Roy Huggins

Pseudonyms include John Thomas James, Thomas Fitzroy, John Francis O’Mara
(1914-2002)

Crime fiction lost an important pioneer when ROY HUGGINS died on April 3, 2002 in Santa Monica, California, at age 87. Although best known as the creator of such popular TV series as Maverick, The Fugitive, 77 Sunset Strip and The Rockford Files, Huggins started out as a novelist, producing a trio of books and several short stories that later became sources for his broadcast dramas.

Huggins was born in Litelle, Washington, according to a biography available at the Museum of Broadcast Communications Web site. After graduating from the University of California and then working for the U.S. Civil Service during World War II, “he taught himself to write gripping and literate drama by copying in longhand Raymond Chandler’s Farewell, My Lovely,” The New York Times reported in its Huggins obituary.

His first novel, The Double Take (1946)–serialized in The Saturday Evening Post –was a Chandleresque yarn that featured Los Angeles private eye Stuart Bailey, whose client is being blackmailed in regard to his wife’s past; Bailey must investigate the woman’s history in order to end the extortion. (Bailey subsequently made three short-story appearances, and after some modification, became the chief protagonist–played by Efrem Zimbalist Jr.–in the Huggins TV series 77 Sunset Strip). Huggins went on to compose two more novels: a suspenser called Too Late for Tears (1947) and a James M. Cain-ish work called Lovely Lady, Pity Me (1949).

However, it was the purchase of film rights to The Double Take that convinced Huggins that steadier employment could be had writing screenplays than novels. He went on to compose several movie scripts, including those for The Fuller Brush Man (1948) and The Good Humor Man (1950), before writing and directing the 1952 Randolph Scott/Donna Reed western, Hangman’s Knot.

In September of that same year, Huggins was summoned before the infamous U.S. House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) to answer questions about his brief membership in the Communist Party, which he’d joined because of his dislike of fascism. “I ended up agreeing that people who had already been mentioned many times were indeed known to me as Communists,” he recalled many years afterward.

Huggins moved into television in 1955. He joined Warner Brothers and later Universal Television, creating such memorable series as Maverick (1957-62), 77 Sunset Strip (1958-64), The Fugitive (1963-67), Run for Your Life (1965-68), The Outsider (1968-69), The Rockford Files (1974-80) and City of Angels (1976). He also served as executive producer on shows ranging from Alias Smith and Jones and the short-lived James Farentino mystery, Cool Million, to Baretta and Hunter. In addition to his episodic works, Huggins was behind several made-for-TV movies and miniseries, such as the Bill Bixby western, The Invasion of Johnson County (1976), and the small-screen adaptation of Taylor Caldwell’s big-canvas novel Captains and the Kings (1976).

Author Max Allan Collins, who was instrumental in giving Huggins the Private Eye Writers of America Lifetime Achievement Award in 1991, calls him “a fine crime writer, and he may have become one of the giants of the genre had he not gone Hollywood. On the other hand, had he not gone Hollywood, we would not have 77 Sunset Strip, Maverick, The Fugitive and The Rockford Files–merely major popular culture touchstones of the second half of the 20th century.”

Collins adds that “Maverick was my childhood obsession, and Huggins (with Stephen J. Cannell) put together what I consider to be the best P.I. show of all time: City of Angels,” a drama that was set in Los Angeles during the 1930s and starred M*A*S*H alum Wayne Rogers.

“One of the charming things about Huggins,” Collins remarks, “was his propensity for recycling his one Stuart Bailey novel, The Double Take, as TV scripts.It’s undoubtedly the most filmed private eye novel ever–there was a Hollywood movie [I Love Trouble, 1948], and it was done (I think) on every series Huggins produced. It was on Rockford (twice I believe), City of Angels and even Maverick! The three [Bailey] short stories were also the subject of many Huggins TV adaptations, probably just so Huggins could double dip: get paid for the screen story and for the script.”

Of course, contriving scripts for his own TV series as well as for other network shows (which Huggins did under both his own moniker and as “John Thomas James,” combining the names of the three sons he had with his wife, actress Adele Mara) demanded more inspiration than recycling. Director Fielder Cook, who’d worked with Huggins over the years, recently explained the producer/writer’s creative methodology as part of a Salon magazine tribute: “What a guy. Know what [Huggins] did? He had this magnificent car–a Cadillac or a Lincoln–and he would take off, alone in the car, and he would drive out into the desert and he had a tape recorder with him and he would drive and drive and just talk these stories into the tape recorder, and come back, give them to a secretary and there was a season!”

“The scripts Huggins wrote for the series he created are among the finest writing in television,” opines Stuart Kaminsky, who in addition to penning novels based on his own characters, has to his credit two fine books (The Green Bottle and Devil on My Doorstep) based on the character of Jim Rockford, the charming and perpetually exasperated gumshoe Huggins created for former Maverick star James Garner. “Maverick and Gunsmoke were, in my opinion, the finest Westerns ever on television and both still play as well as they did when Huggins created Maverick. The Fugitive may be the finest dramatic series ever created and, in my mind, I find it impossible to believe that anyone can create a better private eye series than Rockford.”

Kaminsky recalls once meeting Huggins, “back at Universal in the early 1970s. He was a gracious, quiet man, with a dancing quality in his eyes that made it clear that the world around him was fresh material for a new direction. If he had one particular strength,” says Kaminsky, “it was in creating original characters who were always just ahead of the genre in which they existed.”

It’s hard to imagine a better epitaph than that.

UNDER OATH

• “He taught me everything that I used through my career on how to create and write and produce a television show.”
  — Stephen J. Cannell
• “I’ll be forever in his debt.”
  — James Garner, star of Maverick and The Rockford Files (The Los Angeles Times)
• “Roy was a giant in the television industry, He was brilliant. He had a very fertile mind and was a great storyteller. I think he had a sort of natural sense of popular art of the time.”
  — producer Jo Swerling Jr. (The Los Angeles Times)

NOVELS

• The Double Take (1946; Stuart Bailey) | Buy this book | Kindle it!
  Also appeared in the March 1946 issue of Mammoth Mystery, in condensed form.
• Too Late for Tears (1947) | Buy this book
• Lovely Lady, Pity Me (1949)   | Buy this book

SHORT STORIES

• “Appointment With Fear” (1946, The Saturday Evening Post; Stuart Bailey)
• “Now You see It” (1946, The Saturday Evening Post; Stuart Bailey)
• “Death and the Skylark” (1952, Esquire; Stuart Bailey)

COLLECTIONS

• 77 Sunset Strip (1959, three novelettes based on the TV characters)  | Buy this book

NON-FICTION

• Poker According to Maverick (1959)  | Buy this book
• “The Bloodshot Eye: A Comment on the Crisis in American Television.” (August 1962, Television Quarterly)

FILMS

• I LOVE TROUBLE | Buy the DVD
  (1948, Columbia/Cornell Pictures)
  93 minutes, Black and White
  Screenplay by Roy Huggins
  Based on his novel The Double Take
  Director: S. Sylvan Simon
  Starring Franchot Tone as STUART BAILEY
  Also starring Robert Barrat, Janet Blair, Raymond Burr, Janis Carter, Edward Ciannelli, Donald Curtis, Glenda Farrell, Steven Geray, John Ireland, Adele Jergens, Lynn Merrick, Tom Powers, Sid Tomack
  Stuart Bailey makes his debut.
• THE FULLER BRUSH MAN | Watch it now!
  (aka “That Mad Mr. Jones”)
  (1948, Columbia)
  Story by Roy Huggins
  Screenplay by Frank Tashlin and Devery Freeman
  Directed by S. Sylvan Simon
  Starring Red Skelton, Janet Blair, Don McGuire
  Red Skelton stars as a door-to-door salesman trying to talk himself out of a murder rap in this comedy.
• TOO LATE FOR TEARS | Buy the DVD  | Buy the Blu-Ray
  (aka “Killer Bait”)
  (1949, United Artists)
  Based on the novel by Roy Huggins, originally serialized in The Saturday Evening Post
  Screenplay by Roy Huggins
  Directed by Byron Haskin
  Starring Lizabeth Scott, Dan Duryea, Arthur Kennedy
  Noirish tale about what happens when an unexpected windfall hits Mr. and Mrs. Straight, and threatens to blow them away…
• THE LADY GAMBLES
  (1949, Universal International)
  Story by Lewis Meltzer
  Adapted by Halsted Welles
  Screenplay by Roy Huggins
  Directed by Michael Gordon
  Starring Barbara Stanwyck, Robert Preston, Stephen McNally
  More noir. While accompanying her husband to Vegas on a business trip, a wife gets hooked on gambling, and promptly loses all their money.
• WOMAN IN HIDING
  (1949, Universal International)
  Based on the Saturday Evening Post Serial “Fugitive from Terror” by James Webb
  Adaptation by Roy Huggins
  Screenplay by Oscar Saul
  Directed by Michael Gordon
  Starring Ida Lupino, Stephen McNally, Howard Duff
  After dear old daddy is killed in an accident, mill heiress Deborah Chandler marries the plant manager, but is it love he’s really after?
• THE GREAT MANHUNT
  (aka “State Secret”)
  (1950)
  Screenplay by Sidney Gilliat
  Based on the novelette “Appointment with Fear” by Roy Huggins (uncredited)
  Directed by Sidney Gilliat
  Starring Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Jack Hawkins, Glynis Johns, Walter Rilla
  I’m not sure how Huggins’ Stuart Bailey becomes an American surgeon visiting England who gets all wrapped up in international hijinks, but supposedly this was based on Huggins’ novelette, “Appointment with Fear.”
• THE GOOD HUMOR MAN
  (1950)
  Story by Roy Huggins
• SEALED CARGO
  (1951)
  Screenplay by Roy Huggins
• HANGMAN’S KNOT
  (1952)
  Screenplay by Roy Huggins
  Directed by Roy Huggins
• GUN FURY
  (1953)
  Writer
  Screenplay by Roy Huggins
• PUSHOVER
  (1954)
  Screenplay by Roy Huggins
• THREE HOURS TO KILL
  (1954)
  Screenplay by Roy Huggins
• A FEVER IN THE BLOOD
  (1961)
  Produced by Roy Huggins
• THE FUGITIVE
  (1993)
  Based on characters created by Roy Huggins
  Screenplay by Jeb Stuart and David Twohy
  Directed by Andrew Davis
  Executive Producer: Roy Huggins
  Starring Harrison Ford as  Dr. Richard Kimble
  Also starring Tommy Lee Jones, Sela Ward, Julianne Moore, Joe Pantoliano, Andreas Katsulas, Jeroen Krabbé, Daniel Roebuck, L. Scott Caldwell, Tom Wood
• MAVERICK
  (1994)
  Based on characters created by Roy Huggins
• U.S. MARSHALS
  (1998)
  Screenplay by Roy Huggins
  Based on his television series The Fugitive
  Executive Producer: Roy Huggins
• WRONGFULLY ACCUSED
  (1998)
  Based on characters created by Roy Huggins
  Written by Pat Proft
  Directed by Pat Proft
  Starring Leslie Nielsen, Richard Crenna, Kelly LeBrock, Melinda McGraw, Michael York, Sandra Bernhard, Aaron Pearl
  Decent spoof of The Fugitive and other current thrillers. It helps if you like Nielson.

TELEVISION

• KING’S ROW
  (Part of Warner Brothers Presents anthology)
  (1955-56)
  Created and produced by Roy Huggins
  Director: Paul Stewart
• CHEYENNE
  (Part of Warner Brothers Presents anthology)
  (1955-56)
  Produced by Roy Huggins
  Director: Paul Stewart
• CONFLICT
  (1956-57)
  Produced by Roy Huggins.
• “Anything for Money” (based on a Stuart Bailey story)
• MAVERICK
  (1957-62)
  Created by Roy Huggins
  Writers: Roy Huggins, Marion Hargrove, Douglas Heyes, Montgomery Pittman,
  Directors: Douglas Heyes, Montgomery Pittman, Les Martinson
  Produced by Roy Huggins
• COLT .45
  (1957-60)
  Produced by Roy Huggins
• GIRL ON THE RUN
  (1958)
  (Pilot for 77 Sunset Strip)
  Produced by Roy Huggins
• 77 SUNSET STRIP
  (1958-64, ABC)
  1 90-minute pilot
  205 60-minute episodes
  Created by Roy Huggins
  Writers: Douglas Heyes, Howard Browne, Marion Hargrove, Roy Huggins, Leonard Lee, Charles Sinclair, Roger Smith
  Directors: William Conrad, Lawrence Dobkin, Robert Douglas, Douglas Heyes, Leslie H. Martinson, Irving J. Moore, Leo Penn, Richard Sarafian, George Waggner
  Producers: Howie Horowitz, Fenton Earnshaw, Harry Tatelman, Joel Rogosin, William Conrad, Roy Huggins
  Executive Producers: William T. Orr, Jack Webb
  A Warner Bros Production
• A FEVER IN THE BLOOD
  (1961)
  Produced by Roy Huggins
• BUS STOP
  (1961-62 series)
  Produced by Roy Huggins
• KRAFT SUSPENSE THEATRE
  (1963-65 series)
  • “Doesn’t Anyone Know Who I Am?” (February 27, 1964)
    Based on a story by Roy Huggins (Thomas Fitzroy)
    Teleplay by Luther Davis
    Directed by William A. Graham
    Starring Cornel Wilde,Kathryn Grant,Martha Hyer
  • “The Sweet Taste of Vengeance“ (April 30, 1964)
    Story by Roy Huggins (as John Francis O’Mara)
    Teleplay by Frank Fenton
    Directed by Roy Huggins
    Starring John Forsythe, Diana Hyland, Jack Weston
  • “The Green Felt Jungle” (April 1, 1965)
    Based on a story by Roy Huggins (as Thomas Fitzroy)
    Adapted by Howard Browne
    Directed by Irving J. Moore
    Starring Leslie Neilsen, Macdonald Carey, Richard Conte
• THE FUGITIVE
  (1963-67, ABC)
  120 episodes
  Created by Roy Huggins
  Executive producer: Quinn Martin
  Starring David Janssen as DR. RICHARD KIMBLE
  and Barry Morse as Lieutenant Philip Gerard
• RUN FOR YOUR LIFE
  (1965-68)
  Created and produced by Roy Huggins
• THE OUTSIDER
  (1967, made-for TV movie)
  Created by Roy Huggins
  Directed by Michael Richie
  Produced by Roy Huggins
  Starring Darren McGavin as DAVID ROSS
• THE BOLD ONES
  (1969-73 series)
  Produced by Roy Huggins
• THE LONELY PROFESSION
  (Working title: The Savarona Syndrome)
  (1969, Universal made-for-TV movie)
  Original broadcast October 21, 1969
  96 minutes
  Directed by Douglas Heyes
  Based on the novel The Twelfth of Never by Douglas Heyes
  Executive Producer: Roy Huggins
• THE YOUNG COUNTRY
  (1970)
  Written by Roy Huggins
  Directed by Roy Huggins
  Produced by Roy Huggins
• THE CHALLENGERS
  (1970)
  Story, as John Thomas James
  Produced by Roy Huggins
• HOW TO STEAL AN AIRPLANE
  (aka “Only One Day Left Before Tomorrow”)
  (1971)
  Executive Producer: Roy Huggins
• ALIAS SMITH AND JONES
  (1971-73 series)
  Produced by Roy Huggins
  Western
• TOMA
  (1973-74 series)
  Produced by Roy Huggins
• THE ROCKFORD FILES: BACKLASH OF THE HUNTER
  (1974 made-for-TV movie/pilot)
  Co-creator, writer
• THE ROCKFORD FILES
  (1974-80, NBC series)
  Co-creator
  Also writer, as John Thomas James
• THIS IS THE WEST
  (1974; made-for-television movie)
• THE STORY OF PRETTY BOY FLOYD
  (1974; made-for-television movie)
  (aka “Pretty Boy Floyd”)
  Executive producer: Roy Huggins
• THE INVASION OF JOHNSON COUNTY
  (1976; made-for-television movie)
• TARGET RISK
  (1975)
  Produced by Roy Huggins
• BARETTA
  (1975-7; series)
  Produced by Roy Huggins
  Toma rebooted. Not for better.
• CITY OF ANGELS
  (1976; series)
  Co-created by Roy Huggins and Stephen J. Cannell
  Produced by Roy Huggins
  Starring Wayne Rogers as JAKE AXMINSTER
  
• CAPTAINS AND KINGS
  (1976; television mini-series)
  Executive producer: Roy Huggins
• ASPEN
  (1977; mini-series)
  Produced by Roy Huggins
• THE JORDAN CHANCE
  (1978)
  Screenplay by Stephen J. Cannell
  Based on a story by Stephen J. Cannell and John Thomas James (Huggins)
  Directed by Jules Irving
  Produced by Roy Huggins
  Executive producer: Roy Huggins
  Starring Raymond Burr, Julia Benjamin, Ellen Blake, James Canning, Maria Elena Cordero, John McIntire, Gerald McRaney, Ted Shackelford, Stella Stevens
  Burr plays Frank Jordan, a man wrongfully imprisoned, who becomes a lawyer upon his release and establishes the Jordan Foundation, whose goal is to give the wrongfully imprisoned, one last chance at absolution.
• ARTHUR HAILEY’S WHEELS
  (1978)
  Mini-series
  Executive producer: Roy Huggins
• COOL MILLION
  (1972, NBC)
  Series of 4 made-for-TV movies
  Created by Larry Cohen
  Writers: Gene Levitt, Juanita Bartlett, John Thomas James (Roy Huggins), Richard Morris
  Directors: Gene Levitt, John Badham, Barry Shear, Daryl Duke.
  Executive producer: Roy Huggins
  Starring James Farentino as JEFFERSON KEYES
  A high-flying ex-CIA agent sets himself up as a P.I.–one with a rather large fee.
• HUNTER
  (1984-1991; NBC)
  Series
  152 episodes
  Created by Frank Lupo
  Writer: Roy Huggins (also as John Thomas James)
  Executive Producer: Roy Huggins, Stephen J. Cannell, George Geiger, Fred Dryer, Lawrence Kubik
  Roy Huggins wrote several episodes of this likable Dirty Harry-clone.
• THE FUGITIVE
  (2000-01, CBS)
  Series
  Based on characters created by Roy Huggins
  Executive producer: Roy Huggins
  Directors: Jeff Bleckner , Richard Compton
  Writers: Valerie Mayhew, Vivian Mayhew
  Starring Timothy Daly as DR. RICHARD KIMBLE
  Also starring Mykelti Williamson, Stephen Lang, Connie Britton, Bob Morrisey, Richard Brestoff
  Decent retake on the classic series, though owing more to the film than the original series. Great production values, and Daly and Williamson were likable enough in the roles. Cancelled after one season though, with the season finale cliffhanger unresolved.
• THE FUGITIVE
  (2020, Quibi)
  Series
  Based on characters created by Roy Huggins
  Starring Boyd Holbrook as MIKE FERRO
  and Kiefer Sutherland as Detective Clay Bryce
  A short-lived modern-day spinoff from the even shorter-lived Quibi platform, with a wrongly accused blue-collar worker on the run from an obsessed cop.

FURTHER READING

• Hollywood TV: The Studio System in the Fifties
  (1994; by Christopher Anderson)
• Prime Time, Prime Movers: From I Love Lucy to L.A. Law–America’s Favorite TV Shows and the People Who Created Them
  (1995; by David Marc and Robert J. Thompson)
• Roy Huggins: Creator of Maverick, 77 Sunset Strip, The Fugitive & The Rockford Files | Buy this book | Kindle it!
  (2014; by Paul Green)
• The Mysteries of Roy Huggins & the Deportation of Harry Carlisle | Buy this book
  (2021; by Tom Cantrell)
  

FURTHER INVESTIGATION

• Salon.com: What’s a turn-on?
  Saucy tribute to Roy Huggins by David Thomson, author of Suspects.
• Black List, White Wash
  Did Rockford/Maverick/Fugitive/77 Sunset Strip creator Roy Huggins name names? Apparently, sadly, yes.
• Spartacus.schoolnet: Roy Huggins
  Portions of Huggins’ HUAC testimony.
• The Television Academy Interview with Roy Huggins
  In his five-hour video 1998 interview, conducted by Lee Goldberg, Huggins discusses everything from his early years as a novelist and member of the Communist Party to his long television career, including the later revivals of his works.

Respectfully submitted by J. Kingston Pierce, crime editor for January Magazine and head honcho at The Rap Sheet. Illustration is taken from an original painting in acrylic and fluorescent paint on canvas, measuring 46″ x 40,” by Washington, DC artist Ron Anteroinen, as part of his Blacklist series.