George Kennedy. NYT. A/V Club.
Yes, yes, Naked Gun. But also “Cool Hand Luke”.
And this thought isn’t original to me, though I don’t remember where I first encountered it: Joe Patroni had a rather interesting aviation career. He started out as a mechanic in “Airport“, and wound up pilot in command (?) of the Concorde nine years later. (I honestly don’t remember what he did in the other two “Airport” movies, but he was in them, and was the only actor to appear in all four.)
(Interestingly, Wikipedia says Kennedy was a pilot in real life.)
Edited to add: I intended to also mention (but ran out of time) Kennedy’s two police series:
- “Sarge”, which I’m a little young to remember; I think we were watching “Five-0” at the time, anyway. But “Sarge”, as the Wikipedia entry notes, was showing up on RTN for a while as part of “The Bold Ones” wheel. (This is odd, as “Sarge” was really more of an “Ironside” spinoff.)
- “The Blue Knight”, which should be closer to what I’m able to remember, but I don’t think I ever saw an episode of it. That’s odd, as it would have been right up my alley. I think it was right around this time that I read Wambaugh’s book
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