1974: The FBI’s ‘backdoor pilot’?

Mary Frann

As The FBI concluded its ninth, and final, season, it appears QM Productions attempted a “backdoor pilot,” where an episode is intended to be the start of a new series.

The episode in question was the next-to-last new episode aired for the 1973-74 season, Confessions Of a Madman. Star Efrem Zimbalist Jr. and sidekick Shelly Novack are joined by a woman FBI agent played by Mary Frann, who years later would be Bob Newhart’s co-star on his Newhart series.

Background: The FBI didn’t include women agents until the ninth season, which was the second season made after the death of FBI director J. Edgar Hoover. Until the last season, women were depicted as FBI employees, occasionally venturing into the field to assist agents. But there weren’t actual women agents until the final season.

In the episode, three women students at an unnamed college at a Maryland college have been brutally attacked. Two have been killed but the most recent victim survived. Frann’s character was a student at the same college and, more importantly, was a member of the same sorority as the three earlier victims.

During much the episode, Frann has as much screen time as either Efrem Zimbalist Jr. or Shelly Novack. At the very least, the episode is a major departure for the series. Three suspects emerge. This being 1970s television, care is made to ensure the least obvious of the three candidates (Elliot Street, Daniel J. Travanti and Robert Pine) is the killer.

The episode was directed by Philip Abbott, who played Erskine’s boss, Assistant Director Arthur Ward, throughout the series. Abbott also played a mentally disturbed killer in a 1964 episode of Kraft Suspense Theater, Once Upon a Savage Night, that was directed by Robert Altman. Just speculation, but perhaps Abbott drew upon that earlier television show while directing The FBI episode.

Season 4 of The FBI now available

“Sorry, Arthur, no time to talk right now. I’m ordering season four of The FBI.”

The Warner Archive division of Warner Bros. this week brought out season four of The FBI, confirming a post we had last month.

If you CLICK HERE you’ll see ordering information as well as a sample clip of a 1969 episode called “A Life in the Balance” with James Caan as the guest star.

Here’s a description:

As the Summer of Love faded to the winter of our national discontent in the fall of 1968, Inspector Erskine (Efrem Zimbalist, Jr.), Special Agent Colby (William Reynolds), and Assistant Director Ward (Philip Abbott) continue to battle the nation’s enemies, foreign and domestic. Delivering drama at the height of its powers, The FBI’s well-oiled machine of TV talent continued to draw in the star power – both the iconic and the up-and-coming, from golden age great Ralph Bellamy (as a Nazi sympathizer!) to soon-to-be TV superstar Chad Everett (as a psycho wannabe Vietnam War hero). Other faces found among the cases of extortion, espionage, kidnapping and killing include Dawn Wells, Susan Strasberg, Dorothy Provine, Cicely Tyson, Lynda Day and Gene Tierney as well as Dean Stockwell, Robert Duvall, Harrison Ford, James Caan, and a young teen Ronny Howard.

As with the previous releases, this is manufactured on demand, so it’s not available in stores. The price for the season is $49.95.

The Quinn Martin-produced series had 26 episodes during the 1968-69 season. The season included a number of espionage-themed episodes, starting the opener, Wind It Up And It Betrays You (plotted by Harold Jack Bloom, who wrote an episode of The Man From U.N.C.L.E. and was involved in the scripting of You Only Live Twice) as well as The Enemies (written by Peter Allan Fields, a leading U.N.C.L.E. writer) and Ceasar’s Wife, featuring a young Harrison Ford.