What Might've Been: Scared Stiff (1971)

 Bob Denver was a year removed from The Good Guys when he was cast in a pilot developed by Garry Marshall & Jerry Belson (The Odd Couple). Denver was paired with Broadway star and TV character actor Warren Berlinger in Scared Stiff as a pair of detectives often running afoul of a police detective (Paul Reed, ex-Car 54, Where Are You?), who was the uncle of Berlinger's character.

Plot and title aside, this Scared Stiff has no real connection with a 1953 Dean Martin-Jerry Lewis movie of the same name, which, in turn, was a remake of one of Bob Hope's films, "The Ghost Breakers". Paramount owned the rights to the original "Ghost Breaker", and it'd been 18 years since the Martin-Lewis version of "Stiff".

Linda Kaye Henning (ex-Petticoat Junction), Robert Cornthwaite, and Marie Windsor co-star. Howie Horwitz (ex-Batman) is a producer.

For once, Denver isn't the bumbling half of the team, as Berlinger fills that role. Two years later, Denver was back in Dusty's Trail, Sherwood Schwartz's attempt to remake Gilligan's Island out west, and that lasted just one year. Denver wouldn't get another "smart" character to play until the pilot for The Invisible Woman in the 80's.

No rating. Just a public service.