Books that never had episode counterparts

MeTV has released some teaser trailers for their Fall schedule. I am absolutely ecstatic over some of them; among other things, we’re getting CHiPs, The Man from U.N.C.L.E., and Baa Baa Black Sheep! Oh my goodness. So much wonderful Simon Oakland! Plus, Mission: Impossible is returning at long last. It totally belongs on MeTV; I wish they had never tried removing it.

As of right now, I have no knowledge of how the new schedule will affect Perry, if at all. My guess is that the morning episode will not be returned, but I don’t know. I also guess that Ironside will not yet be returning. I really wish they’d bring Ironside back, especially because I’m nuts about Joseph Campanella and really want to see and record his four guest appearances.

And speaking of actors, I was definitely stunned and saddened by James Garner’s passing this past weekend. I can’t think of any connections he had with the main Perry actors, albeit he did have repeated interaction with some of the marvelous Perry guest-stars. He certainly had a talent for humor and making people laugh. I’ve heard he was also an excellent dramatic actor, but I don’t think I’ve seen any of his more serious roles recently enough to really assess them. (Unless Marlowe counts, but his interpretation of that character was a lot like Jim Rockford.) It would have been interesting to have pitted one of his characters against the Perry or even the Ironside cast. The closest we can ever come to that is the fact that I feature Steve Drumm and Sergeant Brice in my Rockford Files fanfiction story and Jim Rockford has some level of interaction with them. James Garner was definitely one of the remaining greats from a bygone era of movies and television. He will be missed.

Also, out of sheer curiosity, I decided to look through a list of the Perry books and make a tally of how many were not made into episodes, using Storrer’s fabulous site. Out of 82 books (two published posthumously), 16 were not made into episodes. The first of those sixteen, The Golddigger’s Purse, didn’t even appear until the third set of ten, published in the 1940s. The second, The Crying Swallow (hmm, intriguing title) is from the fourth set of ten, and the third, The Irate Witness, from the fifth set. Then there isn’t another episode-less book until the seventh set, with The Stepdaughter’s Secret. All of the subsequent twelve books were never made into episodes. For the record, their titles are as follows:

The Amorous Aunt
The Daring Divorcee
The Phantom Fortune
The Horrified Heirs

The Troubled Trustee

The Beautiful Beggar

The Worried Waitress

The Queenly Contestant

The Careless Cupid

The Fabulous Fake

The Fenced-In Woman 

The Postponed Murder

Some sound intriguing, while others downright amuse me. Careless Cupid?

I wonder why several of the older books were left untouched by the series and all of the later ones? The eighth set of ten were written partially while the series was still ongoing; did they not want to adapt novels written that recently? When the series first started, they were okay with adapting some of the ones written right around that time, including The Daring Decoy, The Screaming Woman, and The Long-Legged Models, all first season episodes based on books published within months of the episodes’ release dates.

Perhaps later on, they were coming up with so many ideas of their own that they weren’t as keen on adapting many more of the original novels. In 1963, they were finishing up season 6 and going on to season 7, two seasons that definitely didn’t have many book-based episodes. Season 8 continued the practice by only having minimal book involvement, and then by season 9 they decided the thing to do was to remake some of the book-based episodes they had already done, instead of adapting some of the remaining books that hadn’t been used. I can’t fully complain, as I definitely adore at least one of those remakes (The Sausalito Sunrise from The Moth-Eaten Mink), but I do wonder why they were so interested in remakes when there was still fresh source material they could have used!