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The Fugitive is an American television series produced by QM Productions and United Artists Television that aired on ABC from 1963-1967. David Janssen starred as Dr. Richard Kimble, an innocent man from the fictional town of Stafford, Indiana, who is falsely convicted of his wife's murder and given the death penalty. En route to death row, Kimble's train derails and crashes, allowing him to escape and begin a cross-country search for the real killer, a "one-armed man" (played by Bill Raisch).
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Quotations
Then ... Fate moved its huge hand.
Spoken by William Conrad, the unseen narrator, just before the train went off the track.
Encyclopedia
The Fugitive is an American television series produced by QM Productions and United Artists Television that aired on ABC from 1963-1967. David Janssen starred as Dr. Richard Kimble, an innocent man from the fictional town of Stafford, Indiana, who is falsely convicted of his wife's murder and given the death penalty. En route to death row, Kimble's train derails and crashes, 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, Dr. Kimble is hounded by the authorities, most notably by Stafford Police Lieutenant Philip Gerard (Barry Morse).
The series premise was set up in the opening narration, but the full details about the crime were not offered in the pilot episode, which started with Kimble having been on the run for six months. Not until episode 14 "The Girl from Little Egypt" does the viewer finally get the full details of Richard Kimble's plight. Through a series of flashbacks the viewer can see the fateful night of Helen Kimble's death, and for the first time see "the one armed man."
The Fugitive aired for four seasons, and a total of 120 episodes were produced. The first three seasons were filmed in black and white, while the final season was in color.
Inspirations and Influence
The series was conceived by Roy Huggins and produced by Quinn Martin. It is a popular belief that the series was based in part on the real-life story of Sam Sheppard, a doctor accused of murdering his wife. Although convicted and imprisoned, Sheppard held forth the claim that his wife had been murdered by an intruder. Huggins has denied basing the series on Sheppard.
The concept also proved to be perfect for television programming. While shows like Route 66 had employed the same anthology-like premise of wanderers finding adventure in each new place they came to, The Fugitive answered two questions that had bedeviled many similar series: "Why doesn't the protagonist settle down somewhere?" and "Why is the protagonist trying to solve these problems himself instead of calling in the police?" The Fugitives premise answered these questions, and numerous other television series have imitated it, with the twists being mostly in the nature of the fugitives: a German shepherd (Run, Joe, Run 1974); a scientist with a monstrous alter ego (The Incredible Hulk, 1978); a group of ex-US Army Special Forces accused of a war crime they committed under orders (The A-Team, 1983); a husband and wife (Hot Pursuit, 1984); a young man afflicted with lycanthropy (Werewolf, 1987) and a reinstated detective (Life, 2007).
The plot device of an innocent man on the run from the police for a murder he did not commit and, simultaneously, pursuing the real killer, was a popular one with audiences, in particular the Alfred Hitchcock movies The 39 Steps, Saboteur and North by Northwest. An example of a doctor in hiding for a major crime had also been essayed by James Stewart as the mysterious Buttons in The Greatest Show on Earth.
In its debut season, The Fugitive was the 28th highest rated show in the US (with a 21.7 Rating), and it jumped to 5th in its second season (27.9). It fell out of the top 30 during the last two seasons. However, the show's finale retains the record for the highest percentage of American homes with television sets to watch the finale of a series, as 72% of American homes in 1967 with television sets tuned in to learn the fate of Dr. Richard Kimble.
The show also came away with other honours. In 1965, Alan Armer, the producer and head writer 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.
Characters
The series lead, and the only character seen in all 120 episodes, was Dr. Richard David Kimble (Janssen).
A respected small-town Indiana pediatrician, it was generally known around Stafford that Richard and his wife Helen had been having arguments prior to her death. Helen's pregnancy had ended in a miscarriage, and this event had also apparently rendered her infertile. The couple was devastated, but Helen refused to consider adopting children as Richard wanted. The night of Helen's murder, the Kimbles were heard arguing heatedly over this topic by their neighbours. Richard later went out for a drive to cool off; as he was returning home, he briefly glimpsed a one-armed man fleeing from his house. He then entered his home to find that Helen had been killed. No one had seen or heard Dr. Kimble go out for his drive, or seen him while he was out and he was convicted of Helen's murder. This story was enlarged upon in the first season episode: The Girl From Little Egypt.
After his escape from custody, Kimble moved from town to town, always trying to remain unobtrusive and unnoticed as he searched for the one-armed man while also trying to evade police capture. He usually adopted a nondescript alias and toiled at low-paying menial jobs (i.e. jobs that required no ID or security checks) in order to survive. Though Kimble tried to keep a low profile, circumstances often conspired to place him in positions where he would be forced to risk capture in order to help a deserving person he had met in his travels.
He is incredibly smart, usually able to perform well at any trade he encounters. He also displays considerable prowess in hand to hand combat.
The One-Armed Man
Like Kimble, the one-armed man (Raisch) used a variety of aliases while on the run - in the episode "A Clean And Quiet Town" he is credited as "Steve Kramer". In this episode, Kimble catches the one-armed man and takes him to the police, confessing his own identity but the police are under control of the Mob. In "The Ivy Maze" he poses as "Carl Stoker." He went by the name Fred Johnson in several episodes, notably "Escape Into Black," "Wife Killer" (where it is found he had donated blood for some money and wrote down his real name on a Red Cross card) and the two-part series finale "The Judgement." Thus Fred Johnson is generally regarded as his "real" identity by fans of the show, although a case could be made for his actual name being Gus Evans -- as revealed in "The Judgment", Gus Evans was the name the one-armed man used before he killed Helen Kimble, when he would presumably have had no need to adopt an alias.
Whatever his name, the one-armed man was rarely seen on The Fugitive, appearing in person in only nine episodes and also in a photograph in the episode "The Breaking Of The Habit" with Eileen Heckart. A shadowy figure, the one-armed man was a drifter who was both crafty and almost superhumanly strong. A number of times, he tips the police off as to Kimble's whereabouts.
Lt. Philip Gerard
While Johnson was being pursued by Kimble, Kimble was being pursued by the relentless police detective Lt. Philip Gerard (Morse). A formidably intelligent family man and a dedicated public servant, Gerard made for an interesting anti-hero: while his utter devotion to tracking down someone he believed to be a cold-blooded murderer made him thoroughly admirable, his unrelenting pursuit of an innocent man made him equally detestable.
Morse did portray Gerard as a man duty-bound to capture Kimble, but who did appear to have some doubts as to his guilt, something the shrewder screenwriters seemed to pick up. In one episode, when a woman witness remarks that Kimble killed his wife, Gerard simply replies "The law says he did", with a tone of doubt in his voice (though in "Wife Killer" he did state with certainty that the one-armed man did not exist and that Kimble was guilty, though this was presumably more to intimidate newspaper editor Herb Malone (Kevin McCarthy) than out of complete and utter conviction).
The angle of Gerard being gnawed by doubt about Kimble's guilt was augmented as Kimble rescues Gerard in episodes such as "Never Wave Goodbye," "Corner Of Hell," "Ill Wind," "The Evil Men Do," and "Stroke of Genius." "Evil" in particular played on the respect that had developed between the two men when Gerard is pursued by former Mob hitman Arthur Brame (James Daly) who was rescued from a runaway horse by Kimble; Kimble rescues Gerard from Brame, and in their dialogue Gerard makes clear he knows Kimble didn't hire a hitman; it is also interesting that Kimble escapes from Gerard but the lieutenant does not pursue Kimble, instead going after and killing Brame. In the epilogue Gerard explains his decision to Brame's wife Sharon (Elizabeth Allen) by noting Arthur's career as a killer while "Kimble, he's done the one murder he'll ever do," in reference to Helen Kimble's murder, but stated with little conviction on Gerard's part that Kimble in fact has ever killed anyone.
In "Nemesis", Kimble unintentionally kidnaps Gerard's young son Philip Junior (played by 12-year-old star-to-be 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 Junior questions whether or not he is guilty and his father openly admits that he could be wrong, though it changes nothing in that Kimble has to be brought in. The epilogue also hints at the respect Kimble has for Gerard the man. Earlier he'd confiscated some football cards which Phil Jr. was using in order to leave a trail; in the epilogue Kimble puts the remaining cards in an envelope and mails them back to the Gerards.
The doubt that gnaws at Gerard about Kimble's guilt begins to get the best of him in "The Judgement, Part One" (early on he tells LA Police Lt. Ralph Lee (Joseph Campanella), "I've lost a lot of things these last four years, starting with a prisoner the State told me to guard.") when he interrogates Johnson and finds discrepancies in his story, to where he grabs Johnson and demands to know if he killed Helen Kimble. There is a script error here: In an earlier episode, it says in a newspaper Kimble is reading, that Helen was killed on "SEPTEMBER 17th. In the final episode, Gerard asks Johnson, "Where were you on SEPTEMBER 19th, the day Helen Kimble was murdered? Later he captures Kimble, but in arresting him he actually apologizes to him for performing his duty ("I'm sorry. You just ran out of time") - building on the twin themes of Kimble's respect for Gerard and also his exhaustion with running, Kimble makes no effort to escape here.
There are parallels to be seen between Gerard's pursuit of Kimble and the pursuit of Jean Valjean by Inspector Javert in Les Miserables, though Javert never let go of his obsession to follow the letter of the law and hunt down his fugitive, even killing himself when he could not reconcile the justice Valjean dishes out. Gerard, on the other hand, was portrayed externally as a man like Javert, willing to even risk his own loyal followers to catch his man, but internally was 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'. 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." 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'" Gerard had originally been conceived as. "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!"
Others
William Conrad provided voice-over narration for each episode. Kimble's murdered wife Helen was portrayed in flashbacks in several episodes by Diane Brewster; in the episode "The Girl From Little Egypt" flashbacks illustrate the actual murder and circumstances surrounding it. Also seen very occasionally were Kimble's married sister, Donna Taft (Jacqueline Scott); and Gerard's superior at the Stafford police department, Captain Carpenter (Paul Birch). Only the character of Richard Kimble is present onscreen in every episode; off-screen narrator Conrad is also heard at the beginning and end of each episode, while a separate voice, the announcer, speaks the title of the episode and the names of the episode's guest stars in the opening teaser. This announcer (an uncredited Dick Wesson) also says, "The Fugitive" aloud at the end of the closing credits. Quinn Martin's previous show, The Untouchables, also contained both a narrator (Walter Winchell) and an announcer.
Gerard directly appears in only thirty-eight episodes, and Fred Johnson is seen in only nine episodes though he appears in the opening credits beginning with the show's second season.
He appeared only twice in the show's first season and one time apiece in the second and third seasons, but appeared in six fourth-season episodes, a reflection of new producer Wilton Schiller's desire to steer the show toward a more action-oriented direction. Kimble's brother-in-law Leonard Taft was played by several actors in different episodes, including Richard Anderson, James B. Sikking and Lin McCarthy.
The 120 episodes of The Fugitive offered a who's who of Hollywood character actors and upcoming talent. Many guest stars reappeared in multiple episodes. For the devoted viewer, this offered the entertaining fun of guessing whether a particular reappearance by an actor would represent a character who would aid Kimble or seek to turn him in. Mel Proctor's book, The Official Fan's Guide to The Fugitive, lists all the actors and their episode numbers as Appendix 5. It is a daunting list of accomplished, well-known talent.
Musical score
Series creator Huggins insisted that Janssen star, Quinn Martin produce and Pete Rugolo compose the music for The Fugitive. 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. However, only a fraction of all the music heard throughout the series was original Rugolo music. As was the practice for the times, 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, a keen listener could find himself listening to a cue from the Outer Limits series during the climactic final episode of The Fugitive. Numerous cues from The Twilight Zone episode "The Invaders" are used to strong effect throughout the series, notably in the climax of the episode "The Witch." 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. There was also an original "Dragnet"-type theme for Lt. Gerard.
A soundtrack issue containing the key music Rugolo wrote and recorded for the series is now available 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.
For the release of Season 2, Volume 1, entirely new musical scores (created on synthesizer and composed by Mark Heyes, with additional contributions by Sam Winan and Ron Komie) were done to replace the tracked music that had been used for original and rerun broadcasts, syndication and earlier home video releases. CBS/Paramount has yet to offer any detailed explanation for the music replacement, though a on the Film Music Society's web site suggests that the use of several cues from the Capitol Music Library that may have been difficult or impossible to clear could have been the cause. Many fans of the original score wrote letters of protest and boycotted this release with the hope that CBS/Paramount would fix this debacle by reissuing the collection with all of the original music intact, or only the specific cues in dispute replaced.
On 17 Feb 2009, CBS/Paramount announced a program to issue replacement discs for Season 2 Volume 1, with much of the original music restored. This was a significant effort by CBS to mollify outraged fans. While this was a step in the right direction, many fans concluded that the replacement discs were too little too late. Several episodes still had major portions of their original scores ripped out and replaced by too-loud Heyes compositions. Incredibly, many of the missing cues were clearly owned outright by CBS. These cues (correctly) appeared in some scenes, yet were needlessly replaced in others, reflecting an overcautious CBS Legal Department whose music-replacement rules had been inconsistently applied.
Final episode
The final episode of the series aired on Tuesday, August 22, and Tuesday, August 29, both in 1967, with a two-part episode entitled, "The Judgment."
In the story, the one-armed man, Fred Johnson, is arrested in a bar. The event, read by Kimble in a newspaper, is the catalyst for the turn of events that will follow. By the time we get to the second part of the story, Dr. Kimble has been captured by Gerard in Los Angeles and is being transported back to Indiana. During the lengthy train trip, Kimble persuades the detective to provide him one final opportunity to catch Johnson.
The clue he follows is a bail bond slip allegedly signed by Kimble's brother-in-law, Leonard Taft. Kimble and Gerard follow leads and head to an abandoned amusement park, where Kimble has a dramatic confrontation on a carnival tower with Johnson. This segment was filmed at Pacific Ocean Park in Santa Monica. In the struggle, Johnson gains the upper hand and, finally admitting he killed Kimble's wife, is about to kill the fugitive to complete the task he started five years before. At this crucial point, Gerard shoots him dead from long range with a rifle. Kimble is eventually cleared of all charges. In the final scene of the episode and the series, an exonerated Kimble shakes hands with Gerard while leaving a courthouse and walks off toward his new life, as narrator Conrad intones: "Tuesday, August 29: The day the running stopped." The final episode on August 29 was interrupted or not shown in some parts of the country due to local baseball telecasts. "The Judgment, Part 2", was shown in those markets the following week. The William Conrad voice over was changed to "Tuesday, September 5, The day the running stopped" (this is the VA used on the VHS version).
Part two of the finale brought in 30 million viewers (72 percent of American homes with television sets at that time). While the November 21, 1980 "Who Shot J.R." episode of Dallas, and the February 28, 1983 final episode of M*A*S*H, "Goodbye, Farewell and Amen," had more viewers, the final hour of the Fugitive retains the record for the highest percentage of homes with television sets to watch the finale.
Legacy
The theme of one or more people on the run, criss-crossing America and getting involved in the personal lives of the people they meet, has become the basis of many similar TV shows.
These have included:
The A-TeamAlias Smith and JonesBrandedThe Guns of Will SonnettHot PursuitThe ImmortalThe Incredible Hulk (in this case the pursuer is a reporter)The Invaders (made by the same people who made The Fugitive, but this time the hero is more of a pursuer than a man pursued)Kung FuThe Life and Times of Grizzly AdamsA Man Called ShenandoahMonster (manga)Planet of the ApesThe PretenderPrison BreakQuantum Leap (although in this case the man is not on the run, he bounces about in time getting involved with and solving people's problems while looking for a way to return to his own time)RenegadeRun, Buddy, RunRun for Your LifeRunawayRun, Joe, RunStarmanThen Came BronsonTwoWerewolf
In addition, British heavy metal band Iron Maiden's 1992 album Fear of the Dark features a song based on the show entitled The Fugitive.
1993 film
The Fugitive, a feature film based on the series, was released in 1993, starring Harrison Ford as Kimble, Tommy Lee Jones as Gerard (now named "Samuel" instead of "Philip" and a U.S. Marshal rather than a police lieutenant) and Andreas Katsulas as the one-armed man (now called Fred Sykes instead of Fred Johnson). The movie's success came as Hollywood was embarking on a trend of remaking old television series into features. 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 liberty or to his physical safety.
Gerard and his team of Marshals returned in the film U.S. Marshals, played by the same actors. Even though it was not a sequel, it had a similar plotline of an innocent man evading police to prove his innocence.
To coincide with the theatrical release, NBC aired the show's first and last episodes in the summer of 1993, and later hosted the film's broadcast premiere in 1996. Tommy Lee Jones also received the 1993 Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor.
2000 TV remake
A short-lived TV series remake (CBS, 2000-2001) of the same name also aired, filmed in Everett, Washington starring Tim Daly as Kimble, Mykelti Williamson as Gerard, and Stephen Lang as the one-armed man. CBS canceled the series after one season with a total of 22 episodes. The show was the very first lead in to CSI: Crime Scene Investigation on Friday nights, which became a hit when it debuted the same year. This incarnation was produced by Warner Bros. Television, the TV division of Warner Bros. Entertainment which produced the 1993 film.
Home Video
Prior to home video, The Fugitive was part of the original lineup on the "Arts & Entertainment Network", commonly known as A&E, beginning in February 1984. It ran until the summer of 1994. The show also appeared on the nationwide WWOR EMI Service, on the former KTZZ-TV (now KMYQ) in the Seattle area and briefly on the TV Land network in 2000 before disappearing from television altogether.
A total of 42 episodes have been released on VHS by NuVentures Video, with selected shows from the 42 later issued by Republic Pictures. 12 episodes were also released on laserdisc.
Currently, Republic Pictures and CBS Paramount Television own the rights to the series (while CBS themselves now own the copyright); CBS Home Entertainment (with distribution by Paramount) 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 and uncompressed, re-mastered from the original negatives and 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, 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. Season 2, Volume 1 was released on June 10, 2008. 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 above for details.)
| DVD Name | Ep # | Release Date |
|---|
| Season 1, Volume 1 | 15 | August 14, 2007 | | Season 1, Volume 2 | 15 | February 26, 2008 | | Season 2, Volume 1 | 15 | June 10, 2008 | | Season 2, Volume 2 | 15 | March 31, 2009 | | Season 3, Volume 1 | 15 | TBA | | Season 3, Volume 2 | 15 | TBA | | Season 4, Volume 1 | 15 | TBA | | Season 4, Volume 2 | 15 | TBA | |
Spoofs and parodies
Spoofs and parodies of The Fugitive appeared in many TV shows and movies, including Alf, The Simpsons, Get Smart ("Don't Look Back"), It's Garry Shandling's Show and the film Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back. On Late Night With David Letterman, Chris Elliott played the eponymous character in a skit called "The Fugitive Guy."
MAD magazine published a satire called "The Phewgitive" in its 89th issue (September 1964).
On an episode of a variety show, the late actor-turned-comedian Frank Gorshin once parodied The Fugitive in a diner spoof by ordering a cup of coffee--to go.
In one episode of the 2000 TV series remake, titled "DrRichardKimble.com," there is a scene that shows a series of wanted posters. One of the posters is a cameo of none other than Dr. Sam Sheppard, the Ohio physician who was imprisoned for killing his wife in 1954 and who most people believe was the real life inspiration for the TV series.
David Lynch included a one-armed man in Twin Peaks as an homage to Fred Johnson. The one-armed man's name is Phillip Michael Gerard, a reference to Lieutenant Philip Gerard in The Fugitive. Coincidentally, CBS now owns the rights to both Twin Peaks and The Fugitive - in both cases with Republic Pictures.
One episode of Saturday Night Live featured a skit entitled The Liberal, set during the ultra-Conservative era of the late 1980s, where the last known Liberal is being hunted down relentlessly.
At the beginning of a series two episode of Life on Mars DC Chris Skelton has a fear of going to prison for murdering his wife even though he does not have one. DI Sam Tyler believes he means Harrison Ford even though he knows it is too early.
In an episode of the TV series Kappa Mikey, Mikey Simon is accused of stealing an invisible coat, although he claims that it was stolen by the 'one armed man.' At the end of the episode, the one-armed man is revealed to have merely had one arm under the coat, making it seem as though he only had one arm.
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