The Lieutenant - Production and Transmission Progress

Production and Transmission Progress

Actor Gary Lockwood was twenty-six years of age and still an apprentice actor at the time the series premiered. Lockwood received his stage "family" name from early mentor Joshua Logan, who had participated in Mister Roberts and Picnic and whose middle name was Lockwood. A former UCLA college football player who could be violent and quick-tempered, and who had seriously injured a man in a brawl at a party, Lockwood tried to withdraw from the series program at the last moment, hoping to concentrate on films. He did not do so because the producers and network executives convinced him that there would be unpleasant payback if he did. Lockwood later compared being a TV star to being a jet pilot: many experts, he said, worked behind the scenes and then the pilot entered the hot seat and made it all work.