Monday, March 26, 2018

What Might've Been: San Francisco International Airport (1970)

NBC & Universal's ambitious anthology wheel, Four-In-One, lasted just 1 season, with half of the component features, Night Gallery & McCloud, being renewed, and, in the case of the latter, it was reassigned to the NBC Mystery Movie.

We previously took a look at Roy Thinnes in The Psychiatrist. Today, we'll scope San Francisco International Airport.

All told, seven episodes, pilot included, were produced. Pernell Roberts (ex-Bonanza) starred in the pilot, an excerpt of which you'll see shortly, but either studio or network suits were not happy, and insisted on Lloyd Bridges (ex-Sea Hunt) replacing Roberts as airport head Jim Conrad. Bridges' post-Sea Hunt track record wasn't that good. A self titled series for Four Star and The Loner also lasted one season each.

As noted before, the reason this failed can be traced to CBS' placement of Hawaii Five-O, in its 3rd season, opposite Four-In-One. Game over.

Right now, the only way you'd see the complete film is via Mystery Science Theatre 3000, which we'll look at another time. Instead, we've got a 7 minute excerpt.



Jason Wingreen is better known, of course, as bartender Harry Snowden from All In The Family. When we cover MST3K, we'll use different source material.

Rating, based on the above excerpt: A.

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