32 MARCH 2019 I LIC COURIER I www.qns.com
AN AMERICAN ODYSSEY
Odysseus was the hero of an epic
poem, The Odyssey, which is the sequel
to another work, the Iliad. Both stories
from ancient Greece are the oldest written
works in literature. The word “odyssey”
means to take a long wandering journey,
often fraught with adventure if not danger,
encountering inimitable people as you pass
through extraordinary settings.
A weekly Friday night program on televi-sion,
“Route 66” was a direct descendant
of the genre. It aired on CBS from 1960
to 1964. Although its name invoked the
legendary highway, the mythic Main Street
of America, and encouraged a generation
to travel the real Route 66, it was filmed
at locations across the country.
Buz Murdock, played by George Maha-ris,
was “a hard-slugging guy from Hell’s
Kitchen” and his partner, Tod Stiles, played
by Martin Milner, a “preppy fellow who had
just inherited a Corvette,” made for an
unlikely team. Fueled with a shared wan-derlust
for adventure, the series chronicled
their four-year odyssey across America.
A critic marveled “The idea of traveling
without a destination, helping people in
need and working for gas, lodging and
food to get to the next place, seems so
American and adventuresome.” These
odd jobs often brought them in contact
with whatever storyline was at the center
of that week’s epic. A reviewer stated: “It
was an attempt to blend the closed-off,
social-issues-based storytelling of the best
anthology dramas, with the recurring char-acters
of a more traditional drama series.”
Tod and Buz were cast as a kind of
“roving Greek chorus,” witnesses to every
shade of the human condition, the rich
and poor, old and young, drifters who
time passed by, residents of the gut-ter
and of prisoners in gilded drawing
rooms, but all facing plots lines that
forced them to encounter challenges
within their lives.
And like the original Odysseus, Astoria
native Maharis was also Greek. Now retired
after an acting career that spanned more
than 70 credits, and an Emmy nomination
for his role in the series, he reflects back
on the show that launched his career: “It
was about two men who were trying to
catch a star and find a place in this world."
Maharis continued, “We worked six days
a week, sometimes seven, because we were
always behind schedule. You got up at 5 in
the morning and you get back to your motel
at 7 or 9 at night, sometimes even later. We
did 32 to 35 shows a year. Now, they do 20
to 22 at most. No one would try anything
like that today” The pace of 12 to 15-hour
work days ultimately endangered his health
and forced him to leave the show. Without
his chemistry, it soon ended.
Hallmarks of the series included its
soaring dialogue and the ways it intro-duced
viewers to new ways of life and
new cultures. It was one the one of the
most unique and memorable programs on
television, or as reviewers later dubbed it,
“artistic TV” or “seat-of-pants television.” It
was a chapter from the early years before
the medium fell into set piece dramas and
tame scripts. Filmed in black and white, the
American landscape was mid-twentieth
century – yet also oddly full of people
and plot lines that would fit easily in the
twenty-first. Its dozens of characters helped
break the color barrier, and at the century’s
midpoint, showcased the legends from the
century’s first half as well as those future
stars still around to this day.
“It was very, very interesting,” Maharis
continued, “because no matter where you
went, every town had its own personality.
It was totally different from the other town
you went to, even if it was only 50 to 60
miles away. That’s not true anymore. You
can go a thousand miles now, and every-one’s
wearing the same clothes, singing
the same songs, eating the same food.”
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