Sorry I Am Not

posting much, but I am sitting here watching a DVD of the classic 1960s series, Route 66. Beyond the fact it was one of the best shows in television history, it is fun to watch where the show was filmed for each episode. Of course it was filmed almost entirely on location.

I watched an episode where Tod (Martin Milner), Buz (George Maharis), and the real star of the show, the Corvette, went to Squaw Valley, California. Squaw Valley, of course, was the location of the 1960 Winter Olympics, and it was mentioned on the show. At the beginning of the episode ("Effigy in Snow"), which was about a nutball who had killed a woman skier, Milner and Maharis were parked alongside the road overlooking a lake. I knew it wasn't Tahoe, but never mind. It was Donner Lake, as the two noted, and they also mentioned the tragic Donner Party incident including cannibalization and all. Since the episode was filmed in 1961, before Interstate 80 was built or completed, the location threw me for a bit.

Another episode, "Like a Motherless Child," was filmed in around Carson City and Reno.

I always like how the show picks up right where it left off in the last episode. In the episode I am watching now, the location is Virginia City, Nevada. Near the beginning of the show, they showed Piper's Opera House and some actor mentioned Reno was "90 miles away." That is nowhere near true, and later on, Martin Milner mentioned Reno was "30 miles away," which is more or less accurate. Then they filmed scenes in Reno, at the Mapes Hotel (1947-2000), which was the place to be back then. I had my landlord watch this episode, and it brought back a lot of memories to him. He has been in Reno since 1947, the year the Mapes was built. The hotel was the first hotel/casino in Nevada.

In another episode, featuring Martha Hyer as a blind woman, it featured a seeing-eye dog called "Rex." I was wondering if the dog was actually a real seeing-eye dog. At the end of the show, during the credits, he was credited as "Special Guest Star Rin Tin Tin," descendant of the original (1918-1932), and probably the same dog or the son of the dog (Flame, Jr.) who was in the 1950s television show.*

It's fun to look at these shows, and see how various parts of the country looked then as opposed to now.

This link has a very good recent interview with George Maharis.

*--The Adventures of Rin Tin Tin, which I remember in reruns, was produced from 1954-1959 by Screen Gems, which also produced Route 66. The dog in the Route 66 episode either was the main dog on the earlier series or else he was one of the other dogs playing the part in the show.