Ironside is an American television crime drama that aired on NBC over eight seasons from 1967 to 1975. The show starred Raymond Burr as Robert T. Ironside (usually addressed by the title "Chief Ironside"), a consultant to the San Francisco police department (formerly chief of detectives), who was paralyzed from the waist down after being shot while on vacation. The character debuted on March 28, 1967, in a TV movie titled Ironside. When the series was broadcast in the United Kingdom, from late 1967 onward, it was broadcast as A Man Called Ironside. The show earned Burr six Emmy and two Golden Globe nominations.
Ironside was a production of Burr's Harbour Productions Unlimited in association with Universal Television.
Plot
The series revolves around former San Francisco Police Department (SFPD) Chief of Detectives Robert T. Ironside (Raymond Burr), a Navy veteran, widower, and veteran of 25 years of police service. He was forced to retire from the department after a sniper's bullet to the spine paralyzed him from the waist down, resulting in his reliance on a wheelchair. In the pilot episode, a television movie, Ironside shows his strength of character and gets himself appointed a peculiar and unprecedented job; a "special department consultant", by his good friend, Police Commissioner Dennis Randall. He does this by calling a press conference and then tricking Commissioner Randall into meeting his terms. In the pilot, Ironside eventually solves the mystery of the ambush. He requests Ed Brown and Eve Whitfield be assigned to him as his own private law enforcement squad.
thumb|upright|Raymond Burr as Ironside
Supporting characters on Ironside include Det. Sgt. Edward "Ed" Brown (Don Galloway) and a young socialite-turned-plainclothes officer, Eve Whitfield (Barbara Anderson). In addition, delinquent-turned assistant Mark Sanger (Don Mitchell), who subsequently attends and graduates from law school (night classes were mentioned from early on), joins the San Francisco police force himself in the sixth season, then marries late in the run of the series. Commissioner Randall is played by Gene Lyons.
After the program's fourth season, Anderson left for personal reasons, and her character was then replaced by another young policewoman, Fran Belding (Elizabeth Baur), the daughter of a fallen cop, who filled much the same role for four more years.
Ironside uses a fourth-floor room (for living and office space) in the old San Francisco Hall of Justice building, which housed the city's police headquarters. He recruits Mark Sanger to be his personal assistant after Sanger is brought in as a suspect who wanted to kill Ironside. Ironside acquires a specially equipped, former fleet-modified 1940 -ton Ford police patrol wagon, with bulletproof glass and a specially modified high-performance supercharged and fuel-injected V-8 engine. This is replaced in the episode titled "Poole's Paradise" after the van is destroyed by Sergeant Brown as part of a plan to trick a corrupt sheriff. At the end of the episode, the patrol wagon is replaced by a one-off fully custom modified 1969 one-ton Ford Econoline Window Van.
The show became a success as Ironside depended on brains and initiative in solving cases. Although Ironside is portrayed as good-hearted and honest, he maintains a gruff persona. The series enjoyed a seven-and-a-half-season run on NBC, drawing respectable, if not always high ratings. As the shortened eighth and final season began (only 16 of 19 episodes produced were aired by NBC), Universal released a syndicated rerun package of episodes from earlier seasons under the title The Raymond Burr Show, reflecting the practice of that time to differentiate original network episodes from syndicated reruns whenever possible. After NBC's midseason cancellation, however, the syndicated episodes reverted to the Ironside title.
Cast
- Raymond Burr as Chief Robert T. Ironside
- Don Galloway as Detective Sergeant Ed Brown
- Barbara Anderson as Officer Eve Whitfield
- Don Mitchell as (later Officer) Mark Sanger
- Elizabeth Baur as Officer Fran Belding
- Gene Lyons as Commissioner Dennis Randall (recurring role)
Production
Locations
The show was filmed in a mixture of locations, sometimes in San Francisco, but also with a large number of studio scenes (including scenes with conversations in a moving vehicle, where a traffic backdrop is used). The shows contained stock footage of San Francisco, with pan shots of Coit Tower or clips of traffic scenes.
Ironside and his team used a rather large open space on the fourth floor of the Old Hall of Justice in San Francisco at 750 Kearny Street between Washington and Merchant Streets. The Old Hall had already been demolished while Ironside was still in production. It had been abandoned in 1961 and demolished in late 1967. The SFPD had begun using their new home by January 1962. In December 1967, demolition finally began. Wrecking balls and bulldozers took five months to raze the building.
Music
The opening theme music was composed by Quincy Jones, and was the first synthesizer-based television theme song. In 1971, Jones recorded a fuller four-minute band version for the album Smackwater Jack. This recording was then edited and used for the opening credits of the fifth through eighth seasons (1971–1975). (The entire album track can be heard in the fifth-season episode "Unreasonable Facsimile" as Ironside and team track a suspect on the streets of San Francisco.) The iconic theme music has since been sampled in numerous recordings and soundtracks to television commercials and shows, including Kill Bill: Volume 1. The score for the episode "The Macabre Mr. Micawber" by Billy Goldenberg (credited as William Goldenberg) was sampled for the song "All Caps" by the hip-hop duo Madvillain.
In addition to the opening theme music, Quincy Jones composed the entire score for the first eight episodes. Oliver Nelson took over those duties up to the end of the winter to spring 1972 episodes. Nelson was then replaced by Marty Paich for nearly all of the episodes from the beginning of the fall of that year until the last episode that was produced, in late 1974. The song "Even When You Cry", with music composed by Jones and lyrics written by Alan and Marilyn Bergman, was performed by James Farentino in the episode "Something for Nothing", while Marcia Strassman had already sung it off-screen in the earlier episode "The Man Who Believed"; both installments were originally broadcast during season one.
Personnel
- Freddie Hubbard − trumpet
- Frank Rosolino − trombone
2013 remake
In 2013, a short-lived remake with the same name aired on NBC. Actor Blair Underwood took on the title role (with none of the other characters from the original series being used), while the action was relocated from San Francisco to New York City. This version of the character was more in the tough cop mold, often at odds with his superiors over his unrelenting, even violent approach to police work. The series was lambasted by critics and ignored by viewers, and was cancelled and pulled after the airing of just four episodes (of nine produced).
Other media
There was a single novel based on the series by Jim Thompson. It was published in 1967 by Popular Library.
There was also a board game published by Ideal in 1967.
Parodies
An episode of Get Smart that aired in March 1969 was titled "Leadside" and featured a wheelchair-using master criminal by that name (and his assistants). Leadside could not walk, but he was able to run.
Leadside was directed by Gary Nelson. Nelson never directed on Ironside during its original stint as a television series but instead directed the reunion television movie The Return of Ironside.
Another Get Smart episode, called "Ironhand", had a KAOS operative with a hand encased in metal hence why he was known as Ironhand.
The December 1970 issue of Mad magazine included a parody of Ironside titled "Ironride".
On The Benny Hill Show, Benny Hill played Ironside in a few sketches, most notably in a sketch called "Murder on the Oregon Express", which parodied several television detective characters.
Impressionist Billy Howard included Ironside as one of the detectives parodied in his novelty hit record King of the Cops.
The 1980 television movie Murder Can Hurt You spoofs numerous television detectives from the 1970s and '80s, and includes Victor Buono playing the wheelchair-using detective Ironbottom.
American Dad has an episode, "Wheels and Legman", that loosely parodies Ironside and similar programs in which Roger and Steve have a fictional detective agency.
In the "Gone Efficient" episode of Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law, a man in a wheelchair is shown pleading a case in front of Judge Mentok (who strongly resembles Raymond Burr) as a nod to both Ironside and Perry Mason.
A promo for the adult animated sitcom Archer was made in the style of the show's opening sequence, replacing Ironside with the character Ray Gillette, who had been temporarily using a wheelchair after a spinal injury.
Home media
Shout! Factory has released the first four seasons of Ironside on DVD in Region 1. Seasons three and four were released as Shout Factory Exclusives, available exclusively through Shout!'s online store.
On May 9, 2017, Shout! Factory re-released season three as a general retail release. Season four was re-released on August 22, 2017.
In Region 2, Anchor Bay Entertainment released the first season on DVD in the UK on August 25, 2008.
In Region 4, Madman Entertainment released all eight seasons on DVD. The eighth and final season, which included the 1993 TV reunion movie The Return of Ironside, was released on October 19, 2011.
Season five includes the two-part crossover TV movie episode The Priest Killer, a crossover with the series Sarge.
{| class="wikitable"
|-
! rowspan="2"|DVD name
! rowspan="2"|Ep#
! colspan="3"|Release dates
|-
! Region 1
! Region 4
|-
| Season 1
| align="center"|29 (includes pilot movie)
| April 24, 2007
| August 16, 2007
|-
| Season 2
| align="center"|26
| October 16, 2007
| November 8, 2007
|-
| Season 3
| align="center"|26
| January 19, 2010♦<br />May 9, 2017 <small>(re-release)</small>
| September 16, 2008
|-
| Season 4
| align="center"|26
| October 19, 2010♦<br />August 22, 2017 <small>(re-release)</small>
| June 24, 2009
|-
| Season 5
| align="center"|25
| N/A
| May 19, 2010
|-
| Season 6
| align="center"|24
| N/A
| August 11, 2010
|-
| Season 7
| align="center"|25
| N/A
| February 2, 2011
|-
| Season 8
| align="center"|19
| N/A
| October 19, 2011
|}
♦ – Shout! Factory Exclusives title, sold exclusively through Shout's online store
See also
- Jessie McTavish, British woman who was alleged to have murdered a woman after being inspired by the plot of Ironside