Tightrope (TV series)
Encyclopedia
Tightrope is an American crime drama series that aired on CBS
CBS
CBS Broadcasting Inc. is a major US commercial broadcasting television network, which started as a radio network. The name is derived from the initials of the network's former name, Columbia Broadcasting System. The network is sometimes referred to as the "Eye Network" in reference to the shape of...

 from September 1959 to September 1960. Produced by Russell Rouse
Russell Rouse
Russell Rouse was an American screenwriter, director, and producer who is noted for the "offbeat creativity and originality"of his screenplays and for film noir movies and television episodes produced in the 1950s....

 and Clarence Greene
Clarence Greene
Clarence Greene was an American screenwriter and film producer who is noted for the "offbeat creativity and originality of his screenplays and for film noir movies and television episodes produced in the 1950s.-Career:...

 in association with Screen Gems
Screen Gems
Screen Gems is an American movie production company and subsidiary company of Sony Pictures Entertainment's Columbia TriStar Motion Picture Group that has served several different purposes for its parent companies over the decades since its incorporation....

, the series stars Mike Connors
Mike Connors
Mike Connors is an American actor best known for playing detective Joe Mannix in the CBS television series, Mannix. Before that, he had played a crime-fighting investigator, wielding a .38 handgun hidden in his back, in another CBS series, Tightrope.-Early life:Connors was born Krekor Ohanian in...

 as an undercover agent named "Nick" who was assigned to infiltrate criminal gang
Criminal gang
A criminal gang may be:* Prison gang* Street gang* gangs within organized crime* Outlaw motorcycle club...

s. The show was to have originally been titled Undercover Man but it was changed before going to air.

Synopsis

Mike Connors' character would narrate the episode, echoing film noir
Film noir
Film noir is a cinematic term used primarily to describe stylish Hollywood crime dramas, particularly those that emphasize cynical attitudes and sexual motivations. Hollywood's classic film noir period is generally regarded as extending from the early 1940s to the late 1950s...

 technique. Police often did not know that Nick was working for the law, thus he was in danger from both the good guys and the bad guys. A special gimmick was that in addition to a gun in a shoulder holster, he carried a second gun snubnosed revolver
Snubnosed revolver
A snubnosed revolver has a barrel length of less than three inches. It was a popular type of firearm with undercover police officers due to its compact size and ease of handling...

 in a holster behind his back; he was often searched by both cops and bad guys, but they stopped searching after finding the first gun.

Guest stars included Jack Albertson
Jack Albertson
Jack Albertson was an American character actor dating to vaudeville. A comedian, dancer, singer, and musician, Albertson is perhaps best known for his roles as Manny Rosen in The Poseidon Adventure , Grandpa Joe in Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, Amos Slade in the 1981 animated film The Fox...

, Raymond Bailey
Raymond Bailey
Raymond Thomas Bailey was an American actor on the Broadway stage, movies, and television. He is best known for his role as wealthy banker, Milburn Drysdale, in the television series The Beverly Hillbillies....

, Barbara Bain
Barbara Bain
Millicent Fogel , known professionally as Barbara Bain, is an American actress.-Early life:Bain was born in Chicago. She graduated from the University of Illinois with a bachelor's degree in sociology. She moved to New York City, where she was a dancer and high fashion model. Bain studied with...

, Whit Bissell
Whit Bissell
Whitner Nutting Bissell , better known as Whit Bissell, was an American actor.-Early life:Born in New York City, Bissell was the son of prominent surgeon Dr. J. Dougal Bissell. He trained with the Carolina Playmakers, a theatrical organization associated with the University of North Carolina at...

, Madge Blake
Madge Blake
Madge Blake was an American character actress best remembered for her role as Aunt Harriet Cooper on ABC's Batman TV series of the 1960s.-Early life:...

, Whitney Blake
Whitney Blake
Whitney Blake was an American film and television actress, director and producer.Blake was born as Nancy Ann Whitney in 1926 in Eagle Rock, Los Angeles, California, the first child of Martha Mae Wilkerson and Harry Whitney...

, Neville Brand
Neville Brand
Neville Brand was an American television and movie actor.-Early life:Neville Brand was born in Illinois. He was born to Leo and Helen Brand as one of seven children. Leo, was an electrician and bridge building steel worker in Detroit, where Neville was raised...

, Paul Burke
Paul Burke (actor)
Paul Burke was an American actor best known for his lead roles in two 1960s ABC television series, Naked City and Twelve O'Clock High...

, Jean Byron
Jean Byron
Jean Byron was an American film, television, and stage actress. She is best known for the role of Natalie Lane, Patty Lane's mother in The Patty Duke Show.-Early life and career:...

, Anthony Caruso
Anthony Caruso (actor)
Anthony Caruso was an American character actor in over 100 American films, usually playing villains, including the First Season of Walt Disney's Zorro as Don Juan Ortega...

, Mary Castle
Mary Castle
Mary Ann Castle was an American actress of early film and television whose personal problems destroyed her once burgeoning career. Her best known role was as female detective Frankie Adams in the syndicated western series, Stories of the Century, which aired from 1954 to 1955.-Early years:Castle...

, Russ Conway
Russ Conway (actor)
Russ Conway was a Canadian-American character actor who appeared on film and television between 1947 and 1975.-Early years:...

, Ellen Corby
Ellen Corby
Ellen Corby was an American actress. She is most widely remembered for the role of "Grandma Esther Walton" on the CBS television series The Waltons, for which she won three Emmy Awards...

, Jerome Cowan
Jerome Cowan
Jerome Palmer Cowan was an American film and television actor. At eighteen he joined a travelling stock company, shortly afterwards enlisting in the navy in World War I. After the war he returned to the stage and became a vaudeville headliner, then gained success on the New York stage...

, Walter Coy
Walter Coy
Walter Darwin Coy was an American stage, radio, film, and, principally, television actor, originally from Great Falls, Montana. He was best known for narrating the NBC western anthology series, Frontier, which aired early Sunday evenings in the 1955-1956 season.-Career:Coy performed on Broadway...

, Dennis Cross
Dennis Cross
Dennis Cross was an American actor who was the lead star of the syndicated television series The Blue Angels, fictional stories of daredevil United States Navy pilots which aired from 1960-1961...

, Donna Douglas
Donna Douglas
Donna Douglas is an American actress best known for her role as Elly May Clampett, in the long-running television series The Beverly Hillbillies.-Early life:...

, Jack Elam
Jack Elam
William Scott "Jack" Elam was an American film actor best known for his numerous roles as villains in Western films and, later in his career, comedies .-Early life:...

, Ross Elliott
Ross Elliott
Ross Elliott was an American television and film character actor. He began his acting career with Orson Welles in Mercury Theatre, where he performed in Welles' famed radio program The War of the Worlds....

, Douglas Fowley
Douglas Fowley
Douglas Fowley was an American movie and television actor.Fowley was born Daniel Vincent Fowley in The Bronx, New York. The 5'11" actor is probably best remembered for his role as the movie director Roscoe Dexter in Singin' in the Rain . The actor appeared in over 240 films and later in dozens of...

, Bruce Gordon
Bruce Gordon (actor)
Bruce Gordon was an American actor best known for playing Frank Nitti in the ABC television series The Untouchables....

, Dabbs Greer
Dabbs Greer
Robert William "Dabbs" Greer was an American actor who performed many diverse supporting roles in film and television for some fifty years. His distinctive, southern-accented voice fitted well in shows featuring rustic characters, such as westerns...

, Ron Hagerthy
Ron Hagerthy
Ronald F. "Ron" Hagerthy is a former American actor known primarily for his guest-starring and supporting roles on television westerns. In 1952, he portrayed Clipper King in the modern western series, Sky King, with Kirby Grant in the title role of Clipper's uncle, Schuyler "Sky" King, pilot of...

, Myron Healey
Myron Healey
Myron Daniel Healey was an American actor. He began his Hollywood, California, career during the early 1940s in bit parts and minor supporting roles at various studios.-Early years:...

, Connie Hines
Connie Hines
Connie Hines was an American actress, best known for playing Alan Young's wife, Carol Post, on the 1960s syndicated and then CBS sitcom Mister Ed.- Biography :...

, Richard Jaeckel
Richard Jaeckel
Richard Hanley Jaeckel was an American actor of film and television.-Life and career:Jaeckel was born in Long Beach, New York. A short, but tough guy, he played a variety of characters during his fifty years in movies & television and became one of Hollywood's best known character actors...

, L.Q. Jones, John Larch
John Larch
John Larch was an American film and television actor.After his lead role in the radio serial Captain Starr of Space , John Larch entered films in 1954. He usually appeared in westerns and action films, including Miracle of the White Stallions as General George S. Patton Jr...

, Ruta Lee
Ruta Lee
Ruta Lee is a Canadian actress and dancer who appeared as one of the brides in the film Seven Brides for Seven Brothers...

, Barton MacLane
Barton MacLane
Barton MacLane was an American actor, playwright, and screenwriter. Although he has appeared in many classic films from the 1930s through the 1960s, he was known for his role as Gen...

, John Marley
John Marley
John Marley was an American actor who was known for his role as Phil Cavalleri in Love Story and as Jack Woltz— the defiant film mogul who awakens to find the severed head of his prized horse in his bed—in The Godfather...

, Ed Nelson
Ed Nelson
Edwin Stafford Nelson is an American actor.Nelson has appeared in numerous television shows, more than fifty motion pictures, and hundreds of stage productions. Until 2005, he was teaching acting and screenwriting in his native New Orleans at two local universities there...

, Simon Oakland
Simon Oakland
Simon Oakland was an American actor of stage, screen, and television.-Early life and career:Oakland was born in Brooklyn, New York City. He began his performing arts career as a musician . He began his acting career in the late 1940s...

, John M. Pickard
John Pickard (American actor)
John M. Pickard was an American actor who appeared primarily in television Westerns.-Early life and career:...

, Mike Road
Mike Road
Mike Road is a voice actor and a Warner Bros. television series contract player whose career dates back to the 1950s....

, Madlyn Rhue
Madlyn Rhue
Madlyn Soloman Rhue was an American character actress.Rhue was born in Washington, D.C. From the 1950s to the 1990s, Rhue appeared in some twenty films, including Operation Petticoat and It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World...

, Doris Singleton
Doris Singleton
Doris Singleton is an American actress perhaps best remembered as Lucy Ricardo's frenemy, Carolyn Appleby, on I Love Lucy.-Career:...

, Olan Soule
Olan Soule
Olan Soule was an American character actor with hundreds of credits in films, radio, commercials, television and animation.-Early life:...

, Karl Swenson
Karl Swenson
Karl Swenson was an American theatre, radio, film, and television actor.-Biography:Born in Brooklyn, New York of Swedish parentage, Swenson made several appearances with Pierre-Luc Michaud on Broadway in the 1930s and 40s, including the title role in Arthur Miller's first production, The Man Who...

, George Tobias
George Tobias
George Tobias was an American character actor.-Early life and career:Born to a Jewish family in New York, he began his acting career at the Pasadena Playhouse in Pasadena, California. He then spent several years in theater groups before moving on to Broadway and, eventually, Hollywood...

, and Jesse White
Jesse White (actor)
Jesse White was an American television, film, and stage character actor. He is best remembered for portraying the Maytag repairman in television commercials, a role he played from 1967 to 1988.-Life and career:...

.

Cancellation

Despite the show's popularity, it was canceled after one season. Mike Connors stated in an interview that the show's sponsor refused the network's request to move it to a later time slot on a different day. When CBS head Jim Audrey stated the show was going to move; take it or leave it, the sponsor dropped Tightrope, and underwrote another program on another network. Connors also did not want suggested changes to the show to turn into an hour format with a sidekick
Sidekick
A sidekick is a close companion who is generally regarded as subordinate to the one he accompanies. Some well-known fictional sidekicks are Don Quixote's Sancho Panza, Sherlock Holmes' Doctor Watson, The Lone Ranger's Tonto, The Green Hornet's Kato and Batman's Robin.-Origins:The origin of the...

. He thought such an alteration would eliminate the suspense element of the program.
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