New book examines The FBI TV series

Cover to The FBI Dossier

The FBI ran on U.S. television for nine full seasons (1965-74). Yet it’s not a show that’s well remembered by the general public compared with other long-running series of the era.

In recent years, an episode of The FBI was featured prominently in Quentin Tarantino’s 2019 movie Once Upon a Time in Hollywood where Leonardo DiCaprio’s Rick Dalton is substituted for guest star Burt Reynolds.

The FBI Dossier, by Bill Sullivan with Ed Robertson, published earlier this year, looks to rectify the lack of attention for the series. The book was seven years in the making and a number of its interview subjects passed away during its preparation. Among them: actor William Reynolds, a series co-star for six seasons and who appeared in all nine seasons.

The book is almost 900 pages. The first section concerns the show’s backstory, including how FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover sought producer Quinn Martin to make the show. The series became a co-production between QM Productions and Warner Bros. For Quinn Martin, who made such shows as The Fugitive, The Invaders, Barnaby Jones, Cannon, and The Streets of San Francisco, it would be his longest-running series.

“Bill and I first worked together on The Case of the Alliterative Attorney, a behind the scenes look at the making of the original Perry Mason TV series and the two-hour made-for-TV movies that Raymond Burr made for NBC from 1985 through his death in 1993,” Robertson said in an email. “That collaboration went very well, and the book was released in December 2015. About a year later, Bill approached me about doing a similar book on The FBI. I said yes and we went from there.”

Star Efrem Zimbalist Jr., who played Inspector Lewis Erskine, had died in 2014. The authors utilize previous interviews Zimbalist had given. The authors also had access to various documents, including memos by the production staff.

In terms of interviews, “We were fortunate to connect with as many as we did, and even more fortunate that a good number of them had memories to share about Efrem Zimbalist, Jr., Quinn Martin, or the show itself,” Robertson said.

“Some of the QM personnel quoted in the book, such as Arthur Fellows and Christian Nyby II, I had interviewed back in the early 1990s, when I worked on my book about The Fugitive. Efrem, I had interviewed once formally in early 2011, plus I had spoken to him briefly informally a few times over the phone,” he added.

“Bill Reynolds was a little hard to track down at first, but once we connected, he shared a lot of great stories about his years on the series, plus he sheds light on what happened heading into the ninth season, why replacing him with Shelly Novack upset the balance of the series, and how that, coupled with the fallout from the Watergate scandal in the summer of 1973, factored in to the demise of the show.”

The second half of the book provides a detailed look at all 241 episodes. Information includes real-life FBI cases that inspired series installments. Some of those cases went back to the 1930s and ’40s.

Disclosure: I am quoted in the book via material I wrote for my website, The FBI Episode Guide. I only learned of the book this week.

The FBI Dossier is published by Black Pawn Press. It is sold through Amazon as well as Strand Book Store and other outlets. The retail price is $49.99