pitchfork
Colin Pitchfork
Colin Pitchfork is a British criminal, the first convicted of murder based on DNA fingerprinting evidence, and the first to be caught as a result of mass DNA screening. Pitchfork raped and murdered two girls, the first in Narborough, Leicestershire, in November 1983, and the second in Enderby,...

.

In 2003, Fire Lover: A True Story, brought Wambaugh his second Edgar Award, for Best Crime Fact book. In 2004 he received an MWA Grand Master Award.

In the 2000s, Wambaugh also began teaching screenwriting
Screenwriting
Screenwriting is the art and craft of writing scripts for mass media such as feature films, television productions or video games. It is a freelance profession....

 courses as a guest lecturer for the theater department at the University of California San Diego.

Hollywood Station series

In 2006, he returned to fiction with the publication of Hollywood Station, his first book depicting life in the LAPD since The Delta Star
The Delta Star
The Delta Star is a novel by author Joseph Wambaugh first published in 1983. The book tells several stories of a group of police in the Rampart Division of the Los Angeles Police Department. The main characters include Detective Mario Villalobos and The Bad Czech.An excerpt of the first published...

(1983). Hollywood Station was highly critical of conditions caused by the federal consent decree
Consent decree
A consent decree is a final, binding judicial decree or judgment memorializing a voluntary agreement between parties to a suit in return for withdrawal of a criminal charge or an end to a civil litigation...

 under which the LAPD had to operate after the Rampart scandal
Rampart Scandal
The Rampart scandal refers to widespread corruption in the Community Resources Against Street Hoodlums anti-gang unit of the Los Angeles Police Department Rampart Division in the late 1990s. More than 70 police officers in the CRASH unit were implicated in misconduct, making it one of the most...

. In 2008 he followed it with Hollywood Crows, his first sequel, which featured many of the same characters. This was followed by Hollywood Moon in 2009 and Hollywood Hills in 2010.

The most commonly recurring characters in the series are Hollywood Nate, a cop who dreams of movie stardom; Flotsam and Jetsam, two cops who are avid surfers and always speak in a thick surfer lingo; and Compassionate Charlie, a sardonic, lazy night-watch detective.

The incidents that the various police characters are involved in are based on anecdotes Wambaugh collects from working police officers.

Film adaptations

Many of his books were made into feature films or TV-movies during the 1970s and '80s. The Blue Knight, a novel following the approaching retirement and last working days of aging veteran beat cop "Bumper" Morgan, was made into an Emmy-winning 1973 TV miniseries starring William Holden
William Holden
William Holden was an American actor. Holden won the Academy Award for Best Actor in 1954 and the Emmy Award for Best Actor in 1974...

. It was also adapted as a short-lived TV series starring George Kennedy. Wambaugh's realistic approach to police drama was highly influential in both film and television depictions (such as Hill Street Blues
Hill Street Blues
Hill Street Blues is an American serial police drama that was first aired on NBC in 1981 and ran for 146 episodes on primetime into 1987. Chronicling the lives of the staff of a single police precinct in an unnamed American city, the show received critical acclaim and its production innovations ...

) from the mid-70s onward.

Wambaugh was also involved with creating/developing the NBC series Police Story, which ran from 1973 to 1977. The anthology show covered the different aspects of police work (patrol, detective, undercover, etc.) in the LAPD with story ideas and characters supposedly inspired by off-the-record talks with actual police officers. At times, the show's characters also dealt with problems not usually seen or associated with typical TV cop shows, such as alcohol abuse, adultery and brutality. The show had a brief revival on ABC during the 1988-1989 season.

Wambaugh was also involved in the production of the acclaimed film versions of The Onion Field (1979) and The Black Marble (1980), both directed by Harold Becker. In 1981, he won an Edgar Award
Edgar Award
The Edgar Allan Poe Awards , named after Edgar Allan Poe, are presented every year by the Mystery Writers of America...

 from the Mystery Writers of America
Mystery Writers of America
Mystery Writers of America is an organization for mystery writers, based in New York.The organization was founded in 1945 by Clayton Rawson, Anthony Boucher, Lawrence Treat, and Brett Halliday....

 for his screenplay for the latter film. This was after The Choirboys film adaptation had met with poor critical and audience reception a few years earlier. Coincidentally, all three films featured performances by up-and-coming actor James Woods
James Woods
James Howard Woods is an American film, stage and television actor. Woods is known for starring in critically acclaimed films such as Once Upon a Time in America, Salvador, Nixon, Ghosts of Mississippi, Casino, and in the television legal drama Shark. He has won three Emmy Awards, and has gained...

.

Works

  • The New Centurions
    The New Centurions
    The New Centurions is a 1972 crime drama film based on the novel by policeman turned author Joseph Wambaugh.It stars George C. Scott, Stacy Keach, Scott Wilson, Jane Alexander, Erik Estrada and James Sikking and was directed by Richard Fleischer....

    (1971, novel)
  • The Blue Knight (1972, novel)
  • The Onion Field
    The Onion Field
    The Onion Field is a 1973 nonfiction book by Joseph Wambaugh, a sergeant for the Los Angeles Police Department, chronicling the kidnapping of two plainclothes LAPD officers by a pair of criminals during an evening traffic stop and the subsequent murder of Officer Ian James Campbell.- Crime :On the...

    (1973, nonfiction)
  • The Choirboys (1975, novel)
  • The Black Marble (1978, novel)
  • The Glitter Dome (1981, novel)
  • The Delta Star
    The Delta Star
    The Delta Star is a novel by author Joseph Wambaugh first published in 1983. The book tells several stories of a group of police in the Rampart Division of the Los Angeles Police Department. The main characters include Detective Mario Villalobos and The Bad Czech.An excerpt of the first published...

    (1983, novel)
  • Lines and Shadows
    Lines and Shadows
    Lines and Shadows is a 1984 nonfiction book by Joseph Wambaugh, a sergeant for the Los Angeles Police Department, chronicling the activities of the Border Crime Task Force of the San Diego Police Department between October 1976 and April 1978....

    (1984, nonfiction)
  • The Secrets of Harry Bright
    The Secrets of Harry Bright (novel)
    The Secrets of Harry Bright is the seventh novel written by former Los Angeles Police Department detective Joseph Wambaugh. Published in 1985, the book continues a pattern of Wambaugh crime fiction beginning with The Choirboys that uses black humor to explore the psychological effects of prolonged...

    (1985, novel)
  • Echoes in the Darkness
    Echoes in the Darkness
    Echoes in the Darkness is the title of a 1987 book by crime writer Joseph Wambaugh which also became a made-for-TV movie the same year. The book details the lurid tale of the murder of Pennsylvania's Upper Merion Area High School English teacher Susan Reinert and her two children in 1979. The...

    (1987, nonfiction)
  • The Blooding: The True Story of the Narborough Village Murders (1989, nonfiction)
  • The Golden Orange (1990, novel)
  • Fugitive Nights (1992, novel)
  • Finnegan's Week (1993, novel)
  • Floaters (1996, novel)
  • Fire Lover: A True Story (2002, nonfiction)
  • Hollywood Station (2006, novel)
  • Hollywood Crows (2008, novel)
  • Hollywood Moon (2009, novel)
  • Hollywood Hills (2010, novel)

External links

  • Official website
  • Hollywood Station Reviews at Metacritic
    Metacritic
    Metacritic.com is a website that collates reviews of music albums, games, movies, TV shows and DVDs. For each product, a numerical score from each review is obtained and the total is averaged. An excerpt of each review is provided along with a hyperlink to the source. Three colour codes of Green,...

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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