Scripts
Route 66 was officially created by producer Herbert B. Leonard and writer Stirling Silliphant, though Silliphant wrote the majority of the episodes (including the pilot) while Leonard did not write at all. It was notable for its dark storylines and exceptional realism. Tod and Buz would frequently become involved with individuals whose almost nihilistic worldview made for occasionally frightening TV. Some 50 years after its premiere, Route 66 is still one of the few TV series to offer such a range of socially-conscious stories, including mercy killing, the threat of nuclear annihilation, terrorism, runaways and orphans. Other episodes dealt with the mentally ill, drug addiction or gang violence. Some stories were lighthearted, such as a memorable episode featuring Richard Basehart as a folklorist trying to record the music of an isolated Appalachian community, and a Halloween episode called "Lizard's Leg and Owlet's Wing".
Even more unusual is the way it served up a kind of soaring dialog that has been referred to as "Shakespearean" and free-verse poetry. For instance, the boys encounter a Nazi hunter named Bartlett on the offshore oil drilling rig where they work. Bartlett describes the horrors of World War II and the Holocaust thus: "Tod, I hope you live a long life and never know the blistering forces that sear and destroy, turn men into enemies and sweep past the last frontiers of compassion" and "once you've seen that dark, unceasing tide of faces... of the victims...the last spark of dignity so obliterated that not one face is lifted to heaven, not one voice is raised in protest even as they died..." (from episode #4, "The Man on the Monkey Board").
The quirky, textured writing extended to episode titles, which included such oddities as "How Much a Pound is Albatross?" and "Ever Ride the Waves in Oklahoma?" the latter causing a sensation as a 'surfing story' where Buz oddly berates a surf bum for existing without purpose. Other storylines were absurd, such as "Fifty Miles From Home" where Linc Case is set upon by several men who want to beat him up because he was deliberately and publicly avoiding a woman who has been following him across the country like some lovesick groupie (played by Susan Oliver). When Linc uses his martial arts expertise to handily trounce the entire mob who had ganged up on him, Tod becomes so incensed at Linc's act of self-defense that he actually goes out of his way to "teach Linc a lesson" by later somehow managing to beat Linc in a fistfight! Other episode titles were drawn from a wide range of literary sources, such as Shakespeare ("A Lance of Straw", "Hell is Empty, All the Devils are Here") or Alfred Tennyson ("A Fury Slinging Flame").
Many of the stories were character studies, like the above-mentioned one featuring Richard Basehart as a man who uses people then tosses them away. The episode titled "You Can't Pick Cotton in Tahiti" refers to small-town America as both a far-away, exotic Tahiti and the "real America" compared to "phony-baloney" Hollywood. Many episodes offer moving soliloquies, into which future Academy-Award-winning writer Stirling Silliphant (In the Heat of the Night) poured his deepest thoughts.
Despite all the adventure, travelogue, drama and poetry, the real subject of the series was the human condition, with Tod and Buz often cast as a kind of roving Greek chorus, observers and mentors to broken-down prizefighters and rodeo clowns, sadists and iron-willed matrons, surfers and heiresses, runaway kids and people from all walks of life, forced by circumstances to confront their demons.
One hallmark of the show was the way it introduced viewers to new ways of life and new cultures. For instance, a view of a shrimper's life in episode 2 of season 1, "A Lance of Straw," and a look at Cleveland, Ohio's Polish community in episode 35, "First Class Mouliak". Here the young are pushed by their parents into careers and marriages they may not want, in an effort to hold community and family together, albeit at the expense of the happiness and well-being of the kids. This story featured Robert Redford, Martin Balsam, Nehemiah Persoff and Nancy Malone as guest stars.
One of the legacies Route 66 left behind is a dramatic and photographic portrait of early-1960s America as a less crowded and less complicated era — if not a less violent one — in which altruism and optimism still had a place. That place was filled by two young men who seemed to represent the best in us, the willingness to stand up for the weak, and who espoused old-fashioned values like honesty and the physical courage necessary to fight in their own and others' defense. In their role of wanderers, they appeared to be peaceful rebels who seemed to reject, at least for a time, material possessions and the American dream of owning a home. The boys were de facto orphans adrift in American society; as such, they embodied facets of Jack Kerouac's Beat Generation, a little bit of Marlon Brando's wild side from The Wild One, James Dean's inability to settle down and fit in from Rebel Without a Cause, and the wanderlust of the above-mentioned Jim Bronson, the traveling writer and loner who toured the USA on a motorcycle in the 1969-1970 series Then Came Bronson. The use of the Corvette on Route 66, not only as the boys' transportation but as their marquee and symbol of their wandering spirit, created a link between America's Sports Car and America's highways that endures to this day.
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