While surfing the internet a while back, we happened across a screenwriting forum which featured a TV writer named Bob Shayne as one of its hosts. Those well-versed in Hexum trivia will recognize that Shayne had become the writer and head producer (under creator Glen Larson) of "Cover Up" early on in the first season. A long time associate of Glen Larson's, his tenure there began with Jon-Erik's last three episodes. Mr. Shayne was kind enough to answer our e-mail, and graciously took a few minutes of free time to share his reflections with us in surprising detail and candor.
JEHRP: We've put together a Remembrance Page for Jon-Erik Hexum on the Web, and would be very interested to hear your comments on the show and how you came to be associated with it, as well as your memories of Jon-Erik.
Bob Shayne: I came on board with the show in big trouble. The original producer had been fired by Glen and the network for making the show (ironically) too violent and dark. I had a reputation for writing light and funny mystery-thrillers, so I got the job.
My first script was a Hitchcockian thriller in which Jon-Erik is wanted for murder by the New York police and has to prove his innocence while on the lam ["Harper-Gate," --ed.]. Glen loved it and based on that hired me to replace the other guy (who, by the way, was a very talented writer who was also known for light,funny scripts, but somehow saw this series as darker and heavier than the rest of us). I didn't know Jon-Erik more than to say hello and have no fond memories to relate. The guy killed himself by doing a real dumb thing and managed to involve me in it through no fault of my own, and yet I feel somehow slightly guilty about the whole thing.
Jon only lived through the first two and one-half episodes I produced ("Harper-Gate," "Nothing to Lose [with Harker Wade]," and "Golden Opportunity" --ed.). I had lunch with him and Jennifer and Glen the day he shot himself -- or perhaps the day before…I remember I was on Catalina when it happened… I never got to know him. He seemed very nice and acted younger than his years.
JEHRP: During your lunch with Jon-Erik on this occasion, what can you say about his demeanor? I ask this because there had been rumors -- which appear to have been largely unfounded -- that he had been in some sort of suicidal depression at this time, and that's what led him to raise the pistol to his head. Do you remember anything about the conversation?
Bob Shayne: He was in high spirits, outgoing. I can't remember anything about the conversation. I'm afraid that's about it.
JEHRP: Tell us a little about Jennifer O'Neill…
Bob Shayne: I always felt he and Jennifer were a terrible match on screen; they came off like mother and son to me. I thought Jon's replacement Anthony Hamilton was a much better match with Jennifer, and I thought he'd become a star. But he never did, and he died of AIDS a few years ago. Jennifer tended to be the tiger woman on the show. She made Glen's right hand man Terry Allen completely crazy. She was never satisfied with anything and seemed to pick on Terry more than anyone, I think because she sensed he was afraid of her. He was very relieved when I came on board. He tried to fade into the woodwork. Seeing how she was with him, I stayed clear of her too, although she seemed to like me. Our supervising producer, who arrived shortly after me, Don Dunaway, got along well with her. She seemed much happier dealing with him.
JEHRP: I'd also heard that Jennifer O'Neill was difficult to work with, and that she was often very concerned about Jon-Erik upstaging her! They apparently didn't get along very well.
Bob Shayne: Jon and Jennifer got along just fine. I'm not aware of her ever thinking he was upstaging her.
JEHRP: I enjoyed your remarks in the scriptwriting forum about Richard Anderson's character breaking into Dani's apartment and having Mac and Dani discover him nude in her tub taking a bubble bath -- as a way of livening up the otherwise tedious portion of the show in which he presents them with their current assignment… I found the show to be amusing in other ways as well;like for example when they go to Florida, they're surrounded by mountains that look suspiciously like the ones around San Pedro or the Pacific Palisades. Did you feel that, as a writer, they were true to your ideal? Or was Glen Larson somewhat of a penny pincher when it came to locations and production values?
Bob Shayne: Glen would be thrilled to think someone thought of him as a tightwad. In fact, his reputation in the industry is, or was, just the opposite. He was always spending unplanned money making changes he thought would greatly improved shows but that never did. He'd re-edit all night the day before he had to ship an episode. Not so much on "Cover-Up" once Don and I were there; he pretty much left us alone to run it for the most part. But on other shows I did with him.
More recently we co-created "P.S., I Luv U," and he ran it while I had a big title and got rather good money but had no authority because he had nothing else to do so he spent all his time, night and day, doing everyone's job for them, including re-editing all night long before the day he had to deliver the episode. He'd take out all the master shots and do all the scenes in close-ups, and then Connie Sellecca, our star (and one of the two greatest actors I've had to work with in my life -- the other being Gerald McRaney), would watch the episode on the air and come to me the next day and tell me the editor had ruined the show and should be fired. And I'd tell her it was Glen, not the editor, and she should talk to him, but she never did, and then the same thing would happen the next week.
The reason we shot in San Pedro for Florida was the show was based at 20th Century Fox in West L.A. San Pedro was 15 miles away. Florida was 3000. There was no way we could fly there to do a show. But the series took place, on screen, around the world. So we had to fake the world as best we could in the environs of West L.A.
JEHRP: I guess it's hard to shoot in Southern California without getting a mountain in the shot somewhere!
Bob Shayne: We eventually found the best place to do our outdoor locations was on the 20th Century Fox lot. We once turned the alley in between two sound stages into a Turkish bazaar and the outside of one of the stages into the outside of a Turkish prison, and did our most exciting and foreign looking episode there.
JEHRP: Lastly, I understand your displeasure about becoming involved in the fall-out from the accident, although it certainly shouldn't be anything you should personally feel any guilt over; The only contributory negligence I could think of on the part of the crew would possibly have been that of the propmaster…
Bob Shayne: That's true. He was a very sweet guy, and as far I know he escaped any kind of legal blame and I don't even think it hurt his career, but in theory he should have been held responsible for allowing Jon-Erik to keep the gun between takes, which is against the safety rules.
JEHRP: Setting aside for a moment the disputed time in which the gun was left in Jon-Erik's possession after the break in shooting, there was one other question asked by the SAG safety committee which investigated the incident, which to my knowledge has never been answered: why were "live" blanks used in a gun which wasn't to be discharged during the scene in question? Generally in such situations, "dummy" (non-discharging) blanks are used. In addition to Jon-Erik's admittedly poor judgment, this could've well been a contributory factor in the accident.
Bob Shayne: I may not have the right information about this, but I assume the gun was to be fired in the master shot, at least, as the point of the scene was for Jon's character to shoot his sidekick, played by Mikeltee Williamson, with a blank in the presence of the bad guys, in order to convince the bad guys he was one of them. I wrote the scene.
JEHRP: The scene where Jon-Erik actually shot the blank gun at Mykeltee Williamson (an exterior shot on a rocky beach) was shot prior to the scene where he loaded the gun in the hotel room. In the hotel room scene (Jon-Erik's last), Mac Harper (Jon-Erik) is seen sitting on the bed, switching the "real bullets" for blanks. Your character, "Ralph" (the villain's bodyguard) knocks on the door, and informs him that he wants to accompany him on the hit. Mac tells him he prefers to work alone, then begrudgingly picks up his duffel bag and they leave. The gun wasn't to be fired in the scene.
Bob Shayne: It's interesting what you say about the gun not needing to be fired in that scene. Maybe those blanks were used because he was loading them in that scene, although I think they could have gotten away with loading anything unless there was an extreme close-up. Oh, well.
…The reason I think I feel slightly responsible is that the scene wasn't in the original script. Then an asshole at the network (who came back to plague me yet again on a later series I did for the network with a whole bunch more of not necessarily good ideas which he would always insist on -- whether they were good or bad) insisted the script was too soft and needed to be more violent. (Of course, they never use that word. The code word is "action." It needed more "action." Bullshit. That meant "violence.") So I devised the whole con-within-the-con where Jon pretends to shoot Mikeltee. If the network asshole hadn't pressed me, that scene wouldn't have been in the script and the gun wouldn't have been in Jon-Erik's hand…By the way, there's a backstory to the script…
They needed [the "Golden Opportunity"] script in about two days as they were already shooting my first one and had thrown out all those developed by the other guy and had nothing else to shoot. I told Glen there was one way I could write a script in two days - by using a story of his that I had adapted before. It was originally an episode of "Switch" with Robert Wagner and Eddie Albert. Glen had written it with Michael Sloan. Although I became less and less a fan of their work, this script just thrilled me. I watched the show before I was making a living doing TV action/adventure, and never forgot it. When I was story editor on a later series of Glen's called "Sword of Justice," I got his permission to adapt that story there. What had happened with boats on "Switch" happened with planes on "Sword of Justice." But the series got cancelled before, I think, that script got shot.
So when, a few years later, "Sheriff Lobo" needed a script from me in a big hurry (as a threatened writers' strike loomed on the horizon) I suggested I steal that story from "Switch" again and turn it into a "Sheriff Lobo." Glen also owned that show and gave his blessings for me to do that, and Michael would have been credited and paid again, except "Sheriff Lobo" was also cancelled so it never aired. (This time what had happened with boats and planes happened with cars.)
A couple of years later, then when a failing new series I was working on called "Simon & Simon" had a chance to have a test run following "Magnum," I suggested taking this story from "Switch" and using it as the second half of a two-part two-hour show that would begin on "Magnum" and then continue on "Simon & Simon" to make people watch the latter. Although Glen got a shared "created by" credit on "Magnum" for having written the first pilot script, which was thrown out, he had nothing to do with running the series. Don Bellesario agreed to my plan and Phil De Guere (who created and ran "Simon & Simon") and I wrote the first half for "Magnum" and Richard Chapman and I wrote the second half for "Simon & Simon." While I was extremely unhappy with the rewritten final scripts and resulting shows, the two-parter is what put "Simon & Simon" on the map and turned it into a hit, which was soon getting even bigger ratings than "Magnum." (This time what had happened with cars, boats and planes took place in -- and was actually shot in -- Mexico, became a take-off on "The Treasure of Sierra Madre," and took place with donkeys.)
So when again I needed to pull yet another show out of the toilet with a script to be written in two days, and since I so disliked the way it had been changed the previous time, I proposed to Glen we use the same basic story for "Cover Up." It actually came out much closer than the original version on "Switch" than the intermediate versions had been. I set it in Florida and wrote it in two days. They started shooting it. The network demanded more violence. I added the scene with the blanks. And Jon killed himself with the show only partially filmed (on the first day I had taken off after working seven days a week since I began on the series). Ironically, the episode came out rather well, except, of course, it had a complete pall over it because of his death.
JEHRP: Thank-you very much for your comments, Mr. Shayne. I appreciate your knowledge and candor.
***
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