After flopping with a revival of the game show, Can You Top This?, Four Star got back into the crime drama business with 1971's Monty Nash, a star vehicle for Harry Guardino. Nash was a government agent who went undercover on his missions.
Unfortunately, Monty Nash suffered from a lack of interest from stations across the country. Insofar as I know, it never aired in the 518, though I may have to clarify that. Guardino would return two years later in a supporting role on CBS' ill-fated The New Perry Mason. Guardino would not headline another series.
Following is the opener, "The Long Ride", directed by future Cheers co-star Nicholas Colasanto, who was mostly a director until Cheers.
How none of the networks took a chance on this, I don't know.
Rating: B.
2 comments:
First off: if you couldn't tell just by looking that this show had a starvation-level budget ...
Everybody here, Harry Guardino included, was in this for a quick payday;
if it went past the first production cycle, fine and dandy, but twenty-six half-hours can rack up a lot of mileage in the syndie marketplace, if you work it right.
This was the first year of the Prime-Time Access Rule, when a lot of producers seemed to think that a fast-buck quickie show was a way to go; that was a mistake that blew up on everybody in a hurry.
As for Harry Guardino, his "supporting role" on New Perry Mason was as Hamilton Burger - and Harry got as much publicity as Monte Markham did as Mason.
Afterwards, Harry Guardino made appearances on everybody else's series, which is almost as good as having your own (if not better) ...
And that's when he wasn't appearing in most (if not all) of Clint Eastwood's feature movies (he was Dirty Harry's favorite Captain).
I have seen a couple of those Mason eps. Guardino grew a mustache so big, he was nearly a dead ringer for Howard Duff at the time. Guardino also did Evil Touch around that same time, and there's probably a couple of IMDB pages of his 70's guest roles alone.
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