Arrest & Trial

Years before Law and Order there was.......Arrest and Trial - a 90-minute crime/legal drama that aired on ABC Sunday nights during the 1963-1964 television season. The two big stars of it were Ben Gazzara and Chuck Connors. Some of the more recognizable faces that made appearances in this include Harvey Korman, Michael Constantine, Anne Francis, James Whitmore, Broderick Crawford, Joey Heatherton, Ed Platt, Richard Basehart, Shelley Fabares, Dabney Coleman, Robert Duval, Sandy Dennis, Martin Balsam, David Carradine, Patricia Crawley, Peter Fonda, Jim Backus, Roddy McDowell and Mickey Rooney. 

Arrest and Trial

This was on 8:30 to 10 pm opposite the second half of the Ed Sullivan Show and the Judy Garland Show on CBS and Grindl and Bonanza on NBC. Anyone remember the comedy Grindl with Imogene Coca besides me? Imogene pretty much was the entire cast so each week there would be different guest stars. Some of the other Sunday night shows that season were My Favorite Martian, The Bill Dana Show (I lived very near Bill's hometown at the time), Disney's Wonderful World of Color and a show called The Travels of Jaimie McPheeters which was a western starring Kurt Russell and Charles Bronson. I have absolutely no memory of that one at all. Not even the name. Uncle Martin the Martian, Disney and Ed Sullivan must have won out at my house. 

You probably knew this, but long before he was The Rifleman, Chuck Connors was a professional athlete. Before the war he kicked around in the low minor league system of the New York Yankees as well as playing in the unaffiliated Northern League (Vermont) and New England League and both college basketball and baseball for Seton Hall. He spent most of his WWII service time stationed at West Point Military Academy in New York where he was able to also play semi-pro basketball for various teams in the New York state area. After the war he was signed by his hometown Brooklyn Dodgers baseball team and he spent the summer of '46 playing for their farm club in Newport News. At the end of the baseball season he was signed by the Boston Celtics basketball team and was on their squad that winter, the first year the Celts existed, before returning to baseball in the spring, this time with the Dodgers farm club in Mobile. He returned to the Celtics again the next winter but only played in four games and stuck with baseball after that. The next 3 seasons he spent mostly with the Dodgers top farm club in Montreal, but he did get into one game with the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1949, a Sunday afternoon game at home against the Phillies. He pinch hit for Carl Furillo in the bottom of the 9th and grounded out to Granny Hamner to end the game. In October 1950 the Dodgers traded Chuck to the Cubs and while he did play in 66 games for Chicago in 1951, he spent the bulk of the next two seasons playing for the Cubs top farm club, the Los Angeles Angels. Being in LA opened the door to acting for him and in between his last two baseball seasons he got a bit part as a police captain in the Spencer Tracy - Katharine Hepburn film "Pat and Mike". See the photo below. That's Charles Bronson next to him.